Release Date: March 3, 2011
Lewis Baltz’ Prototypes to be Presented
at the National Gallery of Art, Washington
March 20–July 31, 2011
Lewis Baltz, Monterey, 1967
gelatin silver print
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Lewis Baltz, 1972.218
© Lewis Baltz
Washington, DC— Lewis Baltz’ black-and-white series of photographs called Prototypes will be featured at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from March 20 through July 31, 2011, in the West Building. Lewis Baltz: Prototypes/Ronde de Nuit includes some 60 works that question the transformation of the postwar industrial landscape of America. The exhibition also includes works by Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Serra—artists who inspired Baltz—as well as Baltz’ remarkable 12-panel color mural Ronde de Nuit (1991–1992).
"The Prototypes are among the first photographs to capture the stark forms of minimal and post-minimal art in the world at large and we are pleased to augment the exhibition with key minimalist works from our own collection," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art.
Exhibition Organization and Support
Lewis Baltz: Prototypes/Ronde de Nuit was organized by The Art Institute of Chicago, where it was on view from September 25, 2010, to January 17, 2011.
The exhibition in Washington is made possible through the generous support of the Trellis Fund.
The Exhibition
From 1967 through the early 1970s, the Californian artist Lewis Baltz (born 1945) made a series of photographs that focuses on the sides of warehouse sheds, stucco walls, empty billboards, and other geometric forms; he titled these works Prototypes. Organized throughout five galleries, the exhibition presents the Prototypes as a group for the first time.
Baltz rendered doors, automobiles, and walls strictly parallel to the picture plane, transforming them into shadowless surfaces. Although he made prints with subtle, rich tones, he suppressed details through over- and underexposure. Baltz’ titles provide locations, yet are vague: multiple works are titled Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, and Monterey: each depicts elements of anonymous commercial architecture.
Baltz inked the edges of many of his prints and mounted them so that they project forward from their mat board rather than recede behind it. With this technique, he minimized the illusion of his photographs as "windows on the world" and stressed instead their nature as independent objects.
As a student in the late 1960s, Baltz admired minimal, post-minimal, and conceptual art. Judd, LeWitt, and Serra—three key artists associated with these movements—emphasized the material qualities of a work, seen in the textured surface of the prints Clara Clara I (1985) and Muddy Waters (1986) by Serra, and the sculpture Untitled (1965) by Judd. In the cubic structure Serial Project No. 1 B5 (1969), LeWitt incorporated actual space, calling it and other works "open" because the viewer can see through and around them. The goals of abstraction as well as an awareness of the space surrounding a work of art are also at the root of Baltz’ Prototypes.
Dramatically different in scale and appearance from the Prototypes, Ronde de Nuit (1991–1992) is a 12-part mural-sized tableau of surveillance sites and the people who work in them. For Ronde de Nuit, Baltz was given access to a rural French police station and allowed to direct its multiple surveillance cameras. The title for this 35-foot-long piece, originally shown in a darkened passageway in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, is the French translation of Rembrandt’s title for his monumental painting Night Watch (1642). The work reveals Baltz’ continued preoccupation with industrially manufactured environments and how they are used to control contemporary society.
Lewis Baltz
Baltz is best known for the 1974 book New Industrial Parks (published by the Leo Castelli Gallery) and is generally associated with the New Topographics movement, christened after a 1975 photography exhibition of that title at the George Eastman House. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and received a master of fine arts from Claremont Graduate School in 1971. He is currently based in Paris and Venice.
Curators and Catalogue
The exhibition is curated by Matthew S. Witkovsky, curator and chair, department of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is coordinated at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, by Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head, department of photographs.
Published by Steidl, in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition catalogue includes an essay by Witkovsky. The 188-page catalogue is available for purchase in the Gallery Shops in hardcover. To order, please visit our website at shop.nga.gov; call (800) 697-9350 or (202) 842-6002; fax (202) 789-3047; or e-mail mailorder@nga.gov.
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