Francesca Woodman - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1935202669 ISBN 13: 9781935202660

Publisher: D.A.P./San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2013

Synopsis

Artists who arrive fully formed at a young age always dazzle, and Francesca Woodman was one of the most gifted and dazzling artist prodigies in recent history. In 1972, the 13-year-old Woodman made a black-and-white photograph of herself sitting at the far end of a sofa in her home in Boulder, Colorado. Her face is obscured by her hair, light radiates from an unseen source behind her out at the viewer through her right hand. This photograph typifies much of what would characterize Woodman's work to come: a semi-obscured female form merging with or flailing against a somewhat bare and often dilapidated interior. In an oeuvre of around 800 photographs made in just nine years, Woodman performed her own body against the textures of wallpaper, door frame, baths and couches, radically extending the Surrealist photography of Man Ray, Hans Bellmer and Claude Cahun and creating a mood and language all her own. In the 30 years since her untimely death, Woodman has gained a following among successive generations of artists and photographers, a testament to her work's undeniable immediacy and enduring appeal Amid a renewed intensification of interest in Francesca Woodman, this volume is published for a major touring exhibition of her photographs and films at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. Containing many previously unpublished photographs, it is the definitive Francesca Woodman monograph.
Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) was born in Denver, Colorado, to the well-known artists George and Betty Woodman. In 1975 she attended the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 1979 she moved to New York, to attempt to build a career in photography. In 1981, at the age of 22, she committed suicide.

About this title

Review:

In an exceptionally informative catalog essay for the present exhibition, the art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson surveys the critical and art historical literature that has proliferated around Woodman's oeuvre.
Francesca Woodman, the photographer who took her own life at 22 in 1981, is as close to a true saint as the putatively secular world of contemporary art can claim. The dreamy, formally playful and disarmingly erotic pictures Woodman made - mostly of herself partly unclothed or naked - project a self surrendering unreservedly to the spirit of art...it remains a poignant record of adolescent joy, fear, ambition and angst. It was not only her body that she exposed - she bared her soul too, and that is a rare and beautiful thing. (Ken Johnson The New York Times)

Even though they are quite small, about 5 by 5 inches, Woodman's haunting photographs have drawn admirers for decades. (Ted Loos The New York Times)

Franesca Woodman's black and white portraits have a way of getting under your skin. (Hilarie M Sheets W Magazine)

This is a comprehensive monograph of Francesca Woodman's photographic oeuvre, which as achieved cult status is the 30 years since the artist's brief yet prolific career ended when she took her life at age 22. (Jack Crager American Photo)

About this edition

• Publisher: D.A.P./San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1935202669
• ISBN 13: 9781935202660
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Corey Keller