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Capturing the Moment: A Journey Through Painting & Photography @ Tate Modern

- 2 years ago

Calling all photographers and art enthusiasts! Get ready for an extraordinary exhibition coming your way from June 14th 2023 to 28th Jan 2024 – Capturing the Moment at Tate Modern, London.

Andy Warhol, Self Portrait 1966-7, Yageo Foundation Collection.© 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Andy Warhol, Self Portrait 1966-7, Yageo Foundation Collection.© 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

This group exhibition will explore the relationship between contemporary painting and photography, and how these mediums have inspired and influenced each other over time.

Visit and you’ll have the rare opportunity to witness extraordinary works from the YAGEO Foundation Collection, including paintings by Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter, and Peter Doig, and photographs by Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, shown in dialogue with many recent additions to Tate’s collection. The exhibition promises to be an open-ended conversation between some of the greatest painters and photographers of recent generations.

The exhibition will begin with some of the most renowned expressive painters of the post-war period, including Lucian Freud and Alice Neel, alongside documentary photography and ground-breaking photographers like Dorothea Lange. You’ll see how photographic source material played a significant role for many artists, with Francis Bacon’s Study for a Pope VI 1961 as a prime example. Cecily Brown’s Trouble in Paradise 1999 and George Condo’s Mental States 2000 reveal the legacy of expressive figurative painting in a world of increasingly prevalent photographic images.

The exhibition will also showcase a series of strikingly painterly photographs, including Jeff Wall’s A Sudden Gust of Wind [after Hokusai] 1993 and Andreas Gursky’s May Day IV 2000, as well as Pushpamala N’s playful take on grand history painting and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s atmospheric near-abstract seascapes. Photographs by Thomas Struth and Louise Lawler reveal another way the two mediums have found a home within each other.

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936 printed c.1950 © Tate
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936 printed c.1950 © Tate

The largest section of the exhibition will explore how painting and photography have converged, with a selection of major contemporary works that attempt to capture fleeting points in time or moments in history. You’ll see how artists like Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans, and Wilhelm Sasnal encapsulate one approach to this, while pop artists like Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Pauline Boty offer another approach, incorporating and collaging photographic images in their paintings.

Key works by Lisa Brice, Miriam Cahn, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, David Hockney, and Paulina Olowska show yet more ways in which the style, composition, content, and meaning of contemporary painting exist in dialogue with photography. And as digital media reshapes the way painters work today, recent canvases by Laura Owens, Christina Quarles, and Salman Toor offer a glimpse of how this influences contemporary art.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to witness the dynamic relationship between painting and photography at Capturing the Moment.

About the author

Read Capturing the Moment: A Journey Through Painting & Photography @ Tate Modern

Simon Skinner

Co-founder // Editor

Having spent many years working in various pockets of the music industry, and always with a camera in hand, Simon has worked with organisations such as Warner/Chappell, Food Records and ultimately, co-founding the innovative independent record label, Izumi Records before moving fully into the world of publishing in 2007. Amongst numerous other projects in the last decade, he has been responsible for a number of specialist photo trade magazines and journals for the filmmaking and photography communities, along with a coffee table book entitled, "Great Britons of Photography' which he produced with Peter Dench and Leica. Now heading up PhotoBite, Simon and the team have set themselves a task of delivering informative and inspirational content for photographers of all levels, from the beginner, shooting with smartphones, to the seasoned photographer and filmmaker.