This last weekend while spending a belated anniversary getaway with my wife, we had a chance to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) to see several of their exhibits. The first, and listed as the premier exhibit (that cost $5.00 more than the General Admission ticket) was Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities. The idea was to bring together these two artists, each working with a different medium, and to show a similar convergence in how each artist rendered their personal response to the natural world around them.
Overall it was a great exhibit, although I admit I’m not a huge O’Keeffe fan, but I do enjoy her work. There were several renditions of trees that I really liked, in addition to her famous floral paintings. There were also a relatively large number of lesser known Adams prints, along with several of his icons. All of the prints were smaller in size, but still, staring at an original Moonrise over Hernandez, or Monolith (Half Dome from the Diving Board) is a treat in itself, and easily worth the price of admission.
My biggest problem with this exhibit was likely in my expectations. There were a lot of images from both artists spread in about 6 rooms on the fourth floor. In each room, there were several walls of Adams images, and several walls of O’Keeffe paintings. However, all the reviews and lead-ups to the exhibit that talked about a ‘pairing’ of these artists work, and the one area that I was disappointed was that there was hardly any real literal pairings. In only one of maybe a couple instances was there an O’Keeffe married right next to a similar Adams were you could immediately see the similarity of artistic response to a subject despite the difference in medium. The one case I do remember where prints were paired off was this pueblo. (pictured above) In almost all other instances, you would walk through a room, along a wall of either Adams or O’Keeffe, and then later, you’d come across an image by the other artist that would remind you of an image you’d just seen by the first. Unfortunately, you’d have to crane your neck or spin around to look halfway across the room at an image now twenty five feet removed from what would have been a great ‘paired’ image. More than a handful of times did I say or point to “…that one over there.” Personally, I think that SFMOMA missed the mark by keeping so many of the images disparate from the others artist work, just to maintain a sense of continuity of “the wall”.
And while I loved looking at the Adams prints, I must say that I was totally taken in with the Robert Frank THE AMERICANS exhibit. Taken over the course of two years in 1955 & ’56, over 750 rolls of film, Frank used a grant to set off on a journey to document the meaning behind America, and of being American. The images, in the best quality of LIFE Magazine, presented true slices of life. And through room after room, print after print, I just was amazed at what great and touching moments Frank was able to record on film. In many cases, the power of the images came from a subtle depth of revealed understanding, or a stolen moment that shows us our inner truth and reality.
A couple of the best images I recall show fans looking at a starlet, where the focus is not on the obvious subject, but of how we see ourselves revealed as one of the crowd, or the simple stare of a waitress in a diner, of a lone(ly) yet beautiful person set off in contrast to happy holiday face of Santa Claus in the background. (I also exclaimed, “18 cents for a hot dog?!”) Probably one of my absolute favorite images is just a simple shot of a pedestrian on a sidewalk, but something of this image shouted to me of the type of photography made famous by Henri Bresson. Now that was some GREAT photography.
I should also note that one of the other things I loved seeing in this exhibit was Frank’s contact sheets, where you could see a single roll of film laid out, and out of 36 frames, you could see that 3, 4 , or as many as six or seven frames were circled as selects. Many of us would feel lucky to get one such frame out of dozens of rolls.
Check out another review of this exhibit from when the exhibit was at the National Gallery in Washington DC, and more of Frank’s images at ArtBlart.
Testing out your comment box, Gary.
Not sure what Frank would have thought about the way you mentioned LIFE, since he wanted his photographs to “stand up” to LIFE magazine, “not be like them” and “their god-damned stories with a beginning and an end” that he considered to be naive and full of platitudes. By the way, the quotes are from the “Loking in ” exhibition catalog, that I highly recommend to anyone wanting to explore in depth this masterpiece, which is far more than the sum of the individual photographs.
QT is right. When the American’s was released it was somewhat of a scandal. The book was put out by the hip Grove Press, not a normal publisher of photo books.
That said, I look at Frank’s images now, 50 years later, and I find them somewhat romantic.
I’ve only seen a couple of his original prints. I’ll have to save my pennies and go to SF MOMA.
– Dan.
QT –
Very valid points; I should clarify : I meant literally, the quality of the images from Life Magazine as being great photos; not that they were wrapped up in any chrome or sugar-coated platitudes. I think what LIFE did best is give us that OK to be Voyeuristic feel. Frank just painted that permission with darker, more revealing truths, furtehr stripping away some of the Victorian veneer. I tghink it was that scratching away at the veneer that fueled the reviled nature of the books release.
IMHO. & @ dan: Well worth the 1500 pennies.
Just another thing: the building painted by O’Keefe and photographed by Adams is not a “pueblo”, but the
San Francisco De Asisis Church in Rancho de Taos, New Mexico.