Monday, February 4, 2008

Irving Penn at The Morgan Library

2nd NE Quadrant\The Approval Matrix: Week of February 11, 2008

(Irving Penn, Pablo Picasso, Cannes, France, 1957)

Close Encounters showcases a group of sixty-seven portraits of notable subjects by Irving Penn (b. 1917). The exhibition demonstrates Penn's incredible achievement as a portraitist, and photography's vital role among the twentieth-century arts. The portrait subjects are chiefly writers and visual artists, with a smaller number of figures from dance, music, theater, and film. The group covers the range of Penn's portrait production to date, beginning with a 1944 photograph of the painter Giorgio de Chirico, made in Rome, and ending with a remarkable 2006 portrait of the painter Jasper Johns, made in New York. Every decade of Penn's work is represented in the exhibition.

Irving Penn has long been recognized as one of the great portrait photographers of the twentieth century. He made many of these portraits for Vogue...Penn's signature portrait style consists of placing a figure in the natural light of the studio, with only rudimentary props included to facilitate the composition. -- The Morgan

Close Encounters
Irving Penn
Portraits of Artists and Writers
January 18 through April 13, 2008

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
New York, NY 10016

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