While Latvia is preparing to hand over the Presidency of the European Union to Luxembourg, Riga is hosting this Saturday "Edward Steichen. Photography," an exhibition symbolically marking the handover of the mandate.
The National Art Museum of Latvia is organising a major retrospective of the renowned American photographer of Luxembourg origin, Edward Steichen (1879-1973). The 86 portraits exhibited at the Arsenals Exhibition Hall from 27 June to 6 September 2015 are from the Musée national d'histoire et d'art Luxembourg (MNHA) collections and particularly illustrate the work of the artist as a celebrity photographer.
Four years after hosting in Luxembourg the exhibition "The Age of Symbolism in Latvia", the MNHA is consolidating its good contacts with the Museum of Riga.
The project is part of the cultural programme of the Latvian Presidency of the European Union Council. Being one of the concluding cultural events of the Latvian Presidency, the project symbolically builds a bridge to Luxembourg, the European Union's next presiding state, which takes over the responsibilities on 30 June 2015.
Introducing the Luxembourg-born artist, who emigrated to America, to the Latvian public as only a photographer would be telling only half the story, leaving hidden countless pages rich in experiment and full of adventure. A painter, photographer, designer, curator, museum worker, new talent scout, also a professional gardener – these are but labels for various activities and occupations forming the mosaic of Edward Steichen's personality. Steichen believed that art should be a citizen of the world, which the artist does not attempt to limit to a narrow field. He has worked in disparate spheres and styles, walking in step with time in his development.
The artist can be counted among representatives of pictorialism, symbolism and modernism, as well as masterful celebrity portraitists, cultivators of commercial and documentary photography. Contemporaries and friends, which included many renowned artists, writers, actors, critics, politics and entrepreneurs, have referred to Steichen variously – as America's enfant terrible, commander with camera, spiritual leader, the motor of discussion on photography and hybrid (in reference to the artist's interest in plant hybridisation). Legendary art critic Clement Greenberg cursed and praised him at the same time.
Edward Steichen has also proven himself as an innovative and professional curator who dares to take risks. A vivid precedent is the exhibition of delphiniums at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1936 that overcame scepticism among botanists and incomprehension in the art world to become a unique event lasting ten days that also attracted a new audience to the museum. The work of his life and main achievement as curator and director of Department of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art, was the ambitious project "The Family of Man” (1955), that travelled to 69 countries in total, including Russia, where in 1959 it was on display in the large American National Exhibition in Moscow. This legendary selection of works currently is housed in Château de Clervaux, Luxembourg as part of the permanent exposition. In 1961, MoMA organised the artist's retrospective, entitled "Steichen the Photographer”. Thirty-six years later, a voluminous monograph on Steichen's work is published, written by American writer and researcher Penelope Niven.
Eighty-six original prints by Edward Steichen will be on display at the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art. They represent the artist's early period, whose highlight was his return to Europe in 1900 and life in Paris, as well as his mature period, working in New York at Condé Nast Publications, where he created celebrity portraits and fashion photography for magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue. The visitors will see iconic portraits of actors Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Myrna Loy, historically significant politicians Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt and many other famous people.
Documentation of everyday life and a family album are also included among the photographs, giving an insight into that part of the artist's life which ran parallel to the intensive working process. Among the portraits of relatives and friends there are images of photographer Alfred Stieglitz and American poet Carl Sandburg. Likewise, introduction of the collection and building a narrative would not be possible without the subjects of nature and light, which, with the exception of the series of portraits of the so called "great men", gradually became for Steichen the main source of reference and values.
The exhibition is complemented by an extensive programme of events, including lectures, meetings and conversations with professionals in the field, film nights, a contemporary dance performance and a jazz concert. An exhibition catalogue in Latvian and English, prepared by the Latvian National Museum of Art in collaboration with the Neputns Publishers, will be available to visitors for purchase.
