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ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH (German, 1924-1966) ASTROPHYTUM MYRIOSTIGMA X ASTROPHYTUM ORNATUM (HYBRIDE...

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ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH (German, 1924-1966) ASTROPHYTUM MYRIOSTIGMA X ASTROPHYTUM ORNATUM (HYBRIDE...
ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH (German, 1924-1966) ASTROPHYTUM MYRIOSTIGMA X ASTROPHYTUM ORNATUM (HYBRIDE, CACTACEAE) AURIGA-VERLAG label adhered to verso vintage gelatin silver print 9 x 6 1/2 in. (22.9 x 16.5 cm) 1923-1924 from DIE WELT DER PFLANZE (AURIGA-VERLAG) PROVENANCE Private Collection LITERATURE Rainer Stamm, DIE WELT DER PFLANZE: PHOTOGRAFIEN VON ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH UND AUS DEM AURIGA-VERLAG, Cologne, 1998, pl. 32 (slightly cropped version illustrated) While working in the photography archive of Folkwang und Auriga in 1922, Albert Renger-Patzsch took pictures on the side and considered himself an amateur. His ambition was crystallized in the following year, when Ernst Fuhrmann, the owner of Folkwang und Auriga, commissioned the artist to illustrate THE WORLD OF PLANTS, a series of books that was published in 1924. As the present work demonstrates, Renger-Patzsch tackled his first professional project with precocious maturity, creating images that combined objective clarity with striking formal beauty. THE WORLD OF PLANTS featured numerous photographs of cacti, which Renger-Patzsch consistently shot from above. Scrutinizing his subjects at close range, the artist captured their botanical minutiae with the exacting eye of a scientist. Yet this same point of view emphasized the aesthetic splendor of nature. One notes how the dark, speckled lobes of the cactus form a star-shaped mound. Renger-Patzsch incorporates this portion of the plant to dramatize the contrasting color, shape, and texture of its delicate blossom. Explaining this unique achievement, Donald Kuspit writes, "Renger-Patzsch emphasizes the details of things almost to the point where they disrupt the representation. This is a kind of formalism, in that the details seem ecstatically independent of what they signify, and yet seem to signify something more essential than the representation of which they are a part. He ingeniously estranges them from the picture as a whole, creating a peculiar effect of disorientation, for all the familiarity of what is pictured. His sense of detail unfreezes the scene, only to leave us caught between the awareness of the object depicted and an intense association with its component parts" (Donald Kuspit, "Albert Renger-Patzsch: A Critical-Biographical Profile," ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH: JOY BEFORE THE OBJECT, New York: Aperture, 1993, p. 68).
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