Richard Avedon, like the subjects of his boldly scaled photographic portraits, is a figure who may at times appear larger than life. In a career that has spanned more than half a century, he has distinguished himself as an artist of immense energy and originality and has created many of the iconic images of our time. Avedon first made his name in the pages of Harper's Bazaar, where his arresting images set a new standard for fashion photography. His fashion photography was the subject of a major exhibition, "Avedon: Photographs, 1947–1977," presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1978. An equal achievement has been his reinvention of the genre of photographic portraiture. Unlike the fashion work, most of Avedon's portraits were not initiated by commercial assignments but by personal conviction. Each is a virtuoso reckoning with human complexities and contradictions and a powerful expression of this artist's distinctive vision.
As is the case with any genuine innovation, much of the best, most recent art is not easy to absorb. To some viewers, Avedon's signature white-background portrait style, with its sharp clarity and unforgiving light, may seem difficult or astringent. In his refusal to flatter or idealize, he carries on a tradition of unflinching naturalism that began with fifteenth-century Netherlandish masters and shares with them an abiding humanism and a clear-eyed commitment to the physical realities of this world.
Avedon's portrait work constitutes a modern-day pantheon of many of the major artistic, intellectual, and political figures of the late twentieth-century, and, as such, it belongs to the time-honored tradition of public portraiture. Much like the great nineteenth-century French photographer, Nadar, whose telling portraits of rare individuals captured the creative genius of his generation, so Avedon, a century later, collected the key players and directed them in a brilliant portrait of an era that was questioning, unruly, and self-consciously alive. With Avedon, photography is the instrument of an engaged and liberal sensibility and occasionally the naturalism of his portraits takes on a satirical edge that also brings the caricaturist Honoré Daumier to mind.
The most important exhibition of Avedon's portraits was held in 1975 at the Marlborough Gallery in New York, where the photographs were presented in a stunning installation designed by the artist in collaboration with his close friend, the art director Marvin Israel. The force of the spare portraits, the scope of the artist's endeavor, and the enormous size of the three central group portrait murals created an indelible impression, forcing visitors to contend with the personalities who so vividly confronted them on the gallery walls. Two years ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art had the great good fortune to receive as a promised gift the contents of that exhibition, which the artist had retained in its entirety. We extend our deep gratitude to the artist for his exceptional generosity and to his gallerist, Jeffrey Fraenkel, who was highly instrumental in bringing this historic body of work to the Museum.
A native New Yorker, Avedon has always had a special connection to the Metropolitan Museum. As a young man, he spent hours in our paintings galleries, especially taken with works by Goya, Soutine, and Modigliani. He was also drawn to Egyptian art, and in particular, the Fayum portraits, painted panels dating from the first century A.D. that were inserted into mummy wrappings. In these ancient faces, he perhaps first recognized the mysterious power of the art of portraiture.
Maria Morris Hambourg, curator in charge of the Metropolitan's Department of Photographs, was among those who visited Avedon's 1975 exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery. The impetus for the exhibition that accompanies this book was her desire to make that experience available to a broader audience and a new generation of viewers. Rather than simply recreating that installation, she has chosen to present those original, carefully printed photographs as the core of a full-scale survey of Avedon's portrait work. Over the course of his prodigious career, Avedon has produced thousands of portraits, and shaping this exhibition has been a rigorous and rewarding process. Working closely with the artist, Dr. Hambourg has gathered the finest existing prints of his most penetrating images. This highly refined and discerning view gives Avedon his proper place in the larger history of the art of portraiture. In presenting this pantheon of portraits, which is both fully representative of its period and one of its remarkable achievements, we hope that today's public will gain an enlightening glimpse of our own time as it may look to future generations.
Begin "Avedon's Endgame," an essay from the exhibition publication, Richard Avedon: Portraits (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2002).
Director's Foreword from the exhibition publication, Richard Avedon: Portraits (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2002), available in the online Met Store
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