The Art Institute of Chicago

UntitledAuthor(s): David TravisSource: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1, Notable Acquisitions at theArt Institute of Chicago (2008), pp. 64-65, 95Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205590 .

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Untitled

1854

Edouard-Denis Baldus (French, 1813-1889)

Waxed paper negative; 34 x 44.5 cm (13 Vs x 17 Vi in.)

THE MARY AND LEIGH BLOCK ENDOWMENT FUND, 2006.312

WHEN WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT produced his first photographic pictures in the late 1830s, they were

what would later be understood as negatives. Because

sunlight darkened the light-sensitive silver salts he had spread on paper, his rendition of images?which he made both with

and without a camera?was reversed: light areas were dark

and shadows were light. Although unnatural in appearance, the calotype negative, as he called it, was an exciting invention,

and Talbot quickly learned that he could employ it to print an

unlimited number of positive pictures. The calotype negative was both practical and beautiful.

This reversed picture revealed the geometry and tonal

distribution of a composition more emphatically than its

conventional positive counterpart. Photographers soon

realized that getting a perfect negative was their primary goal,

as the printing could and would often be left to assistants.

They valued their negatives so highly that they occasionally

put them on view in early exhibitions of the new medium.

Because displaying or judging a negative tended to separate the subject matter depicted from its tonal rendering, viewers

and photographers underwent an aesthetic experience that

was unlike other similar pictorial encounters.1

Although invented by an Englishman, paper negative

techniques advanced further in France, where patent

restrictions were not in force. Edouard-Denis Baldus was

among those who were in or entering their twenties and

making career decisions when the invention of photography

was announced in 1839. This first generation of French

photographers included luminaries such as Gustave Le

Gray, Henri Le Secq, Charles Marville, and Charles

N?gre. Along with Baldus, many of these men began their

careers working

on government commissions to document

important architectural monuments. Beginning in 1851,

Baldus used large-format calotype negatives to record

historic monuments in Aries and Paris?or, in the case of

the example shown here, the rustic mills and vernacular

stone houses tucked into the picturesque mountainsides of

the Auvergne region. Waxing such a finely made negative

enhanced its translucency, further reducing the amount

of paper grain recorded in any print made from it. But no

matter how successful or beautiful the resulting print was, it

was the negative from which the photographers made their

initial judgment and from which they began to develop a

new sense of tone and composition.

DAVID TRAVIS

64

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2. Louise Schouwenberg, Hella Jongerius (Phaidon, 2003), p. 47.

Sur, Long Island City, New York, pp. 28-29. 1. For more on digital architecture and its origins, see Fr?d?ric Migayrou and

Marie-Ange Brayer, eds., Archilab: Radical Experiments in Global Architecture, exh. cat. (Thames and Hudson, 2001); and Joseph Rosa, Next Generation

Architecture: Folds, Blobs, and Boxes (Rizzoli, 2003). 2. For more on Diaz Alonso's work, see Joseph Rosa, Xefirotarch, Design Series 4, exh. cat. (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2006). 3. For more on Barney and Bacon, see Nancy Spector, Matthew Barney: The

CREMASTER Cycle, exh. cat. (Guggenheim Museum Publications/Harry N.

Abrams, 2003); and Gilles Deleuze, Frances Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

Cow Suckling a Calf, pp. 30-31. 1. For one such pastoral idyll, see Ren? Russek, Hinduismus, Bilderkanon und

Deutung (Battenberg Verlag, 1986), pp. 132-33. 2. For a second-century example in the Allahabad Museum (AM81), see

Krishna Deva and S. D. Trivedi, Stone Sculpture in the Allahabad Museum, vol. 2 (Manohar, 1996), p. 228, pi. 313; for a sandstone example from tenth-century

Agroha, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, see Wendy Doniger and George Michell, Animals in Four Worlds: Sculptures from India (University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 107, pi. 74.

3. For the relief in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Si44), see

Pratapaditya Pal, Indian Sculpture: A Catalogue of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collection, vol. 1 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art/

University of California Press, 1986), p. 271.

4. For the work in the Fitzwilliam Album, see Milo C. Beach, Early Mughal

Painting (Asia Society/Harvard University Press, 1987) pp. 31, fig. 16, 45; for

that in the Mittal Museum (76.681), see George Michell, Catherine Lampert, and Tristram Holland, eds., In the Image of Man: The Indian Perception of the

Universe through 2000 Years of Painting and Sculpture, exh. cat. (Arts Council

of Great Britain/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 105.

Couch-Bed(Luohan chuang), pp. 32-33. 1. Wang Shixiang and Curtis Evarts, Masterpieces from the Museum of Classical

Chinese Furniture (Chinese Art Foundation, 1995), p. 12, cat. 6.

Chaekkori,pp. 34-35. i. This entry was greatly informed by Kay E. Black and Edward W. Wagner, "Ch'aekkori Paintings: A Korean Jigsaw Puzzle," Archives of Asian Art 46

(I993)> PP- 63-75; and William Lipton and Yvonne Wong, "A Folding Screen

of Eight Paintings: Ch'aekkori," in Welcoming the Autumn Breeze, exh. cat.

(William Lipton, Ltd., 2004), n.pag, cat. 15.

The First Part of the Return from Parnassus and The Second Part of the Return

from Parnassus, pp. 40-41. 1. Kirk Varnedoe, "Inscriptions in Arcadia," in Cy Twombly: A Retrospective, exh. cat. (Museum of Modern Art, New York/Harry N. Abrams, 1994), p. 34. 2. Ibid., p. 36.

Wall Drawing #274, Wall Drawing #574, Wall Drawing #821, and Wall

Drawing #1257: Scribbles, pp. 42-43. Wall Drawing #63 is shown as described in LeWitt's original diagram; Wall

Drawing #274 was first drawn by Steingrem Laursen and Sol LeWitt and

is shown in its first installation at Gentofte Kommunes Kunstbibliotek,

Copenhagen, Sept. 1975; Wall Drawing #574 was first drawn by Fransje Killaars and Hans van Koolwijk and is shown in its first installation at

Accademia, Bonnefantenmusem, Maastricht, Oct. 1988; Wall Drawing #821 was

first drawn by Artistides D? Leon, Sachiko Cho, Derek Edwards, Naomi Fox,

Henry Levine, Sunhee Lim, Jason Livingston, Emil Memon, Travis Molkenbur, and Caroline Rothwell and is shown in its first installation at Ace Gallery,

New York, Apr. 1997; Wall Drawing #1257: Scribbles was first drawn by Takeshi Arita, Eileen Jeng, and Jason Stec and is shown in its first installation at

the Art Institute of Chicago, Mar. 2008. 1. Bernice Rose, "Sol LeWitt and Drawing," in Sol LeWitt: The Museum of

Modern Art, ed. Alicia Legg, exh. cat (Museum of Modern Art, 1978), p. 31.

Woman in Tub, pp. 44-45. 1. Jeff Koons, quoted in JeffKoons, ed. Angelika Muthesius (Taschen, 1992), p. 122.

2. Jeff Koons, quoted in The Jeff Koons Handbook, ed. Sadie Coles and Robert

Violette (Anthony D'Offay Gallery, 1992), p. 100.

Gold Mats, Paired?for Ross and Felix, Some Thames, and Were II, pp. 46-47. 1. Roni Horn, quoted in Kathleen Merrill Campagnolo, Still Water (The River

Thames, for Example) (Site Santa Fe, 2000), n.pag.

Queen Luise of Prussia, pp. 60-61. i. For more on Rauch's effigy, see Jutta von Simson, Christian Daniel Rauch:

Oeuvre-Katalog (Mann, 1996), pp. 64-69. On Schadow's career in general, see

G?tz Eckhardt, Johann Gottfried Schadow, 1764-1850: Der Bildhauer (E. A.

Seemann, 1990).

Festival in Montmartre, pp. 62-63. 1. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Fondazione a manifesto del Futurismo," Le Figaro, Feb. 20 1909; repr. in Futurismo, ed. Umbro Apollonio (Gabriele Mazzotta Editore, 1970), p. 48. 2. Ibid., p. 47.

3. Umberto Boccioni, "La Pittura futurista?manifesto technico," Poes?a, Apr. 11 1910; repr. in ibid., p. 58. Boccioni's manifesto was signed by Baila, Carra,

Russolo, and Severini.

4. Gino Severini, Severini: The Futurist Painter Exhibits His Latest Works, exh. cat. (Marlborough Gallery, 1913), n.pag., no. 6.

Untitled, pp. 64-65. i. Even the ancient, and likely the first, pictorial reversal?the change from black

figured Greek vase painting to its "negative" in the red-figured technique?did not result in a visual abstraction of this magnitude but rather was a way to

improve the fluidity and naturalness of the figurai subject.

Birmingham, pp. 66-6j. i. Martin Luther King, Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and

Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harper Collins, 1986), p. 546. 2. The Birmingham Police, under commissioner and Ku Klux Klan member

Eugene "Bull" Connor, were notorious for their use of violence. The U.S.

Department of Justice eventually intervened, negotiating the desegregation of

downtown stores, a new integrated city commission, and the release of all jailed student protesters in exchange for an end to the boycotts and demonstrations.

3. Even when photographs did not appear, the Birmingham demonstrations

remained front-page news. For PDF files of this coverage, see New York Times,

May 3-10, 1963, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times

(1851-2004), www.proquest.com. 4.1 thank Gregory Harris for bringing my attention to the website www.

al.com/unseen, which features Norman Dean's photograph of Mattie Howard.

5. Back Street was a 1961 release starring Susan Hayward as an alluring mistress. Damn the Defiant is the American title of the 1962 British film H.M.S.

Defiant. Starring Alec Guinness, the movie dramatizes the mutiny on board the

British frigate Defiant, a relatively peaceful rebellion against poor conditions.

Mom Posing for Me, pp. 68-69. 1. Larry Sultan, Pictures from Home (Harry N. Abrams, 1992), p. 18. 2. Mom Posing for Me is one in a group of over thirty photographs that

represent Pictures from Home in the Art Institute's collection; this group was

determined in consultation with the artist. See Katherine Bussard, So the Story Goes: Photographs by Tina Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Larry Sultan, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 100-17.

3. Sultan (note 1).

The Top Grossing Film of All Time, ix i, pp. 70-71. 1. With a running time of 3 hours, 17 minutes, Titanic has over 280,000 frames.

For the artist, the film's appeal had less to do with the its box-office revenues

and everything to do with its status as a highly popular piece of mass culture. 2. See William J. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the

Post-Photographic Age (MIT Press, 1992); Hubertus V. Amelunxen, ed.,

Photography after Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital

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