Anna Gaskell

Last updated
Anna Gaskell
Untitled 2, Wonder, Anna Gaskell.jpg
"Untitled #2" in Gaskell's photography series, "wonder"
Born (1969-10-22) October 22, 1969 (age 55)
Des Moines, Iowa, US
Known for Photography

Anna Gaskell (born October 22, 1969 [1] ) is an American art photographer and artist from Des Moines, Iowa. [2]

Contents

She is best known for her photographic series that she calls "elliptical narratives" which are similar to the works produced by Cindy Sherman. Like Sherman, Gaskell's works are influenced by film and painting, rather than the typical conventions of photography. [1] She lives and works in New York. [2]

Early life and education

Gaskell's mother was an evangelical Christian who brought Anna and her brother along on "wild pilgrimages throughout the Midwest," where they would witness miracles being performed, acts of healing, people speaking in tongues, and other Charismatic Christian practices. She claims that she does not remember anything strange about these acts, "but more a feeling of excitement and a security in the faith that [she] felt from everyone there." Gaskell says that her work revolves around a similar idea of faith, believing the possibility of the impossible and suspension of disbelief. [3] After studying for two years at Bennington College, [2] she received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1992. [4] In 1995, she received her MFA from Yale School of Art, studying under Gregory Crewdson. [4] [5]

Career

Gaskell stages all of her scenes, using the style of "narrative photography," wherein each scene exists only to be photographed. Gaskell pioneers a new discourse of contemporary photography where within each of her series, the narrative of her photographs is disrupted, "its fragments functioning like film stills excised from their context but suggesting a missing whole." [3] There are gaps of space and time left between each photograph, evoking a "vivid and dreamlike world." [6] In a 2002 interview with curator Matthew Drutt of the Menil Collection, Gaskell describes her creative process and the inspiration she draws from other sources in the following way: "The stories and events that I choose to use as jumping-off points are simply that. They are only a part of what goes into the work, and perhaps a useful reference for viewers. [...] Trying to combine fiction, fact, and my own personal mishmash of life into something new is how I make my work. Into all of this, I try to insert a degree of mystery that ensures that the dots may not connect in the same way every time." [3]

1990s

1996

In haunting photographic scenes of preadolescent girls, Gaskell alludes to well-known children's literature, such as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which can be found in two of her series: wonder (1996–97) and override (1997). Gaskell made her international debut with the twenty photograph series, wonder (1996–97), [7] the first series Gaskell created after receiving her MFA at Yale University School of Art. [8] wonder, which draws the viewer in with stained-glass coloration intensified by lamination, [7] features two identically dressed Alices photographed together and separately and at oblique angles that recall the disorienting experiences of Alice in Wonderland. [9] For example, in Untitled #1 of wonder, one of the Alices is pictured treading in a pool of her tears, "her body grotesquely distorted by the refraction of light on the water" [7] and in Untitled #2, one Alice leans over the other, plugging her nose, seemingly about to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. These two photographs also demonstrate how Gaskell takes on the role of "unreliable narrator" within her series by her "use of photography as a format which invites the suspension of disbelief, with her codings and fragmentations of the frames exposing the viewer to the inconsistencies and assumptions that are held in place by realist photographic as well as narrative conventions.” [10] Through the use of different sized photographs, Gaskell displays an instability in Alice by referring to the character's growth spurts and shrinking spells. [2]

1997

In the series override, allusions to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are made again, as in wonder, but in this series, the scenarios are drawn from Gaskell's own imagination. [7] override features seven versions of Alice which alternate between roles of victim and aggressor. A description about the series written by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum curators states, "[The seven versions of Alice] try to control the changes to her body by literally, physically holding her in place — a potent metaphor for the anxiety and confusion experienced by children on the verge of adolescence." [6] Color and chiaroscuro play a large role in Gaskell's work as they lead the viewer to the main source of action in each piece. While the wonder series features cool blue tones, the photographs featured in override were captured in the "golden hues of Twilight." The constantly changing scale of the photographs, the physical stretching and pulling actions performed by the models, and the range of size of the photographs themselves (6 x 7 1/4 inches to 60 x 90 inches) all relate to the central metaphor of Alice in Wonderland: change. [7]

Gaskell's film Floater repeats in a backwards sequence a scene of an Ophelia-like young woman in a pool of water, trying to decide whether she should drown or save herself. The theme of this cycle of indecision is seen again in her series half life in 2002. [3]

1998

In her photographic series, hide , Gaskell references a lesser-known Brothers Grimm tale, "The Magic Donkey." [11] This series features young girls alone in a gothic mansion, creating a sense of dread and underlying sexual intrigue that takes its impetus from the tale of a young woman forced to hide beneath animal skins to hide from the matrimonial desires of her father. [9] The name of the series is drawn from the children's game hide-and-seek, the dual personality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the literal skin, or hide, that creates a boundary between the inside and the outside, the self and the other. [12]

1999

In 1999, Gaskell produced two series, Sally Salt says and by proxy, both of which featured Sally Salt, the female protagonist in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , a 1988 British comedy film based on the tall tales told about 18th-century German baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchausen. by proxy takes on a darker tone by combining the fictional, gullible, and lovable Sally Salt character with a real-life serial killer, Genene Jones, a pediatric nurse who, in the early 1980s, was found guilty of the murder of several children in Texas. Gaskell's models in by proxy wear white nurse's outfits. The girls in the photographs represent Genene Jones at different stages in her life, battling with her own tormented mind. The title of the series draws from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a type of child abuse in which a caregiver purposefully makes a child under their care ill, usually to attract the attention or sympathy of others upon themselves. Though all of her series are imbued with a sense of darkness, compared to the fictional stories depicted in her previous series such as override and wonder, by proxy is all the more unsettling in that it highlights real-life and disturbing subjects such as Munchausen syndrome by proxy and the Jones murders. [11]

2000s

2002

Gaskell's half life—drawn from stories such as Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Elizabeth Gaskell's (no relation) "The Old Nurse's Story," and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw—began as an idea for a film installation and evolved into an exhibition combining still and moving images with ten photographs and a film installation. The unnamed central character of Rebecca, a tale from 1938 about an ingénue who goes abroad, marries a middle-aged patrician, and follows him back to his ancestral estate in Cornwall. There the young woman finds the house filled with the memory of the man's dead first wife, Rebecca, which torments the heroine to the brink of suicide. half life draws from the idea of Rebecca's presence in the estate and the heroine's mind. This series explores the human psyche, including the experiences of fear, isolation, and uncertainty. As seen in her previous works, the protagonist of half life is a young woman who finds herself between "the purity of youth and the gradual loss of innocence that comes with maturity." Differing itself from previous series, the question of identity is pushed to a new level in half life by the almost total exclusion of the main figure. When shown, the woman often has her back to the camera or remains hidden behind her hair. [3] Gaskell uses dynamic camera angles and elaborately decorated interiors in her photographs in half life creating a sense of vertigo or claustrophobia. The accompanying 21-minute film, similar to her piece, Floater (1997), features a woman floating under water in a state of non-being, neither fully dead or alive. [12]

2007

In her video, Acting Lessons, Gaskell plays the protagonist, an actress who is performing a monologue and is continuously interrupted by an acting coach off screen. In this piece, Gaskell adopts "a mundane living room as the setting for her portrayal of emotional power struggles." [2]

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

1997

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2009

2010

2013

2014

Select group exhibitions

1998

2002

2007

2012

Reception

Grace Glueck, writing in The New York Times in 2004, described Gaskell as an established "maker of spooky, tension-filled feminine fictions", her work recalling Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland , Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca and the films of Alfred Hitchcock. In Glueck's view, Gaskell's method is "to create a narrative expectation without fulfilling it", each picture hinting at a situation or story, provoking the viewer to speculate. Glueck does not necessarily approve of this, calling the process of challenging the viewer to make a story "do[ing] the artist's work". [40]

Robert Mahoney, reviewing Gaskell's first exhibition of color photographs in 1997, calls the show a "masquerade" with a pair of "pretty twins" playing at Alice in Wonderland in blue pinafores, white tights and "black Mary Jane shoes". Mahoney calls this an intense search for identity, observing that the use of twins brings out the "mirror-like clarity" of Alice's dream journey. In his view, the blue and white coloration recalls the Virgin Mary, while the use of young women to represent "prepubescent girls" brings sexuality into the images. [41]

Christopher Mooney, writing for ArtReview in 2014, reviews an exhibition in Paris of Gaskell's photographs alongside her ex-partner Douglas Gordon's "wall, floor, and corner works". Mooney calls it a swan song, the exhibition featuring swan taxidermy in "many" of Gordon's works, and a Bolshoi ballet prima ballerina, Svetlana Lunkina, who "danc[es] across Gaskell's screens". Mooney finds Lunkina the strongest element in the show, Gaskell's photographs displaying her as both graceful and "affecting". [42]

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Ernst</span> German artist (1891–1976)

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, and this experience left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Kippenberger</span> German artist (1953–1997)

Martin Kippenberger was a German painter, sculptor, installation and performance artist, and photographer. He became known for his extremely prolific output in a wide range of styles and media, superfiction, as well as his provocative, jocular and hard-drinking public persona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Bismuth</span> French artist and filmmaker

Pierre Bismuth is a French artist and filmmaker based in Brussels. His practice can be placed in the tradition of conceptual art and appropriation art. His work uses a variety of media and materials, including painting, sculpture, collage, video, architecture, performance, music, and film. He is best known for being among the authors of the story for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay alongside Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. Bismuth made his directorial debut with the 2016 feature film Where is Rocky II?.

Johannes Wohnseifer is a German artist based in Cologne.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Candida Höfer</span> German photographer (born 1944)

Candida Höfer is a German photographer. She is a renowned photographer known for her exploration of public spaces and architecture. In her career she transitioned from portraiture to focusing on spaces like libraries and museums. She is a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. Her work explores the ways in which institutional architecture shapes and directs human experience. Höfer's technical approach is reflective of her goals as an artist.

Christopher Williams is an American conceptual artist and fine-art photographer who lives in Cologne and works in Düsseldorf.

Rachel Harrison is an American visual artist known for her sculpture, photography, and drawing. Her work often combines handmade forms with found objects or photographs, bringing art history, politics, and pop culture into dialogue with one another. She has been included in numerous exhibitions in Europe and the US, including the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial and the Tate Triennial (2009). Her work is in the collections of major museums such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Tate Modern, London; among others. She lives and works in New York.

Kelley Walker is an American post-conceptual artist who lives and works in New York City. He uses advertising and digital media to make "paintings" using screen printing and/or digital printing technologies. His art appropriates iconic cultural images, altering them to highlight underlying issues of American politics and consumerism. He produces work collaboratively with artist Wade Guyton under the name Guyton\Walker.

Bethan Huws is a Welsh multi-media artist whose work explores place, identity, and translation, often using architecture and text. Her work has been described as "delicate, unobtrusive interventions into architectural spaces".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roni Horn</span> American visual artist and writer (born 1955)

Roni Horn is an American visual artist and writer. The granddaughter of Eastern European immigrants, she was born in New York City, where she lives and works. She is currently represented by Xavier Hufkens in Brussels and Hauser & Wirth. She is openly gay.

Jonathan Horowitz is a New York-based artist working in video, sculpture, sound installation, and photography. Horowitz's works focuses on the cultures of politics, celebrity, cinema, war, and consumerism. From found footage, Horowitz visually and spatially juxtaposes elements from film, television, and the media to reveal connections and breakdowns between these overlapping modes of communication.

Rachel Khedoori is a contemporary artist of Iraqi Jewish heritage based in Los Angeles and known primarily for her mixed use of sculpture, film and architecture.

Seth Price is a New York City-based multi-disciplinary post-conceptual artist. He lives and works in New York City.

Beate Gütschow is a contemporary German artist. She lives and works in Cologne and Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie Hewitt</span> American artist (born 1977)

Leslie Hewitt is an American contemporary visual artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoe Leonard</span> American artist (born 1961)

Zoe Leonard is an American artist who works primarily with photography and sculpture. She has exhibited widely since the late 1980s and her work has been included in a number of seminal exhibitions including Documenta IX and Documenta XII, and the 1993, 1997 and 2014 Whitney biennials. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.

Barbara Bloom lives and works in New York City. She is a conceptual artist best known for her multi-media installation works. Bloom is loosely affiliated with a group of artists referred to as The Pictures Generation. For nearly twenty years she lived in Europe, first in Amsterdam then Berlin. Since 1992, she has lived in New York City with her husband, the writer-composer Chris Mann, and their daughter.

Miles Coolidge is a Canadian-American photographer and art-educator who teaches as a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Known for his focus on subjects that blur the line between architecture and landscape, Coolidge's work has also been known to engage the viewing space through its use of scale, in combination with its subject matter. His photographic projects have been exhibited internationally in numerous galleries and museums. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Drutt</span> American curator and writer (born 1962)

Matthew Joseph Williams Drutt is an American curator and writer who specializes in modern and contemporary art and design. Based in New York, he has owned and operated his independent consulting practice Drutt Creative Arts Management (DCAM) since 2013. He is currently working with the Lee Ufan Foundation in Arles on an exhibition of non-objective art for Fall 2024. More recently, he worked with the Nationalmuseum Stockholm on an exhibition and publication of modern and contemporary American crafts gifted from artists and collectors in the United States to the museum, originally organized by his mother, Helen Drutt. He has worked more recently with the Eckbo Foundation in Oslo on the first major monograph of Thorwald Hellesen published in English and Norwegian in by Arnoldsche Art Publishers. He is currently also developing several other titles with the publisher. Formerly, he worked with the Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland (2013–2016) and the State Hermitage Museum in Russia (2013–2014), consulting on exhibitions, publications, and collections. He continues to serve as an Advisory Curator to the Hermitage Museum Foundation Israel. In 2006, the French Government awarded him the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2003, his exhibition Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism won Best Monographic Exhibition Organized Nationally from the International Association of Art Critics.

Koo Jeong A is a South-Korean born mixed-media and installation artist.

References

  1. 1 2 "Anna Gaskell". Artnet.com. November 23, 2013. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Anna Gaskell". Guggenheim Collection Online. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 9 February 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Drutt, Matthew (2002). Anna Gaskell: half life. Houston, Texas: Menil Foundation, Inc. ISBN   0-939594-54-4.
  4. 1 2 3 "Gaskell, Anna." Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
  5. ↑ Higgins, Jackie (2013). Why It Does Not Have to Be in Focus. Prestel. pp. 136–137. ISBN   978-3-7913-4851-3. Archived from the original on 2013-12-03. Retrieved 2013-11-24.
  6. 1 2 3 Moving Pictures: Contemporary Photography and Video from the Guggenheim Museum Collections. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. 2003. ISBN   0-89207-269-5.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Clearwater, Bonnie (1998). Anna Gaskell. Museum of Contemporary Art. ISBN   1-888708-05-0.
  8. ↑ Hofmann, Irene E (2005). Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center.
  9. 1 2 Nancy Spector, "The Fiction of Fiction: An Exquisite Unease," in Anna Gaskell (NY: powerHouse Books: 2001) ISBN   1-57687-069-3.
  10. ↑ Kokoli, Alexandra M. (2009). Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN   9781443815116.
  11. 1 2 3 Anna Gaskell: by proxy. Aspen Art Museum. 2000. ISBN   0-934324-28-X.
  12. 1 2 "Anna Gaskell: Half Life". White Cube. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  13. ↑ "ANNA GASKELL, BY PROXY | Casey Kaplan". caseykaplangallery.com. Archived from the original on 2016-04-27. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "GALERIE GISELA CAPITAIN: Anna Gaskell Biography" (PDF). GALERIE GISELA CAPITAIN. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-07.
  15. ↑ Cube, White. "Anna Gaskell: Hide | White Cube". whitecube.com. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  16. ↑ "Anna Gaskell | Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami". mocanomi.org. 18 October 1998. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  17. ↑ Gaskell, Anna; Des Moines Art Center (2001-01-01). Anna Gaskell. Des Moines, Iowa: Des Moines Art Center. ISBN   1879003368. OCLC   50280913.
  18. ↑ "Anna Gaskell | Castello di Rivoli". www.castellodirivoli.org. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  19. ↑ Edwards, Kathleen A; University of Iowa; Museum of Art; Neuberger Museum of Art (2005-01-01). Acting out: invented melodrama in contemporary photography. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Museum of Art. ISBN   0874141494. OCLC   57391868.
  20. ↑ "KUNSTFORUM international | Login". www.kunstforum.de. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  21. ↑ ""Consciousness from the Ground Up" by Gaston, Diana – Afterimage, Vol. 28, Issue 6, May 2001".[ dead link ]
  22. ↑ "Exhibitions – The Menil Collection". The Menil Collection. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  23. ↑ Hay, David (2002-09-29). "ART/ARCHITECTURE; Photographs on a Wall, Doors to a Haunted Manor". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  24. ↑ Gaskell, Anna; Drutt, Matthew; Menil Collection (Houston, Tex.) (2002-01-01). Anna Gaskell: half life. Houston, Tex.: Menil Collection. ISBN   0939594544. OCLC   53228408.
  25. ↑ "Phillips Academy – The Addison's Artist-in-Residence Program". www.andover.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-04-24. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  26. ↑ "How Some Children Play at Slaughtering". kunstaspekte.
  27. ↑ Gaskell, Anna; Rosenfield, Israel; Gioni, Massimiliano; Galerie Yvon Lambert (2004-01-01). Anna Gaskell: at sixes and sevens. Paris; New York: Galerie Yvon Lambert. ISBN   2913893104. OCLC   84612290.
  28. ↑ "GASKELL | AIRO' | BERTI – Galleria Massimo De Carlo – Dettaglio mostra". www.teknemedia.net. Archived from the original on 2016-04-23. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  29. ↑ "Culture- ART FEATURE- Mind games: Gaskell's missing memories". www.readthehook.com. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  30. ↑ "Paint Your Own Pictures – NY Arts Magazine". NY Arts Magazine. 19 March 2015. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  31. ↑ Services, Miami-Dade County Online. "Vizcaya Museum & Gardens – Anna Gaskell March 15 – June 1, 2007". vizcaya.org. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  32. ↑ "Erasers". wexarts.org. Archived from the original on 2016-04-02. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  33. ↑ "2010 « YVON LAMBERT". www.yvon-lambert.com. Archived from the original on 2012-07-25. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  34. ↑ "2013 « YVON LAMBERT". www.yvon-lambert.com. Archived from the original on 2013-03-12. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  35. ↑ "ANNA GASKELL – DOUGLAS GORDON Vampyr" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-10-16.
  36. ↑ Boxer, Sarah (2002-10-24). "A Citywide Treasure Hunt for Photographs With Vision". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  37. ↑ "Brooklyn Museum: Global Feminisms". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  38. ↑ "Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  39. ↑ "Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  40. ↑ Glueck, Grace (30 April 2004). "Art in Review; Anna Gaskell". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
  41. ↑ Mahoney, Robert. "Anna Gaskell's 'Wonder'". ArtNet. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
  42. ↑ Mooney, Christopher (December 2014). "Anna Gaskell and Douglas Gordon: Vampyr". ArtReview. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
  43. ↑ "Current Exhibitions – The Photographers' Gallery". The Photographers' Gallery. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  44. ↑ Nancy Graves Foundation. http://www.nancygravesfoundation.org/grants.html Archived 2013-11-26 at the Wayback Machine
  45. ↑ "Until the Woods Began to Move | Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation". Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  46. ↑ "KunstFilmBiennale Köln 2005". 2007-07-06. Archived from the original on July 6, 2007. Retrieved 2016-04-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  47. ↑ "NYFA Artists Now: Happy October!". NYFA.org – NYFA Current. 7 October 2015. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  48. ↑ "2010 ArtsLink Projects Awardees | CEC ArtsLink". www.cecartslink.org. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  49. ↑ "The Bohen Foundation". www.bohen.org. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.