The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 19, 2024

Untitled

Untitled

c. 1926
(Belgian, 1903–1971)
Belgium, 20th century
collodion silver printing-out paper, photogram
Image: 17.9 x 23.8 cm (7 1/16 x 9 3/8 in.); Mounted: 28.2 x 35.8 cm (11 1/8 x 14 1/8 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 2007.95
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SABAM, Brussels
Location: not on view

Description

Writer, composer, art dealer, and key figure in the Surrealist movement in Belgium, Mesens experimented with photograms only from 1924 to 1930. This image employs everyday objects: two leaves, one or more drinking glasses, and razor blades. The latter may be an autobiographical reference: a bit of a dandy, Mesens shaved three times a day. The seeming solidity of the objects, ranging from solid to translucent and shadowy to crisp, was altered by leaving them on the paper for varying amounts of time. His use of collodion printing-out paper, which develops slowly in sunlight without a chemical developer, suggests this may have been one of his earliest experiments with photography.
  • The artist's family
    Adrien Dubucq, Belgium
    (Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY)
    early 90s-2000
    (Ubu Gallery, New York, NY)
    2000-2007
    David Raymond [b.1979], New York, NY
    2007-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014. Mentioned: p. 81; reproduced: p. 83; mentioned: p. 227.
  • Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19, 2014-January 11, 2015).
  • {{cite web|title=Untitled |url=false|author=Édouard Léon Théodore Mesens|year=c. 1926|access-date=19 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2007.95