The search for the authentic in contemporary art

Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sete, 1857. Image courtesy of Harry Malcolmson

The art world has been subject to vast changes over the last half-century, from the increased popularity of art as a career, to the rise of commercial galleries, to the power of the collector. At the same time, the art market has gone through the roof, attaining prices previously unheard of.

Art has become trendy among the young and upwardly mobile, creating a demand for edgy, flashy yet not-too-difficult work. As if to answer this demand, art schools are churning out thousands of young painters and installation artists annually, each of whom fully expects to make a successful career from art making. Mega collectors like Charles Saatchi in the UK, Martin Margulies and the Rubells in the US have become media stars with their own galleries filled with artists whose work they collect, complete with catalogues and full time staff.

For collectors and art world hangers-on, fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze in London and others now as far abroad as Dubai, Mexico City and Shanghai have attained an incredible glamour, despite being little more than high-profile shopping events, where art is shoved, cheek by jowl, into booths under harsh lighting with little, if any context.

Gustave Le Gray, The Effect of the Sun, 1856. Image courtesy of Harry Malcolmson

Art is a truly global phenomenon, much of which smacks, to VoCA, of superficiality – the very thing that great art should dispel. Much art today has little integrity and you might say that such art is a reflection of our society. In fact, much of today’s art speaks the language of advertising (and vice versa.) But great art should remain a creative act that puts into imagery fundamental human experiences for which words are inadequate.

The advent of technology and the Internet has created a space where we are both frustrated by and designing ways of dealing with our remove from one another and from our environment. Technology today means that “older” no longer equals “wiser”.

P.E. Emerson, Ricking the Reed, 1886. Image courtesy of Harry Malcolmson

One way for a viewer to restore faith in art – and after Toronto’s ROM Bomb incident (click HERE) many may have lost it – is to seek out authenticity, that is, works of art from an earlier time. The Malcolmson Collection of vintage photography is one such exhibition, presently on view at Lennox Contemporary in Toronto.

In the mid 1800s, photographers like Edouard Baldus, Roger Fenton, Gustave Le Gray, Salzmann and Charles Negre were similarly dealing with the possibilities of a new technology that was to change the way we would see the world. They were the pioneers of a new medium, inventors more than artists.

Edmund Baldus - Chateau Princesse Mathilde, 1854. Image courtesy of Harry Malcolmson

Eugene Cuvelier – Cart on Road, 1862. Image courtesy of Harry Malcolmson

Harry Malcolmson writes in the exhibition notes: “The early photographers were inventors in the sense their role as first practitioners was to “invent” a vocabulary and context for the deployment of the extraordinary device. The aesthetic accomplishment was not the objective, but a byproduct (of) the training and skills of individual picture takers.”

The exhibition features a print of Gustave Le Gray’s The Great Wave, Sete, 1857. This is one of the most admired images in 19th century photography.

August Salzmann – Valley of Josaphat, 1854. Image courtesy of Harry Malcolmson

Other seminal works include Maxime Du Camp early 1850s pioneering travels in Egypt, Auguste Salzmann’s images of Jerusalem, vernacular views of Indian and Sir Lankan subjects.

Julia Margaret Cameron, The Guardian Angel, 1868. Image courtesy of Harry Malcolmson

For more information on the exhibition, please click HERE