Lot 100: EUGENE VON BRUENCHENHEIN

Selected Images

Varying dimensions from 8 7/8 x 6 3/4 in. (22.5 x 17.1 cm) to 9 7/8 x 8 1/2 in. (25.1 x 21.6 cm).

Three gelatin silver prints.

1940s

Private Collection, Chicago

"[Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s] real artistic blossoming seems to have been inspired by Marie, whom he met in 1939, when she was 19 and he was 29, and married four years later. Over the next decade or so he took thousands of photographs of her in various states of undress, often wearing clunky heels, garters, scarves, and draped with pearls or flowers. When she dons dresses, they are floral prints. She is almost always seen against one of three or four floral backdrops, seated on small patterned rugs. Despite frequently bared breasts and thighs, the photos feel remarkably innocent.

Von Bruenchenhein’s images belong to the complex history of set-up photography that gained critical mass in the early 1980s. Like a proto-Cindy Sherman, Marie assumes female, Hollywood-related roles. She serves as chaste pinup girl, Tahitian princess (or tourist), would-be starlet, Breck Girl, young Madonna (although they had no children and much more."

Roberta Smith, "Meager Means, Rich Imagination," The New York Times, 4 November 2010

The exhibition, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Freelance Artist / Poet and Sculptor / Innovator / Arrow maker and / Plant man / Bone constructor / Photographer and Architect / Philosopher will be on view at the American Folk Art Museum in New York through 9 October 2011.