Jeff Wall

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Jeff Wall, Paris Photo 2014

Jeff Wall (born September 29, 1946 in Vancouver , British Columbia ) is a Canadian photo artist .

Life

Jeff Wall studied art history from 1964 to 1970 at the Department of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia , where he completed his studies with a Magister Artium. Immediately after completing his master's degree, Jeff Wall spent a three-year research stay at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London, where he began teaching art studies in 1974. From October 1999 to April 2000 he was the successor of Bernd Becher for a short time as professor of photography at the Düsseldorf Art Academy .

photos

He has been making photographs since 1967. From 1978 onwards, there have been color, large-format pictures in the form of light boxes and, since 1995, black-and-white photographs on paper. A special feature of Jeff Wall's photographs is that they are not created in series or as groups of works, but that each picture represents a unique composition that stands for itself. Many of Jeff Wall's paintings are inspired by novels, paintings or sculptures. Some are, without looking at them, deliberate stagings of the everyday, behind which the work of an entire team lies, e.g. B. of actors who randomly walk through the picture. As a precise artist, he takes a lot of time for his carefully staged photographs. He has only published 166 photos in his long career so far.

Some of these images have become icons of contemporary photography, while many others are little known.

Jeff Wall based three of his works on novels. He calls these accidents of reading . One of these pictures is called After Invisible Man , this picture is based on the novel of the same name by Ralph Ellison . For the painting The Destroyed Room he was inspired by the painting La mort de Sardanapale by Eugène Delacroix .

Many of his other works are based on other famous paintings or sculptures. His photography The Thinker / Le Penseur, for example, is a quote from the sculpture of the same name by Auguste Rodin , The Storyteller is based on Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Édouard Manet and La Liberté guidant le peuple by Eugène Delacroix is the model for Wall's photography under the title The Stumbling block .

reception

The interpretation of Jeff Wall's work breaks down into the actual image with its content and the form of presentation. All images are composed and even small or subtle details - the overhead line of a railway line in The Storyteller or the balloons on the ceiling in A Ventriloquist at a Birthdayparty in October, 1947 - have their role and meaning. These details are particularly noticeable if you look closely at the pictures, in The Destroyed Room the walls of the studio are visible through the windows of the room backdrop. Another indication is the digital processing and composition of his pictures - used by Wall since the 1990s. The best-known example is the picture A Sudden Gust Of Wind (after Hokusai) , in which all parts (hat, man, tree, leaves) come from individual shots and have been put together without a trace.

Very early on, Jeff Wall discovered the light box as the best form of presentation, in his own words as a “delivery system” and even refers to Dan Flavin , who works with fluorescent tubes. Various authors see it as a relationship to neon advertising, which this form of representation is distributed throughout cities and shows mass and large-format advertising. These and other critics relate the transmitted light method or the lighting to the cinema, in which film material is also penetrated in order to show a film to an audience on a large screen.

“I believe this [the light box] is an excellent way to get a dramatic photographic image. The relation to advertising is really only of secondary importance for me ... "

- TJ Clark, Claude Gintz, Serge Guildbaut and Anne Wagner,

Another indication of the relationship to cinema are movements of the characters or the scenery in general, which inevitably arise, as well as the parallel to the (narrated) story. In Milk the gush of milk will inevitably follow gravity, with Sudden Gust Of Wind (after Hokusai) the wind is responsible for the movements. Even the obvious lack of movement, as in Destroyed Room or The Pine on the Corner , has a cinematic aspect, is the end of a movement - in order to destroy a room, a lot of movement is required - or can be interpreted as a fade-in or tracking shot. In the restoration picture , the panorama is referred to as the predecessor of cinematography .

All of these factors are often viewed as Wall's critical engagement with photography, and many authors quote Walter Benjamin in essays on Jeff Wall. The artist himself refers to the work of John Heartfield in terms of assembly techniques. The titles of his pictures ( ... after Hokusai ), their contents ( restoration , the restoration of a panorama is shown) and the references shown ( Destroyed Room on The Death of Sardanapal ) testify to Wall's strong connection with the past and history per se.

Exhibitions

Some of his photographs, such as The Storyteller (1986), are exhibited in the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art and in the Pinakothek der Moderne ( Eviction Struggle , 1988) in Munich.

Jeff Wall participated in documenta 7 (1982), documenta 8 (1987), documenta X (1997) and also documenta 11 in 2002 in Kassel .

From February 24th to April 17th, 1994 the Deichtorhallen Hamburg showed an exhibition by the photographer called Jeff Wall - Dead Troops Talk . His exhibition of photographs at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 1996 was entitled: Jeff Wall - Landscapes and other Pictures .

The largest exhibition of his works took place from April 30, 2005 to September 25, 2005 in the Schaulager Basel . Large parts of this exhibition were then on view from October 21, 2005 to January 8, 2006 in London's Tate Modern .

Until May 14, 2007, the top floor of the Museum of Modern Art in New York was dedicated to him for an exhibition .

From November 3, 2007 to January 20, 2008, four new and five old works selected by the artist were on view at the Deutsche Guggenheim , Berlin.

From June 20 to October 10, 2010, the New Masters Gallery of the Dresden State Art Collections presented the exhibition Transit in the Lipsiusbau . Examples from all three important groups of works were represented in the Lipsiusbau: 19 light boxes, six black-and-white photographs and one color work using the C-print process. They spanned 32 years of his work, from Doorpusher (1984) to his most recent work in 2009, Search of premises .

In 2014 Jeff Wall in Munich could be seen in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich , in the same year in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam Jeff Wall: Tableaux, Pictures, Photographs, 1996-2013.

Kunsthaus Bregenz from November 18, 2014 - January 11, 2015 in cooperation with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk.

A complete list of solo and group exhibitions up to 2003 can be found in the appendix to.

Awards

literature

  • Jean-Christophe Ammann (Ed.): Jeff Wall: The Storyteller. Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-88270-467-5 . (Factory review)
  • Kerry Brougher (Ed.): Jeff Wall. Scalo-Verlag, Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-931141-53-5 . (Cat. For the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles / Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington / Art Tower Mito, Japan)
  • Jean-François Chevrier : Jeff Wall. Hazan, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-7541-0107-1 . (Monograph on Jeff Wall)
  • Thierry de Duve, Arielle Pelenc and Boris Groys : Jeff Wall. Phaidon Press Ltd., London 1996, ISBN 0-7148-3349-5 .
  • Peter Galassi (Ed.): Jeff Wall. The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-87070-707-0 . (Cat. For the exhibition in the New York Museum of Modern Art)
  • Valérie Hammerbacher: Beyond Photography: Arrangement, Tableau and Description - Image Strategies in Jeff Wall's Works. VDG, Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-89739-684-5 .
  • Achim Hochdörfer, MUMOK Vienna: Jeff Wall: Photographs. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-88375-683-0 . (Cat. For the exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig Vienna)
  • Oxford Art Journal. Vol. 30, No. March 1, 2007. (Jeff Wall Special)
  • Evelyn Runge: glamor of misery. Ethics, Aesthetics and Social Criticism with Sebastião Salgado and Jeff Wall. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-412-20726-7
  • Martin Schwander, Jeff Wall (Eds.): Jeff Wall: Dead Troops Talk. Wiese-Verlag, Basel 1993, ISBN 3-267-00100-5 . (Cat. For the exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Luzern, Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin, Deichtorhallen Hamburg )
  • Martin Schwander (Ed.): Jeff Wall: Restoration. Wiese-Verlag, Basel 1994, ISBN 3-909164-17-X ISBN 3267001072 (cat. For the exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Luzern and in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf ) in three languages
  • Steffen Siegel : I am two others. Jeff Wall's diptych of images and texts . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2014. ISBN 978-3-7705-5664-9 (essay on the relationship between Wall's photographs and writings)
  • Jeff Wall: Transparencies. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-88814-203-2 . (Includes a widely acclaimed conversation between the artist and Els Barents)
  • Gregor Stemmrich (Ed.): Jeff Wall. Scenarios in the pictorial space of reality. Essays and interviews. Translated u. av Michael Mundhenk . Fundus Volume 142, Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1997, ISBN 978-3-86572-418-2 . (Anthology of the artist's writings on art theory and history)
  • Theodora Vischer, Heidi Naef (Eds.): Jeff Wall, Catalog Raisonné 1978-2004. Steidl-Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-86521-167-4 . (First, comprehensive catalog raisonné on the artist on the occasion of the exhibition Jeff Wall. Photographs 1978-2004 in Schaulager Basel)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jeff Wall: landscapes and other picture . Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg 1996, ISBN 3-89322-855-1 .
  2. ^ Verena Krebs: Photography at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Past and present . Master's thesis at the Ruhr University Bochum (art history), 2005, ISBN 978-3-63841-431-9 , chap. 2
  3. ↑ Christian Mayer: Always nice and slow . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 2nd and 3rd, 2013, SV
  4. ↑ a b Achim Hochdörfer, MUMOK Vienna: Jeff Wall: Photographs. Publishing house d. Buchhandlung König, Cologne 2003 p. 53ff
  5. ^ Jeff Wall, To the Spectator , in Cat. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1979
  6. ^ Gregor Stemmrich (ed.), Scenarios in the Imagery of Reality: Essay and Interviews Jeff Wall , Amsterdam, Dresden, 1997
  7. ↑ www.tate.org.uk - The Storyteller ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tate.org.uk
  8. ↑ www.aktuellekamera.de - Eviction Struggle ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aktuellekamera.de
  9. ↑ Announcement on the exhibition ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 3, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stedelijk.nl
  10. ↑ Irene Netta, Ursula Keltz: 75 years of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich . Ed .: Helmut Friedel. Self-published by the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88645-157-7 , p. 245 .


personal data
SURNAME Wall, Jeff
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian artist
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Vancouver , Canada