Allen Porter, Filmstrips, Photogram vintage gelatin silver print 1947
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Allen Porter, Filmstrips, Photogram vintage gelatin silver print 1947
ALLEN PORTER (b.1926) USA
Filmstrips 1947
Photogram vintage gelatin silver print
Size: (unframed): H: 11” x W: 14”
Size: (frame): H: 20” x W: 23”
After attending art programs at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Porter enrolled at the ID upon his return from military service in WWII. His course of study included graphic design and photography. His photograms were produced while working with famed ID photography instructors Frank Levstik and Ferenc Berko. Shortly after leaving the ID in 1949, Porter established a design office in Los Angeles during the height of the California modern design movement. He incorporated his innovative light work into design projects for important clients like Gruen Lighting and Carroll Sagar & Associates.
British “Tree Frog” brooch, silver set with green and clear paste jewels, red jewel eyes, marks c. 1895
Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book “On the Origin of Species” overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of specie. By the 1870s both the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact and awakening the public to the diversity of life. The frog emerging from Darwin’s Pond was a symbol of the times and a favorite theme for jewelry of the era.
Mitzi Otten-Friedmann / Wiener Werkstaette reverse painted glass and silver brooch, signed c. 1915
MITZI OTTEN-FRIEDMANN (1884-1955) Austria
WIENER WERKSTÄTTE (1903-1932)
Brooch c. 1915
Reverse-painted glass depicting a couple set in a silver frame / back
Marks: M. OTTEN-FRIEDMANN on the front (right), the reverse stamped: WW, Vienna assay mark for 900 silver
D: 2 3/8”
Rosalia Marie Friedmann-Otten (“Mitzi”) * November 28, 1884 Vienna, † May 5, 1955 New York, NY
Student at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna (with Oskar Strnad), Friedmann-Otten participated in numerous exhibitions (including art shows in 1908, 1920; Neukunstgruppe 1909; German Women’s Art in 1925; Werkbundausstellung 1930). Member of the Austrian Werkbund, the Wiener Werkstätte and the Neukunstgruppe. One of the most versatile artists (commercial art, metalwork, jewelry, fashion, starting from 1920 mainly enamel works, including large-scale email pictures), Friedmann-Otten had to flee in 1938 to the United States.
Thomas F. Barrow, Register Synthesis, Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint, 1978
THOMAS F. BARROW (b. 1938) Kansas City, MO
Register Synthesis Photogram 1978
Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint
Signed: Register Synthesis – 1978 – Thomas F. Barrow (in ink on back)
Exhibited: J.J. Brookings & Co. (San Jose, CA): Thomas F. Barrow: Inventories and Transformations, A Twenty Year Retrospective, Nov. 6 – Dec. 16, 1986. This exhibit occurred simultaneously with the following two museum shows: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Nov. 6, 1986 – Jan 11, 1987) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Feb. 26 – May 10, 1987).
Related photograph illustrated: Aperture: The New Vision: Forty Years of Photography, no. 87 (New York: Aperture Foundation, Inc., 1987), cover image.
Framed size: H: 19 5/8” x W: 23 7/16”
Thomas Barrow, American was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He studied at the Art Institute of Design in Chicago, Illinois and received his M.A. in 1967. At the George Eastman House, Barrow was the Assistant Director from 1971 to 1972 and served as the Associate Director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum from 1973 to 1976. Barrow started teaching photography in 1976 in the Art Department of the University of New Mexico and by 1985 he became the Acting Director of the University Art Museum. His Midwestern academic pedigree includes studying with Aaron Siskind at the Art Institute of Design in Chicago and with filmmaker Jack Ellis at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Barrow has received two NEA Photographers Fellowships in 1973 and 1978.
Barrow has produced a series of silver-gelatin photograms and then applied spray paint to the prints. These combine the feeling of a split-toned black and white print and at the same time appear as color-print photograms. He has produced a series of photograms entitled Disjunctive Forms. His images appear as surreal assemblages of various found and created objects superimposed with stencil text. Barrow works in the “academic” tradition—his pictures are deliberately and consistently experimental, highly intellectualized, scholarly in their concerns, and chock-full of references to the work of other artists.
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