MuseoMag: MuseoMag 2022_04

MuseoMag 2022_04

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Title:: MuseoMag 2022_04

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Title:: Erwin Olaf and Hans Op de Beeck: Inspired by Steichen: Nature as a source of inspiration

9 04 ‘ 2022 museomag ERWIN OLAF & HANS OP DE BEECK: INSPIRED BY STEICHEN (1/2) NATURE AS A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION One of the few positive side effects of the global outbreak of Covid-19, may have been the fact that many people reconnected with nature in the past two years. We were walking, running or cycling more often. The absence of cars and big crowds meant that animals started to venture into our immediate surroundings, there was less noise overall and more to quietly listen to and enjoy. A stay in nature does a person good and so does some exercise: “mens sana in corpore sano” (a healthy mind or spirit in a healthy body). As for the breath of that spirit, inspiration, the same certainly applies to many an artist in the recent period. To them, the natural environment was an important source of artistic ideas – as it frequently was, by the way, throughout art history. The latter is certainly true for one of the most famous artists with Luxembourg roots, the photographer Edward Steichen (1879-1973). STEICHEN AND HIS ARTISTIC LEGACY Born in Luxembourg, raised in Wisconsin and trained as a lithographer’s apprentice, Steichen took up photography in his teens and by age twenty-three Erwin Olaf (*1959), Am Wasserfall (Im Wald), 2020. Photograph, Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, 160 x 240 cm. Courtesy of the artist. had created brooding tonalist landscapes and brilliant psychological studies that won the praise of Alfred Stieglitz in New York and Auguste Rodin in Paris, among others. Over the next decade, this young man – the preferred portraitist of the elite of two continents – was repeatedly acclaimed as the unsur- passed master of the painterly photograph. Among his earliest works is a relatively small group of landscape photographs, including Moonrise – Mamaroneck, New York (1904). Steichen shot this view near the home of one of his friends, art critic Charles Caffin. The photo- graph depicts a wooded area and a pond with the moon shining through the trees, its light reflected in the water. It suggests the moon’s beauty and mystery, the silvery quality of its light and its illusory proximity to the earth. With images like this, Steichen was declaring photography’s great artistic potential, placing it on a par with painting and drawing and arguing for its inclusion in the fine arts. The Pond: Moonrise became an iconic work. In February 2006 the 41 x 50 cm photo- graph put up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which already had another, slightly different version of the print in its extensive collection. Although it was expected to reach a high price, the art world was stunned when it more

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