Lee Friedlander & Pierre Bonnard “Photographs & Drawings”
Pace MacGill
This event has ended.
Pace/MacGill Gallery presents Lee Friedlander & Pierre Bonnard: Photographs & Drawings. Featuring gelatin silver prints by legendary American photographer Lee Friedlander in dialogue with drawings by the French Post - Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard, the exhibition explores the aesthet ic affinities that unite these artists’ depictions of the natural world across time and media. Steidl will publish a fully - illustrated catalogue with an essay by Peter Galassi, former Chief Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, to accompany the exhibition.
The unexpectedly apt association between Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) and Pierre Bonnard (1867 - 1947) was first noted in 1985 by the painter R.B. Kitaj, who observed their mutual disposition for the “complex tableau.” Although working in different media and different decades, both artists display a penchant for pictorial continuity that yields seemingly intricate, yet democrati cally coherent compositions. The seamless quality of their imagery is deeply rooted in perceptual experience, and is perhaps most evident in their representations of landscape.
A prolific chronicler of the American social landscape, Friedlander ’s interest in photographing the natural world (particularly that of the Western United States) emerged around 1990, concurrent with his acquisition of a Hasselblad Superwide camera that offered the potential for a wide view and greater detail. His result ing square - format landscapes, presented here as exquisitely crafted 20 x 24 inch prints, are elegantly composed patterns of branches and bramble, mountains and trees, shadow and light. As Bonnard often painted from memor y, he created small drawings on - sit e that would serve as reference for paintings upon returning to his studio. His sketches of the early 20th - century French landscape , comprised of rapidly executed pencil markings, record outdoor scenes with an immediacy not dissimilar to Friedlander’s pic tures
Media
Schedule
from September 10, 2015 to October 24, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-09-26 from 14:00 to 16:00