SCHILLER, LAWRENCE

Barbra Streisand (in her hotel room)

1969

A photograph by Lawrence Schiller. “Barbra Streisand (fur hat)” is a figurative photograph, vintage silver gelatin photograph in black and white by American artist Lawrence Schiller. The artwork is signed on the verso. Lawrence Schiller only remembers the 60s in this way: Fast. As in: Blur. Which is, for those who lived through it, as accurate a description as one is likely to find about the decade that began with optimism and ended in chaos. It was ten years of turmoil and exploration. And through this turbulent and tumultuous decade, it often seemed that whenever a headline-making news event occurred, Lawrence Schiller was there. Schiller was not just lucky to be in the right place at the right time; he was prescient. He was there to cover the event, to add to it, to help us see it, to aid its meaning and its depth. "It was a time in which things happened awfully fast," Schiller says of the decade. "It was a wild, wild period; an uncontrolled period. I don’t think you had any sense of perspective in the 60s. You had to wait and look back at it, because it was a period in which things were happening that had no rhyme or reason to it. But by the end of the ‘60s I had covered so many stories, had so many magazine covers, I had somehow become part of that decade’s history. And I already had my eye on the future." When Lawrence Schiller got the assignment from the French magazine, Paris Match to photograph Marilyn Monroe on the 20th Century Fox set of Something’s Got to Give, he thought nothing of it. It wasn’t to be a private, studio shoot. He wasn’t going to set up lights, create backgrounds, or use a tripod. Just another assignment, he figured. Monroe by then was firmly established as a figment in the imagination of most young men. The orphan Norma Jean had recreated herself as the blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. She’d appeared in twenty-nine films by the time Schiller photographed her in black and white and color in May, 1962. The world was unprepared for the moment when Marilyn jumped in the swimming pool in a flesh-colored bikini and came up out of the water au natural. She was all smiles and in her element: the sex goddess...

A photograph by Lawrence Schiller. “Paul Newman in the motion picture "Cool Hand Luke” is a figurative, silver gelatin photograph in black and white by ...

A photograph by Lawrence Schiller. “Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is a vintage silver gelatin photograph in black and white by American artist L...

A set of four photographs by Andy Warhol. “Sao Schlumberger” is a set of four Polaroids, Polacolors by American Pop Artist Andy Warhol. The artworks a...

An artist who puts his life on the line for his art. Chris Burden was at the forefront of the conceptual art movement in the early 1970s. Prelude to 220, or 110 is one of his most important works where the artist puts his life on the line for his art. Burden voluntarily lays on his back. His neck and wists are have copper bands that bolt him to the floor. To his immediate left and right are two buckets of water with a 110-volt line inside. If the buckets were compromised in any way by a passerby or an unexpected event - Burden would have been electrocuted in a literal shocking performance. Art history is replete with artists who put themselves in harm's way to accomplish their art. Michelangelo risked a misstep to a certain death as he elevated himself over 60 feet to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Francisco Goya's "The Disasters of War" may have put him at odds with a governing orthodoxy. Picasso walked a very narrow line with during the Nazi occupation. Gutzon Borglum dangled himself off the face of Mount Rushmore and War Photographer Robert Capa, landed on Omaha Beach during D-Day. But it was Chris Burden whose art spotlighted...

Hand colored silver gelatin photograph by Houston, TX artist Jim Reitz. The work features a man casually leaning against a building and looking at the camera...

Late 19th century portrait of a young boy by Arnold Genthe (German, 1869-1942). Signed "Arnold Genthe" lower left. "Billie 11 mo." on verso in the artist...

Woman In Ballet Pose Holding a Flower - San Francisco Richard Edwards A brunette woman poses, standing on her left leg with her hand out holding a flower. A collection of photograph...