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Indepth Arts News:
"How you look at it: 20th-century Photography"
2000-05-14 until 2000-08-06
Sprengel Musuem
Hannover, ,
DE Germany
Karl Kraus once wrote Art is that which becomes the world. The art
form which has set its mark on the 20th century by portraying it and
sowith influencing its view of time and space, is without doubt
photography. It is omnipresent and exists in the most diverse
aesthetic designs.
The exhibition How you look at it. 20th-century Photography offers a
chance to take stock. It starts by showing how photography has
greatly increased in popularity in recent years, mainly obvious by its
growing presence in museums which in the past normally reserved
museum space for older forms of art. It also traces the surprisingly
high numbers in visitors as well as the increase in the market value of
art photography. Even so, aspects central to the history of art
photography are not really known to a broad section of the public. The
exhibition, containing more than 500 prints, presents the artistic
highlights of 20th-century photography and its foremost
representatives.
The main focus is on realistic photography, oriented towards visible
reality. Its language is closely associated with the phenomena of our
everyday world, although not only in order to document it. For, here it
is more a case of artistic structuring of the visible in order to clarify
an intellectual reality: ideas, memories, emotions through which the
previous century makes itself recognisable in its own special reality.
Photographic artists deal with this complex reality by creating
multilayered picture series, in which they heighten the mediums
expression and density. How you look at it follows this principle
through longer stretches of pictures, assembled by the artists
themselves.
Photography could not have developed in this way without an
exchange with other art genres. This pioneering exhibition confronts
photography with some 40 selected works from painting and
sculpture. Parallel viewing reveals numerous points of contact: a
common interest in urban life - its topography; in its speeded-up
social rhythm; in the idioms of advertising and fashion; in portraits of
mankind and the way he treats nature etc. This integration clarifies
new aesthetic positions, reveals borders where both painting and
photography leave traditional paths and try out new means of
expression. It elucidates photographys pictorial character and
proves it to be not merely concerned with documenting the visible,
but with having personal visions, which also reflect the possibilities of
pictorial expression. The exhibition does not, however, illustrate
theses from art history as to definite influences and dependencies of
the artistic genre, but relies more on art and its ability to convince
through a concept which is not only lively but also follows the
interests of the curators.
The exhibition is part of the cultural programme during EXPO 2000.
It is presented in co-operation with the Niedersaechsische
Sparkassenstiftung.
Artists: the exhibition presents groups of work by the following
photographers: Robert Adams (USA), Diane Arbus (USA), Eugene
Atget (F), Lewis Baltz (USA), Bernd and Hilla Becher (G), Karl
Blossfeldt (G), Christian Boltanski (F), Brassaï (F), Larry Clark (USA),
Rineke Dijkstra (NL), William Eggleston (USA), Walker Evans (USA),
Patrick Faigenbaum (F), Hans-Peter Feldmann (G), Robert Frank
(CH/USA), Lee Friedlander (USA), Bernhard Fuchs (A), Dan Graham
(USA), Andreas Gursky (G), Axel Hütte (G), Boris Michailov (UA),
Nicholas Nixon (USA), Sigmar Polke (G), Albert Renger-Patzsch (G),
Judith Joy Ross (USA), Thomas Ruff (G), Ed Ruscha (USA), August
Sander (G), Michael Schmidt (G), Charles Sheeler (USA), Cindy
Sherman (USA), Stephen Shore (USA), Paul Strand (USA), Thomas
Struth (G), Shomei Tomatsu (J), Jeff Wall (CDN) and Garry Winogrand
(USA)
In dialogue with paintings and sculptures by: Francis Bacon (GB),
Max Beckmann (G), Edgar Degas (F), Alberto Giacometti (CH),
Vilhelm Hammershøi (DK), David Hockney (GB), Martin Honert (G),
Edward Hopper (USA), Jasper Johns (USA), On Kawara (J), Ellsworth
Kelly (USA), Franz Kline (USA), Kurt Kocherscheidt (A), Roy
Lichtenstein (USA), Albert Marquet (F), Agnes Martin (USA), Giorgio
Morandi (I), Bruce Nauman (USA), Pablo Picasso (E), Odilon Redon
(F), David Reed (USA), Gerhard Richter (G), Mark Rothko (USA),
Oskar Schlemmer (G), Carl Schuch (A), Thomas Schütte (G), Volker
Stelzmann (G), Ludwig Georg Vogel (CH) and Andy Warhol (USA)
Curators: Thomas Weski, Sprengel Museum Hannover, and Heinz
Liesbrock
Patron: How you look at it is under the patronage of German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
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