Photo London 2016 - Music and Poetry Never Die

MUSIC AND POETRY NEVER DIE

MUSIC AND POETRY NEVER DIE CURATED BY ALINE PUJO

A strong link united John Cohen, Nat Finkelstein, Lynn Goldsmith, Françoise Janicot, Gerard Malanga, and Marcia Resnick: it was the intellectual avant-garde, the multidisciplinary and underground art practice, and a craving for new musical trends. Sometimes filmmakers, sometimes poets or musicians, they were photographers first, both witnesses and actors of the most vibrant artistic period in the history of art. The topic of their photography?

The turning point of an era, and a genius quality of creativity that combined poetry, art and rock ’n’ roll. These photographers showed both the intimate and public side of their subjects, and offer us an unprecedented vision of this creative burst.

In New York, starting in the 1950’s, the Beat Generation and its literary commitment to freedom of lifestyle strongly impacted America. John Cohen followed it from the start, and took photographs of militant poets and artists like Jack Kerouac, who wrote the controversial novel On the Road (1959) and Allen Ginsberg, both acclaimed and criticized for his poem Howl (1956). Françoise Janicot’s, Gerard Malanga’s and Marcia Resnick’s photographs show their evolution over time and include other figures of the Beat Generation such as William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

In the 1960’s, a new intellectual revolution started in the decaying buildings of New York and in the rebuilt Europe. Even though Françoise Janicot focused on France and Europe, immortalizing radical writers and performance artists such as Paul-Armand Gette, Julien Blaine and Robert Filliou, the artistic experimentation was most vivid in SoHo in NYC. The 80 Wooster Street became the emblematic place of this generation. Under Salvador Dali’s and Marcel Duchamp’s approving eyes, it became the hot spot for emerging artists like

Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerard Malanga, Alfred Leslie and Yoko Ono, and for yet unknown musicians like Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, and for the Beat Generation writers... Like electrocardiograms, John Cohen and Gerard Malanga captured the artistic pulse of this period with their cameras. Progressively, Andy Warhol’s Factory outdid the 80 Wooster and became the epitome of an avant-garde laboratory for creation.

Gerard Malanga, and later Nat Finkelstein, became active protagonists of this scene. They lived a couple of ecstatic years at the Factory and took part in the most emblematic period of “The Pope of the Pop”.

The next generation was already taking shape in the concert halls of CBGB, of Max’s, and at the Factory. A generation of rebellious minds flourished with filmmakers like John Waters and his transvestite star, an actor-singer named Divine, with musicians likes Patti Smith and Johnny Thunders, and with provocative figures like Robert Mapplethorpe, Anya Phillips and John Waters. Gerard Malanga, Marcia Resnick and Lynn Goldsmith observed and took pictures of this exuberant counter-culture. They contributed to building bridges between rock ’n’ roll legends and the new punk generation, between the Factory and the new conceptual and minimal art.

The photographs showcased by Caroline Smulders offer a synthetic view of the underground art scene of the 1950-70’s. They are a screenshot of a specific moment in the history of art. Seen through the sharp eye of these photographers, events take up a whole new dimension, sometimes intimate, sometimes iconic. Deeply rooted in the art movements that inspired them, these photographs are the relics of an era, of actions and encounters.

Jean Vergès, 2016

JOHN COHEN

(Born in 1932)

“My lens became the center of an equation between the visible world and the interior world.”

As both a protagonist of the New-York avant-garde movement and the witness of a changing world, John Cohen defies categorization. At once photographer, musician and filmmaker, his creative quest combines an impartial documentary style with a sharp artistic vision. His pictures express his own intimate emotions but exist without him and open up our imagination. Unlike others, he does not deliver a straight propagandist message. John Cohen suggests a point of view without ever forcing it on the viewer.

At the age of 25, John Cohen moved into the Tenth street art world in NYC (before SoHo existed): the temple of a diverse and vibrant avant-garde scene gathering some of the most notorious artists of the 20th century. He took part and documented many artistic encounters, in particular between the writers of the Beat Generation – to which he felt close. Through his lens, poet-writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso became emblematic figures of an anti-establishment generation, which served as a model for the pacifist and disobedient counter-cultures of the 1960’s.

A yet unknown musician popped up in the middle of the encounters documented by John Cohen: it was Bob Dylan. He had just arrived in New York and had not yet produced an album. During a photo shoot in John Cohen’s studio and on his roof, the young 21 yearold singer opened up with naturalness. It marked the beginning of a strong creative bond between Bob Dylan and John Cohen who was also a musician. The photographs taken on this occasion, which remained unseen for several decades, have immortalized the poetmusician at the peak of his youth and genuineness.

Recognized worldwide for his many talents, John Cohen masterfully captured the New York underground world of the 1950-60’s. His photographs have been showcased in exhibitions like There is no Eye, which travelled in 11 museums, and are permanently exhibited in several international museums such as the MoMa, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery of London.

27 photographs will be included in the Centre Pompidou’s Beat Generation this summer and other work will be shown at the Grey Art Gallery in January. The book Cheap Rents... and de Kooning will be coming out in June.

John Cohen, Bob Dylan in My Loft, 1962 Silver gelatin print, printed 2012 by Sid Kaplan 10 x 11 in. / 25 x 28 cm

NAT FINKELSTEIN

(1933-2009)

“I answered the group’s insistent desire for publicity.”

Rebellious and iconoclast would be the best adjectives to describe Nat Finkelstein, a creative accomplice of the underground subversive scene. He first learned photography with the legendary director of Harper’s Bazar, Alexey Brodovitch, as well as Garry Winogrand, a street photographer in search of an aesthetic of live photography. That is how Nat Finkelstein developed his polished, yet impetuous and spontaneous style.

Throughout the 1960s, Finkelstein was a successful photojournalist with Black Star and PIX photo agencies, reporting on emerging political and cultural movements in New York City.

Already an established journalist, Nat Finkelstein entered the Factory in 1965 as the Media: first a witness, then a collaborator among this creative laboratory. He took pictures of the place, of Andy Warhol, and the Velvet Underground, along with iconic visitors like Bob Dylan. He also immortalized the backstage of many of Andy Warhol’s movies, including the screen test in tribute to Marcel Duchamp among others.

As the author David Dalton, described, «Nat Finkelstein had this almost psychic capacity to seize the atmosphere and spirit of a place.» He hugely participated in creating the aura around the Factory, which would not have lasted over time without his photographic memories.

Pop Art was such that it would not have existed without media coverage. Equipped with his Nikons and Olympus Pen, Nat Finkelstein used natural light to take pictures, looking for a visible photographic grain and a reduced scale of grey. His photographs, quite different from others taken at the time, managed to capture and draw attention on the immaterial spirit of this high place of contemporary art.

This attention has now reached its highest point with the growing craze for Pop art in today’s artistic landscape, along with the inclusion of Nat Finkelstein’s pictures in the most renowned museum collections of the world, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Stedelijk Museum, the V&A Museum, the Smithsonian Institution National Portrait Gallery, to name only a few.

Nat Finkelstein, Velvet Underground with Vox (variation), 1966 Printed 2005, unique B&W print from original negative, mounted on aluminium 18,5 x 12,4 in. / 47 x 31,5 cm

LYNN GOLDSMITH

(Born in 1948)

“My work has always been about breaking limiting thought patterns.”

At the age of 68, Lynn Goldsmith looks back at the 45 years she dedicated to art. Both photographer and filmmaker, her practice evolved and grew alongside the New York avantgarde scene. From Andy Warhol to Patti Smith, David Bowie and The Beatles, she met and captured on camera some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Everybody wanted to be immortalized by her lens. She had a gift to shape people’s image, to take a shot that seized someone’s artistic persona while remaining true to one’s personality.

This brilliant and attractive woman made her way through the rock ’n’ roll world of the 1970’s. Always looking for new talents to collaborate with, she witnessed and built the image of an era through her both iconic and intimate pictures.

It was through her studio practice that she was able to stage artists like comedians of their own media cult. With her, Patti Smith shaped her image of rock ’n’ roll woman at the premises of the punk generation, both attractive, rebellious, and independent. Through her own sensuality, Lynn Goldsmith highlighted and questioned her muses’ sensuality. She succeeded in transcribing the inherent ambivalence of famous people, and in transforming her intimate bond with them into iconic shots.

She embodied a new photographic style of portraits in between celebrity pictures and staged photography. Her talent was to drive the spirit of her muses and bring them under the spotlight. She shared their fame and is now considered as one of the greatest photographers of her time, with some of her works exhibited in the permanent collection of the MoMa or the Smithsonian Institution National Portrait Gallery.

Lynn Goldsmith, Patti Smith - White Dress on Blue Hand Up, 1977 Printed 2016, Ed. 2/20 Archival digital print 20 x 16 in. / 51 x 41 cm

FRANÇOISE JANICOT

(Born in 1929)

“The poem is to be seen. The poem is to be heard. We watch it. We hear it.”

Françoise Janicot is an artist like no other, at times looking for the isolation and quietness of her studio, at times thriving to experiment at the limit of art and literature. After gaining recognition as an abstract painter, her art practice evolved, far away from the turmoil of the world, in contact with French and American experimental poets and performance artists of the 1970-80’s. This period of time was a turning point for her. All at once performance artist and photographer, she put action at the center of artistic transformation. Her poetical and visual quest took a decisive political turn with L’Enconnage, when she adopted a feminist point of view. During this now famous performance, she wrapped herself with bandages from head to feet to the point of almost suffocating, with the voice of Bernard Heidsieck reciting poetry in the background.

Her husband Bernard Heidsieck, poet, performance artist and renowned banker, is as impossible to categorize as Françoise Janicot was. With their friends Robert Filliou, John Giorno and Paul-Armand Gette, they opened a new chapter in the history of art and literature named “action-poetry”. These experimentations, inspired by poets of the Beat Generation like Brion Gysin, were fundamentally transgressive, transitive and ephemeral.

Photography played a big part in the movement since it captured these unique moments on camera.

Among other things, we owe to Françoise Janicot some of the most unforgettable pictures of the nomadic festival named Polyphonix -created by her friend Jean-Jacques Lebel to celebrate and spread knowledge about “action-poetry”-, and of the Coléoptère & Co performance by Paul-Armand Gette and Bernard Heidsieck. Performance photography is very singular in that, due to the very nature of its subject, it is a piece of archive with an artistic value of its own. Françoise Janicot took part in that movement and enhanced it through a fine process of staging and framing, which led her to be exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and all throughout the world.

Françoise Janicot, John Giorno. Poliphonix 5, Centre Pompidou, juin 1983 Printed before 1990 Silver print 11,6 x 9,3 in. / 29,5 x 23,6 cm

GERARD MALANGA

(Born in 1943)

“I am a poet, photographer, film maker, and I was Andy Warhol’s closest collaborator.”

Wandering poet, avant-garde filmmaker, actor himself, passionate dancer and photographer of living memories, Gerard Malanga is a live encyclopedia of the Warhol era and the years that followed. They influenced his entire photographic work. Nicknamed the blond angel of the Factory, he met “The Pope of the Pop” in 1963, before the latter established his reign. He shared his worries, helped with his screenprinting, directed and played in his movies. During the early years of the Factory he and Warhol collaborated on the Screen Tests. He took some of the most stunning pictures of Andy Warhol as well as icons of the Factory like Candy Darling, Brigid Polk and Rene Ricard.

He became both an historian, interpret and photographer of a culture that poeticized, glorified and made fun of society through the explosive mix of drug and rock ’n’ roll.

Gerard Malanga was able to capture the power and beauty of this time. Andy Warhol used to say about him that he was a photographer and poet with an incredible sense for interpretation. In his portrait pictures, he used to play with the environment, putting his models in unusual and awkward settings, like Patti Smith and her punk fashion in a neutral subway environment, or William Burroughs in the middle of a war declaration in front of Manhattan. The bond Gerard Malanga had with his models often helped to reveal their emotions. That is how he represented the melancholy of Dennis Hopper -an oftenmisunderstood genius of cinema-, the sensual mouth of Mick Jagger, or Iggy Pop naked in the apartment they shared over the summer of 1971. Gerard Malanga rubbed shoulders with the most famous artists of the 20th century like John Cage, and he immortalized the birth of emblematic figures of the 1960-70’s New York underground culture. Robert Mapplethorpe was only 24 years old when Gerard Malanga shot him with his jewels and malicious eyes. Patti Smith was only 23 and Lou Reed 29.

Gerard Malanga’s pictures are like the iconography of a time when photography was used for its own ends. The close relationship of this artist-photographer with his models shaped images that contributed to build the myth of this generation. His photographs have been exhibited in the most renowned collections and museums in the world, like the Centre Pompidou in 2011.

Gerard Malanga, Robert Mapplethorpe Adorning his Jewelry, 1971 Silver print, Ed. 1/10 + 2 AP 28 x 21,6 x 1,2 in. / 71 x 55 x 3 cm framed

MARCIA RESNICK

(Born in 1950)

“I felt compelled to record the emotional geography of the human face.”

In the underground world of the 1970’s, Marcia Resnick did both live and studio photography. Her life is as extraordinary as the people she photographed. She published conceptual photography books, gravitated around the world of rock and punk music, and rubbed shoulders with the most famous intellectuals and artists of her time. Her last photographic book Punks, Poets and Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys 1977-1982 is a testimony.

By taking pictures of actors, musicians, filmmakers, writers and poets of all kinds, she contributed to building the image and aesthetics of a time characterized by multidisciplinary art pursuits. Rock singers Mick Jagger and David Byrne, guitarist Johnny Thunders and saxophonist, actor and visual artist John Lurie were among the musicians she brought to her studio; along with some of the era’s original personalities like punk promoter Anya Phillips, provocative filmmaker John Waters and his muse, transvestite actor and singer Divine.

Through her use of lights, props and colours, she transcribed the electric atmosphere of this period. With a both confrontational and collaborative approach, she explored the celebrity, sexuality and individual styles of her models. Her intimate and undeniably female gaze questioned the status of a woman photographer in a very masculine world.

Her photographs not only documented an epic artistic era, they also portrayed it, which explained their presence at the MoMa, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Portrait Gallery and the Rijksmuseum.

Marcia Resnick, Brion Gysin, 1977 Printed 2016, Ed. 1/10 Archival pigment print 24 x 20 in. / 61 x 51 cm

PHOTO LONDON 2016

JOHN COHEN NAT FINKELSTEIN LYNN GOLDSMITH FRANÇOISE JANICOT GERARD MALANGA MARCIA RESNICK Somerset House, Booth G11 Strand London Curated by Aline Pujo Texts by Jean Vergès All pictures: © The artists, Courtesy Caroline Smulders John Cohen: Courtesy L. Parker Stephenson Photographs Nat Finkelstein: Estate of Nat Finkelstein Cover picture: John Cohen, Bob Dylan on My Roof (cover), 1962 Silver gelatin print, printed later by Sid Kaplan 14 x 11 in. / 35 x 28 cm

Presented by Caroline Smulders on the occasion of Photo London 2016 www.carolinesmulders.com By appointment: 4, rue Martel 75010 Paris Mobile : +33 (0) 6 09 02 66 31 Mail : caroline.ilovemyjob@gmail.com