Volume 28, Number 19 · December 3, 1981
Proto-Photo
By Charles Rosen, Henri Zerner
Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography
by Peter Galassi
The Museum of Modern Art, distributed by the New York Graphic Society, 151, 82 plates pp., $10.00 (paper)
"Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography" Museum, Omaha; the Frederick S. Wright Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles; the Art Institute of Chicago. May 1981-May 1982
an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Joslyn Art
The catalogue of a brilliant exhibition called Before Photography at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this year contributes wonderfully to our understanding of the nineteenth century without attempting, as is now fashionable, to upset the traditional evaluation of the artistic development of the period. Whatever is original about this exhibition, organized by Peter Galassi, can be beautifully integrated with conventional wisdom. The exhibition explores one thesis: that the photographic vision, the informality and directness of approach that we admire in photography, had been already prepared in painting from the late eighteenth century on, particularly in painted studies or sketches of landscape. In Galassi's view, the freedom and directness of photography, in order to be communicated, depended on certain modes of presentation, certain methods of cropping and points of view, that were already developed earlier in a particular kind of painting and taken over by photography.
Review, 1849 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |