Jeff Wall And The Concept Of The Picture

This book grapples with fundamental questions about the evolving nature of pictorial representation, and the role photography has played in this ongoing process. These issues are explored through a close analysis of key themes that underpin the photography practice of Canadian artist Jeff Wall and through examining important works that have defined his oeuvre. Wall’s strategic revival of ‘the picture’ has had a resounding influence on the development of contemporary art photography, by expanding the conceptual and technical frameworks of the medium and introducing a self-reflexive criticality. Naomi Merritt brings a new and original contribution to the scholarship on one of the most significant figures to have shaped the course of contemporary art photography since the 1970s and shines a light on the multilayered connections between photography and art. This book will be of interest to scholars in the history of photography, art and visual culture, and contemporary art history.

Examining a work that marked the emergence of photography as an art made for the gallery wall instead of the printed page.

Examining a work that marked the emergence of photography as an art made for the gallery wall instead of the printed page. Jeff Wall's Picture for Women (1979) marks the transition of photography as an art form from the printed page to the gallery wall. Before this, photographs—from the orthodox photographic work of Walker Evans to the Conceptual photography of Dan Graham—seemed intended for the page even when hung in a gallery. In Picture for Women, a woman looks outward, as if at the viewer; a camera occupies the center of the photograph; the photographer stands on the right. Modeled on Manet's famous painting Un bar aux Folies-Bergère, in which a barmaid seems to look directly out of the painting, observed by a man on the right, Picture for Women establishes its own art historical genealogy, claiming its rightful position within the canon. Wall's photograph is an ambitious attempt to relate the artistic and spectatorial demands of the late 1970s to a modernist pictorial art that had been too hastily rejected by Conceptualism. In this illustrated study, David Campany offers an account of Wall's move from a Conceptual approach to a reengagement with the idea of a singular (as opposed to serial) picture. He shows that Wall's decision to present his work as a large-scale back-lit transparency, together with his commitment to a singular image, amounted to a radical departure. He contrasts Wall's idea of the photograph as a tableau or “picture,” inherited from the history of painting, with the works of the “Pictures Generation” - including Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Jack Goldstein—and argues that Picture for Women is inseparable from the modern fate of the picture in general

Essays by Peter Brger, Homay King, Tom Holert, Achim Hochdorfer, Fred Orton, Kaja Silverman, Gregor Stemmrich and Friedrich Tietjen.

"Jeff Wall is one of the most highly regarded artists at work in the world today and has played a key role in establishing photography as a contemporary art form. Jeff Wall: Photographs 1978-2004 has been developed in close collaboration with the artist and accompanies a major retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern, London. Featuring Wall's best known works, the large-scale carefully staged scenes presented as illuminated lightboxes, as well as black-and-white photographs, the book includes an insightful essay by Sheena Wagstaff. In it she examines the impact of art history and cinema on Wall's practice, revealing how he combines documentary techniques with meticulous staging and digital collage to realise his extraordinary vision."--BOOK JACKET.

Adolf Menzel was one of the most important German artists of the 19th century, yet he is scarcely known outside his native land. In this study a leading art historian argues that Menzel deserves to be recognized not only as one of the greatest painters and draftsmen of his century but also as a master realist whose work engages profoundly with an extraordinary range of issues - artistic, scientific, philosophical and socio-political. Michael Fried explores Menzel's large and fascinating oeuvre, and in so doing seeks to make the artist's achievement accessible to a wide audience.