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110
DRTIKOL, FRANTISEK (1883-1961)
"Etude." Pigment print, 11x8 1/ 2 inches (27.9x21.6 cm.), with Drtikol's blind stamp on recto and his signature and date, in pencil, on mount recto; signed, titled and with the photographer's address, his notations "Pigment," and number "XXXIV," in ink, on mount verso. 1926
- Notes: Like American photographers working between the wars, the Czech avant-garde artist Frantisek Drtikol drew from the emerging modernist idiom. Entranced by the natural beauty of the body he developed a mature series of nude studies that feature the pigment process, a technique underscoring photography's painterly qualities. The highly refined pigment print, which is noteworthy for its dark saturated tones and relief-like layers of velvety blacks offering luminous shadow detail, requires meticulous brushwork to hand-coat photographic paper. While technique alone insufficiently characterizes Drtikol's photographic production it gives us some insight into why these prints are much sought after today. "Étude" depicts a female figure artfully draped with dark cloth. The fashionably bobbed model demurely casts her gaze downwards, imparting a sense of mystery to the image. The angular line of the cloth against the subject's breast and leg recalls an evening gown or long black dress. The photographer pre-visualized this image, carefully composing and lighting the figure to create a "pose plastique" demonstrating an accomplished use of positive and negative space. Rhythms of light and dark not only reference this artist's aesthetic concerns, but also reflect his deep spirituality, which was influenced by Buddhism and esoteric mysticism. The figure, though in repose, has the quiet but unmistakable strength of the Roaring Twenties' new woman, a post-World War I glamorous figure whose short hair, athletic body, and sensual good looks distinguish her from the more classically feminine Victorian type. Drtikol is among the pantheon of photographers-cum-artists who artfully interpreted the nude. A pioneer of the genre was 19th-century American painter Thomas Eakins, whose poetic photographs of nudes--including those depicting himself--are now displayed in museum exhibitions alongside his paintings. In the 1920s both Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston were renowned for their beautiful studies of independent women. Stieglitz's wife, the well known artist Georgia O'Keeffe, was the subject of many intimate portraits, which were taken when the couple lived together in New York. Weston had several muses, including the remarkably talented photographer, Hollywood actress, and political activist Tina Modotti. And, in the following decade, his abstract close-ups of peppers and turnips revealed surprising erotic elements that complemented his pictures of Charis Wilson posing nude on the sand dunes of Oceano, California. And, Man Ray immortalized his Parisian inamorata, KiKi, who was the darling of Montmartre, in several iconic surrealistic images. Like his contemporaries, Drtikol recognized that the fully realized nude study not only held universal appeal, but also addressed the unprecedented roles women were assuming in society. This image is reproduced in Vladimir Birgus's the photographer frantisek drtikol (Prague, 2000), pl. 59, and frantisek drtikol (Odeon, Prague, 1988), pl. 48; and Katerina Klaricova's frantisek drtikol: panorama (Prague, 1989), pl. 91.
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October 21, 2003 12:00 AM EDT
New York, NY, US
Swann Auction Galleries
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