Philadelphia Museum of Art
Picasso Prints: Myths, Minotaurs and Muses
Artificial
Light: Flash Photography in the Twentieth Century
May
24- August 3, 2014
Reviewed by Ed Voves
Great art always speaks for
itself. A notable work of art - whatever the medium - is a unique and timeless
assertion of each artist's creative insight.
Art exhibitions showcase the individual
contributions of artists. Exhibits also show trace common themes and the ways
that innovative or over-looked forms of creative expression are utilized by
artists to "speak" for art in new ways.
Two thoughtful and eclectic
exhibits at the Philadelphia Museum of Art address the process whereby an
artistic medium, unappreciated or seldom studied by art scholars, can reveal
profound truths and unforgettable imagery. Artificial Light: Flash
Photography in the Twentieth Century and Picasso Prints: Myths,
Minotaurs and Muses also complement each other by drawing attention to a
human value often undervalued today: compassion.
Why compassion? Flash
photography often has an opposite effect, of invading someone's life in a sudden
assault of paralyzing, probing light. Some of the photos in the exhibit, like
Harold Edgerton’s Tumblers (1942), evoke a clinical, dispassionate
perspective, namely that of science. Ovid’s Metamorphosis, which inspired
many of Picasso's prints, is not a notably compassionate work. Pablo Picasso, himself, was more known for
his personal passions than concern for those around him.
Yet many of the art works in
Artificial Light and Picasso Prints powerfully evoke the need for
human empathy.
A photo by Mark Cohen, on
display in Artificial Light, is a good starting point. Now based in
Philadelphia after many years in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Cohen specializes in what he
describes as "intrusive" street-photography.
Mark Cohen, Untitled (Girls' Faces Flashed in Bus Window)
In Cohen's 1973 photo,
Untitled (Girls' Faces Flashed in Bus Window), we see exactly what
the title says - and something more. The reflection of Cohen's flash replicates
the effect of human breath on a window, in this case of the smiling, vivacious
young woman beaming at us from inside the bus. This effect makes the young
woman the active party in the photo. She is the beholder, her breath marking
her presence as she reaches out to us, with an open-handed act of friendship.
Of course, this startling
detail is just a trick of the camera and the young woman's waved hand little
more than a spontaneous gesture. But in that fleeting moment, her eyes meet
ours and the artificial barriers between human beings melt away.
Lewis Hine (1874-1940) aimed
to bridge the dividing gulf between people too, but his photo process was a bit
more deliberate.
Hine, the great
Progressive-era photographer, documented the plight of child workers,
immigrants and hard-luck outcasts with a large format camera. Hine's night-time
photography carried on the work of an earlier social activist, Jacob Riis, one
of the first to experiment with flash photography. Hine's Midnight at the
Bowery Mission Breadline, 1909, on display in the exhibit, is a superb
example of the psychological awareness that he brought to his work.
Hine was a master of giving
artful form to awful reality. Many of his famous photos of immigrant mothers
and children directly borrowed poses from Raphael's Renaissance Madonnas. When
he photographed a young, barefoot factory girl from Vermont, Addie Card, in front
of the cotton-spinning loom of the North Pownal Cotton Mill, Hine was surely
aware of the country lasses painted over a century earlier by Thomas
Gainsborough.
With aesthetically
acceptable photos like these, Hine was able to deliver a shocking glimpse of
the harshness of life in a format that would not cause the viewer to
immediately wince and look away. In his nighttime pictures, however, Hine had
to use the flash to illuminate the scene, a dangerous and unforgiving technique
at that time. Hine ignited magnesium powder to light the scene. This gave
little or no opportunity to arrange the subjects to conform to preconceived
notions of fine art. The flash photo would have to stand or fall on whether it
caught and held this specific moment of time.
Lewis W. Hine, Midnight at the Bowery Mission Breadline
Midnight at the Bowery
Mission Breadline certainly succeeded in
capturing the raw, social-Darwinian brutalities of pre-World War I America.
This group portrait is all the more powerful for the wide range of ages of the
picture's subjects, with a touch of intriguing mystery. Who are these men
trying to hold hunger at bay with a free cup of coffee and a slice of bread?
Hobos? Laid-off factory workers? Immigrants just arrived from Ellis Island?
Hine's Breadline
protagonists have the defeated faces of wartime POWs. Their varying expressions
recall Winslow Homer's Prisoners from the Front. But these hungry men
are not defeated "enemy" soldiers. They are fellow-Americans. They
stare at us through the lens of Hine's camera. And since their clothes are so
non-descript, so lacking in period details - except for the rounded derby hat
of the second man from the left - these men might well be from the
"brother can you spare a dime" 1930's or from our own time. They
could be us, just as the beaming, smiling Girls' Faces Flashed in a Bus
Window could be ours too, on a better, happier day.
These two pictures are
indicative of the way that flash photos help us to reach beyond the "us
vs. them" divide that separates human beings. We can embrace the
"other" in other people more readily because of the enhanced
spontaneity of the photograph taken with a flash camera. And in doing so, we
can get in touch with the "other" in ourselves.
Nicholas Nixon's West
Springfield, Massachusetts extends this embrace to other species, indeed to
all of nature. Nixon is one of the most sensitive photographers of the
contemporary era. His photos of AIDS patients and dying elderly people are
haunting portraits, entirely free of cloying sentimentality.
Here, an affectionate hand
is extended to a sleeping calf. Nixon captured an endearing image of innocent
new life - and of human empathy. The calf, however, is not pet, not a puppy or
kitten who will be showered with affection and treats. The calf, when it
matures, is fated to serve the material needs of people, producing milk or meat
for the dinner table. It is unsettling to look at this photo, taken in 1978,
and reflect that this beautiful animal is long since dead, unremembered but for
this memorable image.
Nicholas Nixon, West Springfield, Massachusetts
mages of cattle are
comparatively rare in art, but in the ancient Mediterranean world religious
cults flourished where bulls were worshipped or ritually slaughtered. We see
echoes of these practices in the second of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
exhibits, Picasso Prints: Myths, Minotaurs and Muses.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
who created mythology-themed prints during the first half of the 1930's,
focused on the legend of the Minotaur. This became a dominant motif in
Picasso's art, partly in response to his own tumultuous life, but also
expressing his anguish over the Spanish Civil War which began in 1936.
Picasso's creative genius
was so caught-up in the revolutionary atmosphere of pre-World War I Paris that
his imagination remained little affected by ancient art until a 1917 visit to
Italy. The "return to order" urged by Jean Cocteau a year later
further directed him toward classical antiquity. When the great art dealer,
Ambrose Vollard, commissioned Picasso to illustrate the mythological stories in
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it appeared to be a perfect match of
artist and subject.
A different destiny awaited the Vollard
Suite and the great etching and engraving, Minotauromachy, created in 1935. These classically-inspired
works mirror Picasso's bitter disputes at that time with his wife, Olga
Khokhlova and his young mistress and model, Marie-Thérèse Walter. The violence
in many of these prints also reflects the savage Spanish Civil War, which began
in 1936.
Marie-Thérèse
Walter, idolized by Picasso for her classical beauty, appears in most of these
prints. We see her Grecian profile as she gazes down at Picasso's alter ego,
the Minotaur. Picasso identified with this bull-headed "monster" and
later, toward the end of his life, he declared, "If all the ways I have
been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a
Minotaur."
Pablo Picasso, Sleeping Minotaur Watched by a Woman
In a 1933 print, Sleeping Minotaur
Watched by a Woman, Picasso presents the Minotaur as a weary, exhausted
creature rather than a dangerous predator. Indeed, the face of the sleeping Minotaur,
behind the delicate curtain, is surprisingly like that of the calf in West Springfield, Massachusetts!
A year later, Picasso shows a young girl
with the facial features of Marie-Thérèse guiding a blinded, suffering
Minotaur. The print is filled with
dense, cryptic images, the tortured Minotaur reflecting his own inner turmoil.
These images climax with the 1935 print, Minotauromachy or "Minotaur
fight." All of the elements here relate to Picasso's explosive conflict
with his wife and Marie-Thérèse. Olga
Khokhlova discovered the relationship between Picasso and Marie-Thérèse, who
was pregnant with his child. Picasso's handling of the situation was notably
insensitive to both wife and mistress and a short time later he commenced a new
liaison, with Dora Marr.
Pablo Picasso, Minotauromachy
The elements of Minotauromachy, however, shortly reappeared in another
work that would yield a great deal of credit to Picasso. The face of
Marie-Thérèse with outstretched hand holding a light, the anguished rearing
horse, the great bull's head, the crumpled, dying figure holding a sword - all
would emerge again in Guernica!Minotauromachy and the prints of the Vollard Suite, by the strange alchemy that is art, paved the way to Picasso's greatest painting. It is a process that we can see at work in the flash photos and classically inspired prints of these fine exhibits at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: the dross of daily life transformed into the gold of compassionate creativity.
***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved
Images Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum
of Art
Blind Minotaur Guided by a Girl at Night, 1934. Pablo Ruiz y
Picasso, Spanish, 1881 - 1973. Aquatint, scraper, and drypoint, Plate: 9 11/16
x 13 11/16 inches (24.6 x 34.8 cm), Sheet: 13 x 15 15/16 inches (33 x 40.5 cm).
Philadelphia Museum of Art, © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York
except for the rounded derby hat of the second man from the left - these men might well be from the "brother can you spare a dime" 1930's or from our own time.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I thought. I was amazed it was in 1909. If men still wore hats, this photo could have been taken 24 hours ago instead of 105 years . Thanks for posting!