Mitchell Funk

Bowery Bum's Bottles

1969

The early 1970s was a period of reexamination of the state of photography for Mitchell Funk. He broke with the tradition of shooting gritty street photography in black and white and ...

A 19th-century red fire call box is smothered in street advertisements and graffiti. It dominates the left half of the composition. Behind i, a street-l...

An early example of a street photography portrait in color and multiple exposures with an image of broken glass . Exhibited: Images en Couleur, Brooklyn Museum, 1970. ( This was firs...

New York Street Abstract . This is actually a straight shot. Taken from a high angle looking down, the photographer uses reflective neon street light...

Laurence Vail Untitled Bottles, circa 1942 Collaged glass bottles 8 3/4 x 5 inches, 12 1/4 x 3 3/4 inches Provenance The artist Art of the Century, New York Dwight Ripley Estate of Dwight Ripley By Descent, New York Acquired from the above, 2025 Exhibited New York, Art of This Century, Laurence Vail: Bottles, December 1942. Greenwich, CT, Bruce Museum, Connecticut Modern: Art, Design and the Avant-Garde, 1930-1960, September 23, 2023-January 7, 2024. Literature Susan Davidson, Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century, Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004, p. 319-320. Laurence Vail was born in Paris on January 28, 1891, to American parents. His father, Eugène Vail, was a painter, renowned for his depictions of Brittany and Venice. For many years throughout his childhood, Vail accompanied his father on his travels to Venice. Having initially studied in France, he moved to England to study literature at Oxford University. Upon his return to Paris, he devoted himself to writing plays and essays, translating books from French, painting, sculpting, and creating collages. In the late 1920s he was considered a main figure of Paris's flourishing intellectual and social circles, to the extent that he became known as the "King of Bohemia." He associated with writers and artists, including Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, who crowded the cafes of Montparnasse. In 1922 he married Peggy Guggenheim, who was, in his eyes, a young woman to whom he could teach art, life, and literature. After the birth of their first son, Sindbad, the couple travelled to Italy and Egypt. In 1926 they went to Switzerland, where their second child, Pegeen, was born. The family settled in Pramousquier in the south of France, where Vail started writing the novel Murder! Murder!, a cutting satire about his marriage, published in 1932. He also continued to paint, creating a series of works which were exhibited for the first time in 1926 at the Parisian boutique on the rue du Colisée managed by Guggenheim and her business partner, Mina Loy...

"Covid Vanitas: The Pandemic Still Lifes" On the first day of quarantine I began photographing the people-less quiet of a home and studio in isolation. The still lifes are a visual ...

Part of Richard Heeps 'Ordinary Places' Series, it captures Britain on the brink of change. It was Richard's first colour series and it achieved much success with an exhibition at th...

Part of Richard Heeps 'Ordinary Places' Series, it captures Britain on the brink of change. It was Richard's first colour series and it achieved much success with an exhibition at th...