Bruce Nauman. American, born 1941 Waxing Hot from the portfolio Eleven Color, Photographs. 1966–67/1970/2007 Inkjet print (originally chromogenic color print), 19 15/16 x 19 15/16" (50.6 x 50.6 cm) Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Gerald S. Elliott Collection © 2010 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
“The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today” opens at the Museum of Modern Art on August 1. With over 300 photographs by over 100 artists, the exhibit takes an extensive look at the practice of photographing sculpture that began in 1839, the same year of the camera’s invention. Now that a “copy” could be made of what was once a single item in a single area, photography altered the concept of sculpture and, with the creativity required for camera work, became an art medium of its own. In other words, as museum director Glenn Lowry put it, “This exhibition provides an unprecedented exploration of one medium’s critical role in the analysis and creative redefinition of another.” “The Original Copy” looks at the 170-year transformation of photographing sculpture, with works by artists considered to be photographers, sculptors, or both.
The exhibit is divided into 10 sections that focus on an individual artist, a specific time period, or methodology. “Sculpture in the Age of Photography,” for example, contains work that takes a traditional approach to photographing sculpture. Featuring artists like Charles Nègre, Roger Fenton, and Stephen Thompson, who took pictures of sculptures in European cathedrals and museums back in the nineteenth century, “Sculpture in the Age of Photography” has works dating from 1839 up to last year. Jumping ahead to the 20th-century, the section “The Studio without Walls: Sculpture in the Expanded Field” contains photographs from the 1960s onward by photographers who approached sculpture as a more open concept. For instance, artists Bruce Nauman, Christo, and Zhang Dali photographed a messy studio floor, a stack of barrels, and a partially demolished wall, respectively.
“Eugène Atget: The Marvelous in the Everyday,” is, as the name implies, devoted to the works of a single photographer. In the 1920s, Atget traveled to various parts of France creating a record of his nation’s cultural past through photographs of its statues. Then there’s “Auguste Rodin: The Sculptor and Photographic Enterprise,” a section showcasing various artists who took pictures of Rodin’s work, and then “Cultural and Political Icons,” which contains photos like Nikolai Kuleshov’s 1938 picture of a hammer and sickle structure in Moscow and Lee Friedlander’s 1969 picture of Mount Rushmore. The list of artists is exhaustive: Walker Evans, David Goldblatt, Hannah Höch, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Cyprien Gaillard, André Kertész, Barbara Kruger, Louise Laweler, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Franks, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bassaï, Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, and Hannah Wilke, to name a few.
“The Original Copy” will be on display at MoMA until November 1, 2010 and then will travel to Kunsthaus Zürich for a 3-month showing in 2011. The exhibit is so extensive that it has something for everyone, whether you’re interested in contemporary art, ancient art, history, politics, and of course, sculpture or photography.
Christo (Christo Javacheff). American, born Bulgaria 1935 441 Barrels Structure—"The Wall" (Project for 53rd between 5th and 6th Avenues). 1968 Pasted photographs and synthetic polymer paint on cardboard, 22 1/8 x 28" (56 x 71.1 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Louise Ferrari © 2010 Christo
Eugène Atget. French, 1857–1927, Saint-Cloud. 1923, Albumen silver print, 6 7/8 x 8 3/8" (17.5 x 21.3 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Anonymous gift
Fischli/Weiss (Peter Fischli. Swiss, born 1952. David Weiss. Swiss, born 1946), Outlaws. 1984, Chromogenic color print, 15 ¾ x 11 13/16" (40 x 30 cm), Courtesy the artists and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, © Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Lee Friedlander. American, born 1934, Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. 1969, Gelatin silver print, 8 1/16 x 12 1/8" (20.5 x 30.8 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer, © 2010 Lee Friedlander
Yves Klein, French, 1928–1962. Photograph by Harry Shunk, French, 1924–2006, and János Kender, Hungarian, 1937–1983, Leap into the Void. 1960, Gelatin silver print, 13 11/16 x 10 7/8" (34.8 x 27.6 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York. David H. McAlpin Fund, © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Shunk/Kender, © Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
