Gallery 291
The Gallery 291 or short 291 was an avant-garde art gallery in the Fifth Avenue in New York . It was founded in 1905 as Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession by the American photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen . In addition to photographic works, the 291 also showed African art and presented European modern artists in the United States for the first time . Your gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz was a key figure in the history of photography and art and one of the first modern exhibition organizers. The gallery and its in-house magazines Camera Work and 291 were important artist forums and gave impetus to pre- Dadaist tendencies, the New York Dada and the subsequent emergence of the first modern art movements in the United States in the early 20th century.
history
Photo Secession , Camera Work and Pictorialism
“The Photo Secession is an idea. It is the idea of a revolt against all authority in art, actually against all authority in everything, because art is only the expression of life. "
The history of the gallery's origins is closely linked to the Photo-Secession , a photography association founded by Stieglitz in 1902 together with his protégé, the painter and photographer Edward Steichen, based on the model of the London Brotherhood of the Linked Ring as an “elitist club”. The term “ Secession ” alluded to the artists of the Vienna Secession who had split off from the academic establishment. Stieglitz saw the Secession as “a protest and division between the spirit of the doctrinaire and the compromise.” The Photo Secession took shape from 1902 to 1904. The first members were, besides Steichen and Stieglitz, internationally renowned photographers of Pictorialism such as Frank Eugene , Gertrude Käsebier , Joseph Keiley and Clarence Hudson White . A little later, Anne Brigman , Alvin Langdon Coburn and George Henry Seeley joined them. Accompanying gave Stieglitz, the elaborately designed, in expensive photogravure glossy magazine produced process Camera Work out to spread the photographs of Photo-Secessionist and proclaimed him pictorialism. The magazine appeared quarterly from 1902 to 1917 with a total of 50 issues and served Stieglitz until the gallery was closed as its “house magazine”, which presented current exhibits in addition to essays and theory development on photography. In addition to the analysis of the Secessionists' photographic work, the early editions offered scientific articles and naturalistic photographs, while later editions concentrated on both applauding and harsh art reviews of the exhibitions organized by Stieglitz.
founding
The traveling exhibitions of the Photo Secessionists and Camera Work were received with great popularity. Still, Stieglitz saw his position as a leading figure in the photography community seriously endangered when the professional photographer Curtis Bell, who was also President of the American Federation of Photographic Societies , organized the exhibition The First American Photographic Salon in New York's Clausen Gallery in December 1904 . The exhibition board consisted of well-known artists such as William Merritt Chase , Kenyon Cox and Robert Henri ; the show featured American and European photographers and was viewed by many as a direct attack on Goldfinch's supremacy. Stieglitz now felt compelled to detach himself and the Photo Secession "from the mediocrity and complacency that threaten artistic photography".
Stieglitz and Edward Steichen rented a narrow apartment on the top floor of a building at 291 Fifth Avenue to use as a gallery. Steichen set up a commercial photo studio in the same building. Because Stieglitz feared that there would generally not be enough photographic works to maintain a gallery, and because both saw the need to compare photography with "the other arts", they decided not only to take the "very best photographs in the world", but also to show paintings, drawings and sculptures and to relate them to one another. The gallery was meant to be a commercial space at the same time, although Stieglitz had a marked aversion to the commercialization of art and financial discussions in general. Stieglitz saw this as a form of prostitution, and when he noticed someone treating a work of art like a consumer good, he didn't hesitate to suddenly ask twice the price for it.
Opening, first exhibitions 1905–1906
The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession , which was soon renamed to 291 , opened on November 25, 1905. Like the Camera Work magazine , the gallery was to offer the pictorialists a forum, serve as a presentation area and establish the medium of photography as an independent art form in the art world . In order to underline the artistic character of the pictorialist photographs and their value as unique items , Stieglitz had designed new showrooms that differed from the traditional salons of New York gallery owners. In addition, the photographs should be offered for sale with the discreet note “Prices on request”.
The exhibition area consisted of only three narrow rooms; the largest measure 4.50 × 5.10 m, the middle 4.50 × 4.50 m and the narrowest only 4.50 × 2.50 m. In an editorial, Camera Work stated that "291 [is] a laboratory, an experimental station and should not be viewed as an art gallery in the traditional sense."
The official opening exhibition in January 1906 featured gum dichromate prints by French photographers Robert Demachy , René Le Bègue and Constant Puyo . The exhibition was followed by a two-person show with photographic works by Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence H. White, as well as four other exhibitions in the same year in which British photographers were shown and the first prints by Edward Steichen were presented. One show was dedicated to German and Austrian photographers and another to the Photo Secessionists.
- Photo secessionists who were shown in the gallery
Robert Demachy : Prima Vera , 1896
Frank Eugene : Adam and Eve , 1898
Constant Puyo : Veiled Women , around 1900
Gertrude Käsebier : Miss N (Photoportrait of Evelyn Nesbit ) , 1903
Clarence Hudson White : Raindrops , 1903
-_Drops_of_rain_(1903).jpg)
Change of direction towards the Art Gallery of Modernism 1907–1908
The gallery was limited to solo and group exhibitions of the photographers only for a short time. As early as January 1907, Stieglitz showed drawings by the English illustrator Pamela Colman Smith , who became known for the design of the Waite-Smith Tarot .
Many important contacts to the European avant-garde were established through Edward Steichen, who was living in Paris at the time . Steichen got to know most of the artists through the influential Stein family of American collectors who lived there - Michael, Sarah, Leo and Gertrude Stein . He later recalled "[...] at the Steins I saw all kinds of modern painting, from Cézanne and Renoir to Matisse and Picasso." Stieglitz once humorously described Steichen as "his local art scout".
From 1908, under Steichen's influence, the gallery showed works by the European avant-garde artists such as Georges Braque , Paul Cézanne , Henri Matisse , Francis Picabia , Pablo Picasso , Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or the sculptors Constantin Brâncuși and Auguste Rodin , as well as American artists who were temporarily in Europe worked like Marsden Hartley , Arthur Dove or Alfred Maurer .
In a letter to Stieglitz, Steichen suggested from Paris, “We should rotate the more modern works so that both photographs and conventional, understandable works of art are shown. And as a 'red rag' we could use Picasso to settle the bill when we get him, because he's a crazy Stone Age person [,] hates exhibitions, etc. however, we'll try him. "
Stieglitz began the 1907/08 exhibition season with a retrospective of the Photo-Secessionists, followed by an exhibition of Rodin's spontaneous, minimalist watercolor drawings , which were shockingly sexual for the time. The 58 drawings were shown to the public for the first time. Rodin was not particularly interested in a retrospective in the United States, but Steichen had persuaded him to send the work overseas. In general, most European artists at the time saw little point in selling their work to a small American gallery without a track record or prospect of good sales, and Rodin needed neither money nor attention in 1908, although he knew he had many admirers in the States would have. Stieglitz presented Rodin's drawings unframed behind glass in the two narrower rooms of the gallery. Another Rodin exhibition followed in the spring of 1910 with 41 drawings, grouped around a thinker in the middle of the gallery.
- Auguste Rodin, exhibitions in 1908 and 1910
Nude with drapery
around 1900–1905; reprinted in Camera Work 39, 1912
Kneeling woman
around 1900–1908
Act
around 1900–1908
Female nude from behind, a scarf around the shoulders
after 1901
Hell
around 1900–1908
The Rodin exhibition was followed by a photo exhibition by George Seeley, a younger member of the Photo Secession, and a joint exhibition with bookplates by the German painter Willi Geiger , etchings by DS MacLaughlan and drawings by Pamela Coleman Smith. The season ended with recent photographs by Steichen and a controversial exhibition by Henri Matisse with watercolors, lithographs, etchings, drawings and a small oil painting. The Matisse exhibition had again been put together by Steichen from Paris. In January 1908 he wrote to Stieglitz: “I have another top exhibition for you, just as distinguished as Rodin. Drawings by Henri Matisse, the most modern of the modern. ”In April of that year, Stieglitz sent out invitations in which he announced Matisse as“ the leading head of a modern group of French painters who call themselves Les Fauves ”and that it would be for the Photo Secession “I am very fortunate to have the honor of introducing Matisse to the American audience and American art critics.” But many visitors and critics took the Frenchman's “unfinished paintings” - exclusively female nudes - as an affront. The critics struggled to place Matisse in an art-critical context: in New York there had been no exhibitions by Cézanne, van Gogh or Gauguin. The unanimous name they found for Matisse's work was "ugly."
The Matisse exhibition in particular showed Stieglitz that his new way of designing exhibitions met with a positive response. He noted: “[…] here was the work of a new man, with new ideas - a real anarchist in art, it seems. The exhibition led to much heated controversy; it turned out to be stimulating. "
Both artists and the public were confronted with new perspectives, which could be discussed extensively in the gallery. The exhibitions of the past five months have included all forms of expression of the female nude in photography and painting, as well as by artists as diverse as Rodin, Seeley, Smith and Matisse. The interest in nudes was not by chance, because Steichen and Stieglitz were themselves engaged in nude photography at the time .
Independent American tendencies, "The Stieglitz Circle" 1909–1910
The 1909 exhibition season began with caricatures by the Mexican artist Marius de Zayas . The 25 charcoal drawings showed portraits of celebrities of the time and were juxtaposed with 30 autochromes by the photographer and art critic J. Nilsen Lauvrik. The exhibition was part of Stieglitz's endeavor to find a dialogue between abstraction and photography. De Zayas went to Paris the following year to deal with the latest and most radical art movements, he joined the circle around Apollinaire and made numerous contacts. He soon acted alongside Steichen as Stieglitz's right-hand man in Europe; de Zayas was responsible for the 1911 Picasso exhibition in the gallery, organized the exhibition of African art objects in 1914 and wrote important art reviews on modernism in Camera Work . In contrast to Stieglitz, de Zayas insisted on the commercial aspect of art and founded the Modern Gallery at 500 Fifth Avenue in 1915 . An initially envisaged cooperative between the two galleries soon failed, and Camera Work reported: "After three months of experimentation, Mr. de Zayas found that practical business life in New York is incompatible with the 291. "
In April 1909 Stieglitz showed a joint exhibition by the painters John Marin and Alfred Maurer . Maurer, originally an academic painter in the Whistler tradition , had dealt with numerous modern styles during his long stay in Paris and had arrived at a Fauvist visual language. Landscape paintings in oil were shown by him. Marin, on the other hand, was a watercolor painter who had dealt with architecture and technology during his studies and addressed increasing urbanization in his pictures. While Maurer's works were still “Europe-wide”, Marin's watercolors already indicated an independent American trend.
Over the next four years, Stieglitz exhibited alternately European and young American artists. In the course of these exhibition cycles, Stieglitz “cultivated” a select group of local painters, which art critics later referred to as “The Stieglitz Circle” . Each of these artists followed, in their own way, Kandinsky's theory that pure abstract forms can convey feelings and ideas.
Meanwhile the pictorialist photographers angrily turned away from the gallery and from Stieglitz. They were irritated that the Photo Secession advocate placed such importance on non -photographic works of art. The photographer Gertrude Käsebier, who was initially heavily influenced by Stieglitz, finally separated from the Photo-Secessionists in 1910 and founded the Pictorial Photographers of America as a rival association with Clarence H. White . After 1912 there were only two photo exhibitions: in 1913 with Stieglitz's own work and another with Paul Strand in 1916.
The 1909/1910 exhibition season opened with monotypes by the realistic American painter Eugene Higgins, lithographs by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and color photographs in the autochrome process by Edward Steichen. This was followed by the second Matisse exhibition, in which drawings and black and white photographs of the artist's paintings - including the key work Le bonheur de vivre from 1905/06 - that Steichen had taken in Paris in the fall of 1909, were shown.
Following Matisse, Stieglitz and Steichen arranged an extensive joint exhibition with Younger American Painters by the American modernists Arthur Beecher Carles, Arthur Dove, Laurence Fellows, Daniel Putnam Brinley, Marsden Hartley, John Marin , Alfred Maurer, Edward Steichen and Max Weber . The purpose of the exhibition was to show that these artists were not just “followers” of Matisse, but created their very own, individual art. Stieglitz proved to be as polarizing as it was a strategic exhibition organizer: the purely American exhibition was followed by shows by painters friends Henri Rousseau and Max Weber - this time a French and an American of Polish descent.
Although the focus of the exhibitions was clearly directed towards American artists, an endorsement of American art was in no way intended. The two following exhibitions in 1911 focused on two European pioneers of modernism with an extensive retrospective of Cézanne's watercolors and lithographs and a comprehensive retrospective of Pablo Picasso. Cézanne's works heralded the step from post-impressionism to cubism that Picasso finally took.
Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse and the redefinition of aesthetics 1911–1913
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At the beginning of the 1910/11 exhibition season, Stieglitz introduced the American public to Cézanne's art . The gallery owner first presented the three lithographs Portrait of Cézanne (1896-1897), Little Bathers (1896-1897) and Die Bathers (undated) as well as around a dozen black and white photographs showing paintings by Cézanne. The photographs came from the possession of Max Weber, who was currently dealing with Cézanne's work and accompanying his own paintings and drawings in the 291 . Under the title An Exhibition of Water-Colors by Paul Cézanne , Cézanne's first solo exhibition in the United States followed just three months later, from March 1 to 25, 1911. Stieglitz's personal interest in the French painter was only aroused by Roger Fry's highly acclaimed exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists in London. It was only in January of that year that Steichen from Paris had informed him that Cézanne's watercolors were available on loan from the Bernheim-Jeune gallery . Stieglitz replied, “Send them to me. Of course, I'm curious how the watercolors, which I was still laughing about in 1907, will now affect me unpacked here in the 291. “Steichen sent a box of 28 watercolors that he had selected with the Parisian art critic Félix Fénéon to New York. Despite the moderate price of $ 200 per work, only one watercolor sold: Arthur B. Davies acquired the source in the Château Noir park (1895–1898). In October 1911, a short essay on watercolor painting appeared in Camera Work No. 36 . The unsigned text came from Stieglitz, who made a clearly formalistic plea for the aesthetics of the works: “The first glance at these few traces of color that make up Cézanne's watercolors ... as a viewer one is inclined to exclaim: 'Is that all?' But if you allow it, you will succumb to the fascination of this art. White paper no longer appears as blank space, it becomes bright sunlight. The artist's instinct is so sure, every line so skilful, every value so true ... "
- Paul Cézanne, exhibition 1911
Landscape with trees
around 1880–1885
Madame Cézanne with hydrangeas
around 1882–1886
Foliage
1895-1900
Mont Sainte-Victoire
around 1890
Winding path in the park of Château Noir
around 1900
Immediately afterwards, on March 28, 1911, the gallery presented Pablo Picasso . The retrospective was the Spaniard's first exhibition to be shown in the United States. Picasso himself had put the works together with the photographer Paul Burty Haviland , the Mexican artist Marius de Zayas and Edward Steichen in Paris. Steichen shipped a total of 83 exhibits to New York. Restricted by the narrowness of the gallery, Stieglitz only hung 49 watercolors and drawings framed under glass; some works were grouped thematically, 34 additional drawings were shown on request. The watercolors, charcoal and ink drawings and sketches almost completely documented Picasso's development towards Cubism, only a few recent works are said to have been missing. Since there are no photographs of the exhibition, it cannot be said exactly which works by Picasso were shown at the time. Only two drawings could definitely be assigned: Study of a Naked Woman from 1906 and Standing Female Nude from 1910. "Contemporary reviews in thirteen newspapers suggest a multitude of possibilities," said Charles Brock, assistant curator of the retrospective Modern Art and America : Alfred Stieglitz and his New York galleries , which was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in the spring of 2001 . Brock described this as "one of the great mysteries in the early history of modernism in America [...] the lack of photographs makes it difficult to understand the Picasso installation from 1911."
The exhibition was greeted with disbelief and indignation by the New York public, and cemented the established belief that the avant-garde had to be absurd. The painter and art critic Arthur Hoeber (1854–1915) reviewed the Picasso exhibition in the New York Globe as follows: “This display is the most extraordinary combination of extravagance and absurdity that New York has done to date, and God knows it existed many in the past. Any sensible criticism is completely out of the question; any serious analysis would be in vain. The results point to the worst section of an insane asylum, the craziest secretions of a disturbed mind, the gibberish of a madman! "
Pablo Picasso, 1911
(external web links ! )
- Mill in Horta , 1909 *
- Standing female nude , 1910
*) probably shown in the gallery
Stieglitz's admiration for Picasso grew with the exhibition. Despite the negative reviews, he felt "tremendously satisfied" with the wide range of interest. He wrote to de Zayas: “The exhibition was a great success. We hit another hit at a psychological moment. In a sense, it was one of the most important exhibitions we've had so far ... the future looks brighter. ”In addition to Steichen, Marius de Zayas, the ambassador in Paris who cemented the relationship with Picasso, turned out to be a personal gain for Stieglitz. In the summer of 1911 Stieglitz finally traveled to Paris himself, where de Zayas introduced him to Picasso. In 1912 Stieglitz bought Picasso's bronze head of Fernande Olivier from the art dealer Ambroise Vollard . He also published Gertrude Stein's prosaic portrait of Picasso and Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art , also with reference to Picasso, in a special edition of Camera Work in August 1912.
The 1911/12 season opened with watercolors by the American illustrator and children's book author Gelett Burgess, followed by the French Adolphe de Meyer , a pioneer of fashion photography , and the painter Arthur Beecher Carles, who had already taken part in the Younger American Painters joint exhibition in 1910 . This was followed by paintings and drawings by Marsden Hartley and the first solo exhibition by Arthur Garfield Dove . Under the title Ten Commandments (The Ten Commandments) Stieglitz showed a series of pastel paintings by Dove, which are considered to be the first non-representational works by an American artist. This show cemented Dove's reputation as the most innovative and productive American painter of his time.
Henri Matisse: Sculpture Exhibition, 1912
(external web links ! )
- Le Serf (The Serf) , 1900–1903
- La Serpentine , 1909
- Head of Jeannette II , 1910
In mid-March 1912, Stieglitz showed the world's first sculpture exhibition by Henri Matisse, including the bronze La Serpentine (1909), which is one of the most innovative sculptural works of the time. The show was the most difficult and demanding of the three Matisse exhibitions in the 291 . Matisse was recognized by critics in New York as a draftsman, but not as a sculptor. The reviewers were dominated by ideals that were more based on Greco-Roman statues. They viewed any anti- classical or primitive style as a personal attack on their own aesthetic sense . A particularly uncontrolled comment came again from Arthur Hoeber in the New York Evening Globe , who downgraded Matisse's work as “decadent”, “unhealthy”, “unreal” and compared it to “a terrible nightmare”. James Huneker wrote in the Sun : “After Rodin - what? Certainly not Henri Matisse. We can see Matisse's strength and individuality ... as a draftsman, but as a sculptor he gives goose bumps. "
The gradual alienation of the human body by the European artists, starting with Rodin via Picasso and ending with Matisse's sculptures, triggered sometimes violent reactions and debates about the understanding of art from the viewer, whether it was the questioning and redefinition of aesthetics . Stieglitz 'intention, however, was not so much the shock effect as it was to introduce the American audience to new perspectives. In addition, this forced change of direction served him to free his preferred medium, photography, from its symbolism , which was perceived as outdated , and to show the possibilities of a new visual language that should soon be based on realism . In this respect, Stieglitz anticipated the concept of the upcoming Armory Show of 1913.
"A Diabolical Test" - Reaction to the 1913 Armory Show
Image comparison: Studies from New York City
(external web links ! )
- Alfred Stieglitz: Old and New New York , 1910
- John Marin: Woolworth Building, No. 31 , 1912
- Francis Picabia: New York , 1913
(Shown in the gallery in 1913)
Stieglitz was not directly involved in the epoch-making Armory Show , but he acted together with Isabella Stewart "Mrs. Jack" Gardner , Mabel Dodge Luhan , Claude Monet and Odilon Redon as a sponsor, was "Honorary Vice President" of the show and controlled some exhibits his own collection. During the show he acquired numerous exhibits, including The Garden of Love (Improvisation Number 27) by Wassily Kandinsky .
Stieglitz reacted to the actual show, which took place from February 17 to March 15, 1913, with a series of strictly conceived exhibitions: First he showed watercolor works by John Marin in a solo exhibition . Stieglitz then presented his own photographic work, followed by the works of the French modernist Francis Picabia . Each of these exhibitions contained comparisons of images and studies of New York City that were intended to show the viewer how the perspective of European artists differed from that of American contemporaries.
John Marin
The John Marin exhibition ran from January 20 to February 15, 1913, ending two days before the Armory Show began. The exhibition showed 14 watercolors with views of New York City. In the exhibition catalog, Marin noted that the New York pictures in this exhibition required an explanation. He wrote: “Should we look at life in a big city limited only to people and animals on the streets and in the houses? Are the buildings themselves dead? I see great forces at work; big movements ... pushing, pulling, side ways, downwards, upwards, I can literally hear the sound of their competition and great music is being played. And so I try to express what the city is doing with graphic means. "
Marin's abstract building views, primarily those of the Woolworth Building , met with great interest from critics. One of them compared the watercolors with the Cathedral series by Monet . Another noticed the playful dissolution of solid buildings in the tumult of the big city by means of shrill colors and beautiful lights. "As if the great buildings were swinging away in a dance." W. B. McCormick of the New York Press compared a view of Fifth Avenue to "an oyster shell opening over a warship." Paul Haviland praised the exhibition in Camera Work as "one of the precocious works by an American modernist and as a radical departure from all earlier interpretations of New York. "
In an interview with New York American , Stieglitz had already announced in advance that “he intends to place an American artist and, even more ambitiously, New York itself, at the forefront of the international avant-garde movement.” Stieglitz's message was received: reproductions of Marin's Woolworth Building appeared in every New York newspaper, three of which drew the eye with large articles at the same time to the controversial Frenchman Francis Picabia, who had just arrived in America.
Alfred Goldfinch
A week after the Armory Show premiered, Stieglitz opened an exhibition with his own photographs. He showed a total of 30 works from 1892 to 1912, including subjects from Paris, horse races, farms in Tyrol, ocean liners, airplanes, bathers and swimming pools. However, his predominant theme was the city of New York, to which he dedicated 13 photographs. With photography, Stieglitz showed a medium that was excluded from the Armory Show. He called it a “diabolical test” in which he wanted to put the strength of photography to the test, whereby, as Paul Haviland emphasized in Camera Work , “the focus should not be so much on Stieglitz 'work, but rather on the role of photography in the development of modern art. And which work could express this better if not that of Stieglitz? His prints show the purest form of pure photography, the best of the record of one of the most honorable photographers… “In the reviews of the exhibition, Stieglitz's thoughts on photography were largely uncritical.
Francis Picabia
Immediately after the Armory Show, Stieglitz showed the exhibition An Exhibition of Studies Made in New York with abstract works by Francis Picabia. Accompanied by a catalog that contained a brief explanation by the artist, 16 works were shown: two unidentified subjects, two portraits of the Polish dancer Stacia Napierkowska , whom Picabia had met on his trip to America, two pictorial implementations of Afro-American songs that he in Heard of New York, as well as ten pictures depicting his experiences in the city.
Picabia painted the pictures during Stieglitz's photo exhibition. He noticed that the photographs helped him to realize the true nature of art: “The camera cannot reproduce mental facts. Pure art cannot create material facts. It can only deliver immaterial or emotional facts. That is why art and photography are opposites. "
The idea of presenting art in the process of creation was novel. In an interview with Henry Tyrell, the art critic from New York World , Picabia stated, “Was I painting the Flatiron Building or the Woolworth Building when I was painting my impressions of the great skyscrapers of your big city? No. I gave you the intoxication of the upward movement, the feeling of those who were trying to build the Tower of Babel - the dream of the people to reach the sky in order to attain limitlessness. ”Shortly before the exhibition at 291 , three watercolors by Picabia reprinted in the New York Tribune , flanked by two derisive cartoons of children playing with building blocks.
Brâncuși and African art - experimental exhibitions 1914–1915
Stieglitz felt pushed into the background by the Armory Show in his mission to bring European modernism to America. While he had previously tried to promote new art with care and discrimination , the Armory Show turned modern art "into a circus," he thought. Suddenly the 291 seemed to lose its quality mark - sales stagnated, the reviews became listless. The considerable response to the Armory Show also spurred other New York gallery owners to organize exhibitions of modern European art for their part. Unwilling to “swim with the crowd”, Stieglitz changed direction again and began to design more experimental shows.
Constantin Brâncuși 1914
For the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși , the exhibition at 291 marked a turning point in his career. Even in his adopted home of Paris, the Romanian, who briefly worked for Rodin, was considered an insider tip among critics. Edward Steichen became aware of Brâncuși in 1907 at the Paris Salon des Indépendants . When he suggested Stieglitz organize an exhibition with the sculptor is unknown, and it is also unlikely that Brâncuși and Stieglitz met in person. Rather, the contact was made through the artist Walter Pach , the co-organizer of the Armory Show, who was friends with Brâncuși.
The exhibition from March to April 1914 showed a cross-section of Brâncuși's work over the past three years. Four variations of female figures each were shown: The Sleeping Muse and Muse were originally inspired by a portrait of the Baroness Renée Frachon; the Danaïde and Mademoiselle Pogány was inspired by the young Hungarian art student Margit Pogány. The figures showed the female face as strongly schematized (egg) shapes that, without claiming to be realistic, were intended to suggest different characters. The figures were made of white marble; Mademoiselle Pogány and the muse Brâncuși had cast additional bronzes. With the different versions he wanted to demonstrate that the shape of the sculpture can be completely redefined by the different material. Brâncuși also supplied the bronze Maiastra , one of the more than thirty bird figures he made during his career, and Progigal Son (The Prodigal Son) , his first wooden sculpture, which was considered a pointer to African artifacts. From Progigal Son only photographs exist, for Brancusi destroyed the figure in Paris after their return.
Constantin Brâncuși, 1914
(external web links ! )
- Sleeping Muse , 1909-10
- Maiastra , around 1911
- Mademoiselle Pogány , 1912
- (La Muse) , 1912
- Danaïde , 1913 (illustration: a cast from 1918)
The critics were largely positive. In June 1914, Camera Work printed six newspaper reports. One review was by Henry McBride, a young art critic for the Sun , who noted, "Brancusi's art appears to be expanding, unfolding, and assuming a surprising clarity." Brâncuşi in Europe, on the other hand, was extremely concerned about the exhibition, such as the correspondence preserved between him, Covering Steichen and Goldfinch. In the beginning there were problems with customs who could not declare the objects, which is why the opening of the exhibition was delayed by a month, from February to March. Stieglitz solved the customs problem with a cash payment. Furthermore, there were differences between Stieglitz and Brâncuși, since Brâncuși had made an arrangement with Walter Pach that the profit should be sent directly to him, so that Stieglitz could not take any commission for the works.
Nevertheless, the exhibition was an economic success: Brâncuși had set the prices, which Stieglitz accepted without question. One object was already sold before the opening: The marble Sleeping Muse went to Arthur B. Davies , who also acquired the muse ; the bronzes Danaïde and Maiastra were sold to the art collector couple Agnes and Eugene Meyer , prominent supporters of the 291 , who also took over the shipping and insurance of the entire Brâncuși exhibition and became lifelong friends of the artist. The wealthy lawyer John Quinn , who had already shown himself to be a generous patron of art during the Armory Show, acquired Mademoiselle Pogány , the most expensive item in the exhibition, for 6,000 francs, and became another of the sculptors' patrons . Stieglitz himself bought the third bronze of the Sleeping Muse . Only the marble Danaïde and Prodigal Son were not sold. The exhibition at 291 was the only collaboration Brâncuși had with Stieglitz.
African art 1914/1915
In June 1914 Stieglitz announced in Camera Work for the coming season in the fall to date unusual about: Statuary in Wood by African Savages - The Root of Modern Art (sculpture in wood of African savages - The root of modern art) , the title, should bring a radical break to the previous interplay between European and American art. Stieglitz alluded to primitivism , a trend among contemporary European artists to borrow from African folk art, which was particularly popular in France at the time as art nègre ; Examples can be found in Maurice de Vlaminck , André Derain , Henri Matisse and in Picasso's African period . On the invitation cards, Stieglitz described the presentation as “the first time in the history of the exhibition that negro sculptures were shown from the point of view of art.” The phrase “from the point of view of art” was of particular importance, since artifacts from Africa up to this point At the time , they were treated exclusively in an ethnographic and scientific context, but not in the sense of folk art as an independent art form.
Marius de Zayas, who was now considered the gallery's “chief curator”, was responsible for selecting the exhibits in Europe. In the 19th century, European museums had imported a vast amount of African artifacts from their colonies , but since the United States did not have such sources, de Zayas had to look for a European dealer. He found a point of contact in Paul Guillaume . Guillaume had opened a gallery in Paris in February 1914, where he offered contemporary art and African sculptures. De Zayas wrote to Stieglitz: “I think ... I can arrange an exhibition of remarkable negro sculptures . The art dealer Guillaume has a very important collection and he would be happy to lend it to us… ”Inspired by expression and spirituality , Stieglitz mainly focused on exhibits from West and Central Africa .
With the exhibition, Stieglitz sought to spark a debate about the relationship between art and nature, Western and African art, and intellectual and allegedly “naive” art, and so the critics reacted differently. What they all had in common was an understanding of Stieglitz's textbook illustration of the influence of African art on the European avant-garde.
Elizabeth Luther Carey of the New York Times wrote succinctly: “As the exhibition clearly shows, the Post-Impressionists and the savages of the Congo have a lot in common.” On the other hand, the review of the New York Evening Post was disparaging : “In the case of this exhibition, it is probably not necessary to explain that they are savages. Savages indeed! The disgusting smell of wildness attacks the visitor immediately when he enters the small room. These raw carvings belong to the black depressions of the jungle. Some examples are barely human and powerful expressions of such gross brutality that the muscles tremble. ”Other critics, however, placed the African works on a higher aesthetic level than the European avant-garde, as New York World wrote :“ The French apostles still have a long way to go before they come within shouting range of their African predecessors. "
Picasso and George Braque 1914/1915
In another exhibition at the turn of the year 1914/1915, Stieglitz combined works by Picasso and Georges Braque with relics of the Kota people from Gabon and a wasp nest . The masks of the Kota had inspired Picasso at the time while working on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907).
Both Picasso's and Braque's works can no longer be clearly identified. Presumably it was current work, for example in November 1915 Camera Work showed a paper collé by Braque on the title page and a corresponding violin drawing by Picasso on the reverse. Both works were acquired by the art collector couple Arensberg . Another work in the exhibition, Braques Glass, Bottle and Guitar from 1913, was incorporated into the collection of Katherine S. Dreier . As before with the Armory Show, the critics reacted with abuse at the Cubist artists. The exhibition was without profit for Stieglitz, the sales proceeds went to the Picabias, from whose collection the works on display came.
In the middle room of the gallery, Stieglitz also showed archaic Mexican ceramics and carvings from Paul Haviland's collection.
The magazine 291 1915
During the First World War , Galerie 291 became the most important forum for the European avant-garde and the proverbial “driving force” of international Dadaism. In 1915 Stieglitz, de Zayas and Picabia founded a new magazine with the support of photographer Paul Burty Haviland and journalist Agnes E. Meyer , which they called "291" for short, with the same name as the gallery . Other authors were, besides John Marin, the poets Max Jacob and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes . Inspired by de Zayas' abstract portrait drawings, Picabia published a series of machine drawings, the so-called "mechanomorphic pictures" . Including the significant work Fille née sans mère (Girl, Born Without a Mother) , which should mark Picabia's departure from Cubism. In addition, Picabia de Zayas portrayed Haviland and Stieglitz as machines; So the likeness of Stieglitz became a camera construction with the addition "Ici, c'est ici Stieglitz / foi et amour (Here, this is Stieglitz / Faith and Love)" . The ironic goldfinch portrait appeared on the cover of 291 .
Against the backdrop of the war, the tenor of 291 was extremely patriotic , with the United States being hailed as "the most modern nation in the world," but the authors also questioning their readers whether they knew and appreciated the central role the machine played in their lives meanwhile games. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp continued this line of thought artistically by declaring a machine-made object, any urinal he called Fountain , as ready-made and making it an object of art. At this time Duchamp was a member of the Society of Independent Artists and had already caused a sensation in the Armory with his painting Nude, Descending a Staircase No. 2 . With the additional scandal surrounding the urinal, which was submitted under a pseudonym in the annual exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists and rejected by the jury, Duchamp had achieved media-effective popularity that Stieglitz wanted to take advantage of. Finally he managed to convince Duchamp to display the urinal in 291 . Alfred Stieglitz personally photographed the exhibit, which, thanks to an image document by the most renowned photographer on the east coast of the time, has received international attention as an art object within a very short time. The photograph was published in the same year in the Dada journal The Blind Man (Issue No. 2 in May 1917) edited by Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood .
At least since the Armory Show, Stieglitz felt increasingly committed to American artists and after 1915 concentrated mainly on their work. According to his closest friends, Marius de Zayas and Francis Picabia, Stieglitz's enthusiasm for innovation had clearly slowed down since the Armory Show, and his concern to advance American modernism seemed to fizzle out. Stieglitz literally “needed” a new, modern American artist, if possible a photographer, who would give the medium new impulses.
Paul Strand 1916
With Paul Strand it was the first photo exhibition in the gallery since Stieglitz '"diabolical test" during the Armory Show three years ago. Although Stieglitz had announced the show as a "groundbreaking event for modern photography", it must have been a "thrown together mixture of photographs", as Sarah Greenough, curator of the Stieglitz retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 2001 , when the exhibition was reconstructed.
Paul Strand, 1916
(external web links ! )
- Pears and Bowls , 1916
- Blind , 1916
- Portrait, Washington Square Park , 1916
- The White Fence , 1916
(probably shown in the gallery)
As for most of the gallery's exhibitions, there are no catalogs or lists of the exhibits. Only five photographs can be safely assigned to the exhibition: City Hall Park , The River Neckar from 1911, Railroad Sidings from 1914, Maid of the Mist , Niagara Falls and Winter, Central Park New York . The pictures are considered to be the photographer's early student works. Contemporary reviews suggest that it must have been almost exclusively pictorialist work. The conservative critic Royal Cortissoz of the New York Herald Tribune , who universally classified the work of the modernists as “silly ugly pictures”, praised Strand's “remarkable photographs” as “silvery pictures of supreme grace.” One critic described The White Fence : “Man can hardly combine contrast, emphasis, exaggeration and ugliness within the four sides of a picture ”; only the art critic Charles Caffin noticed a difference to the other Pictorialists of these days.
Paul Strand combined essential aspects of modernism in his photographic work: like his models Cézanne, Picasso and Braque, he experimented with everyday objects ( Pears and Bowls , 1916); like the Cubists, he dismantled the compositions by overemphasizing structures, lights and shadows ( The White Fence , 1916); he was interested in the machine ( Wire Wheel , 1917), an essential element also found in Duchamp and Picabia; Added to this was a new, social documentary component, which he presumably had taken over from Lewis Hine : empathy for common people on the street ( Blind , 1916) and interest in the ethnic diversity of emigrants ( Portrait Washington Square Park , 1916). The latter works were published in the last edition of Camera Work in June 1917 .
Marsden Hartley 1916
Following Paul Strand, Marsden Hartley exhibited his Berlin paintings at 291. Hartley and Stieglitz had known each other since 1909. At that time, Stieglitz had promised the painter an exhibition after only a brief look at his works. A lasting friendship was built on the gallery owner's trust in the artist. Hartley went to Paris in 1912, but moved to Berlin after only a year because the Seine metropolis seemed too crowded to him and he enjoyed being an exception in Berlin as an American. Hartley stayed in Berlin until the end of 1915 and had not made another painting since his return to the United States: "Now I am prepared for all connections ... I will make myself as free as possible for all ideas in the exhibition ..."
Marsden Hartley, 1916
(external web links ! )
- Indian Fantasy , 1914
- Portrait of a German Officer , 1914
- The Iron Cross , 1915
The exhibition marked the climax of the first phase of Hartley's career. Around 40 paintings were shown; the show was considered the most extensive response by an American artist to European modernism. The pictures were, as Hartley put it, “shaped by cosmic cubism”, with influences from Kandinsky and Franz Marc becoming visible. Whereas some works were clearly inspired by the imagery of the Native Americans and showed, for example, teepees , eagles, canoes or war paints. Hartley first got to know these Indian artefacts in the Trocadéro in Paris (today Palais de Chaillot ) and in the Berlin Museum of Ethnology , but they caused his lasting interest in Indian culture . As the war progressed, however, Hartley pushed the American themes out of his work and increasingly incorporated German set pieces, which on the one hand is to be understood as painterly mourning work over the fall of his friend Karl von Freyburg , on the other hand to suit the German public to a certain extent.
The reactions to the exhibition were largely negative. Hartley's status as the most radical artist in Germany was cemented, but his paintings were aimed at the Berlin public, which was extremely unfavorable against the background of the war. The New York Times reporters could not quite make up their minds whether Hartley's works should be interpreted pro or anti-German. Robert J. Cole of the Evening Sun at least praised the colors of the flags and checkerboard patterns in the paintings: "The soldiers' pieces show less the destruction on the battlefields, because this very modern artist draws on the glory of chivalry and its heraldry ." Another critic drew a direct comparison between Indian tipis and military tents.
Georgia O'Keeffe, 1916 and 1917
Georgia O'Keeffe, 1916/1917
(external web links ! )
- No. 20 - From Music - Special , 1915
- Blue Lines , 1916
- Blue II , 1916
The first work Stieglitz saw by Georgia O'Keeffe in January 1916 was relatively rough, abstract charcoal drawings. The 29-year-old was a completely unknown art teacher at the time. He was enthusiastic about the seemingly puzzling abstractions: “These are really fine things - you say a woman did them - she is an unusual woman - she is open-minded - she is bigger than most women, but she has this sensitivity - I knew that she is a woman - see this line. These are the purest, finest, most sincere things that have long been put into 291. I wouldn't mind showing her in one of these rooms for a while. ”So in May 1916 he decided to exhibit some of her drawings in the gallery without informing O'Keeffe.
O'Keeffe was influenced by, among others, Alon Bement, who gave art classes at Teachers College, Columbia University , and by the artist, photographer, printer and art teacher Arthur Wesley Dow . Bement introduced O'Keeffe to European artists and suggested that she deal with Kandinsky, especially with his idea of understanding art as self-expression. Dow, however, had dealt with Chinese and Japanese art , which ultimately led him to reject the traditional realism taught in art schools . Dow was convinced that an artist shouldn't imitate nature, but rather express her feelings and ideas, which ideally could be achieved through harmonious arrangements of lines, colors and tones.
Stieglitz did not make any particular gender differences; he regarded and treated male and female artists equally, just as he equated creative energy with sexual energy. He wrote in 1916: “Among other values, Miss O'Keeffe's drawings are interesting from a psychoanalytic point of view. The 291 has never before seen a woman who has expressed herself so freely. ”Stieglitz was convinced that O'Keeffe's work had a hidden meaning of which the artist herself was not aware. A lively postal dispute arose about this, as a result of which she first asked for her work back, then Stieglitz finally explained her thoughts, agreed to an exhibition and concluded with the question: "Do you think I'm an idiot?"
By February 1917, O'Keeffe had created enough works for a solo exhibition. The 23 works on display demonstrated their continuous step into abstraction . The exhibition, which was shown from April 3 to May 14, 1917, was also the last in Galerie 291 . O'Keeffe had come from Texas specifically to see their exhibition. In New York she made the acquaintance of Paul Strand and other artists of the Stieglitz Circle, such as Arthur Dove and John Marin. An intense love relationship developed with Stieglitz, which was to last for the next ten years. From 1918 to 1937 Stieglitz made over 300 photographs of O'Keeffe. They married in 1924 (Stieglitz's first marriage to Emmeline Obermeyer was divorced in 1918).
The gallery closes in 1917
In June 1917, two months after the USA entered the war, Stieglitz, who had financed the gallery primarily from the assets of his first wife, Emmeline Obermeyer, was forced to close 291 due to the poor economic situation . With the end of the gallery, the now insignificant Photo-Secession also dissolved, and the expensive magazine Camera Work was discontinued. Between 1917 and 1918, Stieglitz retired to a room on the floor below the now abandoned exhibition rooms for several months. In this room, which he called his “tomb”, he was able to “endure” to exchange ideas with the artists, photographers and authors who continued to visit him. "Well, in wartime, with no exhibition space or new works of art, free experimentation and the feeling of complete artistic freedom no longer seem possible," he said. It was clear to him "that modernism had to be completely rethought."
In addition, many of his friends and colleagues, as well as many others who had animated the collective art scene, left New York and disappeared from his environment. Paul Haviland had already gone to Paris in 1915. Marius de Zayas pursued his own goals with the Modern Gallery , which led to a break with Stieglitz. Edward Steichen joined the US Army as a volunteer and was involved in aerial reconnaissance in France . In later years he continued to work as an exhibition organizer and was director of the photography department of the New York Museum of Modern Art from 1947 to 1962 , for which he curated the extensive photo exhibition The Family of Man from 1951 . In October 1917, Francis Picabia went back to France with his wife Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia and never returned to the United States. Marcel Duchamp left New York for South America.
With their companions Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe and Paul Strand, a group of artists emerged who developed and consolidated American modernism as the "Seven Americans" . In the years that followed, Stieglitz founded other galleries in New York: The Intimate Gallery (1925–1929) and An American Place (1929–1946), in which he preferred to present works by these and other, primarily American, artists.
Résumé
Especially the last exhibitions had made Stieglitz clear what extreme conversion had taken place the art in the last decade and that every artist the developments of European modernism in its own way at the factory rezipiert had and found a new vocabulary in the imagery. Marsden Hartley, for example, was inspired by Kandinsky; In his watercolors, John Marin provided a model for later precisionism with urban, often deserted subjects ; Arthur Dove was the first abstract American artist to emancipate himself, and Georgia O'Keeffe had found her own style with her semi-abstract works that was apparently completely uninfluenced by the Europeans. Many other artists initially pursued cubo-futuristic arrangements in order to move via precisionism to a regionalist or, like the painters of The Eight (known as the Ashcan School around 1934 ), to a socially critical realism that became widely known as the American Scene . What they have in common is a clear attachment to photography, which has had the greatest influence on the visual arts in the United States. Paul Strand should be mentioned here as a representative of social documentary photography . Only a few contemporaries adopted Predadaist elements, such as the New York painter and photo artist Man Ray , who had taken inspiration from Stieglitz's gallery at the very beginning of his artistic career. Together with Duchamp and Picabia, Man Ray formulated the short-lived New York Dada at around the same time , before turning away from American art.
The tendencies of the modern art business could never induce Alfred Stieglitz to leave New York. At the time when numerous American artists such as Charles Demuth , Marsden Hartley or Man Ray were looking to Paris, Stieglitz asked the editors of the avant-garde magazine Broom , a periodical that was published by Americans in Italy, to look back to New York judge. Four years after the gallery was closed, Stieglitz saw the idea of 291 more actively than ever; he wrote: “A lot is crystallizing right now - a lot is set in motion - everyone is striving in one direction.” In Paris, artists and art critics alike feared that there would be no center and no American meeting place without an ambitious spokesman like Stieglitz: Stieglitz ' The gallery was the focal point and contact point for arguments and art discussions, for exhibitions and mediation.
Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946. After his death, most of the 291's works were part of Georgia O'Keeffe's ownership as the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC , Fisk University in Nashville , Tennessee , and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston , donated.
reception
"Finally, if I should be judged, I should be judged for my own photographic work, for camera work , for the way I lived and for over forty years how I demonstrated how to create interlocking exhibitions."
Marius de Zayas, Francis Picabia, Agnes E. Meyer, the art collector Walter Conrad Arensberg and other young protagonists from Alfred Stieglitz's circle opened their own exhibition rooms with the Modern Gallery on Fifth Avenue in October 1915 , although under the legendary spirit of 291 operated, but in contrast to Stieglitz ' patronage primarily focused on the commercial aspect. Thus they belonged to the pioneers of the rapidly growing New York art trade and marked the beginning of the city's transformation into a new art metropolis.
From January 1917 on, Francis Picabia published the Dada periodical 391 in Barcelona , in which he presented his machine pictures and proclaimed “anti-art” and “anti-literature”. The title and presentation of the magazine were a deliberate allusion to the in-house magazine of Galerie 291 , which he had previously published with Stieglitz. 391 appeared successfully in New York, Zurich and Paris by October 1924 .
In the 1920s, a large number of other commercial galleries arose in New York, such as Bourgeois, Belmaison, Daniel or Montross and institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Brooklyn Museum of Art were founded, "but the gap in the New York art world, which was created with the closure of the 291 after the war, closed slowly, ”says curator Sarah Greenough.
When the Société Anonyme Inc. was founded in 1920, the art collector and painter Katherine Sophie Dreier, together with friends Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, tried to build on Stieglitz and establish an organization to promote modern art in New York. The Société organized a number of important exhibitions - for example, the first exhibition by Alexander Archipenko was organized in the USA. However, Dreier failed in the long term because of the plan to bring their own extensive collection into a state-subsidized, museum context.
Also in 1920, the Modern Artists of America , founded by Henry Fitch Taylor, and the Whitney Studio Club (which resulted in the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1930 ) showed modern work by their members.
The painter Thomas Hart Benton , a leading exponent of American regionalism , attacked Alfred Stieglitz in a retrospective in 1935 in the magazine Common Sense by questioning his “American aesthetic”: “It is not so much his art that is American, it is rather his self-image as a 'seer' and 'prophet', therein lies his true relationship to our country. America produces more of them than any country in the world. This place is full of cults led by individuals who regard themselves as the measure of all things. "About the 291 , Benton wrote:" I am sure that no other place in the world has produced more stupid stuff [ ...] the contamination with intellectual stupidity assumed unbelievable proportions there. "
Ansel Adams , who exhibited at Stieglitz's gallery An American Place in the mid-1930s , recalled Stieglitz as an exhibition organizer in his 1984 autobiography: “He told other artists what their work meant to him. If they were big enough to accept the truth of his honest opinion, that enriched them. He believed that art was an opportunity to make essential statements about life - to express what the individual in relation to the world and his fellow men feels. "
Susan Sontag considered Stieglitz's efforts to emancipate American art, which from the point "a major American cultural revolution" Walt Whitman in 1855 in the preface to Leaves of Grass (dt. Grass) had prophesied, "... which never took place" so sunday. In her essay On Photography she remarked: “Starting with the images that were reproduced and consecrated in Camera Work and exhibited in the 291 - the magazine and gallery being the most sophisticated forum of Whitman style - the path of American photography has gone from affirmation the excavation led to the parody of Whitman's program [...] like Whitman, Stieglitz saw no contradiction in making art a tool for identification with the community and at the same time glorifying the artist as a heroic, romantic, self-expressing self . "
In the spring of 2001, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC presented the extensive exhibition Modern art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries , which for the first time reflected Alfred Stieglitz's role as a photography pioneer, gallery owner and publisher for the development of the modern US -Highlighted American art. The show showed, among other things, a reconstruction of Stieglitz 'experimental 1914 exhibition with African art and sculptures by Constantin Brâncuşi.
In his reflections on aesthetic modernism and photography, published in 2005, the American cultural scientist Michael North questions the multidisciplinarity of Alfred Stieglitz's magazine Camera Work, in which not only photographic works but also paintings and literary texts - Gertrude Stein should be mentioned in particular - were published. North assumes that photography has brought literature and visual arts into a new relationship: "The magazine has made photography an important vehicle for abstract art and experimental literature". The author attaches this to an anecdote from 1912, when a reader of Camera Work asked astonished what “Picasso & Co” had to do with photography.
An extensive Dada retrospective, which was shown in the Paris Center Georges Pompidou in 2005/2006 , presented Alfred Stieglitz 'Galerie 291 as the center of the New York Dada, which was, however, characterized by less collectively organized activities.
List of exhibitions
The dates are taken from Camera Work magazine and the New York Evening Post's art calendar .
| 1905 | November 24–4. January | Exhibition of the Photo Secession |
|---|---|---|
| 1906 | January 10–24. January | Photographic work by Robert Demachy, René Le Bègue and Constant Puyo |
| February 5–19. February | Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence H. White | |
| February 21–7. March | First exhibition by British photographers | |
| March 9–24. March | Photographs by Edward Steichen | |
| April 7th - April 28th April | German and Viennese photographers | |
| November 10–30. December | Exhibition of members | |
| 1907 | January 5–24. January | Drawings by Pamela Coleman Smith |
| January 25 - December 12 February | Photographs by Baron Adolphe de Meyer and George Henry Seeley | |
| February 19th – 5th March | Photographs by Alice Boughton, William B. Dyer, and C. Yarnall Abbott | |
| March 11–10. April | Photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn | |
| November 18–30. December | Exhibition of members | |
| 1908 | January 2–21. January | Drawings by Auguste Rodin |
| February 7th-25th February | Photographs by George H. Seeley | |
| February 26–11. March |
Bookplates and etchings by Willi Geiger Etchings by DS McLaughlan, drawings by Pamela Coleman Smith |
|
| March 12–2. April | Photographs by Edward Steichen | |
| April 6–25. April | Watercolors, lithographs , etchings and drawings by Henri Matisse | |
| December 8–30. December | Exhibition of members | |
| 1909 | January 4th-16th January | Caricatures in charcoal by Marius de Zayas and Autochromes by J. Nilsen Lauvrik |
| January 18–1. February | Photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn | |
| February 4th – 22nd February | Photographs in color and monochrome by Baron Adolphe de Meyer | |
| February 26–10. March | Bookplate, etchings and drypoint etchings by Allen Lewis | |
| March 17th - 27th March | Drawings by Pamela Coleman Smith | |
| March 30–17. April | Sketches in oil by Alfred Maurer and watercolors by John Marin | |
| April 21–7. May | Edward Steichen: Photographs by Rodins Balzac | |
| May 8th - May 18th May | Paintings by Marsden Hartley | |
| May 18–2. June | Exhibition of Japanese prints from the FW Hunter Collection, New York | |
| November 24–17. December | Monotypes and drawings by Eugene Higgins | |
| December 20–14. January | Lithographs by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | |
| 1910 | January 21–5. February | Color photographs by Edward Steichen |
| February 7th – 19th February | Watercolors, pastels and etchings by John Marin | |
| February 23–8. March | Photographs and drawings by Henri Matisse | |
| March 9–21. March | Younger American Painters (Arthur Dove, John Marin, Max Weber and Edward Steichen) | |
| March 21 - March 18 April | Drawings by Rodin | |
| April 26 – May | Caricatures by Marius de Zayas | |
| November 18–8. December | Lithographs by Cézanne, Manet, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec; Drawings by Rodin; Paintings and drawings by Henri Rousseau | |
| December 14th - December 12th January | Etchings and drawings by Gordon Craig | |
| 1911 | January 11–31. January | Paintings and drawings by Max Weber |
| February 2–22. February | Watercolors by John Marin | |
| March 1–25. March | Watercolors by Cézanne | |
| March 28–25. April | Early and more recent watercolors and drawings by Pablo Picasso | |
| November 8–17. December | Watercolors by Gelett Burgess | |
| December 18– January 5 | Photographs by Baron Adolphe de Meyer | |
| 1912 | January 17–3. February | Paintings by Arthur B. Carles |
| February 7th – 26th February | Paintings and drawings by Marsden Hartley | |
| February 27–12. March | Paintings and pastels by Arthur G. Dove | |
| March 14th – 6th April | Sculptures and drawings by Henri Matisse | |
| April 11–10. May | Watercolors, pastels and drawings by children aged two to eleven | |
| November 20–12. December | Caricatures by Alfred J. Frueh | |
| December 15–14. January | Paintings and drawings by Abraham Walkowitz | |
| 1913 | January 20–15. February | Watercolors by John Marin |
| February 24th – 15th March | Photographs by Alfred Stieglitz | |
| March 17th – 5th April | Exhibition of New York Studies by Francis Picabia | |
| April 8–20. May | Caricatures by Marius de Zayas | |
| November 19–3. January | Watercolors, pastels and drawings by Abraham Walkowitz | |
| 1914 | January 12–14. February | Paintings by Marsden Hartley |
| February 18–11. March | Second exhibition of children's paintings | |
| March 12–4. April | Sculptures by Constantin Brâncuşi | |
| April 6–6. May | Paintings and drawings by Frank Burty Haviland | |
| November 3–8. December | Sanctuary in Wood by African Savages - African sculptures | |
| December 9–11. January | Paintings and drawings by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in combination with African artifacts; Archaic Mexican ceramics and carvings; Calograms from Torres Palomar from Mexico |
|
| 1915 | January 12–26. January | Later paintings by Francis Picabia |
| January 27-22 February | Paintings by Marion H. Beckett and Katharine Rhoades | |
| February 23–26. March | Watercolors, oil paintings, etchings and drawings by John Marin | |
| March 27–16. April | Third exhibition of children's paintings | |
| November 10th - 7th December | Paintings and drawings by Oscar Bluemner | |
| December 8–19. January | Sculptures and drawings by Elie Nadelman | |
| 1916 | January 18–12. February | More recent watercolors by John Marin |
| February 14th - December 12th March | Watercolors and drawings by Abraham Walkowitz | |
| March 13–3. April | Photographs by Paul Strand | |
| April 4th – April 22nd May | Paintings by Marsden Hartley | |
| May 23–5. July | Drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe, watercolors and drawings by Charles Duncan, oil paintings by René Lafferty | |
| November 22–20. December | Watercolors and drawings by Georgia S. Engelhard, a ten-year-old from New York; Paintings and drawings by Hartley, Marin, Walkowitz, Wright, and O'Keeffe | |
| December 17th – 17th January | Watercolors by Abraham Walkowitz | |
| 1917 | January 22nd - 7th February | Recent work by Marsden Hartley |
| February 14–3. March | Watercolors by John Marin | |
| March 6–17. March | Paintings, pastels and drawings by Gino Severini | |
| March 20–31. March | Paintings and sculptures by Stanton Macdonald-Wright | |
| April 3–14. May | Recent work by Georgia O'Keeffe |
literature
- Alfred Goldfinch . Könemann, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-89508-607-X .
- Robert Doty: Photo-Secession: Stieglitz and the Fine-Art Movement in Photography . Dover Publications Inc., 1978, ISBN 0-486-23588-2 . (English)
- Sarah Greenough: Modern art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and his New York galleries . Exhibition catalog of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, at Bulfinch Press (= Little, Brown and Company), 2001, ISBN 0-8212-2728-9 . (English)
- Sarah Greenough: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Volume I & II ; Harry N. Abrams, 2002, ISBN 0-89468-290-3 . (English)
- R. Scott Harnsberger: Four artists of the Stieglitz Circle: A sourcebook on Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Max Weber . Greenwood Press, 2002, ISBN 0-313-31488-8 .
- William Innes Homer : Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-Garde . Secker & Warburg , 1977, ISBN 0-436-20082-1 . (English)
- William Innes Homer: Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession . Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1983, ISBN 0-8212-1525-6 . (English)
- Beaumont Newhall : History of Photography ; American original edition History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present . New York 1937; German translation as a new edition by Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88814-319-5 .
- Michael North: Camera Works - Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word . Oxford University Press, New York 2005, ISBN 0-19-517356-2 . (English)
- Simone Philippi, (Ed.), Ute Kieseyer (Ed.), Julia Krumhauer et al .: Alfred Stieglitz Camera Work - The Complete Photographs 1903–1917 . Taschen, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8228-3784-9 (multilingual; texts by Pam Roberts, German translation by Gabriele-Sabine Gugetzer)
- Susan Sontag: About Photography ; American original edition On Photography by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1977; German translation by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 18th edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-596-23022-8 .
- Marius de Zayas, Francis M. Naumann (Eds.): How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to New York . MIT Press, 1998, ISBN 0-262-54096-7 . (English) Excerpts from Google Books
Web links
- The 291 Gallery at the National Gallery of Art (English)
- In the American Grain: Dove, Hartley, Marin, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz (English)
- Alfred Stieglitz's Gallery 291 on georgia-okeeffe.com (English)
Notes and individual references
Unless otherwise stated, the information is based on Sarah Greenough et al .: Modern art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and his New York galleries . Exhibition catalog of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, at Bulfinch Press (= Little, Brown and Company), 2001, ISBN 0-8212-2728-9 .
- ^ Free translation after Greenough, p. 23; in the original: “The Photo-Secession is an idea. It is the idea of revolt against all authority in art, in fact against all authority in everything, for art is only the expression of life. "
- ↑ Greenough, p. 25
- ↑ Greenough, pp. 23-26; see. Michel Frizot: The magazine Camera Work 1903-1917 ; in: New History of Photography ; ed. by Michel Frizot, Könemann, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-8290-1327-2 , p. 327
- ↑ a b Greenough, pp. 26f
- ↑ 291 Fifth Avenue was the original address of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession . After a rent increase, Stieglitz was forced to move the gallery two doors down, to the smaller 293 Fifth Avenue. However, he kept the now naturalized name. ( Stieglitz's 291. Archived from the original on October 25, 2011 ; accessed September 9, 2012 . )
- ↑ Greenough, p. 55
- ^ Peter C. Bunell: The gallery 291 ; in: New History of Photography , p. 314
- ↑ a b c Beaumont Newhall: History of Photography , 1984, p. 174
- ↑ Camera Work No. 22; see. also: Waldo Frank: America And Alfred Stieglitz - A Collective Portrait . The Literary Guild, New York, 1934. E-Book (English. Retrieved April 29, 2009)
- ↑ Greenough, p. 83
- ↑ Greenough, pp. 30f
- ↑ An exhibition season began in autumn and ended in April / May. In the summer months from 1907 until the outbreak of the First World War , Goldfinch usually stayed in Europe.
- ↑ Greenough, pp. 57, 73-76
- ↑ Greenough, p. 84
- ↑ Greenough, pp. 85f.
- ↑ a b Greenough, pp. 32-33
- ^ Marius de Zayas, Francis M. Naumann (eds.): How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to New York . MIT Press, 1998, ISBN 0-262-54096-7 , p. 90
- ^ Charles Brock: Marius de Zayas, 1909-1915, A Commerce of Ideas ; in: Modern art and America , pp. 145f, 151
- ↑ In the American Grain: Dove, Hartley, Marin, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz. Traditional Fine Arts Organization, accessed July 10, 2009 .
- ^ Pam Roberts: Alfred Stieglitz Camera Work , p. 206
- ↑ John Cauman: Henri Matisse, 1908, 1910, and 1912 - New Evidence of Life ; in: Modern art and America , p. 89
- ↑ Greenough, p. 559
- ^ Jill Kyle: Paul Cézanne, 1911, Nature reconstructed ; in: Modern art and America , pp. 108-109
- ^ A b Charles Brock: Pablo Picasso, 1911, An Intellectual Cocktail ; in: Modern art and America , pp. 119, 123-124
- ^ Brooke Schieb: Alfred Stieglitz and the Gallery 291. (No longer available online.) Southern Methodist University , archived from the original ; accessed on July 16, 2008 .
- ^ Charles Brock: Pablo Picasso, 1911, An Intellectual Cocktail ; in: Modern art and America , p. 121
- ↑ Brooke Schieb: Arthur G. Dove - Biography. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, accessed July 27, 2008 .
- ↑ John Cauman: Henri Matisse, 1908, 1910, and 1912 - New Evidence of Life ; in: Modern art and America , pp. 94-95
- ^ Alfred Stieglitz and His Circle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art , accessed April 30, 2009 .
- ^ Charles Brock: The Armory Show, 1913, A Diabolical Test ; in: Modern art and America , p. 129
- ↑ a b c Brock, p. 131f
- ↑ a b c Brock, pp. 135f
- ↑ a b c Ann Temkin: Constantin Brancusi, 1914, Startling Lucidity ; in: Modern art and America , pp. 156-157
- ^ Temkin, p. 161
- ↑ a b Temkin, pp. 162-163
- ↑ Here it has to be put into perspective whether Stieglitz was really the first exhibition organizer to present African objects in the art discourse. He probably knew of a similar exhibition that was shown in the Washington gallery in the spring of 1914 by Robert J. Coady and Michael Brenner. (Helen M. Shannon: African Art, 1914, The Root of Modern art ; in: Modern art and America , pp. 169–170)
- ↑ Shannon, pp. 173f
- ↑ a b Shannon, pp. 177-178
- ↑ Pepe Karmel: Picasso and Georges Braque, 1914-1915, Skeletons of Thought ; in: Modern art and America , p. 188
- ↑ Carmel, p. 192
- ↑ Greenough, p. 546
- ^ Hermann Korte: The Dadaists . Rowohlt, Reinbek, 5th edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-499-50536-2 , p. 111
- ^ The 291 Gallery. National Gallery of Art, accessed April 30, 2009 .
- ^ Sarah Greenough: Paul Strand, 1916, Applied Intelligence ; in: Modern art and America , pp. 248-249
- ↑ a b Greenough, pp. 247f.
- ↑ Greenough, pp. 256-259
- ↑ a b Bruce Robertson: Marsden Hartley, 1916, Letters to the Dead ; in: Modern art and America , pp. 229-233
- ^ Robertson, p. 238
- ↑ Barbara Buhler Lynes: Georgia O'Keeffe, 1916 and 1917, My Own Tune in: Modern art and America , p. 261
- ↑ a b Buhler Lynes, p. 263f
- ↑ Buhler Lynes, pp. 268-269
- ^ Alfred Stieglitz Exhibition. (No longer available online.) Victoria and Albert Museum, archived from the original on December 15, 2012 ; accessed on July 29, 2009 . ;
- ↑ a b c Greenough, pp. 277-279
- ↑ Merry Foresta: Recurring motifs in the art of Man Ray , in: Man Ray - His complete work . Edition Stemmle, Zurich, 1989, ISBN 3-7231-0388-X , pp. 22-25
- ↑ Elizabeth Hutton Turner: Trans Atlantique ; in: Man Ray - His Complete Works , p. 140
- ↑ Alfred Stieglitz. (No longer available online.) Fisk University, archived from the original on April 15, 2010 ; accessed on April 30, 2009 (English).
- ↑ Sarah Greenough et al .: Modern art and America , back side (free translation)
- ^ Stephen E. Lewis, The Modern Gallery and American Commodity Culture . In: Modernism-modernity . Vol. 4.3. Pp. 67-91. The Johns Hopkins University Press 1997 (accessed April 8, 2018)
- ^ Documents of Dada and Surrealism - Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection. The Art Institute of Chicago. , 2001, archived from the original on February 12, 2015 ; Retrieved July 18, 2008 .
- ↑ a b c Greenough, p. 300
- ^ Henry Fitch Taylor (1853-1925) was an American impressionist and member of the Cos Cob Art Colony near Greenwich , Connecticut . At the time, Taylor was considered to be the oldest artist to deal with modernist techniques.
- ↑ Greenough, p. 570; compare Justin Wolff: The Ballad of Thomas Hart Benton . Retrieved July 19, 2009. (English)
- ^ Ansel Adams: Autobiography (in the American original: Ansel Adams, An Autobiography , New York 1985) German translation by Christian Verlag Munich, 1st edition 1985, ISBN 3-88472-141-0 , p. 120
- ^ Susan Sontag: About Photography . New York 1977; German translation in Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 18th edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-596-23022-8 , pp. 31, 33-34
- ↑ Melissa Seckora: Modern Champions . nationalreview.com, 3./4. February 2001, archived from the original on October 1, 2009 ; Retrieved July 18, 2008 .
- ^ Michael North: Camera Works - Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word . New York 2005, pp. 35ff. Excerpts from Google Books . (English)
- ^ Esther Buss: The whole "Dadaglobe". taz, December 7, 2005, accessed September 16, 2009 .
- ↑ Greenough, pp. 543-547
Illustrations
- ^ Henri Matisse: Le bonheur de vivre , oil on canvas, 175 × 241 cm, Barnes Foundation
- ↑ Pablo Picasso: Standing female nude
- ^ Francis Picabia: Fille née sans mère. National Galleries of Scotland, Retrieved April 28, 2009 .
- ^ Francis Picabia: Ici, c'est ici Stieglitz. Retrieved April 28, 2009 .
Coordinates: 40 ° 44 ′ 47.2 " N , 73 ° 59 ′ 9.8" W.