Dorothea Lange, faire parler les images

Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures

Entrée de l’exposition Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 9, 2020 – May 9, 2020. © 2020 The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: John Wronn

Le Museum of Modern Art a développé très tôt des liens profonds avec la photographe Dorothea LANGE (1895-1965). Elle contribue à la toute première exposition de photographie du musée en 1940 et participe à la préparation de sa première rétrospective, qui ouvrira en 1966, trois mois après sa mort. La modernité de son œil et son parti pris engagé n’ont pas pris une ride et, dans les salles de vente comme dans les galeries de musée, ses mots-images continuent de résonner.

Words and Pictures

Ses yeux sont perdus dans le lointain, comme si son regard était tout ce qui lui restait pour s’échapper de sa condition. Deux enfants l’entourent, le troisième sur ses genoux. Elle doit être jeune, mais semble avoir vécu un siècle. Migrant Mother est la photographie la plus connue de Dorothea Lange (1895-1965). Le MoMA lui consacre jusqu’au 9 mai sa plus grande rétrospective depuis plus de 50 ans, « Dorothea Lange : Words and Pictures »… dans cet ordre. Une centaine de photographies issues des collections du musée, mais également des archives, et notamment des éléments de correspondance, des publications et des travaux universitaires contemporains permettent d’examiner la manière dont les mots – les siens et les nôtres – influencent la manière de comprendre son travail.

Lange, Dorothea

Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. March 1936. Gelatin silver print, 11 1/8 x 8 9/16″ (28.3 x 21.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase

Rare photographe a avoir été reconnue de son vivant, Dorothea Lange naît Dorothea Nutzhorn près de New York. Après des études à la Columbia University et des cours de photographie auprès de Clarence Hudson I WHITE (1871-1925), elle décide de troquer la côte Est pour la côte Ouest et prend le nom de jeune fille de sa mère pour ouvrir un studio à San Francisco, en 1918. Dix ans plus tard, c’est la crise de 1929. La Grande Dépression jette sur les routes des milliers de travailleurs en recherche d’emploi, et Dorothea quitte son atelier pour les suivre. Elle est bientôt employée par la Resettlement Administration (devenue plus tard la Farm Security Administration) pour documenter la réalité des conditions de vie des ouvriers agricoles, dramatiquement impactée par les conditions climatiques catastrophiques et le krach boursier. Son premier rapport de terrain a une véritable répercussion, et passe même entre les mains des locataires de la Maison Blanche : une aide d’urgence est débloquée pour aider les compagnons d’infortune du Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona. La FSA, consciente du pouvoir informatif et émotionnel de ce média encore sous-utilisé au niveau gouvernemental, réunit une petite équipe dont émergera certains des plus grands maîtres de la photographie du XXe siècle : Walker EVANS, Russell LEE, Arthur ROTHSTEIN ou Ben SHAHN. L’exposition étudie la carrière de Lange dans un ordre chronologique, des portraits de studio à la Grande Dépression et à son travail pour diverses agences gouvernementales, en particulier ce documentaire accablant sur les conditions de vie des Américains d’origine japonaise, internés dans des camps au lendemain de l’attaque de Pearl Harbor, si dérangeant qu’il fut censuré par l’administration Roosevelt et publié seulement en 2006.

Ses images sont très parlantes, elles rendent l’atmosphère générale, les conditions de vie des portraits, le désespoir et la résignation, l’espièglerie du regard et l’innocence, la colère et la fatigue. Et pourtant leur auteure n’a jamais pensé que ses photographies seules étaient suffisantes. Toute la controverse autour de son iconique portrait de Migrant Mother lui donne raison : on peut faire dire tout et n’importe quoi à une image. Son travail avait une relation compliquée avec les mots, et l’artiste voulait être aussi juste avec son stylo qu’elle l’était avec son appareil. Une lettre à John Szarkowski de juin 1965 reprise dans l’exposition rend compte de cette incessante recherche : « Suis en train de travailler sur les légendes. Ce n’est pas un simple travail administratif, mais un tout processus, car elles devraient non seulement contenir des informations factuelles, mais également des pistes sur les états d’esprit, les liens et le sens. Ce sont des passerelles, et en expliquant la fonction des légendes, comme je le fais maintenant, je crois que nous étendons le champs d’action de notre médium. » Dorothea Lange voyait la photographie comme le principal moyen de son engagement social, choisissant de sauver de l’oubli les laissés-pour-compte et d’informer sur la réalité des histoires humaines de son temps.

Son œuvre rencontre très tôt un large public, car les photographies étant propriété de l’État, elles sont publiées sans demande de paiement ce qui contribue à leur propagation rapide. Près de 80 ans plus tard, la charge émotionnelle est toujours aussi efficace. Les collectionneurs honorent l’artiste de nombreuse enchères en salles de vente. Le marché de Dorothea Lange a connu un rebond après son record absolu de 2005 pour«White Angel Bread Line» chez Sotheby’s NY emporté à 822 400 $. Ce fut une année en or, avec un pic du chiffre d’affaires qui n’avait plus été approché avant 2019. L’année dernière en effet, la transactions se sont accélérées – avec 40 lots vendus contre 12 en 2018 – et le produit de ventes annuel de l’artiste (près de 1,2m$) lui a permis de faire un bond en avant dans le classement mondial, 2300e place à la 876e place. Nul doute que l’exposition du MoMA permet de remettre l’artiste à l’honneur en salles de vente : ce mardi 25 février, Swann Galleries New York propose pas moins de 9 photographies, des tirages attendus entre 3.000 et 6.000$ en moyenne.

Source : Dorothea Lange, faire parler les images – Artmarketinsight – Artprice.com

Researchers Discover an Ancient Stone Carving So Detailed It Could Alter the Course of Art History | artnet News

A drawing of the Pylos Combat Agate. Courtesy of Ben Gardner/the University of Cincinnati.

The tiny carving has been dubbed the Pylos Combat Agate.

By Sarah Cascone, November 8, 2017

It’s the tomb that keeps on giving. More than two years since its discovery, a treasure-filled Greek tomb has offered up perhaps its most significant find to date: a Minoan stone carving so sophisticated and detailed that it has forced art historians to reaccess their understanding of ancient artwork.

Dubbed the Pylos Combat Agate, the sealstone carving is just an inch and a half wide, but its impact on the study of prehistoric art may well be enormous.

“This seal should be included in all forthcoming art history texts, and will change the way that prehistoric art is viewed,” said Sharon Stocker, a senior research associate in the University of Cincinnati classics department, in a statement. She believes the stone, made by the ancient Minoans, is the finest-known example of prehistoric glyptic art produced in the Aegean Bronze Age.

The intricately carved gemstone “shows that the [Minoan’s] ability and interest in representational art, particularly movement and human anatomy, is beyond what it was imagined to be,” added her husband, department head Jack Davis, a professor of Greek archaeology. “The representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the Classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later.”

“Looking at the image for the first time was a very moving experience, and it still is,” Stocker noted. “It’s brought some people to tears.”

The Pylos Combat Agate. Courtesy of Jeff Vanderpool/the University of Cincinnati.The Pylos Combat Agate. Photo courtesy of Jeff Vanderpool/the University of Cincinnati.

The landmark find shows a warrior battling against two adversaries, killing one enemy, the other already dead at his feet.

It’s the latest archaeological treasure to come out of the Griffin Warrior Tomb, discovered by the Davis- and Stocker-led team from the University of Cincinnati at Pylos in 2015, which was touted as the most significant Greek archaeological discovery in half a century.

The tomb is believed to have been the final resting place of a remarkably wealthy Mycenaean warrior or priest. (A team of specialists has since recreated his probable appearance based on the dead man’s skull.)

The Griffin warrior was buried around 1500 BC, about the time that the Mycenaeans, from mainland Greece, defeated the Minoans, a more advanced civilization from the island of Crete that had a massive influence on the Greek world. The presence of many Minoan artifacts in the tomb suggests a previously unknown degree of exchange between the two cultures.

To date, archaeologists have catalogued some 3,000 burial objects from the Griffin Warrior Tomb, including a bronze sword with a gold-embellished ivory hilt; four solid gold rings; silver cups; over 1,000 carnelian, amethyst, jasper, and agate beads; fine-toothed ivory combs; and a golden dagger.

“The whole tomb contains such a wealth of riches that it’s really very stunning,” Stocker told artnet News. “It’s extremely rare to find a tomb that wasn’t looted during antiquity or in modern times.” Amid the treasures, the seal, heavily encrusted with limestone that took over a year to clean, was almost overlooked, a tiny, apparently insignificant object.

The Pylos Combat Agate before it was cleaned. Courtesy of Alexandros Zokos/the University of Cincinnati.The Pylos Combat Agate before it was cleaned. Photo courtesy of Alexandros Zokos/the University of Cincinnati.

“It was after cleaning, during the process of drawing and photography, that our excitement slowly rose as we gradually came to realize that we had unearthed a masterpiece,” wrote Stocker and Davis in the journal Hesperia, according to the New York Times.

“The Pylos Combat Agate is one of the finest objects that we have found in the Griffin Warrior tomb,” Stocker added. “The craftsmanship is something that you rarely see in the Minoan and Mycenean world. It’s virtually unparalleled.”

The fine details on the stone carving, made all the more difficult to decipher by banding in the agate stone, are so minute that some of them, as small as a half a millimeter in length, can only be seen with the assistance of magnification. Davis described the artwork as “incomprehensibly small.”

In Crete, such sealstones would be used to make impressions that would mark ownership. Placed on a bottle of wine, for instance, it would indicate that the seal was unbroken. In contrast, the Myceneans treated such sealstones as decorative objects, wearing them as jewelry. The Griffin Warrior was found sporting another sealstone pendant as a bracelet.

Less is known about how such an object might have been made, as there is no evidence of magnification at existing archaeological sites for sealstone workshops in Crete. Theories include the use of rock crystal, or artisans with exceptional close-up vision, perhaps due to nearsightedness. Agate is also quite hard, making it difficult to carve.

“It is indeed a mystery how they did it,” said Stocker. “It’s amazing to hold and look at it.”

Source : Researchers Discover an Ancient Stone Carving So Detailed It Could Alter the Course of Art History | artnet News

Did Vermeer Trace His Golden Age Masterpieces? An Artist Puts the Theory to the Test | artnet News

Did Vermeer Trace His Golden Age Masterpieces? An Artist Puts the Theory to the Test

If Johannes Vermeer used a camera obscura, a new book may have figured out how he did it.

Detail from Jan Vermeer’s Young Woman With A Pearl Necklace, (1662-1665). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Leaving behind just 36 exquisite, immaculately lit paintings, Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer has captivated art lovers for generations. Now, author Jane Jelley may have uncovered the artist’s secrets. In her new book, Traces of Vermeer, Jelley tests long-held suspicions that Vermeer actually traced his compositions using a camera obscura—by demonstrating just how such a technique could have been executed.

For over a century, art historians have wondered if Vermeer could have been working with the aid of a camera obscura, a pinhole device that uses a lens to project an inverted view of a subject into a darkened space. And if so, how did the artist convert an upside-down light projection into a fixed painting?

Precious little is known about the Dutch Golden Age master, aside from his birthplace in Delft. So there is no historical evidence supporting such theories. All we have are the paintings and what can be inferred from their appearance.

Jane Jelley, Traces of Vermeer (2017), cover. Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Jane Jelley, Traces of Vermeer (2017), cover. Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Jelley, a painter, has approached the mystery from the point of view of an artist, doing her best to replicate Vermeer’s work from the canvas up, based on X-ray observations.

Beneath the surface, there aren’t underdrawings on Vermeer’s canvases, and there are no signs that he made corrections to his layouts as he worked. Instead, he created a shadowy image outlining the scene before painting. These unusual underpaintings served as a foundation for his luminous works.

Using a camera obscura, Jelley attempted to come up with the same underlayer through a rudimentary monoprint process. She projected images of various Vermeer works through the lens, then traced each image in dark paint on a sheet of transparent oiled paper. She then pressed the painted paper—essentially an image negative—down on canvas, producing a rough outline of each scene. The results appear remarkably similar to the underpaintings of the Vermeer works.

Jane Jelley devised a mean of making prints from a tracing made using a camera obscura, as part of the research for her new book Traces of Vermeer (2017). Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Jane Jelley devised a means of making prints from a tracing made using a camera obscura, as part of the research for her new book Traces of Vermeer (2017). Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

In reimagining Vermeer’s process, Jelley made certain to use a method the artist could have employed in his era. “The materials used in the studio experiments were all available in Vermeer’s time. Great care was taken to prepare the surface of the canvas in a way he would have recognized; and pigments were ground by hand into cold pressed linseed oil,” Jelley wrote on her website, describing the process. “This experiment took a year to complete not only because grounds had to be dry and prepared ready to receive a print, but also because it took time to refine a successful technique.”

If Vermeer really did use this method, it would go a long way to explaining his distorted proportions and off-center compositions. It’s also easy not to have to adjust your perspective when you’ve traced it all in one fell swoop.

L: Jane Jelley made this print based on Johannes Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring using a camera obscura, as part of the research for her new book Traces of Vermeer (2017). R: Jelley added color to the print, based on Vermeer's original. Images courtesy of Oxford University Press.

L: Jane Jelley made this print based on Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring using a camera obscura, as part of the research for her new book Traces of Vermeer (2017). R: Jelley added color to the print, based on Vermeer’s original. Images courtesy of Oxford University Press.

The first person to raise the possibility that Vermeer used a camera obscura was American artist Joseph Pennell, who in 1891 noticed that the man in the foreground of Officer and Laughing Girl was shown nearly twice as large as the girl he sat facing, in much the same way that such a scene might appear in a photograph.

In 2002, Philip Steadman further explored this theory in Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces. (It was a lecture by Steadman in 2007 that inspired Jelley to begin the research that led to Traces of Vermeer.)

Johannes Vermeer, Officer and Laughing Girl (c. 1655–60). Courtesy of the Frick Collection, New York.

Johannes Vermeer,
Officer and Laughing Girl (c. 1655–60). Courtesy of the Frick Collection, New York.

Artist David Hockney also famously made his case on the matter, with help with from physicist Charles Falco, in their 2001 book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. To further his point, Hockney made a number of portraits using the techniques he claimed were employed by the likes of Vermeer.

In her book, Jelley is quick to allay fears that Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura diminishes his genius. Rather, she says, it is an impressive innovation. “The image from the camera obscura is merely a projection. To capture and transfer this to canvas requires skill, judgment, and time; and its product can only ever be part of the process of making a painting,” she writes. “We can never know if Vermeer worked this way; but we should remember that this is not a mindless process, and not a shortcut to success.”

Source : Did Vermeer Trace His Golden Age Masterpieces? An Artist Puts the Theory to the Test | artnet News

Frank Lloyd Wright | HOW TO SEE Rosenwald School with Mabel Wilson

In the 1920s, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a school for the Rosenwald Fund, a philanthropic organization which built over 5,000 schools for African American students who, under Jim Crow laws, were required to pay for their own educational facilities despite paying taxes. Mabel Wilson explores Wright’s plans for the Rosenwald School as well as the architect’s interest in progressive education reform throughout his career.

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