134
ALFRED STIEGLITZ (1864-1946)
New York, 1931. Silver print, the image measuring 7 1/4x9 1/4 inches (18.4x23.5 cm.), the mount 10 3/4x13 1/2 inches (27.3x34.3 cm.), with Stieglitz''s signature, title, date, and notations, "With permission ''An American Place,'' Kindly return to," in pencil, an Alfred Stieglitz, 509 Madison Avenue, New York, NY hand stamp, and additional numeric notations, also in pencil, in an unknown hand, on mount recto, and a Popular Photography and date hand stamps, cropping notations, and numeric notations, in pencil, on mount verso. 1931; printed before 1946
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Notes: Gifted by Stieglitz to his niece, Georgia Engelhard; to a Private Collection, New York.
This image appeared in Popular Photography''s September 1946 pictorial tribute to Stieglitz. The photo essay was arranged by Georgia Engelhard, his niece and noted model, and published shortly after his death in July 1946.
Pictured is the northern view from Stieglitz''s window at An American Place, his renowned modern art gallery in midtown Manhattan. The photograph reveals facets of an accomplished formal composition, including dark shadows and bright highlight details, and includes the iconic Squibb Building (at the far left). The esteemed American critic Lewis Mumford praised the building's architectural restraint, "[It was] a great relief after the fireworks, the Coney Island barking, the theatrical geegaws that have been masquerading as ''le style moderne'' around Manhattan during the last few years."
Stieglitz''s gallery, which was also situated near the newly erected site known as Rockefeller Center, had a bird''s-eye-view of New York City''s burgeoning cityscape, all of which was planned and built during the height of the economic Depression. The Empire State Building, which eclipsed the Chrysler Building as the world''s tallest skyscraper, had been recently completed and was hailed as a symbol of New York City''s growing economic strength. Indeed, it confirmed the city''s position as the official capital of modernity. For Stieglitz, who had been championing modern art for thirty years, the opening of a small institution known as the Museum of Modern Art (during this same period) perhaps heralded a new awareness that his artistic struggles to posit innovative fine arts--painting, sculpture and photography--as forces of cultural change had finally come to fruition.
Sarah Greenough, Curator of the National Gallery of Art, has dated the image to the winter of 1930-31, "probably . . . November or December 1930 or early in 1931." Other prints of this image are in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University, Nashville, and The National Museum of Art, Tokyo.
Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz, The Key Set, Volume Two (Harry N. Abrams), cat. no. 1357, p. 777.
Frank, et al., America & Alfred Stieglitz (Doubleday), pl. 29a.
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