Photography
Aaron Siskind, "Martha's Vineyard #111A," 1954
- Item Number
- 12
Item Description
Aaron Siskind (American,1903-1991)
Martha's Vineyard #111A, 1954
Gelatin silver print
Image:16 x 20 inches
Framed: 20 x 24 inches
Inscribed "mv111a 1954" on left under image in pencil; signed "Siskind" on right under image in pencil; initialed in reverse of print in pencil
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Aaron Siskind holds a preeminent place in the history of American art. Beginning his photographic career in the 1930s as a social documentarian with the New York Photo League, he ultimately radicalized the medium by emphasizing the photograph as an abstract form of expression and an aesthetic in itself.
In this mid-century image, Siskind approaches rock formations on Martha’s Vineyard from a very intimate range, framing them up-close so as to underscore the formal and abstract qualities of their mass, color, and texture. Many of Siskind’s photographs from this period reflect the influence of Abstract Expressionist painters, many of whom were his friends, including Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko. He began to regularly exhibit with them at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York from 1947 to 1954.
While it would be easy to assume that Siskind observed what was happening in painting and simply translated it to photography, the record shows that aesthetic exchange went both ways. In an essay that accompanied his 1951 exhibition, Elaine de Kooning called Siskind "a painter's photographer". Such mutual affinities are evidenced by Franz Kline's painting Siskind, 1958, and the incorporation of motifs from the photographer's work into Willem de Kooning's Woman series.
Aaron Siskind's archive is at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson. His work is in dozens of major public collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, NY; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and The Art Institute of Chicago as well many other museums in the U.S. and abroad.
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