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==Major Collections==
==Major Collections==


[http://www.artic.edu/ The Art Institute of Chicago] holds the [http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/IrvingPennArchives/overview Irving Penn Paper and Photographic Archives], which were donated to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries and the Department of Photography in 1995. In addition, the Art Institute of Chicago has more than 200 of Penn's [http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/artist/Penn%2C+Irving fine art prints] in its collection, and has mounted several exhibitions of work by the artist including the retrospective ''Irving Penn: A Career in Photography'' (1997–98) which traveled internationally as well as ''Irving Penn: Underfoot'' (2013).
[[The Art Institute of Chicago]] holds the Irving Penn Paper and Photographic Archives], which were donated to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries and the Department of Photography in 1995. In addition, the Art Institute of Chicago has more than 200 of Penn's fine art prints in its collection, and has mounted several exhibitions of work by the artist including the retrospective ''Irving Penn: A Career in Photography'' (1997–98) which traveled internationally as well as ''Irving Penn: Underfoot'' (2013).


The permanent collection of the [[Smithsonian American Art Museum]] possesses a silver gelatin print of Penn's ''The Tarot Reader'', a photograph from 1949 of Jean Patchett and [[surrealism|surrealist]] [[Painting|painter]] [[Bridget Bate Tichenor|Bridget Tichenor]].<ref name="Irving Penn">[http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=19489 The Tarot Reader (Jean Patchett and Bridget Tichenor) - New York 1949 by Irving Penn SAAM]</ref>
The permanent collection of the [[Smithsonian American Art Museum]] possesses a silver gelatin print of Penn's ''The Tarot Reader'', a photograph from 1949 of Jean Patchett and [[surrealism|surrealist]] [[Painting|painter]] [[Bridget Bate Tichenor|Bridget Tichenor]].<ref name="Irving Penn">[http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=19489 The Tarot Reader (Jean Patchett and Bridget Tichenor) - New York 1949 by Irving Penn SAAM]</ref>

Revision as of 13:11, 24 June 2013

Irving Penn
Born(1917-06-16)June 16, 1917
Plainfield, New Jersey
DiedOctober 7, 2009(2009-10-07) (aged 92)
New York
OccupationPhotographer
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1950⁠–⁠1992)​
ChildrenTom Penn
RelativesArthur Penn (brother)

Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009[1]) was an American photographer most known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn's career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake, and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally, and continues to inform the art of photography even after his death.

Biography

Irving Penn was born on June 16, 1917 in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Harry Penn and Sonia Greenberg. In 1922, Irving Penn's younger brother, Arthur Penn, was born, who would go on to become a film director and producer.

Irving Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) from 1934 to 1938, where he studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch. While still a student, Penn worked under Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar, where several of Penn's drawings were published.

Irving Penn worked for two years as a freelance designer and making his first amateur photographs before taking Brodovitch's position as the art director at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1940. Penn remained at Saks Fifth Avenue for a year before leaving to spend a year painting and taking photographs in Mexico and across the US.

When Irving Penn returned to New York, Alexander Liberman offered him a position as an associate in the Vogue magazine Art Department, where Penn worked on layout before Liberman asked him to try his hand at photography for the magazine.[2]

Irving Penn's first photographed cover for Vogue magazine appeared in October 1943 and Penn continued to work at the magazine throughout his career, photographing covers, portraits, still lifes, fashion, and photographic essays.

In the 1950s, Penn founded his own studio in New York and began making advertising photographs. Over the years, Penn's list of clients grew to include General Foods, De Beers, Issey Miyake, and Clinique.[3]

Irving Penn met fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives at a photo shoot in 1947.[4][5] In 1950, the two married at Chelsea Register Office, and two years later Lisa gave birth to their son, Tom Penn, who would go on to become a metal designer.[5] Lisa Fonssagrives died in 1992.

Irving Penn died aged 92 on October 7, 2009 at his home in Manhattan.[6][7]

Photography

While perhaps best known for his fashion photography, Irving Penn's repertoire also includes portraits of creative greats; ethnographic photographs from around the world; Modernist still lifes of food, bones, bottles, metal, found objects, etc.; and stunning scenes from photographic travel essays. That said, his fashion photography is paramount to his career, and his creative eye helped to shape the post-World War II feminine chic and glamour photography of the mid-twentieth century.

Penn was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and used this simplicity more effectively than other photographers. Expanding his austere studio surroundings, Penn constructed a set of upright angled backdrops, to form a stark, acute corner. Subjects photographed with this technique included Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky.

Penn's still life compositions are skillfully arranged assemblages of food or objects—at once spare and highly-organized, the objects articulate the abstract interplay of line and volume. All of Penn's photographs are composed with a great attention to detail, which continues into his craft of developing and making prints of his photographs. Penn experimented with many printing techniques, including prints made on aluminum sheets coated with a platinum emulsion rendering the image with a warmth and maturity that untoned silver prints lacked.[8] His black and white prints are notable for their deep contrast, giving them a clean, crisp feel.

While steeped in the Modernist tradition, Penn also ventured beyond creative boundaries. The exhibition of Earthly Bodies consisted of series of posed nudes whose physical shapes range from thin to plump; while the photographs were taken in 1949-1950, they were not put on exhibit until 1980, perhaps in part because of questions about the public reception of the graphic representations of the female nude.

Exhibition History

  • 1975: Irving Penn: Recent Works, Photographs of Cigarettes, Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • 1975: I Platini di Irving Penn: 25 Anni di Fotografia, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Turin
  • 1975: Irving Penn: Platinum Plates, Photographer's Gallery, London
  • 1977: Irving Penn: Street Material. Photographs in Platinum Metals, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • 1977: Irving Penn: Photographs in Platinum Metals—Images 1947–1975, Marlborough Gallery, New York
  • 1980: Exhibition at the Center for Visual Arts, Oakland, California
  • 1981: Earthly Bodies: 76 Photographs of the Female Nude, Negatives and Silver Prints Made in 1949–1950, Marlborough Gallery, New York
  • 1982: Irving Penn: Recent Still Life: Negatives 1979–1980, Prints in Platinum Metals 1980–1982, Marlborough Gallery, New York
  • 1984: Irving Penn, a retrospective, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • 1986: Irving Penn: Printemps des arts de Monte Carlo, Monte Carlo
  • 1989: Irving Penn: Cranium Architecture, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
  • 1990: Irving Penn: Master Images, National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
  • 1990: Irving Penn, Other Ways of Being: 100 Photographs 1948–1971, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
  • 1990: Irving Penn: Platinum Test Material, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
  • 1994: Irving Penn: Collection Privée/Privatsammlung, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Fribourg, Switzerland
  • 1995: Irving Penn Photographs: A Donation in Memory of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, Moderna Museet, Stockholm
  • 1996: Irving Penn: Fringes, PaceWildensteinMacGill, Los Angeles
  • 1997: Le Bain: Dancers' Workshop od San Francisco, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris
  • 1997: Irving Penn: A Career in Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago
  • 1999: New and Unseen, PaceWildenstein, New York
  • 1999: Process, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
  • 2001: Irving Penn: Objects (Still Lifes) for the Printed Page, Museum Folkwang, Essen
  • 2002: Dancer: 1999 Nudes by Irving Penn, Whitnew Museum of American Art, New York
  • 2002: Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn's Nudes, 1949–1950, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • 2002: Irving Penn: Still Life in Color, 1947–2001, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
  • 2004: Dahomey (1967), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
  • 2005: Irving Penn: Platinum Prints, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • 2008: Close Encounters, Morgan Library & Museum, New York
  • 2009: The Small Trades, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles:[9] a collection of 252 full-length portraits by Penn from 1950 to 1951
  • 2010: Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (London): an exhibit of over 120 portraits of people from the worlds of literature, music and the visual and performing arts
  • 2012: Irving Penn: Diverse Worlds, Museum of Modern Art (Moderna Museet), Malmö, Sweden

Major Collections

The Art Institute of Chicago holds the Irving Penn Paper and Photographic Archives], which were donated to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries and the Department of Photography in 1995. In addition, the Art Institute of Chicago has more than 200 of Penn's fine art prints in its collection, and has mounted several exhibitions of work by the artist including the retrospective Irving Penn: A Career in Photography (1997–98) which traveled internationally as well as Irving Penn: Underfoot (2013).

The permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum possesses a silver gelatin print of Penn's The Tarot Reader, a photograph from 1949 of Jean Patchett and surrealist painter Bridget Tichenor.[10]

Quotations

"Photographing a cake can be art" —Irving Penn.[11]
"A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it; it is in one word, effective." —Irving Penn.
"Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world. ...Very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe." —Irving Penn, 1975.

Bibliography

Books by Penn

  • (2004) A Notebook at Random (ISBN 0-8212-6192-4)
  • (2004) Photographs of Dahomey (ISBN 3-7757-1449-9)
  • (2001) Still Life (ISBN 0-8212-2702-5)
  • (1999) Drawings (ISBN 0-9665480-0-0)
  • (1999) The Astronomers Plan a Voyage to Earth (ISBN 0-9665480-1-9)
  • (1999) Irving Penn Regards The Work of Issey Miyake (ISBN 0-224-05966-1)
  • (1991) Passage (ISBN 0-679-40491-0)
  • (1980) Flowers (ISBN 0-517-540746)
  • (1977) Inventive Paris Clothes, 1909–1939 (ISBN 0-670-40067-X)
  • (1974) Worlds in a Small Room (ISBN 670-79025-7)
  • (1960) Moments Preserved

Books about Penn

  • (2010) Irving Penn Portraits (ISBN 978-1-85514-417-0)
  • (2009) Irving Penn: Small Trades (ISBN 978-0-89236-996-6)
  • (2005) Irving Penn: Platinum Prints. Sarah Greenough, David Summers (ISBN 0-300-10906-7)
  • (2002) Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn's Nudes, 1949-50. by Irving Penn, Maria Morris Hambourg, Metropolitan Museum of Art (ISBN 0-8212-2787-4)
  • (1997) Irving Penn : A Career in Photography. Colin Westerbeck (ISBN 0-8212-2459-X)

References

  1. ^ Grundberg, Andy (2009-10-07). "Irving Penn, Fashion Photographer, Is Dead at 92". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
  2. ^ Penn, Irving (1991). Passage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 5. ISBN 0-679-40491-0.
  3. ^ Greenough, Sarah (2005). Irving Penn Platinum Prints. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 167–170. ISBN 0-300-10906-7.
  4. ^ "Obituary: Irving Penn". Telegraph. 2009-10-08.
  5. ^ a b Fraser, Kennedy (July 2007). "The Mighty Penn". Vogue.
  6. ^ New York Times obituary by Andy Grundberg, October 8, 2009
  7. ^ Washington Post obituary by Adam Bernstein and T. Rees Shapiro, October 8, 2009
  8. ^ Greenough, Sarah (2005). Irving Penn Platinum Prints. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 5–20. ISBN 0-300-10906-7.
  9. ^ "Irving Penn: Small Trades". Retrieved 23 March 2012.
  10. ^ The Tarot Reader (Jean Patchett and Bridget Tichenor) - New York 1949 by Irving Penn SAAM
  11. ^ quoted from http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/irving_penn.htm

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