Anyone enamored of provocative images and the ways in which photography informs the analysis and creative redefinition of another art form will want to dash to MoMA to view the exhibition The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today. Through a superb selection covering the past 170 years -350 images in all – these photographs demonstrate how ex post facto techniques, ranging from manipulation of the dark room, photo-collages, montage, and assemblage, allowed photographers to move beyond the usual documentation or interpretation of sculpture to create stunning reinventions of it.
Costume for Salvador Dalí’s “Dream of Venus”. 1939
Gelatin silver print, 10 x 7 1/2″ (25.4 x 19 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of James Thrall Soby
© 2010 Horst P. Horst/Art + Commerce
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
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
Divided into conceptual modules representing the individual artist, time period, or a particular methodology, aesthetic shifts are seen through a stellar grouping of images from key figures in avant-garde, modern, and contemporary genres ranging from master photographers such as Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Bernice Abbott to others known primarily as sculptors Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brancusi, and David Smith; and contemporary artists working in different mediums from Bruce Nauman, Fischl/Weiss to Rachel Harrison, among many others. Through November 1, 2010. http://www.moma.org/, (212) 708-9400.
