ANSEL ADAMS (1902–1984)
PROPERTY FROM THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
ANSEL ADAMS (1902–1984)

Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California, 1938

细节
ANSEL ADAMS (1902–1984)
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California, 1938
gelatin silver print, mounted on board, printed c. 1960
signed in ink (mount, recto); stamped Carmel credit [BMFA 5] with title 'Yosemite/ Gates of the Valley' in ink and 'Winter Storm' in pencil, credited, titled and dated '1936' in pencil, credited, titled, and dated '1944' on affixed Museum label and with affixed secondary Museum loan label (mount, verso)
image/sheet: 12 1/8 x 14 7/8 in. (30.8 x 37.8 cm.)
mount: 22 x 28 in. (55.9 x 71.1 cm.)
来源
Acquired from the artist by the present owner, 1966.
出版
Nancy Newhall, Ansel Adams: The Eloquent Light, Sierra Club, San Francisco, 1963, pp. 88-89.
Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, Little, Brown and Co., New York, 1983, p. 102.
James Alinder (ed.), Ansel Adams: 1902-1984 (Untitled 37), The Friends of Photography, San Francisco, 1984, p. 34.
Exhibition catalogue, On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1989, fig. 13, p. 247.
Ansel Adams and Paul Brooks, Yosemite and the Range of Light, Little, Brown and Co., New York, 1992, cover and frontispiece.
John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100, Little, Brown and Co., New York, 2001, pl. 89.
Andrea Stillman, Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man, Little, Brown and Co., New York, 2012, p. 102.
展览
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, The Photographer and the American Landscape, September 24–December 1, 1963, no. 9.
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, American Landscapes, July 9–October 4, 1981.
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Ansel Adams at 100, July 11–November 3, 2003.

拍品专文

When The Museum of Modern Art established its first Committee on Photography in 1940, Ansel Adams was appointed the vice-chairman. The committee oversaw the newly formed Department of Photography, which was under the leadership of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. It was during their years together that the museum would exhibit major retrospectives of Paul Strand (1945), Edward Weston (1946) and Alfred Stieglitz (1947) as well as important thematic exhibitions including How to Make a Photogram (1942), New Workers (1944) and French Photographs: Daguerre to Atget (1945).

In his capacity as vice-chairman, Adams had a strong hand in shaping the new department. Although he, like Beaumont Newhall, strongly preferred 'straight photography', the department did incorporate other styles in their programming—especially when Newhall was enlisted in the military at the onset of World War II and the department began to solicit the opinions of external photographers, critics and curators (Quentin Bajac, 'Modern Photography at MoMA', Photography at MoMA 1920-1960, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016, p. 14).

Referring to the very view of Yosemite Valley presented in the present lot, Clearing Winter Storm, Ansel Adams once described it as ‘one of the most wonderful viewpoints in the whole world.' Taken around noon on a December day, Adams waited for a snowstorm to clear so he could capture what would become one of his most iconic compositions (Ansel Adams, ‘Yosemite’, Travel and Camera Magazine, October 1946). The vantage point was difficult to navigate but optimal; the weather and light ideal for making a ‘fairly strong’ negative, which Adams considered the canvas on which he burned and dodged his final creation (Stillman, Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man, p. 105).

It is no surprise that Adams, with a lifelong affinity for classical music, astronomy and a deep philosophical drive, was capable of imbuing his prints with a sense of existential realism that went far beyond documentation. As a young man Adams admired Beethoven and his ability to convey ‘a world of thought of the loftiest nature’ bringing the listener ‘so much closer to an understanding of the Great Mystery’ (Anne Hammond, Ansel Adams: Divine Performance, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 4). This is arguably what Adams achieved for his viewers. With superlative technical skill and the intellectual rigor necessary to evoke such raw emotion from a photograph, he successfully crafted experiences.

The present print of Clearing Winter Storm was included in the 1963 exhibition, The Photographer and the American Landscape and is believed to have been printed at approximately that time. It was subsequently included in exhibitions, American Landscapes (1981) and Ansel Adams at 100 (2003).

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