Eugene Druet Eve c. 1899 Cat. No. 4 AN ALMOST IMMATERIAL SUBSTANCE": PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE DEMATERIALISATION OF SCULPTURE Geraldine A. Johnson Some of the earliest known photographs depict sculptural subjects.1 But most of the photographs taken in the decades immediately following the discovery of the new medium served primarily documentary purposes. Only in the later nineteenth century did sculptors and photographers begin to explore how photography could be used not just to record the external appearance of three-dimensional objects, but also to question long-held assumptions about the art of sculpture itself. In fact, beginning with Auguste Rodin, a number of artists began to deploy the medium to explore the very nature of sculpture's materiality. Rodin From the mid-l870s onwards, Rodin actively incorporated photography into his artistic practices, with the medium becoming increasingly important in the design, marketing and documentation of his sculptural oeuvre.2 His imaginatively varied use of photography became a model for both immediate contemporaries, such as Medardo Rosso, and somewhat younger artists working in the first decades of the twentieth century, including Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Naum Gabo and Constant in ), On (he photography of sculpture, see: Geraldine A. Johnson [Ed.), Sculpture and Photography: En Distorting the Third Dimension. Cambridge 1998, esp. p. 16, n. 2. for further references: James Hall, The World as Sculpture. London 199a pp. 325-347; and Dorothy Kosinski, Vie Artist and the Camera: Degus to Picasso. New Haven !999. passim. 2. On Rodin and photography, see: Albert E. lilscn, /n Rodin's Studio: A photographic record of sculpture in the. making. Oxford 1980; Kirk Varnedoe, "Rodin and Photography", in A.E. Elsen (Ed.), Rodin Rediscovered. Washington D.C. 1981, pp. 202-247: Helene Pinet, "Montrer est la question vitale': Rodin and Photography". In Johnson, pp. 68-85: and Jane R. Becker. "Auguste Rodin and Photography: Extending the Sculptural Idiom", in Kosinski, pp. 91-115. 71 Brancusi. Photography, however, was not. just a helpful, but humble tool. Rather, for Rodin and other photographically-oriented sculptors, the medium could also serve to redefine sculpture itself by transforming solid, palpable and static matter into an ever-changing illusion or, as Moholy-Nagy put it, into "an almost immaterial substance,"3 Indeed, for some artists, photography seemed capable of liberating sculpture from its very materiality. Rodin was often actively involved in stage-managing photographic shoots. In the case of Eugene Druet., one of his favourite photographers at the turn of the century, Rodin (who apparently never took a single photograph himself) encouraged his assistant to record works such as the Eve from the Gates of Hell from the back and side in a mysteriously shadowed, disembodying half-light" {cat. nos. 3 and 4). Especially in Druet's back view, the figure of Eve seems to dissolve into her penumbral surroundings, as if on the verge of dematerialising info the 'silence which surrounds things' that Rodin's works evoked for the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.3 Or could the incorporeal silence felt by Rilke, who served as Rodin's personal secretary, have been at least partially the result of looking at photographs of the sculptor's figures, rather than at the works themselves? Even more intriguing is the possibility that Rodin himself may have pursued an increasingly dematerialised sculptural style in part thanks to the photographs he encountered, one medium thus reinforcing the aesthetic tendencies of the other. The impact, of photographs is incontestable in the case of the writer Charles H. Caffin, who, in 1909, based his reaction to Rodin's controversial statue of Balzac on photographs which captured the "silence [that] renders audible the footfall of incorporeal presences: the shadow seems to be the substance."0 The photographs seen by Caffin were the result of a collaboration between Rodin and the young American photographer Edward Steichen. Although Druet had already depicted the Balzac as a shadowy figure emerging from the studio's crepuscular darkness, Steichen's roughly-textured prints went even further in 3. Krisziina Passuth, Mohohj-Nagij, London 1985, p. 306. 4. On Druet. see Varnedoe, pp. 205-206 and 215-224. and Pinel. pp, 76-77. 5. Alex Potts. "Dolls and things: The relocation and disintegration of sculpture in Rodin and Rilke". in J, Onians (Ed.), Sigh! & Insight: Essays on art and culture in honour of E.H. Combrich al 85, l^ondon 1994, p. 367. 6. Becker, "Rodin", p. 104. 72 Eugene Druet Eve e. 1899 Cat. No. 3 73 Edward Steichen. three photographs of Rodin's Balzac, 1908 (from the lefi: Toward the Light. Midnight', The Silhouette. 4 a.m.' and The Open Sky'). From _Camerawork... 1911 undermining the fixed, material reality of the statue. Apparently at Rodin's suggestion, a plaster cast, of the Balzac was dragged into the garden, set on a rotating platform and photographed by Steichen over the course of two long, sleepless nights. The stunning results were pared down to three key images arranged in a temporal and kinetic sequence, running from midnight to dawn and moving around the figure.7 These images transformed the statue first into a disembodied ghost, then into an inky black silhouette with no recognisable relation to the actual white plaster cast. Photography's ability to transform the very materials of sculpture is also seen in photographs of Rodin's Burghers of Calais taken by Jean-Francois Limet, a studio assistant (cat. nos. 6 and 7). Once again, the slightly unfocused lens and rough surface textures of the prints leave viewers uncertain as to whether the hazy, mysterious figures are cast in dry white plaster or dark gleaming bronze.H The grainy, often technically imperfect and highly atmospheric photographs taken by Druet, Steichen and Limet in many ways recall the unfinished surfaces, purposefully preserved imperfections and serial reworkings that were the hallmarks of Rodin's own sculptural style. Indeed, his obsession with endlessly revising and replicating sculpted works in different media with only slight variations in surface texture and scale found its perfect echo in the disembodied and endlessly mutable figures that populated the photographs he most admired. 7. On these photographs, see Varnedoe, pp. 229 and 235-238. 8. As noted by ibid., p. 242, 74 Rosso At least, one disgruntled contemporary was convinced that his own example lay behind the dematerialising tendencies of Rodin's sculptural practices and photographic preferences. Indeed, the Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso became convinced that his 'Impressionist' sculptures in wax, plaster and bronze had inspired Rodin's most innovative works, including the Balzac.'1 Rosso and Rodin initially had been friendly, mutual admirers. By 1904, however, six years after the Balzac's unveiling. Rosso had had enough. Certain that this statue owed much to his own stylistic proclivities, Rosso assembled a small group of sculptures and photographs for display at the Salon d'Automne in Paris. Amongst (he latter were photographs of works by him and by Rodin, including the Balzac captured in a deeply shadowed print by Druet.10 The Italian sculptor's suspicion that his much better-known colleague was appropriating his sculptural strategies without due acknowledgment is suggested by the note Rosso scribbled alongside a photograph of this curious multi-media ensemble: "Confrontation at the Salon, Paris."" Presumably, Rosso believed that a visual (as well as virtual) confrontation with his famous rival effected in large part through the medium of photography would prove his point, namely, that his example had pushed Rodin to develop a dematerialising sculptural style that allowed beholders "to forget matter,"12 However, one could argue that. Rosso's sculptural style was itself, to some extent, the product of the dematerialising photographs taken of his own works. Although there has been some debate as to whether all the photographs associated with Rosso were actually taken by his own hand, there is no doubt that, unlike Rodin, he was a very active photographer.13 The resulting images made his already highly-textured sculptures seem to dissolve completely into a misty, nebulous haze. 9. On Rosso, see: G. Moure (Ed.). Medardo Rosso. Santiago dc Composieia 1996: Jane R Becker, "Medardo Rosso: Photographing Sculpture and Sculpting Photography", in Kosinski. pp. 159-175; and Many Cooper and Sharon Meeker, Medardo Rosso.' Second Impressions, New Haven 2003. 1 would like lo thank Michael Archer lor kindly lending mc his copy of Moure's catalogue. 10. The Druel photograph is illustrated in Vamedoe, p. 221. fig. 9.28. 1 1. See Sharon Meeker, "Reflections on Repetition in Rosso's Art", in Cooper and Hecker, pp. 64-67, and Becker, "Rosso." pp. 167-168. 12. Moure, p. 130. 13. On the attribution of Rosso's photographs, see: Luciano Caramel, Identity and Current. Relevance of Medardo Rosso", in Moure, p. 106, and Becker. Rosso", p. 159. 75 Medardo Rosso (attributed), three photographs of Er.ce puer. c. 1906. (Museo Medardo Rosso, Barzio) The photographs taken of Rosso's Ecce puer (Behold the child) in c.1906 demonstrate his consciously dematerialising photographic practices, with the prints' technical imperfections mirroring the accidental Slaws and blemishes he also relished in his sculpted works.14 The bust was apparently conceived after Rosso caught a glimpse of a young boy pressing his face through a thin curtain. This fleeting impression of a veiled being is hauntingly evoked by the indistinct surface textures of the sculpture. But the effect is heightened when the bust is seen through yet another veil, that of the photographic medium. Like Rodin, Rosso used dematerialising photographs of such objects to create new, virtual variations of a work that itself had been cast in multiple versions. At the same time that Rosso's impressionistic photographic style gave him the freedom endlessly to revise sculptural compositions, like Rodin, he too jealously guarded the right to oversee the nature of these variations. Rodin insisted on approving and eventually co-signing all photographs issued by his studio photographers.1" Similarly, Rosso stated in a letter of 1926: "1 cannot allow other photographs to be taken. 1 want those of mine and no others. I also believe these are the best."16 14. On this composition, see Harry Cooper, "Ecce Rosso!", in Cooper and Meeker, pp. 14-15, and Hecker, pp. 51-54. 15. See Elsen, 1980. p. 14. 16. Moure, p. 299. 76 Throughout his life, Rosso repeatedly claimed that "material does not exist ... Nothing is material in space."17 However, it was only thanks to his manipulation of the photographic medium that his complex sculpted objects managed to shed their material qualities and be transformed into a series of disembodied 'impressions', indeed, it was the shadowy impression of a sculpture, best captured in photographs, rather than the solid, physical object itself that, ultimately most fascinated Rosso: "That shadow on the ground is more important than the shoes. So let's deal with the shadow and forget the shoes."18 Mohoiy-Nagy By the time Rosso died in ]928, photography's ability to materialise the impalpable, while simultaneously dematerialising what was solid and real had fired the imagination of a new generation of sculptor-photographers. One of the most successful in articulating such ideas was the Hungarian artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.19 In 1927, he confidently stated that photography gave "tangible shape to light" itself.20 Moholy-Nagy was well aware, however, that photography could also dematerialise any three-dimensional object it encountered. For Moholy-Nagy. this paradox seems first to have become apparent in 1922 when, in collaboration with his first, wife Lucia, he began developing a new photographic technique he dubbed the 'photogram', the "most completely dematerializcd medium" (cat. nos. 43-54).21 Unlike conventional photography, which relied on light passing through a camera's aperture, a photogram was made by allowing light to strike small, solid objects placed directly on light-sensitive photographic paper.22 For Moholy-Nagy, photograms effectively gave a fixed, material presence to light, itself, while denying the specific materiality of the objects used in the process. Significantly, in a note scrawled on the back of a photogram made in about 1924, Moholy-Nagy stated that 17. For instance, sec Ibid., p. 17). 18. Ibid., p. 183. 19. On Moholy-Nagy, see: Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy. Experiment in Totality, Cambridge, Mass., 1969; Andreas Hans. Moholy-Nagy: Photographs and Photograms, Irans. F. Samson. London 1980; I'assuth; and Eleanor M. Hight, Picturing Modernism: Moholy-Nagy and Photography in Weimar German, Cambridge. Mass.. 1995. 20. Christopher Phillips iEd,}, Photography in the Modem Era: European Documents and Critical Writings. 1913-1940, New York 1989, p. 85. 2). Passuili, p. 326. 22. On camera-less photography, see; 1-laus, pp. 13-25; Might, pp. 57 IT; arid Michel J-Yjzot (Ed.). A New History of Photography. Cologne 1998. pp. 442-446. 77 lie had used napkin rings and matches to generate the image, then asked: "But. is that, important, in the end? How the light flows ... and what becomes of the whole, has nothing anymore to do with the original material."'n By using multiple light sources when producing a photogram, the silhouetted shape of the 'original material' could be doubled and dislocated, an effect similar to some of the abstract, black-and-white intaglio prints Moholy-Nagy also made in the early and mid-1920s (cat. no. 41). In his sculptural constructions and mobile multi-media installations, Moholy-Nagy further explored the possibilities of using light as a 'medium of plastic expression' and, conversely, of transforming plastic material into 'light compositions', the latter phrase used in reference to the transparent Plexiglas constructions he produced in 1946, the last year of his life (cat, nos. 57 and 58),9A Interestingly enough, such complex exchanges between two and three dimensions, between motion and stasis, between transparency and opacity were often realised or at least confirmed through photography and, occasionally, in film, as seen in the case of a rotating sculpture known as the Light-Space Modulator, first conceived by Moholy-Nagy in 1922, then photographed and filmed by him when finally completed in 3 930.25 Gabo The notion that photography and film can transform the material into the immaterial and back again also permeates the work of the Russian artist Naum Gabo,26 In the case of Gabo's Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) of c. 1919-20. a piece that consists of a vibrating vertical metal rod, Moholy-Nagy observed that a "blurred photograph" of the work showed "several phases of motion superimposed. (What would elsewhere be regarded as an unsuccessful photograph is in this instance a good demonstration of the processes of motion, of the resulting virtual volumes.}"27 (cat. no. 25). Ironically, these 'virtual volumes' are perhaps most, evident 23. Kalherine Ware, Introduction. Lasxlö Mohokj-Nagij: Photographs in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Malibu 1995. p. 12. 24. P