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Arthur Tress
Making Leaves (a sexy still life where 2 rakes and some leaves turn up the heat)

1978

About the Item

Tress uses a bed, the juxtaposition of two rakes and a scattering of fallen leaves to enter a sexy anthropomorphic world. Often men are called "rakes" to suggest amoral activity. In this vintage image #8/50, the men are suggested by two actual rakes. The Getty Museum recently acquired more than 80 works by Arthur Tress for its collection. He is one of America's most prodigious and diversified photographers, one whose creation of an individual mythology in a universe of kitsch can make sense of the meaning of life, death, and the hereafter. Tress created his series "Open Space in the Inner City" for which he received a New York State Council on the Arts grant. In 1972 he got a National Endowment for the Arts grant for his "Dream Collector" series. In 1976 he received a second New York State Council on the Arts grant for his "Theater of the Mind" series. In 1980 he published a book on the male nude called, "Arthur Tress: Facing Up, A 12-Year Survey". His major retrospective "Talisman" traveled from 1986-1988, opening at the Photography Gallery in London and then moving to the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, U.K., Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfort, Germany and the Musee de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium. In 1995 the Center for Creative Photography exhibited "Arthur Tress: The Wurlitzer Trilogy", which in early 2002 traveled to the College of Santa Fe. Tress has been published numerous times, including in the monographs, "Arthur Tress: The Dream Collector", "Shadow: A Novel in Photographs", "Theatre of the Mind", "Reeves" and "Arthur Tress: Fantastic Voyage: Photographs 1956-2000". His work is in the collection of numerous museums and institutions, including the New York Museum of Modern Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum, the George Eastman House, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Stedelijk Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Getty Museum. In 2001, the Corcoran Gallery of Art featured a retrospective of his work entitled "Arthur Tress: Fantastic Voyage: Photographs 1956-2000" which took an intimate look at his long and varied career. He is listed in the 1982, 1988 and 1995 editions of "Contemporary Photographers", in the International Center of Photography Encyclopedia of Photography, and in the Macmillan Biographical Encyclopedia of Photographic Artists & Innovators. He is listed in the Auer & Auer and George Eastman House databases.
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