Opening Reception & Book Signing
June 9th, 6-8pm
Book available:
George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes: $60.00
Throckmorton Fine Art is pleased to offer an exhibit of photographs by George Platt Lynes. The
selection includes previously unseen images made from negatives conserved in cold storage at The
Kinsey Institute.
Lynes, who was born in 1907, went to Europe in 1925 to better prepare for admission to college.
In Paris, Gertrude Stein befriended him, and introduced him to her circle of artists and writers. He
attended Yale briefly, but dropped-out and began a career in New York as a photographer. His talent
led to assignments for Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, and Vogue; in those magazines, Lynes
showcased fashion photos and celebrity portraits. The portraits - made in New York, Hollywood, and
Europe - include luminaries such as Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Katharine Hepburn, and Salvador
Dali. Lynes was especially celebrated for his dance photographs: the elegant, imaginative pictures of
George Balanchine and his ballet company and are among Lynes’s most acclaimed achievements.
Lynes worked exclusively in black-and-white, and his photography is marked by the influence of
Surrealism, its fascination with the unconscious, dreams, sexuality, and unexpected juxtapositions.
He used light—and shadows and darkness—to great dramatic effect. Lynes’s pictures, exhibited at
prominent galleries in New York, were included in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1936 show, “Fantastic
Art, Dada, and Surrealism.”
From the beginning of his career, Lynes photographed the male nude. Given the repressive social
and political environment of the era, those intimate photographs were circulated only among his close
circle of friends. Lynes considered the male nudes to be his most important work: he understood that
they would establish his legacy. In 1955, when he was 48 years old and dying, he entrusted his
negatives to his friend Alfred Kinsey for safekeeping. Those negatives have been in cold storage at
The Kinsey Institute, unseen for the past half-century.
In collaboration with the Lynes estate, The Kinsey Institute recently opened the George Platt
Lynes archives. A handsome new book entitled, George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes (Rizzoli), includes
a majority of images from that archive. On this occasion, Throckmorton Fine Art will exhibit 30
photographs of male nudes by Lynes. The works shown will include both vintage photographs and
one-of-kind recent prints made from the original negatives. The exhibit honors one of the twentieth
century’s pioneering photographers.
|
