John Baldessari

 

John Baldessari’s contribution to art over the last forty years cannot be underestimated. A seminal figure in the conceptual art movement, Baldessari came to prominence with his videos, performances, and language-based art. His use of visual puns, repetition, and irony made him one of the first to extensively question realist representation and straightforward perception as a proper vehicle of the truth. To him, making art requires looking at things without linearity and subverting the very systems of logic we normally employ to understand the world.

 

Selected Collections and Exhibitions

 

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam
Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid

 

Lillian Bassman

 

Lillian Bassman was one of the most influential fashion photographers of the 1940s and 50s, working under the tutelage of the legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar. Her sense of artistry and movement redefined fashion photography and lent a sophistication to what had been a fairly staid medium. In the 1970s she abandoned fashion work because it had moved away from beauty. Then in the 1990s she began to work again, moving into even more ephemeral and dreamy forms. Her art and style have enjoyed a revival that has placed her squarely at the forefront of the history of fashion art photography.

 

Selected Collections and Exhibitions

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
Center for Photography, Woodstock, New York

 

Vanessa Beecroft

 

Somewhere between classical architecture and contemporary performance art stands the work of Vanessa Beecroft. Her controversial stagings of nude or semi-nude women in museum spaces raise questions of conformity and feminist politics and, in fact, are based in part on her past struggles with  eating disorders. Beecroft’s talent was discovered when she was quite young in her native Italy. She now resides in New York where she has proven herself to be one of the most interesting and provocative newcomers to the contemporary art scene. 

 

Selected Collections and Exhibitions

 

Guggenheim Museum, New York
Institute of Contemporary Art, London
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Venice Biennale
Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland

 

William Eggleston

 

William Eggleston is arguably one of the most important artists of the late 20th century for his transformation of color photography into a fine art. In 1976, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, mounted a solo exhibition of his work, the first show MoMA had ever devoted to color photography. His reputation and influence has grown exponentially from that time. A  genius of color and form, Eggleston captures subtle compositions that are at once about place and absolutely placeless. The snapshot has never been the same. In 1998, he was awarded the presigious Hasselblad Award for lifetime achievement in photography.

 

Selected Collections and Exhibitions

 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Getty Museum, Los Angeles
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

Sally Mann

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Sally Mann became famous for her controversial pictures of her three young children posing nude or semi-nude. But it was the unspoken subject of those works – the borderline between innocence and adulthood, beauty and repulsion, looking and being examined - that has kept her reputation as a subtle yet hard-hitting photographer safely intact. Deeply involved in the land where she was born and raised, her pictures show a haunting, mystical place that exists both in reality and in a more mythic sense of our true selves and lives.

 

Selected Collections and Exhibitions

 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

 

Sheila Metzner

 

Whether she’s doing fine art photography, celebrity portraits, still lifes, or fashion shoots, Sheila Metzner’s work is predominated by the textures that she achieves through the Fresson processs. Metzner began her career in photography through commercial work for magazines such as Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Rolling Stone, but she gradually moved into fine art photography. Her coupling of sensual, deeply emotional images and a palpable richness have earned her a place in the world’s most exclusive galleries and museums.

 

Selected Collections and Exhibitions

International Center for Photography, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Thomas Struth

 

Thomas Struth’s midcareer retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, showed the range that has made him one of the foremost photographers working today. Struth’s visual and conceptual roots are strong, having studied with painter Gerhard Richter and photographer Bernd Becher. From banal family portraits to disquieting moments amongst the great works of art at major museums to forest scenes collectively titled “Paradise,” Struth seeks out and finds an abstraction that is rooted in history and a real sense of a spiritual timelessness.

 

Selected Collections and Exhibitions

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Dallas Museum of Art
Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

 

Wolfgang Tillmans

 

Wolfgang Tillmans is interested in achieving a sense of the “real” in his photography, but he does this through sometimes artificial means and staging. His work takes on a variety of subjects, from banal still lifes to provocative portraits of friends. In the 1980s, he worked as a fashion photographer but moved into more egalitarian themes. His casual, yet hauntingly beautiful documentary style helped him win the prestigious Turner Prize in 2000 and position him as a very important player in the contemporary art scene.

 

Selected Collections and Exhibitions

 

Tate Britain, London Guggenheim Museum, New York

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts