Details & Cataloguing
A Show of Hands: Photographs from the Collection of Henry Buhl
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New York
New York
Herbert Bayer
1900-1985
LONELY METROPOLITAN
a unique object, photomontage with gouache, mounted to illustration board, framed, Buhl Collection and Guggenheim Museum, National Gallery of Art, and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art exhibition labels on the reverse, 1932
16¼ by 11 7/8 in. (41 by 30 cm.)
Read Condition Report
Read Condition Report
16¼ by 11 7/8 in. (41 by 30 cm.)
Provenance
The photographer to Joella Bayer, his wife
Acquired by Kaspar Fleischmann, Zurich, 1987
Christie's New York, Twenty Years: Celebrating Galerie zur Stockeregg, Zurich, 4 October 1999, Sale 9306, Lot 21
Acquired by Kaspar Fleischmann, Zurich, 1987
Christie's New York, Twenty Years: Celebrating Galerie zur Stockeregg, Zurich, 4 October 1999, Sale 9306, Lot 21
Exhibited
Los Angeles, ARCO Center for Visual Art, herbert bayer: photographic work, April - May 1977
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, herbert bayer: photographic works (an abridged version of the ARCO exhibition), October 1977 - January 1978
Zurich, Galerie Zur Stockeregg, Herbert Bayer: Vintage Works, May - August 1987
New York, Guggenheim Museum, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection, June - September 2004, and 4 other international venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)
Washington, National Gallery of Art, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945, National Gallery of Art, June - September 2007; and traveling thereafter to:
New York, Guggenheim Museum, February - May 2008
Milwaukee Art Museum, February - May 2008
Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, June - August 2008
Palm Beach Photographic Centre, In Good Hands: Selected Works from the Buhl Collection, March 2011
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, herbert bayer: photographic works (an abridged version of the ARCO exhibition), October 1977 - January 1978
Zurich, Galerie Zur Stockeregg, Herbert Bayer: Vintage Works, May - August 1987
New York, Guggenheim Museum, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection, June - September 2004, and 4 other international venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)
Washington, National Gallery of Art, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945, National Gallery of Art, June - September 2007; and traveling thereafter to:
New York, Guggenheim Museum, February - May 2008
Milwaukee Art Museum, February - May 2008
Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, June - August 2008
Palm Beach Photographic Centre, In Good Hands: Selected Works from the Buhl Collection, March 2011
Literature
This unique object:
Jennifer Blessing, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection (Guggenheim Foundation, 2004), pp. 54 and 203
Leland Rice and Beaumont Newhall, herbert bayer: photographic works (Los Angeles: ARCO Center for Visual Art, 1977), pl. 62
Matthew S. Witkovsky, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945 (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2007), fig. 97, p. 120
Catalogue Note
The Buhl Collection Lonely Metropolitan is the original fotoplastik created by Herbert Bayer in 1932. This unique work is composed of several photographic elements, artfully combined into a cohesive whole with the aid of Bayer's expert airbrushing and handwork. In 1936, and later in 1968, Bayer issued small editions of copy photographs of this original photomontage and other fotoplastiken, and it is primarily through these second-generation prints that the images are known. Lonely Metropolitan, as offered here, is the original montage from which all subsequent generations of prints of this image have been made.
The Austrian-born Bayer became interested in art as a boy; by the time he attended the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1921, he had already worked as a professional commercial artist and graphic designer in Linz and Darmstadt, Germany. At the Bauhaus, he studied mural painting under Wassily Kandinsky. Between 1925 and 1928, he was an instructor at the Bauhaus, teaching typography and advertising design. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Bayer worked in Berlin, and it is during this period that he created the series of works that he referred to as fotoplastiken, including Lonely Metropolitan (cf. herbert bayer: photographic works, plates 65 - 74).
The Austrian-born Bayer became interested in art as a boy; by the time he attended the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1921, he had already worked as a professional commercial artist and graphic designer in Linz and Darmstadt, Germany. At the Bauhaus, he studied mural painting under Wassily Kandinsky. Between 1925 and 1928, he was an instructor at the Bauhaus, teaching typography and advertising design. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Bayer worked in Berlin, and it is during this period that he created the series of works that he referred to as fotoplastiken, including Lonely Metropolitan (cf. herbert bayer: photographic works, plates 65 - 74).
Bayer’s process for creating his fotoplastiken (literally 'photo sculptures') was a complex and varied one. In some instances, he photographed objects in his studio; he also used found imagery. A meticulous craftsman, Bayer combined these photographs, expertly assembling all of the elements into a homogenous composition. Bayer’s handling of Lonely Metropolitan is masterful. In it, several photographic components are collaged together and carefully accentuated with black and gray gouache applied by hand and airbrush. Bayer made extensive use of gouache to create the shadows behind the hands, which throw them into greater relief, giving them an almost three-dimensional appearance. Bayer similarly blended the eyes seamlessly into the palms of the hands.
Throughout Bayer's brief career as a photographer, which lasted roughly from 1926 to 1938, he consistently pushed the medium's boundaries, and continually approached his compositions with intelligence, imagination, and a sly sense of humor. In Lonely Metropolitan, eyes stare from the palms of hands that float in midair within an urban courtyard. In Self-Portrait (ibid., pl. 64), the photographer looks in mock horror as he removes a portion of his arm in front of a mirror to reveal not flesh and bone, but an opaque stone-like interior.
Lonely Metropolitan is perhaps Bayer's most famous fotoplastik. Like the best of Bayer's fotoplastiken and photomontages, Lonely Metropolitan depends for its impact not only upon a precise Bauhaus-inspired handling of materials, but also upon a clever juxtaposition of disparate images that creates a dreamlike totality bordering on the Surreal. Within the context of the Buhl Collection, in which hands are the consistent motif, the pairing of the eyes with the hands serves as an especially poetic comment on one collector’s approach to the medium.
Suggested Lots
A Show of Hands: Photographs from the Collection of Henry Buhl
|
New York
New York
