THE FIRST MUSEUM RETROSPECTIVE OF THE INFLUENTIAL PHOTOGRAPHER’S 35-YEAR CAREER
The Museum of Modern Art announces Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness, the first retrospective devoted to Christopher Williams (American, b. 1956), spanning the 35-year career of one of the most influential cinephilic artists working in photography. Organized by MoMA in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition brings together about 100 works that engage the conventions of photojournalism, picture archives, and commercial imagery, presented within their sociopolitical contexts. Williams has pursued an artistic direction that examines the theoretical and political history of photography within the larger context of image production. On view from August 2 through November 2, 2014, in the International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness is organized at MoMA by Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator, with Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography.
Christopher Williams (American, born 1956). Erratum / AGFA Color (oversaturated) / Camera: Robertson Process Model 31 580 Serial #F97-116 / Lens: Apo Nikkor 455 mm stopped down to f90 / Lighting: 16,000 Watts Tungsten 3200 degrees Kelvin / Film: Kodak Plus-X Pan ASA 125 / Kodak Pan Masking for contrast and colour correction / Film developer: Kodak HC-110 Dilution B (1:7) used @ 68 degrees Fahrenheit / Exposure and development times (in minutes): / Exposure Development / Red Filter Kodak Wratten PM25 2´30˝ 4´40˝ / Green Filter Kodak Wratten PM61 10´20˝ 3´30˝ / Blue Filter Kodak Wratten PM47B 7´00˝ 7´00˝ / Paper: Fujicolor Crystal Archive Type C Glossy / Chemistry: Kodak RA-4 / Processor: Tray. 2000. Chromogenic color print. Paper: 14 × 11″ (35.6 × 27.9 cm); framed: 29 3/4 × 25 3/8″ (75.6 × 64.5 cm). Kravis Collection. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne © Christopher Williams
The exhibition is presently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through May 18; and after its presentation at MoMA, the exhibition travels to Whitechapel Gallery, London.
Williams studied at the California Institute of the Arts from the mid to late 1970s under the first wave of West Coast Conceptual artists, including Michael Asher, John Baldessari, and Douglas Huebler, eventually becoming one of his generation’s leading Conceptualists and art professors—he is currently professor of photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Deeply invested in the histories of photography and film, Williams has produced a concise oeuvre that furthers a critique of late capitalist society in which images typically function as agents of spectacle. For the title of this exhibition, Williams has taken a line from a documentary by French director Jean-Luc Godard in which an amateur filmmaker compares his daily job as a factory worker with his hobby of editing his films of the Swiss countryside as “the production line of happiness.” In Williams’s hands the phrase appears to refer to the function of much photography in postwar consumer society, in which it not only pictures but also produces so many experiences and objects to be consumed.
Christopher Williams (American, born 1956). Mustafa Kinte (Gambia) / Camera: Makina 67 506347 / Plaubel Feinmechanik und Optik GmbH / Borsigallee 37 / 60388 Frankfurt am Main, Germany / Shirt: Van Laack Shirt Kent 64 / 41061 Mönchengladbach, Germany / Dirk Schaper Studio, Berlin / July 20, 2007. 2007. Gelatin silver print, paper: 20 × 16″ (50.8 × 40.6 cm); framed: 33 3/4 × 29 1/4″ (85.7 × 74.3 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, restricted gift of Artworkers Retirement Society, 2013.1097. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne © Christopher Williams
The Production Line of Happiness welcomes visitors with an installation of extensive vinyl “supergraphics” covering the walls outside the exhibition space. These supergraphics, in black letters on a red oversaturated AGFA color ground, feature elements taken from the exhibition catalogue, such as the checklist, graphics, and selected writings—so that the show appears to unfold from the book. The exhibition presents Williams’s early and little-seen Super-8 shorts, and major projects from the 1980s to the early 1990s, such as: SOURCE (1981), a work of appropriation and re-photography that subverts conventions of photojournalism; Angola to Vietnam* (1987–89), an installation of 27 photographs crossing taxonomies of scientific and political inquiry, which is being shown in its entirety for the first time in the United States in decades; and Bouquet for Bas Jan Ader and Christopher D’Arcangelo (1991), a single photographic still life of a bouquet mounted on a free-standing wall just beyond the main wall of a room, which pays tribute to two under-recognized artists from the 1960s and 1970s who met tragic ends. Williams calls art a dialogical exercise, each work forming part of a conversation with other artists and traditions, in his case with Neue Sachlichkeit,photo-Conceptualism, and the films of Godard, Harun Farocki, Georges Franju, and Jean Painlevé, among others. Other photographs in the exhibition include images of works by artists Claes Oldenburg, John Chamberlain, and Daniel Buren.
Christopher Williams (American, born 1956). Pacific Sea Nettle / Chrysaora Melanaster / Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific / 100 Aquarium Way, Long Beach, California / July 9, 2008. 2009. Pigmented inkjet print. Paper: 14 x 14″ (35.6 x 35.6 cm); framed: 28 3/4 x 28 1/4″ (73 x 71.8 cm). Collection of Constance R. Caplan. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne © Christopher Williams
Christopher Williams (American, born 1956). Bergische Bauernscheune, Junkersholz / Leichlingen, September 29th, 2009. 2010. Pigmented inkjet print. Paper: 20 x 24″ (50.8 x 61 cm); framed: 32 7/8 x 37 1/16″ (83.5 x 94.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Photography Fund. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne © Christopher Williams
From 1993 until 2001, Williams worked on a single photographic series known as For Example: Die Welt ist schön (The World Is Beautiful), which he describes as an “essay on modernity and modernization.” One inspiration for the series is Albert Renger-Patzsch’s 1928 book Die Welt ist schön, which contains 100 pictures of natural and human creations. Similarly, Williams’s series brings together various subjects in the world—Japanese models who have undergoneWestern-style hair and makeup changes; a tropical beach in Cuba, carefully maintained for foreigners; a travel poster with International Style buildings constructed in Africa; an overturned Renault recalling the student unrest in Paris—to address the aftereffects of decolonization, histories of avant-garde art, and the radicalism of May 1968. Like Renger-Patzsch, Williams attempts to create an atlas of the world while enacting a critique of photography’s role in the history of the Cold War that defined much of the second half of 20th century.
Christopher Williams (American, born 1956). Weimar Lux CDS, VEB Feingerätewerk Weimar / Price 86.50 Mark GDR / Filmempfindlichkeitsbereich 9 bis 45 DIN und 6 bis 25000 ASA / Blendenskala 0,5 bis 45, Zeitskala 1/4000 Sekunde bis 8 Stunden, ca. 1980 / Models: Ellena Borho and Christoph Boland / November 12, 2010. 2010. Pigmented inkjet print. Paper: 24 x 20″ (61 x 50.8 cm); framed: 37 1/2 x 32 1/2″ (95.3 x 82.6 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Photography Associates, James and Karen Frank, and Comer Foundation funds, 2011.318. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne © Christopher Williams
In the last decade, Williams has worked on another major series, For Example: Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle (Eighteen Lessons on Industrial Society), which takes its title from the 1962 book by French sociologist Raymond Aron, a study of modes of production in Fordist capitalism and Soviet planned economy. The series puts photography itself at its core, featuring numerous images of precision optics: sectioned cameras, lenses, photographic color- charts, analogue darkrooms, and light meters isolated against pristine backgrounds like fetish objects. The focus, this time, is the photographic apparatus and image culture across Europe and America during and in the aftermath of the Cold War. There are also pictures of socks, tires, chocolate bars, bricks, and apples, reflecting Williams’s fascination with German painting of the early 1960s (including the Capitalist Realist phases of Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and Konrad Lueg), which engaged the consumer culture of mass-mediasociety with a sense of ambivalence.
Christopher Williams (American, born 1956). Fachhochschule Aachen / Fachbereich Gestaltung / Studiengang: Visuelle Kommunikation / Fotolabor für Studenten / Boxgraben 100, Aachen / November 8, 2010. 2010. Pigmented inkjet print. Paper: 24 x 20″ (61 x 50.8 cm); framed: 38 1/4 x 33″ (97.2 x 83.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Photography Fund. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne © Christopher Williams
This ambivalence is reflected in Williams’s pictures, which emulate regular advertisements, but include deliberate imperfections or irritations. Employing an auteurist approach in his studio practice, Williams has continued to raise questions about representation and photography’s historical role in the formation of the society of spectacle.
Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness is an illuminating and unusual volume, equal parts artist’s book and exhibition catalogue. With a trio of essays by Mark Godfrey, Curator, Tate Modern; Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Matthew S. Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator, Department of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago, the book explores Williams’s engagement with his artistic peers and predecessors, with cinema (particularly the film-essay),and with the methods and modes of display and publicity in the art world. These contributions are “interrupted” by a transcript of a talk Williams delivered on the work of John Chamberlain, and additional historical and contemporary textual and visual materials that were selected by the artist himself. An exhibition history, bibliography, and illustrated list of works round out the publication. Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness is published and distributed by Yale University Press. It is available at the MoMA Stores and online at MoMAstore.com. 186 pages; 100 illustrations. PB- with jacket, $45. ISBN: 9780300203905.
Christopher Williams (American, born 1956). Fig. 4: Changing the shutter speed / Exakta Varex IIa / 35 mm film SLR camera / Manufactured by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co, Dresden, German Democratic Republic / Body serial no. 979625 (Production period: 1960–1963) / Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar / 50mm f/2.8 lens / Manufactured by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena, Jena, / German Democratic Republic / Serial no. 8034351 (Production period: 1967–1970) / Model: Christoph Boland / Studio Thomas Borho, Oberkasseler Str. 39, Düsseldorf, Germany / June 19, 2012. 2012. Pigmented inkjet print. Paper: 24 x 20″ (61 x 50.8 cm), framed: 37 3/8 x 33 3/8″ (94.8 x 84.7 cm). Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne © Christopher Williams
Major support for the MoMA presentation of the exhibition is provided by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation and by The William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund. Additional funding is provided by The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art and by the MoMA Annual Exhibition Fund.
Carte Blanche: Christopher Williams
July 23–29 and September 15–21,2014 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters. In conjunction with MoMA’s Christopher Williams retrospective, the artist has selected experimental, avant-garde films that have informed his practice. The two-week film program is organized for MoMA’s Carte Blanche screening series.
Filed under: Arts & Culture, Museums & Exhibitions, Photography Tagged: b. 1956), Christopher Williams (American, Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness, The Museum of Modern Art