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New York Times Review of the exhibition
PUBLISHED
8 May 1981
ART: EASEL TO CAMERA, A SHOW WITH A MESSAGE
THE exhibition called ''Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography,'' which opens tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art (through July 5), is a highly unusual event, and one that is certain to cause a great deal of discussion and debate. For this is an exhibition designed to illustrate an ambitious art-historical hypothesis that, if widely accepted as true, would significantly alter our understanding not only of the origins of photography but also of the development of modern art itself. For this reason, it may turn out to be one of the most important exhibitions ever mounted at the Museum of Modern Art - and the odd thing is, there isn't a single ''modern'' painting in the entire show. The argument, briefly stated, is that a radically new pictorial syntax, which we now acknowledge to be the syntax of Realism, emerged for the first time in certain landscape sketches to be found in late-18th- and early-19th-century European painting, and - this is the original and controversial point - that the invention of photography, far from being a scientific or technological sport, occurred as the direct result of this new pictorial vision pioneered in the art of painting. Photography is thus seen to be the ''inevitable'' consequence of a radical change in pictorial esthetics.
New York Times • Arts • page 18 • 1,167 words