Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art shows Yousuf Karsh ~ Portraits

Written by Victor Penney Friday, 24 December 2010 20:50

PROVIDENCE, RI - The RISD Museum of Art presents an exhibition which highlight portraits of artists. Yousuf Karsh: Portraits of Artists and Facing Artists: Twentieth Century Portraits from the Collection will showcase the work of the photographer Yousuf Karsh and other artists such as Andy Warhol, Lucien Freud, and Pablo Picasso. The exhibitions are presented in adjoining galleries and offer the visitor the opportunity to make connections between the various artists. On view through 23 August, 2009.

The Karsh exhibition celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yousuf Karsh (Canadian, born Armenia, 1908–2002) as part of a nationwide celebration. Karsh is one of the most celebrated portrait photographers of the twentieth century. More than 15,000 people sat in front of Karsh’s camera—from ordinary citizens to such influential figures as Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein. Karsh made a concerted effort to record the century’s most accomplished individuals, especially those in the arts. A selection of twenty-seven photographs of visual artists and designers comprise this exhibition; all are promised gifts to The RISD Museum from the artist’s estate administered by his wife, Estrellita Karsh.

Karsh’s portraits are collaborations. His charming manner and ability to connect with his sitters come through in the images, which reveal as much about his admiration for his subjects as they do about the subjects themselves. As fastidious as he was spontaneous, Karsh researched his subjects and planned his shots before every sitting, but he was always alert to the opportunity of the moment and eschewed choosing any single portrait convention. When he photographed Jasper Johns, for example, he changed his initial plan to show him with one of his paintings, instead tightly framing the artist’s penetrating gaze to better capture his cerebral nature. For his portrait of Josef Albers, Karsh posed the artist seated in profile, creating geometry within the frame that echoes Albers’s celebrated Homage to the Square painting behind him. In the nearly full-length portrait of Russell Wright, the designer gazes out a window in a domestic setting that perfectly suits his dishware and furniture.

Karsh wrote about his sittings in a diary. Several of his entries are included with the portraits on view, offering insight into his experience of his collaborations.

The exhibition of portraits drawn from the Museum’s collection consists of portraits of literary, performing, and visual artists by a broad range of twentieth-century artists associated with the genre. It is intended to give context to the Yousuf Karsh’s photographs in the adjacent gallery by grouping the works by portrait type so that viewers will see how artists have embraced the conventions of portraiture and how they have expanded its parameters. Some of the portraits on view include Marlene Dietrich by Cecil Beaton; Stephen Spender by Lucien Freud; Brassaï by Pablo Picasso; and Mick Jagger by Andy Warhol. Visit : http://www.risdmuseum.org/

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