EXHIBITIONS · ARTISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY
Joel Smith
Also known as: Joel Smith
Most acclaimed
More than one
"The essays in More than One examine sequentiality and serialism in the practice of photography from the medium's earliest years to the present. Contributors explore nuances of syntax and sense raised by works including photographic albums, books, thematic portfolios, journalistic photo features, and documentations of performance art." "Fully illustrated essays discuss, among other topics, the little-known volume Beyond This Point (1929), a collaborative experiment by American photographer Francis Bruguiere and London radio-drama writer Lance Sieveking; the evolving relationships among "straight" photographic aesthetics, sequence, and sexual self-definition in the early work of Minor White; and an important performance work by Ana Mendieta. The title essay surveys the social conditions and expressive motives that have given rise to serial and sequential forms throughout the history of photography."--Jacket.
The life and death of buildings
Considers how photographic images of buildings reflect the passage of time through an exhibition held at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2011.
Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg's The Americans, a colossal mural-collage over seventy meters long made for the U.S. pavilion at the 1958 Brussel's World's Fair, is being exhibited by the Museum Ludwig in its complete state for the first time since the Fair closed. The exhibition will also include a selection of related drawings from the 1950s and magazine features by the artist who always crossed the boundaries between high and low art. Romanian-born Steinberg (1914-1999) studied architecture in Milan before emigrating to America in 1942. He settled in New York and achieved prominence for his drawings for The New Yorker and other magazines, as well as his art for galleries and museums (long before his famous View of the World from 9th Avenue from 1976). For the U.S. pavilion at Expo 58 -- the first world's fair to be mounted after World War II, which was shaped by the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and Soviet pavilion -- Steinberg created a monumental mural-collage consisting of eight panels with a total length of over seventy meters. They present a panorama of everyday life in America, ranging from the hustle and bustle of the big city to the apparently idyllic world of rural communities. An array of collaged human figures dominates the foregrounds, sometimes singly, sometimes densely packed, often against a background of enlarged photographs of drawings. The figures testify to Steinberg's assimilation of a wide range of artistic influences and to his creative engagement with a variety of media and materials, including drawing, photography, wallpaper, packing paper, and comics. His view of the American way of life, though affectionately humorous, does not exclude its darker aspects. He looks at the United States with the fresh eyes of an immigrant, observing and registering phenomena like the postwar automobile culture and urban development, but also the culture of corporate conformity and a sociological sense of alienation.