Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Viva Mexico
Viva Mexico! Edward Weston and His Contemporaries, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, May 30 - November 2, 2009
Mexico in the 1920s lured certain American artists into undertaking a hemispherically translated Grand Tour. Thus Edward Weston wrote to Alfred Stieglitz, "I am off to Mexico to start life anew," and did so, skipping out on his wife and three of his four sons with Tina Modotti, his studio assistant and lover at the time. (His oldest son Chandler came along.) Much of what we associate with Weston - the nudes, the still lifes, the crisp modernism - took shape over the course of his two trips to Mexico in 1923 and 1926. Viva Mexico! at the MFA Boston convincingly frames his achievements as Mexican in origin, a product of the geometric light, Olmec heads, folk art, and the frisson of intellectual and political life in Ciudad de México at the time.
He in turn encouraged Modotti's relatively brief career in photography, she encouraged Manuel Bravo, and the widening influence extended to Paul Strand, Weston's son Brett, and the general course of both American and Mexican photography for years to come.
Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958), Rose Roland (Covarrubias), 1926, photograph, gelatin silver print, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Sophie M. Friedman Fund, photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Edward Weston, Galván Shooting, 1924, photograph, gelatin silver print, The Lane Collection, photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Weston began to identify as a fine artist instead of a commercial photographer in Mexico, but even his earlier pieces there show a mature eye, gifted with a flair for pattern and strong compositions.
Edward Weston, Palmilla, 1926, photograph, platinum print, The Lane Collection, photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Edward Weston, Chayotes, 1924, photograph, platinum print, The Lane Collection, photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Edward Weston, Mercado, Oaxaca, 1926, photograph, platinum print, The Lane Collection, photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Modotti willingly modelled for Weston, sunbathing as he photographed her and made contact prints right there on the rooftop.
Edward Weston, Tina on the Azotea, with kimono, 1924, photograph, platinum or palladium print, The Lane Collection , photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Modotti absorbed Weston's fondness for geometry, but she possessed a more political temperament, and produced work that reflects both.
Tina Modotti (American (born in Italy, died in Mexico), 1896-1942), Worker's Hands, Mexico, 1927, photograph, gelatin silver print, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Sophie M. Friedman Fund, courtesy of Throckmorton Fine Art, photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
It was this combination of formal and political sensibilities that fed into the work of Bravo and Strand. Modotti and Weston split in 1926, and she remained in Mexico, becoming increasingly involved in Socialist politics. Bravo, who had studied painting, referred to it even as a scion of the Weston mantle, such as in his surrealism-tinged Dreamer. Strand encountered a less idyllic situation in Mexico than Weston, as the revolutionary climate turned increasingly bloody, and he applied himself to seeing into the human subject while composing striking formal statements.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902-2002), El sonador (The Dreamer), 1931, photograph, gelatin silver print, The Lane Collection, photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976), Dia de Fiesta, Mexico, 1933, photograph, platinum print, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Sophie M. Friedman Fund, photograph © Aperture Foundation, Inc, Paul Strand Archive, photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston