Avant-garde photographers generally were not much interested in landscape, a genre associated with pastoral and sublime notions. Rodchenko characteristically found the natural setting of his country house accidental and unorganized: "A bush here, a tree there, a gully, nettles." There seemed nothing to make a photograph from, he wrote, until he looked up to see the trees towering above him "like telephone poles." His raking shot from below proposes vertigo instead of a sylvan calm, a dynamic alternative to the traditional horizons of the landscape view.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Pine Trees in Pushkin Park
Artist:Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, St. Petersburg 1891–1956 Moscow)
Date:1927
Medium:Gelatin silver print
Dimensions:29.3 x 23.4 cm (11 9/16 x 9 3/16 in.)
Classification:Photographs
Credit Line:Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
Accession Number:1987.1100.5
Inscription: Signed and inscribed on print, verso LC: "ALEXANDER RODCZENKO // 1925"; stamped on print, verso UL: "[Cyrillic "f"] OTO // A.M.P [illegible] [Cyrillic letter] 4EHKO"; inscribed on print, verso UC: ""Coena" 1925r";
[Robert Shapazian to Waddell, January 14, 1986]; John C. Waddell
Negative date: 1927 or before. Variants: See "Novy lef", Number 7, 1927.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 23–December 31, 1989.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 28–April 22, 1990.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 10–July 15, 1990.
High Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 5–April 28, 1991.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 8–August 4, 1991.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Johnson Gallery, Selections from the Collection 3," October 3, 1993–March 1, 1994.
IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia. "The New Vision, IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia," January 20, 1995–March 26, 1995.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Johnson Gallery, Selections from the Collection 37," March 8–June 28, 2004.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Selections from the Permanent Collection - Johnson Rotation 77," February 22–May 13, 2019.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Photography between the Wars: Selections from the Ford Motor Company Collection." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Spring 1988). p. 24.
Hambourg, Maria Morris. The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 119.
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, St. Petersburg 1891–1956 Moscow)
1935
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