“Henri Cartier-Bresson (Aperture Masters of Photography)” (Aperture)
Was lucky enough to sneak over to the Art Institute of Chicago this week, and explore the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit. Wow. My art-speak muscles have atrophied from inactivity, so I’m not going to bore you with faux critical analysis, suffice it to say, I was blown away, and want to explore the exhibit again before it leaves, January 4th, 2009. I was not familiar with his work, besides perhaps one image that became famous recently when uploaded to Flickr. Amazing will suffice as an adjective for Mr. Cartier-Bresson.
The exhibit also mixes in drawings from contemporaries, sometimes uncannily similar, sometimes related in other fashion – such as a photo of Henri Matisse in his studio alongside a Matisse sketch.
From the AIC:
To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the Art Institute will present, for the first time, a comparison of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs to the modern drawings, etchings, and paintings of his contemporaries—works that would otherwise be in storage in preparation for their installation in the Modern Wing.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, the legendary photojournalist whose work was characterized by the term “the decisive moment,” began his career as a painter influenced by the Surrealist poets who were a mainstay of Parisian café culture in the 1920s. Although his subsequent work in photography was concerned primarily with time and timing, it also reveals an appreciation for the irrational and subconscious gleaned from the work of writers and poets of this time.
Pulling from the Art Institute’s Julian Levy Collection—the legendary gallery director who assembled the first exhibition of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs in the United States—this exhibition provides a rare glimpse into the early stages of Cartier-Bresson’s career. Work by his painting instructor André Lhote parallels Cartier-Bresson’s early photographs, as does that of Salvador Dalí. Also included will be work by Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso that relates to photographs by Brassaï, André Kertész, and other photographers active in Paris between the World Wars.
When I got home, I ordered this book from Amazon
Henri Cartier-Bresson reveals–as only a few great artists have done consistently–the richness, the sensibilities, and the varieties of the human experience in the twentieth century. This volume of Aperture’s Masters of Photography series confirms the genius of the photographer whose pictures with the new, smaller hand-held cameras and faster films defined the idea of “the decisive moment” in photography.
Cartier-Bresson’s imagery is intimate, but it is also utterly respectful of his subjects. In his wide travels throughout the world, he has captured universal meanings through the glimpses into the lives of individuals in scores of countries. Each photograph is in itself a masterpiece of dramatic form; taken together, Cartier-Bresson’s works constitute a personal history of epic scope.
Henri Cartier-Bresson presents forty-two of the artist’s photographs, each recognized a a masterpiece of the medium. In addition, Cartier-Bresson offers a brief statement of his own artistic ethos, his striving for the spontaneity through intuition that imbues his work.
Forty-two 5″X7″ quality reproductions, well worth the $10 price tag. If you have the slightest interest in photography or art history, you should swing by the Art Institute, or at least pick up a copy of this book.
Footnotes:
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