contemporary photography
Günther Förg was a German painter, graphic designer, sculptor and photographer. His abstract style was influenced by American abstract painting.
Andy Warhol, born as Andrew Warhola Jr., was an American visual artist, film director, and producer, who played a pivotal role in the development of the Pop Art movement. His art delved into the interplay between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture, especially prevalent in the 1960s. Warhol was renowned for his diverse range of media, which included painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture.
Warhol's journey began in Pittsburgh, where he was born and raised, initially making a name for himself as a commercial illustrator. His New York studio, "The Factory," became a famous hub for intellectuals, celebrities, and various artistic minds. He was known for creating the notion of "Warhol superstars" and popularized the phrase "15 minutes of fame."
His contribution to the art world is significant, with notable works like "Campbell's Soup Cans" (1962) and "Marilyn Diptych" (1962), as well as his experimental films like "Empire" (1964) and "Chelsea Girls" (1966). These works not only define his career but also underscore the essence of the Pop Art movement.
Warhol's influence extended beyond his artwork. He managed and produced the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground, founded Interview magazine, and wrote several books, including "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol" and "Popism: The Warhol Sixties." Living openly as a gay man before the gay liberation movement, Warhol's personal life was as influential as his professional endeavors.
Tragically, Warhol's life was nearly cut short in 1968 when he was shot by radical feminist Valerie Solanas. He eventually passed away in 1987 due to cardiac arrhythmia following gallbladder surgery. His legacy continues, with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh standing as the largest U.S. museum dedicated to a single artist.
Warhol's art remains highly collectible and valuable. His works, like the "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)" and "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn," have fetched staggering amounts at auctions, signifying his enduring impact on the art market.
For art collectors and experts, Andy Warhol's work represents a crucial intersection of pop culture and fine art, offering a unique perspective on consumerism and celebrity. His pieces are not just art; they are historical landmarks that capture a transformative era in both art and society.
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Thomas Struth is a German photographer who is best known for his Museum Photographs series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives and works in Berlin and New York.
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, celebrated for his black-and-white photographs that captured a range of subjects including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. Born in New York in 1946, Mapplethorpe's work is renowned for its technical precision, formal elegance, and controversial content, particularly his documentation of the gay male BDSM subculture and his erotic art. His body of work not only includes provocative themes but also more traditional subjects like flowers, showcasing his versatile artistic talent.
Robert Mapplethorpe's education at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn was foundational to his artistic journey, where he met Patti Smith and began his explorations in photography, initially through Polaroid camera use before advancing to more sophisticated techniques. His collaboration with Lisa Lyon, the first World Women's Bodybuilding Champion, and his retrospectives at significant institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art highlight his broad artistic impact and continued influence in the art world. Despite his premature death in 1989 due to complications from AIDS, Mapplethorpe's legacy endures, supported by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation which promotes photography and funds medical research.
For collectors and experts in art and antiques, Robert Mapplethorpe's work remains a testament to the power of photography as a medium of both aesthetic beauty and provocative commentary. To stay updated on sales and auction events related to Robert Mapplethorpe's works, sign up for updates to not miss out on owning a piece of this influential artist's legacy.
Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.
Her breakthrough work is often considered to be the collected Untitled Film Stills, a series of 70 black-and-white photographs of herself evoking typical female roles in performance media (especially arthouse films and popular B-movies). In the 1980s, she used color film and large prints, and focused more on costume, lighting and facial expression.
Robert Gober is an American sculptor. His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs.
Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer. In the mid-1970s, Prince made drawings and painterly collages that he has since disowned. His image, Untitled (Cowboy), a rephotographing of a photograph by Sam Abell and appropriated from a cigarette advertisement, was the first rephotograph to be sold for more than $1 million at auction at Christie's New York in 2005. He is regarded as "one of the most revered artists of his generation" according to The New York Times.
Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.
Her breakthrough work is often considered to be the collected Untitled Film Stills, a series of 70 black-and-white photographs of herself evoking typical female roles in performance media (especially arthouse films and popular B-movies). In the 1980s, she used color film and large prints, and focused more on costume, lighting and facial expression.
Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, collage and found objects.
Jeanne Dunning is an American photographer whose work is centered around corporeality and human physicality in abstract forms. Dunning earned her Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College and her Masters of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. From there, she opened her first exhibit at the Feature Gallery in Chicago in 1987. In the early 1990s, Dunning created a series of photographs for an exhibit titled "Directions" which was meant to blur the lines of fact and fiction.The exhibit was displayed at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. Dunning's work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Désiré-Magloire Bourneville was a French physician, neurologist, innovator and educator, and statesman.
Born into a modest family, Bourneville began his medical education in 1860 and for about ten years worked as an assistant to Jean-Martin Charcot, where, together with Paul Régnard, he supervised the publication of "Photographic Iconography of Salpetriere". During the Franco-Prussian War, he served as both surgeon and physician's assistant. Appointed physician at Bissetre, Borneville devoted himself to the medical and educational care of "idiots and epileptics" for whom he organized a service, and later directed the Fondation Vallée in Gentilly until his death. He is considered one of the earliest child psychiatrists.
In 1876, Bourneville was elected a municipal councilor of Paris, three years later he became a general councilor of the Seine, and then a deputy. In this capacity, Bourneville carried out several health reforms: he became the rapporteur for the public assistance budget and the budget for psychiatric asylums, achieved the creation of the first special classes for mentally retarded children, and the first municipal nursing school in Salpêtrière.
Bourneville had many very different talents. Very early on he became interested in medical journalism, where he made a name for himself through the vividness of his articles. In 1873, he founded the journal Progrès Médical, which promoted the tenets of avant-garde medicine, open to pioneering scientific developments (Bourneville published Charcot's lessons) and social issues. He fully developed the theoretical and practical foundations of teaching for the nursing profession. Outraged by the lack of practitioners' professional knowledge of obstetrics, he worked to create a new medical specialty, gynecology. But his main purpose in life was to educate and nurture those who were labeled "idiots" and mentally retarded.
Paul Regnard, full name Paul Marie Léon Regnard, was a French physician, physiologist and photographer, and teacher.
He became a trainee at the hospital in 1874 and received his MD degree in 1878. Paul Regnard was deputy director of the Hautes Etudes Laboratories, and from 1878 taught general physiology at the newly founded National Agronomic Institute and later became its director (1902). He was also from 1895 a member of the Academy of Medicine in the section of biological sciences.
Regnard was one of the first practitioners of medical photography, particularly photographs of the mentally ill. Together with Désiré-Magloire Borneville, he directed the photographic service at the Salpêtrière Hospital of Paris, established by the psychiatrist J.C. Charcot (1825-1893). Numerous photographs were published in the book Iconographie Photographyique de la Salpêtrière. Regnard was a tireless researcher. He was one of the first naturalists to study the effects of atmospheric pressure on microbial metabolism. The scientist made a detailed historical and bibliographical survey of descriptions of possession and witchcraft through the ages, focusing on well-documented cases.
Regnar was particularly interested in the physical manifestations described by contemporaries: fainting spells, tetany, paresthesias, signs that could only be interpreted as diabolical or at least miraculous. All these signs Regnard had already observed, photographed, and treated at the Salpêtrière Hospital in the department of J.M. Charcot, to whom he dedicated this work, and so it was from the perspective of nascent psychiatry that Regnard analyzed these historical cases.
For his services, Regnard was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1884, then an officer in 1900.
Zoe Leonard is an American artist who works primarily with photography and sculpture. She has exhibited widely since the late 1980s and her work has been included in a number of seminal exhibitions including Documenta IX and Documenta XII, and the 1993, 1997 and 2014 Whitney biennials. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.
William Eggleston is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston's books include William Eggleston's Guide (1976) and The Democratic Forest (1989).
Thomas Struth is a German photographer who is best known for his Museum Photographs series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives and works in Berlin and New York.
Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, collage and found objects.
JR (French: Jean René) is the pseudonym of a French photographer and artist who does not give his full name. He lives and works in Paris and New York.
He describes himself as a "photograffeur" (photographer and graffiti artist in one word) and claims that the street is "the biggest gallery in the world". His work is flyposting large black and white images in public spaces. JR works at the intersection of photography, street art, filmmaking and social activism. Over the past two decades he has developed many public projects in cities around the world, from buildings in the slums of Paris to walls in the Middle East and Africa or favelas in Brazil.
JR places large-scale photographic images in public spaces. He started creating graffiti as a teenager on the streets and rooftops of Paris and on the subway. In 2007, he gained worldwide attention by placing huge photographs of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities on both sides of the separation barrier. In his works, the photographer always addresses current political and social issues in the world. For example, in 2019, JR worked with a group of inmates of a maximum security prison in California and created a large format piece with portraits of the inmates.
JR has traveled to many cities with his work, participating in exhibitions, he has collaborated with magazines and created films about his work. JR has also directed three feature-length documentaries, one of which, Women Are Heroes (2011) was nominated for an Oscar. At the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, he won the Golden Eye for Best Documentary.
Gordon Matta-Clark is an American photographic artist known for his subject-oriented art.
He studied architecture at Cornell University and literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Gordon Matta-Clark has used various media in his work, including film, video and photography.
Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer and architect. He leads the Tokyo-based architectural firm New Material Research Laboratory.
Nan Goldin is an acclaimed American photographer renowned for her profound visual narratives that delve into her personal world, marked by themes of addiction, sexuality, and intimate relationships. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1953, Goldin's journey into photography began in the early 1970s, capturing the lives of those around her, forming a "substitute family" amid a backdrop of drugs, sex, and violence.
One of Goldin's most celebrated works, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" (1986), is a raw and intimate portrayal of her "tribe," documenting their lives through the late 70s and early 80s in New York City. This work, initially presented as a slideshow, captures moments of love, sexuality, and domestic life, transcending into a poignant narrative of the era's challenges, particularly the AIDS crisis.
Throughout her career, Goldin's photography has continued to evolve, exploring various themes and mediums, including film. Her work, deeply personal and often autobiographical, challenges conventional perceptions of beauty, identity, and relationships, offering a window into the complexities of human connection and the essence of her subjects.
Goldin's influence extends beyond the art world, with her activism, particularly against the opioid crisis, marking another significant chapter in her journey. Her profound empathy and commitment to portraying the raw, unfiltered realities of life resonate through her extensive body of work, which continues to be celebrated in exhibitions and collections globally.
For art collectors and enthusiasts, Goldin's work offers not just aesthetic value but also deep emotional and historical resonance. To stay informed about Nan Goldin's works and related updates, signing up for newsletters from prominent galleries or her exhibitions could provide valuable insights and opportunities for engagement with her art.
