Watch a video interview with Andrea Rosen, curator of Under the Surface: Surrealist Photography, produced by student assistant to the curator Kiyomi Mino ’16. My Favorite Objects in “Under the Surface: Surrealist Photography” from Bowdoin Art Museum on Vimeo. Related posts: Grete Stern, Dream 28, 1951 Frederick Sommer, Max Ernst, 1946 Frederick Sommer, Max Ernst, […]
Frederick Sommer, Max Ernst, 1946
by Andrea Rosen, Curator of Under the Surface. In Frederick Sommer’s portrait of the surrealist painter Max Ernst, the subject both emerges from and is fused with the textured background, in ways that recall some of Ernst’s own techniques, such as collage and frottage (a rubbing over a textured surface). Sommer achieved this effect through the […]
Frederick Sommer, Max Ernst, 1946
by Jordan Goldberg ’14. I found Frederick Sommer’s portrait of Max Ernst to be extremely compelling. Formed by overlaying the negatives of the portrait of the artist and a photograph of a concrete wall, the composite result displays a confusion of perspective that plays very interestingly with shallowness and depth and creates a disjunction through […]
Frederick Sommer, Max Ernst, 1946
by Walter Wuthmann ’14. At first glance, Frederick Sommer’s photograph, Max Ernst, 1946, looks like an incredibly well-painted mural. Some of the body is wearing away; white streaks carry his skin down the wall like rain damage; the roughness of the wall bubbles up through his skin, implying time and weather and wear. His eyes remain […]