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Photographs curator Jeff Rosenheim discusses
the charged meaning of the bedroom, and its
resonance in all stages of life.
I'm Jeff Rosenheim, I'm a curator of photographs, and my topic is "The Bedroom."
The bedroom is the most intimate space there is. It's
probably our earliest memory. It's the deep structure in which we
live our life. It's a place of repose and it's a place of
excitement. It's where we share our secrets and where we hide them.
It's tinged with almost every emotion we have.
The poetics of space draws me to period rooms, especially bedrooms. The bed is like a trophy. Someone said to me
and I believe it, that you can imagine someone sleeping in that bed and waking up being blue, in a good sense.
Those rooms' emptiness is part of their beauty. And of course the emptiness is filled by the attention you pay to it. Great artists have always, I think, turned emptiness into somethingness.
I'm taken by Walker Evans's picture of a boarding house that John Cheever, his friend, the writer, was living in right in the middle of the worst parts of the Depression. The bed is sunken, and there's a little bit of light coming through the window, but it's pretty harsh. These guys were broke and trying to survive. Walker Evans did try to get into the inner sanctum of somebody's life.
The picture of Floyd and Allie-May Burroughs's bed is extraordinary for me. It's an iron bed, it's been pulled away from being parallel to the wall, and there's a shotgun sitting on a peg on the wall right above it. It's a perfect, spectrally white space surrounded by raw wood. And I do think about the lives of these individuals.
The bed fits into the narrative. It is about birth. It's where things begin.
And it's also where things end. There's a great
Lee Friedlander photograph of his motel room. He's on the bed and he's looking out across the mattress. What he sees is the television, the altar at the foot of the bed, and on TV is a child and that suggestion about where life comes from.
On the other hand, Mondrian turned, in the '20s, his apartment and studio into a work of art. He painted all the furniture white, he painted the walls gray, and every so often he would paint red cardboard panels and place them around. And the bed, which is this soft organic form in this rectilinear, hard-edged, modernist space, is clearly a prop in a work of art that is his apartment. I cannot imagine sex happening in Mondrian's studio.
Diane Arbus made a picture of a blind couple. You enter the space through the foot of the bed, and at the very end of the bed, in the darkness below this blaze of light that's coming through the window is the couple, looking out at us, unable to see us. The way the bed sits and floats, it's a kind of pool. And there's very little in the bedroom. It deals with issues of tranquility and solitude.
The suggestiveness of intimacies in space makes bedrooms pregnant with emotion and desire, in a word voyeur. We're glancing in at something that's very intimate and private.
Nan Goldin, she's revealing herself in her own bedroom. We feel the beauty of the tension of any sexual relationship, what she called, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency."
There's a whole surrealism around beds. Christian Bérard never got out of bed. He suggested that he could live his entire life in bed.
For me, a bedroom is a dreamscape. It's about the beauty of the flesh and the potential for life. It is tinged with this wonderful thing that artists allow us
which is to enter a space that is hidden and is filled with life.
It's about memory, it's about familiarity. I
have to bring to it the things that I know and feel
the exploration of my own life.
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Works of art in order of appearanceLast Updated: June 22, 2015. Not all works of art in the Museum's collection may be on view on a particular day. For the most accurate location information, please check this page on the day of your visit. |
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The Bridal Chamber of Herse ca. 1550 Workshop of Willem de Pannemaker (Flemish) Made/manufactured: Brussels, Southern Netherlands Wool, silk, silver, silver-gilt thread Bequest of George Blumenthal, 1941 (41.190.135) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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The Birth of Cupid Master of Flora (Italian, Fontainebleau) Oil on wood Rogers Fund, 1941 (41.48) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Woman with a Water Pitcher, and a Man by a Bed ("The Maidservant") ca. 1667–70 Pieter de Hooch (Dutch) Oil on canvas The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1931 (32.100.15) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Radha and Krishna on a Bed at Night ca. 1830 India (Punjab Hills, Sirmur) Ink and opaque watercolor on paper Gift of Cynthia Hazen Polsky, 1985 (1985.398.13) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Bedroom from Sagredo Palace, Venice 18th century (ca. 1718) Stuccowork probably by Abbondio Stazio of Massagno and Carpoforo Mazzetti; ceiling painting probably by Gaspare Diziani of Belluno Italian (Venice) Wood, stucco, marble, glass Rogers Fund, 1906 (06.1335.1a–d) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Boiserie From the Hôtel Lauzun ca. 1770, with one modern panel French (Paris) Painted oak and plaster (the painting modern); gilt-bronze, mirror-glass, painted canvas overdoors, oak flooring, etc. Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift, 1976 (1976.91.1) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Architectural elements from North Family Dwelling, New Lebanon, New York ca. 1830–40 New Lebanon, New York American Wood Purchase, 1972 (1972.187.1) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Hudson Street Boarding House Detail, New York 1931–33 Walker Evans (American) Gelatin silver print Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1993 (1993.361) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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[Part of the Bedroom of Floyd Burroughs's Cabin, Hale County, Alabama] 1936 Walker Evans (American) Gelatin silver print Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1999 (1999.35) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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The Annunciation ca. 1525 Joos van Cleve (Netherlandish) Oil on wood The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1931 (32.100.60) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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The Death of Socrates 1787 Jacques-Louis David (French) Oil on canvas Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1931 (31.45) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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T.V. in Hotel Room, Galax, Virginia 1962, printed 1973 Lee Friedlander (American) Gelatin silver print Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1990 (1990.1009.1) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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[A Corner of Mondrian's Studio with Bed, Stool, Curtain, and Mirrors] 1926 André Kertész (American, born Hungary) Gelatin silver print Gift of Harry Holtzman, 1986 (1986.1225.2) © Estate of André Kertész, All Rights Reserved. More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Blind couple in their bedroom, Queens, N.Y. 1971 Diane Arbus (American) Gelatin silver print Purchase, Joyce Frank Menschel, and Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gifts; Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest; and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Family Foundation, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, Diana Barrett and Robert Vila, Elizabeth S. and Robert J. Fisher, Charlotte and Bill Ford, Lita Annenberg Hazen Charitable Trust and Hazen Polsky Foundation Inc., Jennifer and Joseph Duke, Jennifer and Philip Maritz, Saundra B. Lane, The Jerry and Emily Spiegel Family Foundation and Pamela and Arthur Sanders, Anonymous, and The Judith Rothschild Foundation Gifts, 2007 (2007.520) © 2003 Estate of Diane Arbus LLC More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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[Nude with a Mask] ca. 1912 E. J. Bellocq (American) Gelatin silver print Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005 (2005.100.130) © The Estate of E.J. Bellocq, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC 1983 Nan Goldin (American) Silver dye bleach print Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2001 (2001.627) © 1983 Nan Goldin More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Christian Bérard, First Hotel, Paris 1932, printed 1946 Henri Cartier-Bresson (French) Gelatin silver print Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987 (1987.1100.179) © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Scene from "The Ivy" (Yadogiri), chapter 49 of the Tale of Genji Edo period, early 17th century Studio of Tawaraya Sôtatsu (Japanese) Hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on paper Gift of Chizuko and Frank Korn, in honor of Miyeko Murase, 2006 (2006.570) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Glass Panel with Death Bed Scene early 16th century Made in, probably Brussels Flemish Pot-metal glass and vitreous paint Gift of Mrs. Lucy Lawrence Hutchinson and Mrs. Gladys Lawrence Hubbard, in memory of their father, Henry C. Lawrence, 1921 (21.27.2) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Room from the Hart House 1680 Ipswich, Massachusetts Munsey Fund, 1936 (36.127) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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