Artists using photography

Dan Graham
HOMES FOR AMERICA (DETAIL)
1966-67

Não vou falar aqui da obra e da importância de Dan Graham na arte contemporânea mas sim do uso da fotografia por artistas, a propósito de uma excelente exposição que assisti no Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Vigo há dois anos cujo tema era: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW: ARTISTS USING PHOTOGRAPHY, 1960-1982

Esta exposição, organizada pelo Walker Art Center permite constatar a importância da fotografia nas práticas artísticas não só entre o período compreendido entre os anos sessenta e princípios dos anos oitenta, assim nas práticas contemporâneas actuais. Importância essa cuja influência não se resume unicamente à pintura mas a outras práticas como o cinema (o último filme de Wim Wenders " Don't come knocking" é prova disso mesmo).

A propósito desta exposição fui publicado um excelente catálogo complementado com um bom número de textos e cuja leitura recomendo vivamente. Fica aqui alguns excertos desse catálogo:


While artists today feel just as comfortable picking up a camera as they do a paintbrush, this has not always been the case. How did photography become an increasingly popular medium of choice among artists who may or may not consider themselves to be photographers? Focusing on a roughly 20-year period of history, The Last Picture Show addresses this question as well by bringing together more than 200 photographic works by 57 international artists. Each took up the camera as a tool in pursuit of a diverse range of artistic experiments that provocatively intersected with the realms of sculpture, painting, and performance.

Cutting a historical swath across a wide range of art practices and movements such as Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Arte Povera, and strategies of image appropriation, The Last Picture Show traces the development of conceptual uses of this medium. The exhibition encompasses photography's first glimmerings in the 1960s in the work of artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Bruce Nauman, and Edward Ruscha to its rise to art-world prominence in the work of the photo-based artists of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and Cindy Sherman. The scope of their subjects is diverse and each has used the camera to frame critical explorations of a range of issues. These include the tradition of self-portraiture, the body, landscape, the architecture of the built environment, photography's relationship to painting and sculpture, the intersection of language and vision, and the impact of advertising and mass media.

By the end of the 1980s, it had become clear that experimental uses of photography were gaining both momentum and validity within the international art world and helping to reshape the possibilities of contemporary artistic expression. It is this legacy that continues to find its descendants in a new generation of artists using this medium today.


THE LAST PICTURE SHOW: ARTISTS USING PHOTOGRAPHY, 1960-1982
The new Walker-produced exhibition catalogue includes essays by Geoffrey Batchen, Kate Bush, Douglas Fogle, Stefan Gronert, Pamela Lee, and Melanie Marino as well as seminal historical texts by Vito Acconci, Lawrence Alloway, Douglas Crimp, Nancy Foote, Dan Graham, Robert Smithson, and Jeff Wall.