Published by Radius Books/Howard Greenberg Gallery. Introduction by Gregory Heisler.
Published to coincide with the centennial of Arnold Newman's birth, Arnold Newman: One Hundred offers a celebratory look at 100 of the photographer's most provocative and memorable images. Arnold Newman is widely renowned for pioneering and popularizing the environmental portrait. He placed his sitters in surroundings representative of their professions, aiming to capture the essence of an individual's life and work. Though this approach is commonplace today, his technique was highly unconventional in the 1930s when he began shooting his subjects. His environmental approach to portraiture was influenced by symbolism and impressionism, and defined by the imperative of captivating the viewer no matter how well known the subject was. While he specialized in photographing artists, Newman captured the likenesses of a vast range of figures, from athletes and actors to presidents and politicians, including Marlene Dietrich, John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Mickey Mantle and Audrey Hepburn.
Born in New York City in 1918, Arnold Newman grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Miami Beach, Florida. He began his career in photography working at portrait studios in Philadelphia, Baltimore and West Palm Beach, while making abstract and documentary photographs on his own. While socializing with students at what was then called the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts, he was introduced to an experimental approach to portraiture encouraged by Alexey Brodovitch. In 1941, Beaumont Newhall and Alfred Stieglitz discovered his work and gave him an exhibition at the A.D. Gallery. Newman was an important contributor to publications such as the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Life, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, New York Times Magazine and many others. He died in New York in 2006.
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Edited by Pierre Bonhomme, Michael Juul Holm and Lars Schwander. Foreword by Poul Erik TØjner. Introduction by Pierre Borhan. Afterword Lars Schwander.
Arnold Newman is a master of the environmental portrait, the portrait that takes its subject's surroundings as a crucial, integral element to the portrayal of the person himself. (“Himself,” for there are only two portraits of women in this wonderful collection--Marilyn Monroe and Georgia O'Keeffe.) Newman's career began in 1941 but took off in 1946, when he moved to New York and received his first commission from Life magazine--a portrait of Eugene O'Neill in his library--and then from Harper's Bazaar--the portrait of Igor Stravinsky, all piano with the musician in the corner of the frame. Since then he has constructed an immaculate, cosmopolitan oeuvre that has captured the essential of its subject better than most others, from Piet Mondrian and his rigid easel to Max Ernst in a cloud of smoke and Surrealist objects, from Marcel Duchamp with a readymade to Leonard Bernstein in an empty concert hall, from Woody Allen scribbling notes to Joan Miró smiling like Puck. And here they all are, a wonderful cast of artist, poets, scientists and other characters, alongside an interview with the photographer and a thoughtful essay on his work.
Arnold Newman