Duane Michals : The Portraitist
Adam and Eve, 1963
Andy Warhol and his Mother Julia Warhola, 1958
Jeremy Irons, 1981
Joseph Cornell, 1972
Magritte with Hat, 1965
Meryl Streep, 1975
The Original Cast of Saturday Night Live, 1970s
Shelley Duvall, 1980
Yves Saint Laurent, 1983
Duane Michals: The Portraitist presents the first comprehensive overview of inventive photographic portraits by one of the medium’s most influential artists. Best known as a pioneer who broke away from established traditions of documentary photography in the 1960s, Michals is widely recognized for his ability to navigate between imposing his style and allowing his sitters to express themselves, and for the sequences he assembles to convey personal visual narratives, often adding handwritten messages and poems on the photographic print surface.
More than 125 portraits by this beloved photographer are included in Duane Michals: The Portraitist, many of which were recently discovered in a workroom in his brownstone building in New York City. Frequently commissioned to create portraits of actors, writers, musicians, and others, Michals relished the challenge of distinguishing each personality with an improvisational approach. Collectively the prints reveal the artist’s spontaneity and highlight his expansive toolkit of techniques, including multiple exposures, reflections, uncommon vantage points, collage, hand-painting and more, to create a unique image.
The diversity of personalities, along with the tremendous variety of photographic approaches, creates a nourishing visual experience and, as always, the works by master photographer Duane Michals do not cease to surprise and delight.
WORKS
135 framed photographs
DIMENSIONS
Various
SPACE REQUIREMENTS
405 linear ft (123 linear m)
INQUIRIES
exhibitions@curatorial.org | 626.577.0044
FEE
Please inquire
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
The Finnish Museum of Photography | Helsinki, Finland
(February 16 – May 21, 2023)
University of Richmond Museums | Richmond, Virginia
(August 24, 2022 – November 18, 2022)
Hasselblad Foundation | Gothenburg, Sweden
(February 11, 2022 - May 15, 2022)
Lowe Art Museum | Coral Gables, Florida
(February 8, 2021 – May 30, 2021)
Fenimore Art Museum | Cooperstown, New York
(September 14, 2019 – November 10, 2019)
Snap! Space | Orlando, Florida
(February 8 – April 12, 2019)
Crocker Museum of Art | Sacramento, California
(September 16, 2018 – January 6, 2019)
CURATOR BIOGRAPHIES
Linda Benedict-Jones is a photographer, writer, and independent curator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was curator of photography at Carnegie Museum of Art, prior to which she directed Silver Eye Center for Photography and served as curator of education at The Frick. From 1999–2017, Benedict-Jones taught the history of photography as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Before moving to Pennsylvania, Benedict-Jones was curator of the Polaroid Collection in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she earned a Master of Science in Visual Studies degree at MIT in 1982.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Duane Michals (born 1932) is one of the great photographic innovators of the last century, widely known for his work with series, multiple exposures, and text. Michals first made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, he manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. He has also incorporated text as a key component in his works. Rather than serving a didactic or explanatory function, his handwritten text adds another dimension to the images’ meaning and gives voice to Michals’s singular musings, which are poetic, tragic, and humorous, often all at once. Michals' work belongs to numerous permanent collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Michals's archive is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
PUBLICATION
Duane Michals : Portraits
(Thames & Hudson, 2017)
REVIEWS
Art Daily, October 18, 2018
Submerge, Richard St.Ofle, October 10, 2018
Capital Public Radio (interview), with Beth Royal, October 08, 2018
Sactown Magazine, Jessica Rine, October 2018
Widewalls, Balasz Takac, September 21, 2018
PDN, February 4, 2019
Orlando Weekly, February 06, 2019
VOGUE Italy, March 30, 2019