Photographer and author John Jonas Gruen’s candid portraits feature some of the most important American artists of the last 50 years — usually at the beach.
The vast archives of Gruen’s culture criticism and elegant, intimate photography are now celebrated in a Whitney Museum exhibition. His pictures of legends like John and Yoko, Willem de Kooning, Maria Callas, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres serve as both fine art and an insider’s view of a time and place in East Coast art history.
Learn more about the Whitney exhibition, brush up on Gruen’s bygone Hamptons history, and buy a copy of his autobiography, Callas Kissed Me…Lenny Too!
Click through below for a gallery of Gruen’s portrait photography.
Glenn Ligon, 1998. Courtesy of the Whitney Museum
Comments (2)
[...] Flavorwire ran a gallery today of portraits John Jonas Gruen shot of his artist peers over the past five decades. Apparently, East Coast artists of his generation spent a lot of time at the beach. Somehow there can be a West Coast notion that the beach is for the superficial and well-adjusted, but that is not bicoastal. Probably because you are more likely to be pensive on a chilly shoreline and more likely to show off a bikini body when the water is warm. The Whitney Museum in New York is currently show retrospective exhibition of portraits shot by John Jonas Gruen. [...]
Flavorwire always on the the brighter side of art! Interesting reading and brilliant images.
Post a new comment