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Deluxe Photo Book
Sydney Stutterheim discusses Chris Burden’s Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73 on the occasion of its inclusion in About Photography at Gagosian San Francisco.
Extended through June 30, 2018
Gagosian is pleased to present About Photography, an exhibition by artists, modern and contemporary, who have exhibited with the gallery over the past four decades.
About Photography explores the ways in which artists use photography as a medium, a means to an end, and a catalyst for other art forms. From Andy Warhol to Richard Prince, these artists open up the question of what it means to utilize the photographic medium for representation, as well as in the creation of form. As intellectual challenges continue to unfold, photography pervades not only all other artistic genres, but our every moment as well, a phenomenon that has irrevocably changed the nature of art itself.
The exhibition’s only sculpture, Duane Hanson’s Man with Camera (1991–92), takes center stage: a figure perched on a folding chair poises his camera to take a photograph. Celebrated for their startling realism, Hanson’s figures and the “snapshot of America” that they constitute take on new meaning in a photographic context. Nearby, Andy Warhol’s Screen Test of Edie Sedgwick (1965) is projected on the entrance wall. Richard Avedon’s portraits of Louis Armstrong (1955), Bob Dylan (1963), Malcolm X (1963), and members of Warhol’s Factory (1969–75) create an interlocking narrative about photography and society, contrasting with both the aesthetics and implications of Hanson’s figure.
Fifty years after Diane Arbus began shooting her unsettling black-and-white portraits of ordinary Americans on a medium-format Rolleiflex, producing distinctive, square photographs, Richard Prince’s Untitled (portrait) (2015) borrows the characteristic text and cropping of an Instagram post. An avid documenter and collector of American subcultures, Prince uses mass-media images to redefine concepts of ownership and authorship. Here, his examination of the contemporary channels and distribution of the photograph stands in stark contrast to Arbus’s iconic portraits, including Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J. (1966).
While Ed Ruscha’s deadpan series Vacant Lots (1970–2003) memorializes Los Angeles’s vernacular architecture, now largely overbuilt, the dissonance between nature and the incursion of commerce and popular culture is made evident in Andreas Gursky’s SH II (2014), in which a superhero sits alone in a desolate landscape.
Sydney Stutterheim discusses Chris Burden’s Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73 on the occasion of its inclusion in About Photography at Gagosian San Francisco.
Michael Cary explores the history behind, and power within, Nan Goldin’s video triptych Sisters, Saints, Sibyls. The work will be on view at the former Welsh chapel at 83 Charing Cross Road, London, as part of Gagosian Open, from May 30 to June 23, 2024.
On the occasion of an exhibition at Fondation Beyeler, novelist Rachel Cusk considers the ethical and aesthetic arrangements that Duane Hanson’s sculpture initiates within the viewer.
On the occasion of Douglas Gordon: All I need is a little bit of everything, an exhibition in London, curator Adam Szymczyk recounts his experiences with Gordon’s work across nearly three decades, noting the continuities and evolutions.
The Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, has staged a comprehensive Jeff Wall exhibition including more than fifty works spanning five decades. Here, Barry Schwabsky reflects on the enduring power of and mystery in Wall’s photography.
Lee Miller and Tanja Ramm’s friendship took them from New York to Paris and back, in front of and behind many cameras, and into the Surrealist avant-garde. Here, Gagosian director Richard Calvocoressi speaks with Ramm’s daughter, art historian Margit Rowell, about discovering her mother’s early life, her memories of Miller, and the collaborative work of photographers and models.
Gagosian presented an evening of poetry inside to light, and then return—, an exhibition of new works by Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann, inspired by each other’s practices, at Gagosian, New York. In this video—taking the artists’ shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis as a point of departure—poets Elisa Gonzalez and Terrance Hayes read a selection of their recent works that resonate with the themes of elegy and historical reckoning in the show. The evening was moderated by Jonathan Galassi, chairman and executive editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
In this video, Urs Fischer elaborates on the creative process behind his public installation Wave, at Place Vendôme, Paris.
Douglas Gordon took over the Piccadilly Lights advertising screen in London’s Piccadilly Circus, as well as a global network of screens in cities including Berlin, Melbourne, Milan, New York, and Seoul, nightly for three minutes at 20:22 (8:22pm) throughout December 2022, with his new film, if when why what (2018–22). The project was presented by the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Art (CIRCA) in conjunction with the exhibition Douglas Gordon: Neon Ark at Gagosian, Davies Street, London.
This fall, artists and friends Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann will exhibit new works together in New York. Inspired by their shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis, the works included will form a dialogue between their respective practices. Here they meet to speak about the origins and developments of the project.
Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade is a group exhibition and shop takeover that feature works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators including photographers Ronnie Cutrone, Michael Halsband, Christopher Makos, and Billy Name. To celebrate the occasion, Makos met with Gagosian director Jessica Beck to speak about his friendship with Warhol and the joy of the unexpected.
In this video, Jessica Beck, director at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, sits down to discuss the three early paintings by Andy Warhol from 1963 featured in the exhibition Andy Warhol: Silver Screen, at Gagosian in Paris.
Jake Skeets reflects on Richard Avedon’s series In the American West, focusing on the portrait of his uncle, Benson James.
The Summer 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Richard Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe, actor, New York, May 6, 1957 on its cover.
In celebration of the centenary of Richard Avedon’s birth, more than 150 artists, designers, musicians, writers, curators, and representatives of the fashion world were asked to select a photograph by Avedon for an exhibition at Gagosian, New York, and to elaborate on the ways in which image and artist have affected them. We present a sampling of these images and writings.
The Spring 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Roe Ethridge’s Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on its cover.
In conjunction with his exhibitions Adam McEwen at Gagosian in London, and Adam McEwen: XXIII at Gagosian in Rome, the artist sits down with author Ian Penman to discuss his new obituary works and graphite sculptures.
During the 2022 edition of Paris Photo, Sally Mann and Benjamin Moser sat down for an intimate conversation as the first event in Gagosian’s Paris Salon series, initiated by Jessie Fortune Ryan. In light of Moser’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Susan Sontag, Sontag: Her Life and Work (2019), recently translated into French, the two discussed the power and responsibility tied up in their respective practices of photography and writing.
Contemporary artists Adam McEwen and Jeremy Deller met up online over the holiday season to discuss McEwen’s upcoming exhibitions in London and Rome. McEwen delves into the motivations and criteria behind his work, as well as the challenges and complexities of memorializing the living.
To celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland, staged an exhibition entitled Jubiläumsausstellung—Special Guest Duane Hanson. The presentation featured several sculptures by Duane Hanson alongside more than one hundred works from the foundation’s collection. Alice Godwin considers the fertile dialogues produced by these juxtapositions.