The Whitney Museum of American Art, to give its full title, was founded in 1931 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942), a wealthy and prominent American socialite and art patron after whom the museum is named.
Saw the Alexander Calder Hypermobility exhibition, a quote from the museum blurb: Calder: Hypermobility focuses on the extraordinary breadth of movement and sound in the work of Alexander Calder. This exhibition brings together a rich constellation of key sculptures and provides a rare opportunity to experience the works as the artist intended—in motion. Regular activations will occur in the galleries, revealing the inherent kinetic nature of Calder’s work, as well as its relationship to performance. Influenced in part by the artist’s fascination and engagement with choreography, Calder’s sculptures contain an embedded performativity that is reflected in their idiosyncratic motions and the perceptual responses they provoke.
Followed that up by viewing images by Willa Nasatir. A description from the exhibition. "The emerging artist Willa Nasatir (b. 1990) creates photographs routinely informed by a cinematic vocabulary, inspired by the shifting landscape and individuals who inhabit New York, where she works and lives. Nasatir’s compositions routinely function as part-still life, part-portrait (notably without bodies), evoking a surreal otherworldly environment—a realm that’s familiar yet simultaneously difficult to pin down." The first ten images are from the Willa Nasatir exhibition.
I was fascinated by her use of chromogenic printing, which I hadn't come across before. This is a description: What is a Chromogenic Print? Chromogenic prints, often referred to as ‘c-type’ prints are prints produced using chromogenic materials and processes. Chromogenic materials, such as film or photographic paper, are composed of one or many layers of silver halide emulsion. Along with dye couplers, and in combination with processing chemistry, these chemicals form visible dyes. Full colour chromogenic materials are comprised of multiple layers of emulsion that are sensitised to different wavelengths of light and of which the three main dye layers – cyan, magenta and yellow – together form a full colour image. The first commercially available chromogenic print process available was Kodacolour, which was introduced by Kodak in January 1942.
