Photographs by Aaron Siskind in Hommage to Franz Kline

5 October–1 November 1975

In his work, Aaron Siskind explores the importance of friendship between individuals as well as the larger concept of communication within the artistic community. As a result of his personal friendship with and aesthetic influence from Franz Kline, Siskind uses media such as broken walls and flaking plaster to achieve similar effects on film to those Kline achieved in paint. The show featured over 100 of Siskind’s photographs on loan from the Light Gallery in New York, Samuel William Sax, and the artist himself. The photographs were accompanied by several paintings by Franz Kline borrowed from the Smart’s Permanent Collection, several private collections and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Siskind delivered a gallery lecture, as did art critic Harold Rosenberg, and Professor Joel Snyder, University of Chicago Department of Art. The Smart exhibition was part of a larger celebration in Chicago of Siskind’s work, which included “For You, Aaron,” an installation at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago which featured work by five of Siskind’s students, and “Photographs by Aaron Siskind,” a retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Catalogue by Carl Chiarenza, PhD candidate at Boston University, whose dissertation centered around Siskind’s oeuvre.

Curator: Katharine L. Keefe, Curator of Collections, in collaboration with Joel Snyder, with assistance from the artist.
 

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