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AARON SISKIND, (American, 1903-1991), CHICAGO 30, titled, dated and signed "Chicago 1949, Aaron S...
Currency:USD
Category:Everything Else / Other
Start Price:NA
Estimated At:4,000.00 - 6,000.00 USD
NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2003 Apr 25 @ 19:00UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT
AARON SISKIND
(American, 1903-1991)
CHICAGO 30
titled, dated and signed "Chicago 1949, Aaron Siskind" in pencil below image recto
gelatin silver print
141/2 x 181/2 in. (36.8 x 47 cm)
1949
ESTIMATE: $4,000-6,000
PROVENANCE
LIGHT Gallery, NEW YORK
LITERATURE
Carl Chiarenza, AARON SISKIND: PLEASURES AND TERRORS, Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1982, p. 128, pl. 140 (illustrated)
Pete Turner, AMERICAN IMAGES: PHOTOGRAPHY FROM 1945-1980, Middlesex, Penguin Books, Ltd, 1985, p. 92 (illustrated)
Peter Galassi, WALKER EVANS & COMPANY, NEW YORK, Museum of Modern Art,
2000, p. 178, cat. no. 217 (illustrated)
Aaron Siskind has been affiliated with the community of Abstract Expressionist painters in New York. Yet as Maria Antonella Pelizzari points out, it is reductive to see his photographs as simple abstractions. "Siskind's main concern was not abstraction in photography. Through the camera lens, he intended to find a poetic language that could link experience with memory, sight with surprise, common objects with unknown signs." (Maria Antonella Pelizzari, "Aaron Siskind," in ORIGINAL SOURCES: ART AND ARCHIVES AT THE CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY, Tucson, Center for Creative Photography, 2002, p. 165). Carl Chiarenza has confirmed this opinion of Siskind's work, "The photograph was a visual construction equivalent to the verbal construction of poetry and the sound construction of music." (Carl Chiarenza, "Form and Content in the Early Work of Aaron Siskind," in PHOTOGRAPHY: CURRENT PERSPECTIVES, Rochester, Light Impressions, 1978, p. 188).
The year after making this photograph, Siskind prepared a statement about his work for a symposium on modern photography at the Museum of Modern Art. Later calling it his "credo," part of the statement reads, "When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order-(unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder). . . . First, and emphatically, I accept the flat plane of the picture surface as the primary frame of reference of the picture. . . . I must stress that my own interest is immediate and in the picture. What I am conscious of and what I feel is the picture I am making, the relation of that picture to others I have made and, more generally, its relation to others I have experienced?.It has been suggested that these shapes and images are underworld characters, the inhabitants of that vast common realm of memories that have gone down below the level of conscious control. It may be they are. The degree of emotional involvement and the amount of free association . . . would point in that direction." (Included in: Walter Rosenblum, "What is Modern Photography? A Symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, November 20, 1950," AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY, vol. 45 (March 1951), pp. 146-153).
Auction Location:
United States
Previewing Details:
Wednesday April 16 - Wednesday April 23
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