View Old Master painting through a new lens with London's National Gallery's first major exhibition of photography co-curated by Christopher Riopelle, National Gallery Curator for Post-1800 Painting, and Hope Kingsley from the Wilson Centre for Photography. Opening on 31 October 2012 the exhibition explores work by early photographers from the mid-19th century and the most exciting contemporary artists working with photography, alongside historical painting. It takes a provocative look at how photographers use fine art traditions, including Old Master painting, to explore and justify the possibilities of their art.
Work by leading photographers, such as Martin Parr, Craigie Horsfield, Sam Taylor-Wood, Richard Billingham, Julia Margaret Cameron and Gustave Le Gray will be on display beside key works from the National Gallery collection.
Paintings and early and contemporary photographs are presented together according to traditional genres such as portraiture, still life, nudes and landscape, highlighting the universality of the themes and influences across all the works, both past and present.
Drawing attention to one particular and rich strand of photography’s history – that of the influence and inspiration of historical painting – the exhibition features major early works by the greatest British and French photographers alongside work by an international array of contemporary artists. It includes new photography and video specially commissioned for the exhibition and on public display for the first time, plus works rarely seen in the UK.
Exceptionally, three ‘interventions’ of contemporary photographs by Richard Billingham, Craigie Horsfield and Richard Learoyd will be displayed within the Gallery’s collection, juxtaposed with great 19th-century paintings by
Constable, Degas and
Ingres .
The show includes almost 90 photographs alongside selected paintings from the National Gallery’s collection. Key photographs will come from the collection of the Wilson Centre for Photography, with loans from Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Media Museum in Bradford, Fundació La Caixa in Spain, and direct from the photographers themselves.
There is an interview view Colin Wiggins here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/may/13/photography-painting-national-gallery-exhibition and more at the National Gallery's website here: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/seduced-by-art-photography-past-and-present
Image: Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews (c1750), which will be juxtaposed with work by Martin Parr from 1991. Photograph: © National Gallery, London
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