American Portraiture The Focus Of YUAG Photography Exhibition

NEW HAVEN —  American photographic portraiture is the subject of an exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery on view through November 25. “The Persistence of Photography in American Portraiture” comprises close to 80 photographs and photo-inspired works of art by more than 30 artists. These include such established masters of 20th Century photography as Walker Evans, Helen Levitt and Robert Frank, as well as more recently recognized artists like Regina Monfort, Tina Barney and Dawoud Bey. Daguerreotypes and photo-based prints, paintings and sculpture by Chuck Close, Marisol Escobar, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and others are also on view.

The survey of aspects of 20th Century photographic portraiture is offered in conjunction with the major exhibition “Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures,” which opens October 3 at YUAG.

“The Persistence of Photography in American Portraiture” was organized by Jock Reynolds, the Henry J. Heinz II director of Yale Art Gallery, who was assisted by Jason Kakoyiannis, a graduate student in the history of art.

The photographs in the exhibition are drawn chiefly from the gallery’s permanent collection, the majority of which were acquired within the past two years with generous gifts and loans from several individuals and institutions.

The exhibition is introduced by a historic 1848 Lorenzo Chase daguerreotype described as “a Caucasian man with dark-skinned youth,” together with a 1999 Chuck Close daguerreotype, “Untitled Torso,” and two classic portraits, “Girl in Fulton Street, New York,” 1929, by Walker Evans, and Robert Frank’s 1955 “Movie Premiere, Hollywood.”

Whitfield Lovell’s 1999 sculptural tableau, derived from a historic photographic studio portrait, further sets the show’s motif. From there the installation is more or less thematic, beginning with a group of portraits of African-American families that includes work by the Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee, as well as the contemporary artist Linda Connor.

A selection of urban portraits “where,” as Mr Kakoyainnis says, “architecture and chance produce moments worthy of capture,” includes work by Evans, Frank, Levitt, Lee Friedlander, and the contemporary artists Monfort and Bey. Images of children, alone and in groups, in school and at play, by Emmet Gowin and Judith Joy Ross are followed by two of Roy De Carava’s gentle portraits of Harlem residents.

The works in the second gallery, beginning with Jake Seniuk’s suite of 54 gelatin silver prints or “surveillance” photos of random individuals driving along a Seattle freeway, break away from the traditional black and white “framed” portraits of the early part of the show. The influence of mass media and popular culture replaces that of the studio.

A group of images from about the 1960s includes Rauschenberg’s illustrations updating Dante’s “Inferno,” in which the artist employs an inventory of techniques including rubbed, transferred photographs taken from Sports Illustrated and other magazines. In the section also are large color photographs by Tina Barney and Larry Sultan, who take advantage of their insider status to record friends and relatives.

The final works in the exhibition include such photo-related paintings as Lichtenstein’s Pop icon “Thinking of Him” and the photo-based portraits by Gregory Gillespie and Chuck Close.

Related Programs

On Wednesday, October 4, Baird Jarman, a prize teaching fellow and history of art student, will offer an Art àla Carte program. Mr Jarman’s talk will concern “Self-Portraiture in 19th Century American Painting.” The program begins at 12:30.

A gallery-wide celebration of all current exhibitions at YUAG will be celebrated on Friday, October 6. Music will be performed during the reception, which will run 6:30 to 8 pm.

On Tuesday, October 10, at 2 pm, and again on Thursday, October 12, at noon, Jason Kakoyiannis will offer a free gallery talk.

On Saturday, October 28, there will be an all-day symposium, “Facing the Past and Present: The Portrait in American Art.” The morning program, from 10 am to noon, will be devoted to “Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures.” It will be moderated by Paul Mellon professor emeritus (history of art) Jules D. Brown, independent scholar Davida Tenenbaum Deutsch, National Portrait Gallery curator Ellen G. Miles, and independent curator Anne Sue Hirschorn.

The afternoon program, from 2 to 4:30 pm, will encompass “The Persistence of Photography in American Portraiture.” Jock Reynolds will moderate the afternoon program and artists Tina Barney, Dawoud Bey and Whitfield Lovell, all of whom have work in the exhibition, will speak. A reception will conclude the symposium at 4:30.

On Friday, November 10, at 5:30 pm, the first of this season’s Andrew Carnduff Ritchie lectures will be presented. Alan Fern, the director emeritus of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, will speak on “Raised To An Art: Photography in Portraiture.”

Yale University Art Gallery is at 1111 Chapel Street, at the corner of York. For general information including program details, call 203/432-0600. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday, 1 to 6 pm.

(Note: The American galleries at YUAG will remain closed until the beginning of 2001 while they are reconfigured, refurbished, and the objects reinstalled.)