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Walker Evans--Then and Now
By Melinda Schupmann
Walker Evans, whose seminal work has helped shape American photography in this century, is currently featured in two marvelous exhibitions at the Getty Museum. Both were developed by museum curators independent of each other and now join to provide a rare historic view of America and its artists.
Walker Evans & Company: Works from The Museum of Modern Art, shown only in Los Angeles before returning to MoMA, is an impressive array of art and photography that stands out as a chronicled commentary. Works representing over 70 artists develop the themes of American life that speak of the ordinary events of a civilization. Names like Diane Arbus, Eugene Atget, Edward Hopper, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Edward Weston join with Evans to span a time period from the 1930's to the present that capture that unique view. Though photographs are the focus, several pieces are included that underscore how influential Walker Evans was in the world of art. Included are 55 photographs by Evans, and 151 paintings, photographs, and drawings by others. Of these, 20 works that were published in the Walker Evans & Company catalog but not displayed in New York will be on view.
The exhibition is organized in eight sections, each devoted to a particular dimension of Evans' work. Joining his photographs are other pieces that expand or clarify an aspect of those topics. Wisely, the collection begins with 3 August Sander photographs from the 1910's (Peasant Woman, Earthbound Farmer, Farming Generations) that clearly influenced Evans' sharecropper photographs from 1936 (Sharecropper's Family, Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife, Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama.) when he worked for the Farm Security Administration. These are the images that are most often reproduced and recognized by the public. But he surveyed many other subjects as well.
In another grouping, Eugene Atget prints from Paris stand as ethereal counterpoints to Evans' photographs of buildings in Maine, Louisiana and Alabama. Evans spoke of photography as collecting. What he collected were things and people that struck his eye as signs of the times. He looked at homes and their interiors, those disposable elements of the society like signs or showbills, and panoramas of place. One torn minstrel show playbill stands as testimony to a time long forgotten, capturing the flavor of that moment (Minstrel Showbill, 1936). Another face of a young woman in New York seizes the "theater of the street" (Girl in Fulton Street.) Panoramic views of the countryside, displays in shop windows, subway photos, cars--all subject matter for Evans.
What is interesting are the other collateral art pieces MoMA's chief curator, department of photography Peter Galassi has combined with Evans' works. "By dispensing with the pictorial flourishes and privileged subjects that had prevailed before he arrived on the scene, he opened artistically ambitious photography to any and all subjects and to the full range of the medium's descriptive curiosity. In the process he radically broadened modern art's sustained engagement with the world outside the studio." "First Landing Jump, 1964, by Robert Rauschenberg is the centerpiece of a room full of Evans and others. Around the corner, Andy Warhol is juxtaposed with photographs from an earlier decade, and their influence is clearly evident. In that room, a large 33 by 45 take-away poster for the public, filled with photos of victims of violence, will become next century's collectible.
The American Tradition & Walker Evans: Photographs from the Getty Collection is equally intriguing. This complementary perspective on Evans focuses on his predecessors and some contemporaries who explored similar topics. Weston Naef, curator of the Getty's department of photographs, said, "We have seized this opportunity to bring from our storeroom many never before displayed or published photographs, some made more than a century ago when most photographers sought to capture both truth and beauty in a single work" The Getty houses more early Evans' prints than any other museum.
Works by Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, the Langenheim brothers, and Carleton Watkins are central to understanding the inspiration that fueled Evans' vision. Over 100 works represent a chronology from daguerreotypes and stereotypes from the 1840's and 50's through the 1940's, sharing works by Evans' contemporaries.
It is hard to say which of the two collections is more compelling. A photo album containing portraits of criminals and written annotations from the turn of the century invites a moment's pondering about that early photographer and his task. Another gelatin silver print of a movie poster remnant is a stark snapshot of an earlier time. A single bed neatly made sits silently near simply mounted photographs, also unadorned with nothing more than their unpretentious clarity.
Walker Evans looked at his subjects with an objective eye. His works always spoke for themselves, and they bridged time. Seeing all these works together helps in understanding the interrelatedness of art and artist and how themes emerge from the inspiration of that art.
Walker Evans went on to write, his most famous book being Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, to be a contributing photographer and picture editor at Fortune, and finally to teach at Yale University as a professor of photography and graphic design. His 30-plus years as a photographer have left behind a mirror from the past that is a rich legacy well worth viewing.
Walker Evans & Company: Works from the Museum of Modern Art (July 10-September 16)
The American Tradition & Walker Evans: Photographs from the Getty Collection (July 10-October 28, 2001)
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