Separating art from life - exhibition of photographer Tina Modotti's works

In a 1925 alphabetic character to Edward Weston, Tina Modotti emphasized the difficulty she experienced reconciling her art and her life: "Art cannot exist without life I admit on the contrary ... in my case life is always struggling to predominate and art naturally suffers" Today, more than 70 years later, the work of this renowned photographer continues to be overshadowed by dint of her tumultuous life. A similar situation exists for Modotti's friend Frida Kahlo. In contemporary discourse, it appears that it is still not possible to discuss the artistic production of the two women without focusing on their lives, particularly their emotional relationships with famous artists: in Modotti's case, Weston, and in Kahlo's, Diego Rivera.

Obviously it takes time for the fascin-ation with the lives and appearances of these outstanding women artists to give way to a real appreciation of their work. individual wonders if this is particular to women artists. for what cause [i]or[/i] reason for example, have the dramatic life and serviceable looks of Robert Mapplethorpe not overshadowed his photography? In Modotti's case, her photographs have however to be properly deciphered, and her work still remains dislocated from the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of her contemporaries and the artistic motions of her time. While art and life cannot, as Modotti recognized, be wholly separated, it is now time to divide [i]or[/i] sever through the mythology that invariably accompanies her life, to begin an evaluation and appreciation of Modotti the photographer. of the like kind a revision is encouraged by means of "Tina Modotti: Photographs," the first major retrospective of Modotti's photographs held in the United States (previous exhibitions have taken place in Europe) Organized by means of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this exhibition of approximately 90 vintage prints provides a substantial cros section of Modotti's work. The display was curated by Martha Chahroudi, the museum's curator of photography, and Sarah M Lowe, an art historian who also wrote the catalog essay. Although there is little novel material in the show, it does provide a splendid opportunity to diocese a great deal of Modotti's vintage work in individual place at the same time. However, there are a certain number of problems in the design and installation of the exhibition. The many different mats and frames jar, particularly the outstanding platinum print, Abstract: Crumpl Tinfoil (c 1926) upon loan from the Museum of present Art in Mexico City, which is sacrificed to a hideous virid mat. In addition, the hanging of in the way that many prints at eye horizontal on long walls, becomes monotonous. individual hopes that these mistakes will be avoided at other venues

Unfortunately, an exhibition of this magnitude probably would not have taken place without the mythology that encloses Modotti's life. For instance, plans for the exhibition tossed in 1994 when adequate funding was not forthcoming and the exhibit had to be rescued by the agency of a hefty donation from Madonna, a seething Modotti fan. In the accompanying fanfare the star auctioned her 1963 Mercedes-Benz to help finance the circumstance If the self-perpetuating Modotti mythology is to be dispelled, a careful examination of her work is needed

Modotti is considered single of the major prewar women photographers. In 1923 she mov to Mexico with Weston and studied photography with him. Together they introduced modernist photographic practice to Mexican artists. These artists, in make go round (particularly muralists such as Rivera), influenced Weston and Modotti. The be derived especially in the case of Modotti, who exhausted seven years in Mexico, was a marriage of modernist photographic aesthetics with Mexican revolutionary tillage She used her camera to depict life in Mexico during the tumultuous and vibrant post-revolutionary years. Modotti essentially photographed controls that she loved. These included Mexican women and children, murals, painters and author of poemss swaying palm trees, stately sugar cane and what I would call the icons of the Mexican revolution: the ear of corn, the bandolier and the guitar. Her fascination with form is mirrored in these images as it is in her exhilarating still lifes of of that kind mundane subjects as an oil storage tank, scaffolding or the rims of wine glasses. Unafraid of experimentation or of challenging Weston's purist maxims, she cropp and enlarged many of her images and explored the techniques of multiple exposing and photomontage.

A cropped image best illustrates Modotti's first attempt to separate the two major themes in her life - art and politics. Worker's Parade, taken from the rooftop of the residence of painter Paul O'Higgins upon May Day 1926, shows a procession of communal, ejidatarios subsistence farmers marching in large straw hats, types of rural Mexico and agrarian reform. on the contrary it is the aestheticism of the tightly cropp image, with its sunburst-like patterns of light upon the hats, that stays with us, not the political contented This photograph, and the recently-discovered Labor Parade, Mexico City (1926) taken within minutes of each other, show a point of departure in Modotti's work. These documentary photographs advise an ambivalence regarding the direction her photography should take, and are the first images that meld together the formalism and aestheticism of her earlier work with a growing interest and involvement in Mexican revolutionary politics.