Of the Refrain
Through August 22
Of the Refrain
Robert Mann
210 11th Avenue, at 24th Street, Chelsea
From the New York Times Published August 14, 2008:
A beautiful conspiracy of rhyme and reason, “Of the Refrain” presents 53 black-and-white photographs by 16 Modernist masters in a way that seems as musical and poetic as it is visual. Organized by Phil Taylor, a young employee at the gallery, the exhibition focuses on standard genres of studio and commercial photography, viewing them as occasions for formal and technical innovation and experimentation. There is a particular emphasis on the extraordinarily lucid and stylish work of Ringl & Pit, two women who worked together in Berlin in the late 1920s and early ’30s.
Portraits, still lifes and fashion and dance photographs are distributed around the gallery at different levels like notes on a musical score. Certain motifs regularly repeat. Barbara Morgan’s pictures of Martha Graham in extravagantly expressive poses and Hazel Larsen Archer’s images of Merce Cunningham leaping with athletic abandon create a theme of exuberant buoyancy, while images of glassware by Berenice Abbott, Margaret Watkins, Carlotta Corpron and Ringl & Pit — some bordering on pure abstraction — repeat moments of crystalline luminosity.
Many amusing juxtapositions occur. Man Ray, in a self-portrait, and James Joyce, in a portrait by Abbott, appear sitting on couches and resting their heads on their hands. Ringl & Pit’s image of a woman in a sexy, lacy corset is followed by Ilse Bing’s picture of a white lacy baby’s dress. A Ringl & Pit portrait of Ringl wearing glasses with round black frames mirrors Andre Kertesz’s picture of a man’s hands holding similar glasses. Caught in a crossfire of echoes, reflections and affinities, these and other old photographs, including works by Josef Sudek, Dora Maar and Horst P. Horst, are vividly rejuvenated. KEN JOHNSON