Sculpture loses a dimension, gains several at MOMA
S.O.S. Starification Object Series, Hannah Wilke Museum of Modern Art
8:07 am Jul. 28, 2010
The first image in the Museum of Modern Art’s upcoming exhibition, “The Original Copy,” is a photograph of a sculpture half in darkness, with smooth, empty eyes directed outward. William Henry Fox Talbot’s “Bust of Patroclus,” sets this white marble figure against black backdrop, a three-dimensional object represented here as a two-dimensional photograph.
The idea that sculpture gains vitality through photography continues to develop throughout the show. It’s a conceptual presentation and also an homage to the role of photography in art history. According to MoMA Director Glenn Lowry, speaking to a group of reporters and critics Tuesday morning, “The Original Copy” examines “one medium’s critical role in the analysis and redefinition of another.”
Photography Curator Roxana Marcoci, who organized the exhibition, added that, “Art history, in fact, as we know it today, is a child of photography.”
Talbot—who is recognized as one of the inventors of photography—began experimenting with light-sensitive chemistry in 1834 and “Bust of Patroclus” is dated "before" February 7, 1846. “The Original Copy” spans 1839 to the present, featuring a wide-ranging collection of over 300 photographic images in 10 thematic modules.
“I tried to touch on all the functions of photography,” Marcoci said in an interview.
Within some groups, images vary widely in time period, subject matter, or style. In the first, Talbot’s image is presented along with Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Still #50” (1979). Sherman’s photograph depicts the artist in a modernist living room, which is actually her studio. Sherman herself is the sculpture here—within the set she decorated—and her presence blurs the line between photographer and subject, her life and the life of the image.
Other photographs show artists producing sculpture, audiences viewing it, sculptural alterations to natural landscapes, and performance artists in action. That these subjects are all considered to be 
sculpture suggests that photography can determine what sculpture is. The exhibition takes this on by drawing attention to photography’s implicit role in conveying what constitutes sculpture, and what it means.
The exhibition also studies the power of the lens in a series by Eugène Atget that calls to mind Monet’s haystacks in its analysis of light and air on a single subject. The French photographer took hundreds of pictures of classical statues, fountains, and other park adornments during the early 20th century. Atget’s images of Versailles’s marble sculptures in different seasons and at different angles suggest that objects as permanent as statues in the garden of Versailles can appear to move and emote.
And just as a tourist peering through binoculars at Mount Rushmore can be rendered statuesque in a photograph (as in Lee Friedlander’s “Mount Rushmore, South Dakota,” 1969), a statue might be imagined to live beyond the still frame after the camera has taken its shot.
Many of the photographs feature recognizable—or at least decipherable—statues, sculptures, and other figures that rely on the camera for transmission of the image. But in photographs such as Constantin Brancusi’s “Shadows” (1920), the lens plays tricks. “Shadows” applies techniques to depict sculpture out of focus, giving the image an ephemeral, dematerialized quality. Surrealist art and playful pieces featuring everyday objects highlight the ability of the camera not only to transmit, but to recreate.
In the more contemporary pieces in the exhibition, the line between photography and sculpture vanishes. One of the most recent works, Robin Rhode’s “Stone Flag” (2004), combines elements of sculpture, performance, and photography—not simply as a copy of an original work, but as the product itself. A series of nine prints show the artist in choreographed poses to appear as if he is waving a flag made from discarded bricks. Though the viewer knows that the overall motion depicted across the frames is technicaly impossible, the stone flag still seems to have life.
And with that, “The Original Copy” concludes a narrative of photography’s influence on sculpture with prints of what couldn’t have originally been.
*“The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today” runs August 1st to November 1st at the Museum of Modern Art.*
