Current Events - updated
March 9, 2009
Here we try to keep up on happenings related
to
Frederick Sommer (b.
September 7, 1905 – d. January 23, 1999).
Auction offerings and results we are informed of, exhibits and more if possible.
Additional information is posted as it becomes available.
Click for info about the development of a
catalogue raisonne
The wall texts and jpeg
illustrations from the recent exhibition Sommer School : Art, Education and
Frederick Sommer that was held at Prescott College can be download
here
Current & Upcoming exhibits (sorted by closing date) –
Mills College Art Museum
"In Focus: Photography from the Mills College Art Museum Collection,"
January 20 - March 14, 2010
Syracuse University Art Galleries,
"At the
Crossroads of American Photography:
Callahan, Siskind, Sommer"
January 24 - March 17th
Additional Publicity, Gallery Talk with Claire Carter, curator at SMOCA, during the reception on
January 28th.
The
February 19, 2009, Gallery talk with Claire
Carter, Naomi Lyons and Jeremy Cox during the "Callahan, Siskind, Sommer"
exhibition
SMOCA,
available
here
~1 hour .wav
Bruce Silverstein Gallery
"Frederick Sommer:
Drawing, Photography, Painting, Collage"
February 6 - March 20
New Yorker review
'Chelsea' towards bottom.
"FREDERICK SOMMER...this sprawling, museum-quality survey shows how
closely his photography, drawing, painting, and collage work were linked..."
Brooklyn Rail review
DLK Blog review 3 stars (highest) "...first
can't miss show of 2010, as it take what we know about one of the masters of the
medium and explodes it outward..."
A 6mb download of the catalog can be found
by clicking
PDF
here
In NYC,
MOMA
has reinstalled the Edward Steichen
Photography Galleries on the third floor and included Sommer's "Glass, 1943" as
part of the exhibit
(through March 22, 2010).
At the Met, a paint on cellophane by Sommer is included in
Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection
September 15, 2009 – June 13, 2010
Other Items:
Recent Blog post with considerate observations
The Compass Rose
by Curtis Faville, July 6, 2009
Recent post to the Special Insights Gallery:
Sommer at Sun Valley Idaho 1976
ESSAY by Ian Walker 'As if one's eyelids had been cut away' Frederick
Sommer's Arizona Landscapes' is now available on the Journal of Surrealism and
the Americas (JSA), Vol.2, No.2 (2008) online
JSA. Registration required, Free.
Duke University Libraries posted the Barbaralee Diamonstein
interviews from Visions and Images on YouTube...
the Frederick Sommer interview
here
David Levi-Strauss has written an article on Frederick Sommer in a recent issue of
Aperture (Fall 2006) that is worth reading.
Book Info -
Callahan, Siskind, Sommer - At the Crossroads of American
Photography by Britt Salvesen and Keith F. Davis (2009)
:
Radius Press Book description :
This is a great look at the three artists in parallel along with excellent
essays from Keith and Britt - Jeremy Cox
The Art of Frederick Sommer: Photography, Drawing, Collage
This book is widely available with several
reviews
since the release in May 2005.
Distributed by
Yale University Press, New Haven and London (ISBN
0-300-10783-8), for the Frederick & Frances Sommer
Foundation.
Winter, 2006
of
Photo-Eye Magazine includes an article covering
Sommer's publications. Be sure to scroll down to 'old and rare' for another
page.
Independent Publishers chose The Art of Frederick Sommer
as winner of the Fine Art
category in the national competition of books published in 2005 (announced May
2006).
Press release (May 2006) for the
ARLIS Wittenborn Memorial Book Awards
where the The Art of Frederick Sommer was one of six books recognized for
excellence in art publications at the 34th annual conference held this year in Banff,
Alberta, Canada.
Golden Light Award
Book of the Year 2005, from the
Maine Photographic Workshops.
MUSIC -
The music from Consent to Gravity
as composed by
Christopher Eastburn
is now available
on CD from Chris's listing at
CD Baby.
To elaborate on the connection, C.E. -
"In thinking about writing vocal music for ANY project, a primary
question is "What are the words?" Very fortunately Frederick Sommer left a
treasure trove of those, in his writings, poems and lectures. These contain
wonderfully rich lines such as "Ideas and
thoughts collide and sort themselves out in these fruitful collisions",
"The Art of Vermeer must have been there
on the morning of creation", "Ideas
and art are the possibility of an answer tomorrow."
So how does a text become a song? In approaching a set of words composers or
songwriters often consider the images, meaning and feelings contained within the
texts. Words or passages such as "collide", or "Vermeer", or "morning of
creation" can trigger musical ideas or possibilities. The speech rhythms of a
text also come in to play. You speak it aloud and listen to the rhythms and
inflections. They can indicate a feeling of meter and melodic shape. Your
concepts and intuitions may start to meld. What you are doing musically can
become consciously and subconsciously interwoven with the feeling of the text.
You may feel in the end that you wrote very little and just listened carefully
for the music already there- in this case, the music sounding in Frederick
Sommer's brilliant texts."
'Recent' Auction Results -
auction results includes buyer's premium
Currently noted on eBay that sellers are listing -
Recent
Online (eBay) auction results -
#260449928171 Aperture 10:4 1962, ended July 26,
$256
Upcoming Art Auctions -
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