Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art Hardcover – June 12, 2018

Recording an exhibition at the Tate of the mutual influence of abstract painting and abstract photography. Hardcover is very well me, and quality of images is superb.

Good survey of photography of the abstract. Would have liked more colored reproductions. Enjoyed the history. An interesting read.

Gift

If you are interested in experimental or art photography, this book will be of great interest. Otherwise, the succession of fuzzy or strangely angled black and white photographs may leave you bemused. However, reading the text and giving close study to the photographs results in a greater appreciation.This is the accompanying catalogue to the Tate Modern’s exhibition, “Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art”, held from 02-May-2018 to 14-Oct-2018. It is a substantial book of 200 pages plus a Glossary, Notes, Exhibition Works and Index. It is in full colour, although most of the illustrations are in monochrome, and printed on matt rather than glossy paper, which is somehow preferable. It can be picked up to read without any problem.It is divided into four chronological sections: 1910 – 1940; 1940 – 1960; 1960 – 1980 and 1980 – now. Each section starts with illustrated explanatory text followed by full-page reproductions of photographs and abstract artworks. There are only a few artworks compared with the number of photographs, they are mostly paintings and all are from the Tate’s own collection (1). For the earlier dates, the photographs are all in black and white, as would be expected, but it is only in the last section “1980 – now” that there is an explosion of colour. By contrast, the abstract paintings bring colour even in the first section.Section “1910 – 1940” has photographs from reality, taken at strange angles or in unexpected close-up or unexpected distance. It also has purely abstract photographs, constructed in the darkroom. There is an explicit rejection of scientific photographs in this section. The author states, “As a matter of principle, scientific images here have been ruled out in order to highlight the desire to 'create art', reasoning that it is precisely because photographers wanted to create art that they made every effort to move away from reality.”The second section, “1940 – 1960”, has forty-odd images all but one in black and white. It contains illustrations more reminiscent of abstract painting. There is a Pollock drip painting amongst them, “Number 23, 1948”, which is in black and white and fits perfectly with the photographs (2). I was glad to see two colour photographs amongst all the monochrome, but I later realised that one of them was an artwork. The photograph was by Harry Callahan, a photograph dye transfer print on paper, and the artwork was by Jacques Villeglé (3) consisting of printed coloured papers on canvas. There are four photographs by Aaron Siskind. He was considered as the Abstract Expressionist photographer.Section “1960 – 1980” is more varied and more difficult to describe. Parts of this section look more scientific, suggesting images produced by X-ray spectroscopy, rock slices under a microscope or oscilloscope displays. The two categories of art photography continue in this section. The first category is the darkroom as a laboratory with camera-free photography. The second category is documentary photography where the real world is transformed into the abstract, the “defamiliarisation of the everyday” by “scale and context”. Gottfried Jäger belongs to the first category with his pinhole series of 1967. These are ordered abstractions produced by a programme, a precursor to digitally created photography. Edward Ruscha belongs to the second category with two photographs from his series “Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles” of 1967. Each photograph was shot from above and taken early on a Sunday morning when the car parks were empty. The grid lines that mark where the cars should be are clearly visible, forming an abstract pattern.In the last section “1980 – now”, colour predominates. Wolfgang Tillmans created large fields of colour by passing photographic paper through a developing machine. James Welling produced photograms with subtly changing colour reminiscent of Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko. The Tate Modern has a room of Rothkos, so it is surprising that one of them is not included for comparison. Alison Rossiter dipped expired sheets of photographic paper into developer, producing areas of contrasting tonalities. Thomas Ruff created a software environment to emulate a darkroom, light source and objects. Stan Douglas used software to alter JPEG files to create soft focus colours and shapes. Some of the photographs could come straight out of the X-Files. For example, Signar Polke’s Untitled (Uranium Green) 1992 are green fuzzy shapes. Could these be spacecraft in the Roswell sky as seen by the locals? Just as fantastically, these images are from Polke’s “Uraniums” series. They were made by placing uranium on photosensitive plates and negatives, letting the radiation create the artwork._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(1) There are only 12 original artworks included in the catalogue, including 9 paintings. The artists are Kandinsky, Braque, Wyndham Lewis, Brancusi (bronze sculpture), Mondrian, Jean Arp, Joan Miró, Pollock, Carl Andre (flat sculpture), László Moholy-Nagy (who is better known for his photography), Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé and Bridget Riley. In comparison, there are over 150 photographs, mostly full-page plates. These photographs include a small number of less familiar processes: Chemigram, Cyanotype print on paper, E ink screen (hacked Kindle), Tomograph, Inkjet print, Luminogram, Photogram, Pigment print, Roentgenogram and Vortograph(2) To quote the Tate website “Number 23 is an abstract painting on paper. Comprised of layered skeins of black and white enamel paint, the composition was created by dripping and flicking the paint onto the surface of the paper from all four sides. This unusual technique creates a sense of frenzied movement within the image, and results in a composition that could be read from several orientations, although the small inscription of the artist’s name and the date (‘Jackson Pollock, 48’) along one side suggests this to be the lower edge."(3) To quote the Tate website “The Jazzmen is a section of what Jacques Villeglé termed affiches lacérées, posters torn down from the walls of Paris. These particular ones were taken on 10 December 1961. Following his established practice, Villeglé removed the section from a billboard and, having mounted it on canvas, presented it as a work of art.”(4) A few books are mentioned in the Notes:  Aaron Siskind, photographer , Creative Photography: Aesthetic Trends, 1839-1960 , Man Ray Autoportrait  and  Alfred Stieglitz: An American SeerAaron Siskind, photographerCreative Photography: Aesthetic Trends, 1839-1960Man Ray AutoportraitAlfred Stieglitz: An American Seer

This book will mainly be of interest to those interested in photography, who also have an interest in Abstract art, and to those people with an interest in Abstract art, and who want to see how it was seen through the eyes of photographers. It may also be useful to those who visited the many rooms at Tate Modern in 2018 but were overwhelmed by the size of the exhibition and need to reflect on both what they saw, and find what they missed. Regardless, it’s a well produced book, with faithful reproductions of both the photographic prints and the abstract artworks that influenced their makers. It stands alone in its own right as a book on the subject of the relationship between 20th and 21st Century photography and Abstract art, so even if the exhibition was missed, it’s well worth buying.

Arrived on time & very well packaged!Very happy with my order, this made a fantastic birthday gift!- Highly recommend!

Catalogo dell'ultima mostra fotografica in Inghilterra dedicata ai rapporti fra astrattismo e fotografia. Testi interessanti ma brevi aprono ogni singola sezione. Secondo me non vanno molto a fondo nel dettaglio.

Intérêt personnel pour la photo non figurative et les rapports avec la peinture