Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Several Exceptionally Good Recently Acquired Pictures XVIII, from 6 July through 12 August 2006.
This is the eighteenth installation of the exhibition known for its eclectic group of artists, some familiar and others unknown. The exhibition provides an opportunity to study a provocative range of photographs that encompasses both flea market finds and historic treasures.
Included in this year’s selection is an ethereal Carleton Watkins mammoth-plate view of the Mendocino coastline circa 1863, as well as a group of Loewy and Puiseux heliogravures of the moon made at the end of the nineteenth century. These pictures come from The Photographic Atlas of the Moon, considered the astronomers’ greatest achievement. Helen Levitt, typically known for her black and white street scenes, is represented by her later, color pictures, recently published in the book Slide Show. Four of Peter Hujar’s black and white portraits will be included as well as an early diptych from the German artists Bernd & Hilla Becher. Another highlight is a group of Mechanical Forms, a pristine study of form and structure by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Six pictures from Diane Arbus’s radical Untitled series will be on view. The portraits made during 1970 and 1971, at a residence for the mentally handicapped in New Jersey, represent a courageous body of work made during the last year of the artist’s life.
