André Kertész - Hardcover

Greenough, Sarah; Gurbo, Robert; Kennel, Sarah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691121141 ISBN 13: 9780691121147

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2005

Synopsis

In a career that spanned much of the twentieth century, Hungarian-born photographer André Kertész (1894-1985) created deceptively simple yet compelling and poetic photographs. This book presents approximately 120 of these striking images as well as previously unpublished archival material that sheds important light on the artist and his work.



Like the exhibition it accompanies, André Kertész takes us through Kertész's years in Budapest, Paris, and New York. Unlike other works on Kertész, it presents only vintage prints and includes several seldom seen photographs from throughout his career.



Written by renowned art historian Sarah Greenough and Kertész Foundation curator Robert Gurbo, André Kertész includes excerpts from the photographer's previously unexamined journals and correspondence--documents that prompted the authors to reexamine every period of Kertész's life and work. They reflect on their findings in essays covering each of the major phases in Kertész's career.



While the book includes examples of the artist's most important photographs, including Chez Mondrian, The Satiric Dancer, and The Eiffel Tower, it also focuses on the intensely autobiographical nature of his work. It elegantly demonstrates the ways in which Kertész injected his persona, both literally and metaphorically, into his work.



Accompanying the book's essays and exquisite tritone reproductions of his photographs are an illustrated chronology that corrects many previous errors, a comprehensive bibliography, and selections of previously unpublished writings by the photographer.


EXHIBITION SCHEDULE:


http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/exhibits.htm National Gallery of Art, Washington
February 6-May 15, 2005


http://www.lacma.org/ Los Angeles County Museum of Art
June 12-September 5, 2005

About this title

About the Author

Sarah Greenough is curator and head of the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art. Robert Gurbo is curator of the Kertész Foundation in New York. Sarah Kennel is research associate at the National Gallery of Art.

From the Back Cover

"Kertész always insisted, only somewhat disingenuously, that he was, as he called it, an 'amateur.' And so he was in a way. Not in the sense of the unskilled or unprofessional hack, but in the root sense of the word, as someone who does what he does not for fame and fortune, but for love. . . . What he tried to maintain in his art was, as curator Sarah Greenough points out . . . a kind of artistic virginity. Kertész's genius was his passion, his romanticism, his knack for seeing something fresh, as if it had never been looked at, at least not quite that way, before."--Michael O'Sullivan,The Washington Post

From the Inside Flap

"Kertész always insisted, only somewhat disingenuously, that he was, as he called it, an 'amateur.' And so he was in a way. Not in the sense of the unskilled or unprofessional hack, but in the root sense of the word, as someone who does what he does not for fame and fortune, but for love. . . . What he tried to maintain in his art was, as curator Sarah Greenough points out . . . a kind of artistic virginity. Kertész's genius was his passion, his romanticism, his knack for seeing something fresh, as if it had never been looked at, at least not quite that way, before."--Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691121141
• ISBN 13: 9780691121147
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 302