American photographer Arnold Newman is generally acknowledged as the pioneer of the environmental portrait. He spent time exploring the essence of his subjects, finding the best environment to express who they were, and integrating them with their work into compositions that referenced the work. He structured his own visual language, setting up photographs with jaunty geometric grace and inventing visual elements where none existed thus adding complexity and depth to his portraits. His sense of tension, rhythm, and balance, guides the eye through his command of composition.
An exhibition in New York celebrates the centennial of his birth, with 45 works from the 1930s through the 1990s who present fine and nuanced prints with wonderful portraits of artists Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, David Hockney, Isamu Noguchi, and Georgia O’Keeffe. The Howard Greenberg gallery also presents early work – collages, still lifes, and graphic images – made in the 1940s and 1950s, that show the development of the formality of structure that became his signature. He mastered the abstract arrangement of lines and shapes, light and dark, space and volume – all in service of a purely visual moment and culminating in iconic portraits.
“Arnold Newman conceived a new vocabulary for photographic portraiture,” writes Gregory Heisler, Professor of Photography, Syracuse University, in the introduction to the book Arnold Newman: One Hundred, who will also be published this year by Radius Books. “It is difficult today to truly appreciate the magnitude of his breakthrough. Before Arnold’s arrival, the photographic portrait was generally a box with somebody in the center. Arnold used what was around him to create visually complex, spatially intriguing portraits that had a psychological dimension. He didn’t just show the environment, he actively employed it for its narrative power.”
Arnold Newman: One Hundred
May 10 – June 30, 2018
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 E 57th St
New York, NY 10022
USA
