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Apogee Photo Magazine

Behind the Strokes of Genius:
Photography's Secret Role in Modern Art

by Ysabel de la Rosa 

Have you ever walked through the National Gallery of Art, the Musée d'Orsay, or the Metropolitan Museum and felt depressed by the great views all around you? I have! Along with the awe I felt for the colossal talent of the world's great painters, I also felt a sense of sheer artistic incompetence. After all, when I was in elementary school, I was drawing chunky fairy princesses with button eyes and hot-dog lips. When Pablo Picasso was in elementary school, his relatives fought over who got to have a portrait drawn by the little genius.

Felix Vallotton "Mme. Vallaton Y Su Sobrina Germaine Aghion" (1899)

Felix Vallotton "G. Vallatton Sentado Delante De Chimena (1899)

Thanks to a recent exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, I feel much less inferior in the artistic arena than I once did (all right, somewhat less inferior). The exhibit was "From Degas to Picasso: Painters, Sculptors, and the Camera." This fascinating show contained paintings and sculptures by fourteen modern art masters, including Paul Gaugin, Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Edvard Munch, Gustave Moreau, Constantin Brancusi, Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Alphonse Mucha. Other less widely known but equally important artists featured in the exhibit were Medardo Rosso, Fernand Khnopff, Franz von Stuck, and Félix Vallotton. In all, there were 330 items on display, dating between 1880 and 1920. In addition to the paintings and sculptures, a wide variety of photographs were exhibited, from prints by Edward Steichen and Eadweard Muybridge to anonymous "popular" photographs, such as postcards from the same time period.

The exhibit revealed how artists in "traditional" art disciplines used photography in their work. According to Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, exhibit curator and curator of the Dallas Art Museum's Lemmon Collection, "Painters, Sculptors, and the Camera" revealed "…the way in which photography changed the creative process of these artists. And, there's an interesting parallel here," she added. "Today we're becoming saturated with information technology and an abundance of new computer-generated images. The artists in this exhibit faced a similar situation..." with the so-called "new technology" of photography. Photography presented late nineteenth and early twentieth century artists with new images created in new ways. And, each of the artists featured in this exhibit found his own way of using photography in his work.

Using Photography for Other Forms of Art

Edgar Degas (French-American, 1834-1917) studied the works of Eadweard Muybridge in order to be able to portray horses in motion in his famous racetrack paintings. He also experimented with photography himself. Degas had a weakness that proved to be an artistic strength. He had serious vision problems, including myopia, a partial loss of sight in his right eye, and a condition called "photo-phobia" which, contrary to the way the word sounds, does not mean Degas was afraid of light but that his eyes could tolerate very little of it. From necessity, Degas photographed many subjects in low-light settings, using simple equipment and no flash. The results are spectacular. These photographs could hang in any twenty-first century photography show.

Sculptors Constantin Brancusi (Romanian, 1876-1957) and Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917) both used photography as a way to represent their works. Brancusi photographed his own sleek, spare sculptures, while Rodin hired Edward Steichen to photograph a number of his statues. Both men took great care with and exerted a high degree of control over the photographing of their art, and for good reason. A carelessly composed two-dimensional photograph can make a three-dimensional artwork look entirely different from the way in which it is seen in real life. As often happens when art serves art, the photographs of Brancusi's and Rodin's sculptures are now considered artworks in themselves. Steichen received a great deal of credit for helping Rodin's work become more highly regarded on an international scale. His photograph of Rodin's statue of French author Balzac is a masterpiece of early twentieth century photography.

Paul Gaugin (French, 1848-1903) is best known for his paintings of exotic landscapes and equally exotic women in Tahiti. Did he find his inspiration as he walked along the beach soaking in the Tahitian sun, or was it from post cards? Yes, Paul Gaugin, whose paintings today sell for seven-figure prices, used photographic post cards as sources for many of his paintings' compositions--a doubly intriguing fact when you consider that Gaugin made several public comments during his lifetime on the "limitations" of photography!

Art writers and historians have always known that Impressionism was closely linked to photography and that photography's treatment of light influenced how Impressionist painters chose to portray light in their paintings. What has not always been known, however, is that a number of the Impressionist painters were also self-taught photographers. Impressionist-period painters Édouard Villouard (French, 1868-1940) and Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947) were considered "Intimist" painters, artists who painted intimate portrayals of their home environments. Before they painted these scenes, they often photographed them with their future paintings in mind.

The troubled and troubling images of Expressionist painter Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944) are unique in modern art. He is probably best known for his eerie, haunting painting titled "The Scream," which has been reproduced in many publications. Who would guess that before putting his twisted shapes and unnatural colors on canvas, this artist often began his creative process with black-and-white photographs? Munch's painting "Nude with Long Red Hair," done in 1902, was preceded by a black-and-white photograph taken in Munch's studio. The visual transformation from the "normal" woman in the photo to the haunted, haunting, and almost misshapen female in the painting is startling. It's clear that Munch's intention was not to represent the scene in the photograph, but to use the figure in the photo as both an anatomical reference and as mental fodder for the deep emotions he wanted to express. The photo was, in a sense, a launching pad from which Munch's imagination jumped into the creation of the painting.

Eduard Munch Model in Munch's Studio (1902)

Eduard Munch Nude with Long Red Hair (1902)

Franz von Stuck (German, 1863-1928) used photography extensively in his work. His portrait of a woman in a red hat is painted from a photo, as is his dreamy picture of a "Guardian in Paradise." Although there are numerous examples, as in the case of von Stuck, of painters using photography as images from which to paint or to draw inspiration, it would be a mistake to think that these painters were dependent on photography. They did not depend on it (nor did they need to), but they did, indeed, rely on it. And, most of them kept their reliance a deep, dark secret. The reason was simple. Most people did not yet consider photography an art form--certainly not most collectors or art institutions and galleries.

Franz von Stuck Mary in a Dark Hat

Franz von Stuck Mary in a Red Chair

Yet, how could these great, groundbreaking painters and sculptors not be drawn to photography? These creative pioneers discovered what thousands more were to discover as the twentieth Century progressed: photography can do more than document and preserve what we see. It can help us see with sharper vision and create new ways of looking, analyzing, and understanding.

Now that the exhibition "Painters, Sculptors, and the Camera" has come to a close, you can see many of the works that were in the exhibit in their original homes, which include The National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, among other art institutions. So, get thee to a museum and look anew at the art masters who came before us (inferiority complexes not allowed). Then, pick up your camera--digital or "old-fashioned"--and start creating art that would make our painting-sculpting-photographing predecessors proud.