netherlandsamsterdam

Ari Marcopoulos, Creekside, Sonoma, 2004 (c) Ari Marcopoulos.

Ari Marcopoulos, Dash Snow, © Ari Marcopoulos.

Ari Marcopoulos, Black Boy, Sonoma, 2005, c-print, 72 x 90”, Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.

Ari Marcopoulos, Angel, 2008 (c) Ari Marcopoulos.

Foam_
Fotografiemuseum
Keizersgracht 609
+31 (0)20 551 6500
Amsterdam
Ari Marcopoulos
It might seem familiar
February 26-June 16, 2010

Ari Marcopoulos’s work is characterized by a remarkable feeling of intimacy. Whether it concerns celebrities from the world of music or art, or his own family, he approaches his subjects in an intuitive manner and he always knows how to get close to the heart. His photos are direct, extremely personal and subtly structured. Recurrent themes are art, music, graffiti and the vulnerability of the human body. The exhibition shows a cross-section of his work from the last 30 years, varying from grainy black and white copies, monumental colour photos, videos, books and zines.

Ari Marcopoulos (Amsterdam, 1957) set off for New York in 1979 and quickly became a significant documenter of alternative youth culture in America throughout the last three decades. Foam is showing work from his entire oeuvre, ranging from photos of the emerging hip-hop and downtown art scene in New York in the 1980s and the snowboard and skate culture in the 1990s, to frequent depictions of his own family in Northern California over the last ten years.

Upon arriving in New York, self-taught Marcopoulos had the opportunity to learn the profession from two great, but very different masters. He started out as a darkroom printer for Andy Warhol, from whom he learned that anything is worth photographing. Marcopoulos also worked as an assistant to photographer Irving Penn, from whom he gained more technical skill and learned that control and a simple approach produce the best images.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Marcopoulos began to photograph street culture in New York, which at the time was characterized by an emerging graffiti and hip-hop scene. As is evidenced throughout his entire oeuvre, Marcopoulos has the ability to assimilate into the group he’s following, by which he seems to stay ahead of the Zeitgeist. His earlier work contains portraits of personalities that later emerged as the leading players of their time, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Mapplethorpe and rappers like Rakim, LL Cool J or Run DMC.

In the 1990s, Marcopoulos became interested in the lives of skateboarders. He befriended a group of young skaters who were recruited for the film Kids by Larry Clark in 1995. Marcopoulos followed them on a bicycle and documented them both as a group and in their personal lives. An assignment for a snowboard company introduced Marcopoulos to a new youth culture of snowboarders. In documenting these groups, he combined images of extreme physical exertion and concentration with intimate images of their daily lives.

After his marriage, Marcopoulos moved to the West Coast, where he became the father of two sons, Cairo and Ethan, who frequently appear in his photos. The themes from his earlier years return in photographs of his children growing up, such as skateboarding, graffiti and music.

Ari Marcopoulos became acquainted with photography at an early age, when he received an SLR camera as a gift from his father. After living in New York for a long time, for the last few years he has resided in northern California. Marcopoulos has exhibited his work in Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY (2000), Deitch Project NY, The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2002), MOMA (2005), MU Eindhoven (2006), Gallery White Room, Tokyo (2008), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA (2009), amongst others.

Several books of Marcopoulos’ work have been published, including Transitions and Exits, New York powerHouse Books (2001), Release your inner Ari, self-published (2006), Free Fall, Paris Nuke (2007), The Chance is Higher, New York Dashwood Books (2008), Within Arm’s Reach, JRP Ringier (2009).

Marcopoulos’ work is being simultaneously exhibited at Foam and at the Whitney Biënnale in New York.

Ari Marcopoulos, Post 911, Sonoma, 2001, c-print, 48 x 60”, Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.

The Shchukin Mansion in Moscow. Photograph by Orlov. 1913.

Picasso’s studio in Horta de Sant Joan with Factory. Photograph by Pablo Picasso. 1909.

The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings ‘0.10’. 1915. Petrograd. Photograph.

Valentin Serov, Portrait of Ivan Abramovich Morozov. 1910. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Interior Maison Shchukin.

Henri Le Fauconnier, The Signal, 1915, © Henri Le Fauconnier, Staatsmuseum Hermitage St. Petersburg.

Hermitage Amsterdam
Amstel 51
+31 (0)20 530 74
Amsterdam
Matisse to Malevich
Pioneers of Modern Art
from the Hermitage
March 6-September 17, 2010

Outstanding works by Matisse, Picasso, Van Dongen, De Vlaminck, Derain and many other contemporaries of theirs are seen in a magnificent exhibition of about 75 paintings selected from the Hermitage St. Petersburg, which has one of the world’s finest collections of French painting of the early 20th century. Apart from the world-famous French masters, such equally celebrated Russian contemporaries as Malevich and Kandinsky are represented. These artists are seen as the pioneers of Modernism. Almost all the works exhibited are on permanent display in St. Petersburg. Most come originally from the Moscow collections of Morozov and Shchukin. This is the first time that this extensive collection of avant-garde masterpieces has been seen in the Netherlands. The exhibition explores the origins of modern art as an art historical phenomenon, but also looks at the passion of the artists, when at a crucial moment in art history at the beginning of the last century they initiated a revolution in art.

Morozov and Shchukin
The Hermitage’s impressive collection originated with the famous Russian collectors Ivan Morozov (1871-1921) and Sergej Shchukin (1854-1936). Both were textile dealers, and they brought French art to Russia because they wanted to change the course of art in their homeland. They provided a tremendous stimulus. Shchukin was the most conspicuous collector of his time; no one else bought so many works by Picasso (51) and Matisse (37). Morozov and Shchukin dared to buy the revolutionary paintings — sometimes with the paint still wet — and during the turn of the century they dominated the art world in Moscow. What they bought was shown at regular intervals in their own house. This enabled the young Russian artists to see what was in vogue in France. With the outbreak of the First World War collecting came to an end. During the October Revolution of 1917 the two collections were confiscated, and in 1948 a large part of them was given to the Hermitage in St.- Petersburg.

A documentary presentation in one of the rooms of the Hermitage Amsterdam gives the visitor a picture of the lives of both collectors and an insight into their idiosyncratic and progressive collecting policy.

Artists like Matisse, Picasso, Derain, De Vlaminck and Van Dongen were searching for renewal, for liberation from nature and from the academic traditions in painting. They formed the first important avant-garde movement of the 20th century, which arose in French painting around 1900 in reaction to Impressionism and Pointillism. Bright and contrasting colours, rough brushwork, simplified forms and bold distortions characterised the new art. Light and shadow were depicted without intermediate shades and without soft transitions. In traditional painting the artists still wanted to represent three-dimensional space. For the pioneers that was no longer important; that was what photography was for. Through their work they provoked emotional reactions. Matisse, the most gifted and influential of them, was the focus of a group of artists known as the Fauvists or ‘wild animals’. No less than 12 paintings and 4 sculptures by him will be in the exhibition..

Picasso is represented by 12 paintings (including The absinthe drinker, andTable in a café. Throughout his long and productive life he constantly experimented with new techniques, and from 1907 he laid the basis for Cubism: this new style developed from a harder and tighter manner of expression and the use of thick layers of paint.

Kandinsky (Winter landscape) met Picasso and Matisse in Paris and was deeply impressed by the colour effect in their work, but was also influenced by music (Schönberg). He wanted to represent his own feelings and expression yet more, he heard the colours of the music and his colours evoked music. Malevich went a step further, he had had experience of everything new in the 20th century and finally brought everything — nature, life, "being" — down to a geometrical plane (Black square).

Charles Guérin, Nude, 1910, © Charles Guérin, Staatsmuseum Hermitage St. Petersburg.

Sergey Ivanovich Shchukin. Photograph. 1913.

Alexey Javlensky, Landscape with a Red Roof, 1911, © Alexey Javlensky, Staatsmuseum Hermitage St. Petersburg.

Mylou Oord, Paris Fashion Week, 2009 © Mylou Oord.

Mylou Oord, Hotel L’Europe, 2009 © Mylou Oord.

Foam_
Fotografiemuseum
Keizersgracht 609
+31 (0)20 551 6500
Amsterdam
Mylou Oord – It would be so nice
January 24-March 24, 2010

Mylou Oord’s photography is characterized by a distinct style which well expresses the Zeitgeist of her generation. All her subjects come from the creative world, and the way she captures them clearly evidences a close relationship between her and the subject.

As part of Amsterdam International Fashion Week, Foam _ Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam is showing the work of young fashion and portrait photographer Mylou Oord. A recurring element in the exhibition is Oord’s series on Amsterdam fashion journalist and style icon Aynouk Tan.

As a self-taught photographer, Oord does not rely on technical or stylistic structures; she creates photos which sometimes have a feeling of rawness and yet are extremely intimate. Oord works intuitively, producing photos that are exceptionally direct and natural.

For the series It would be so nice, she photographed her friend and muse Aynouk Tan for more than a year. This series clearly shows how the boundaries between a posed portrait and a more snapshot-like approach blur for Oord. The difference between the photography she does on assignment and that she does for herself is not always apparent. The spontaneous and intimate character of her photos gives the viewer a feeling of witnessing the photographer’s life from extremely close up.

Mylou Oord (Amstelveen 1987) is self-taught and concentrates on portrait, fashion and documentary photography. Between 2007 and 2009 she worked as an assistant for the successful photographic duo Petrovsky&Ramone. Oord has exhibited her work at the Streetlab festival in Amsterdam (2007), the Streetlab festival in Istanbul (2008) and at the Amsterdam Biënnale in Mediamatic (2009). Her work is also regularly published in Blend, Vice, Micromag.com and accompanies Aynouk Tan’s weekly column in NRC Handelsblad’s cultural supplement.

Mylou Oord, Parijs, 2009 © Mylou Oord.

Alexander Rodchenko, Stairs,1930 (c) A. Rodchenko, V. Stepanova Archive, Moscow House of Photography Museum.

Alexander Rodchenko, Knigi (Books), 1924, Poster, © A. Rodchenko, V. Stepanova Archive, Moscow House of Photography Museum.

Alexander Rodchenko, Lily Brik. Portrait for the poster Knigi, 1924, © A. Rodchenko, V. Stepanova Archive, Moscow House of Photography Museum.

Alexander Rodchenko, Fire Escape (with a man) (c), A. Rodchenko, V. Stepanova Archive, Moscow House of Photography Museum.

Alexander Rodchenko, Pioneer Girl. 1930, Gelatin-silver print, 49.6 x 37 cm., The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Alexander Rodchenko, Pioneer with a Horn, 1930.

Alexander Rodchenko, Girl with a Leica, 1934 (c) A. Rodchenko - V. Stepanova Archive, Moscow House of Photography.

Foam_
Fotografiemuseum
Keizersgracht 609
+31 (0)20 551 6500
Amsterdam
Alexander Rodchenko –
Revolution in Photography
December 18, 2009-
March 17, 2009

Tracking the development of his photographic work over the course of two decades, Revolution in Photography reveals the artist’s talent for experimentation as well as the extraordinary range of his work. From sharp-witted photomontage to documentary reportage in Moscow’s streets, from dynamic architectural studies to intimate portraits of his circle, Rodchenko's photographic activity possessed a breath and scope matched by few artists of his day. Abandoning ‘pure’ art in favour of developing a visual language that could address a mass audience, Rodchenko applied himself as a photographer and designer to the production of posters, magazine and book design, advertisements for state-owned enterprises as well as photojournalism and other forms of documentary photography.

Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam presents a unique retrospective of the world-famous Russian avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko. The exhibition contains more then 200 vintage photographs some of which have never been exhibited in the West before. Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) is one of the great innovators of twentieth-century avant-garde art and one of its most versatile practitioners. Having first gained international acclaim as a painter, sculptor and graphic designer, Rodchenko took up the practice of photography in the early 1920s, convinced that it would become the artistic medium of his era. Over the course of the following two decades he developed a bold new vocabulary of acute camera angles, extreme foreshortenings of perspective and close-ups of surprising details. In addition to introducing design as an integral element of photography, Rodchenko’s approach balanced formal concerns with an interest in documenting the social and political life of the Soviet Union. In the process, he helped to change the way people perceived not only photography, but also the role of the photographer.

In presenting a comprehensive selection of his work, this exhibition offers a significant opportunity to re-evaluate Rodchenko’s achievements in photography as well as to reconsider the fertile and tumultuous moment in which he worked – a period that extended from the intellectually adventurous Lenin years to the repressive cultural regime initiated by Stalin. It also allows us to appreciate how fresh and daring his work still is today. Indeed, though more than half a century has passed since his death, his many significant accomplishments continue to influence a wide range of contemporary practitioners.

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko (Alexander Rodchenko) was born on December 5, 1891, in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father, Mikhail Mikhailovich Rodchenko, was a theatre designer. His mother, Olga Evdokimovna, was a laundress. From 1908-1910 Rodchenko was a dental technician at Dental School of Dr. Natanson. From 1910-1914 he studied art at the Kazan School of Art under Nikolai Fechin, then at the Stroganov Art Institute in Moscow.

Rodchenko experienced the influence of Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Wassily Kandinsky, and other artists working in abstract style. He was the pupil and assistant of Vladimir Tatlin, and his work was initially influenced by Cubism, then Cubo-Futurism. His early drawings and paintings followed the developments of Suprematism and Futurism. He worked with a wide variety of media as a decorator, furniture and theatre designer, printer, painter, sculptor, and photographer. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Rodchenko joined the Bolsheviks. He believed in new opportunities for art and became active in many applications of art, illustration, commercial designs, and photography. In 1921 Rodchenko replaced Wassily Kandinsky as Chairman of State Institute of Artistic Culture (INKHUK) and Chairman of Museum Bureau and Russian State Art Acquisitions Commission. In 1921 he co-wrote the Constructivist's Manifesto. He collaborated with writer and actor Vladimir Mayakovsky, director Vsevolod Meyerhold, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, filmmaker Dziga Vertov, and many others. From 1923-1928 he collaborated with Osip Brik in the Left Front of Art (LEF). In 1925 Rodchenko won four silver medals at Paris International Exhibition.

Alexander Rodchenko became one of the founders of Constructivism and Productivism in Russia. His innovations revolutionized the art of still photography. He used his camera as if it was a drawing instrument. He mastered the use of photo-montage, odd angles, wide frames, and photo-series. His way of photographing from unusual and obscured viewpoints, exploring the potential of shadows, opened new dimensions in photo-art. Rodchenko shot his subjects from high above or below angles, to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition. He made important photo-portraits of actress Lily Brik, writer Osip Brik, actor Vladimir Mayakovsky, director Vsevolod Meyerhold, director Dziga Vertov, director Aleksandr Dovzhenko, and other Russian culture luminaries. He also organized many photography exhibitions. Rodchenko was the art director in several Soviet-made films. His most innovative and interesting work was his graphic design and montage works for advertisements and movie posters, which was his major contribution to film-poster art. His posters for such films as 'Battleship Potemkin' (1925), 'Kinoglaz' (1924), and other works, are regarded among the highest achievements in film-poster art.

In 1928 Rodchenko wrote a manifesto titled "Against the Synthetic Portrait, For the Snapshot" in which he argues for the documentary objectivity of photography. "Snapshots allow no one to idealize or falsify Lenin", wrote Rodchenko. He was soon attacked by Stalinists and was accused of supporting Trotsky and his ideas. His exhibitions were canceled, he was dismissed from major projects and jobs. For many years he was deprived of livelihood. That caused him a depression, high blood pressure, and other health problems. Rodchenko was officially charged with "bourgeois formalism" and his photography was censored and banned from public shows. However, from 1934-1938, he was commissioned to make several photo-albums for Soviet propaganda, such as: "Belomor-kanal imeni Stalina" and "Krasnaya Armia" (Red Army 1938). Rodchenko made a beatiful job, but remained under suspicion during many years of the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.

Alexander Rodchenko was in opposition to Socialist realism. From the late 1930's to the end of his life he was forced to quit photography amidst the paranoia of Stalinist censorship. He returned to painting sporadically after 1942, made a series of abstract decorative compositions, but his art was ostracized. He lived in poverty and obscurity for the last twenty years of his life. Rodchenko was constantly harassed by officials for his art, his membership in the Union of Soviet Artists was canceled, and he was made an outcast. His membership was restored only in 1954, after the death of Stalin. Rodchenko died of a stroke on December 3, 1956, in Moscow, and was laid to rest in Donskoe Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.

The exhibition Revolution in Photography is made in collaboration with the Moscow House of Photography.

Alexander Rodchenko, Pro Eto. Ei i Mne (About This. To Her and to Me), 1923, Book by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Book with nine letterpress photomontages, page: 9-1/16 x 5-15/16", Printer: Tsinkografiia V.Ts.I.K.. Publisher: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo (State Publishing House), Moscow. Edition: 3,000.

Alexander Rodchenko, White Sea Canal, 1933.