Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions
Installation View: Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 November 15 – December 21, 2024 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
New York – Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of work by the celebrated photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York, which opened on November 15 and will be on view until December 21. This presentation, titled Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions, marks the centenary of Frank’s birth and coincides with several other major exhibitions of his work around the world. Pace’s upcoming Frank exhibition—organized in collaboration with The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation—will be accompanied by a new book from Pace Publishing, featuring an essay by Ocean Vuong.
Robert Frank Story A / Story B, Mabou, 2002 GELATIN SILVER gelatin silver print enlarged from two Polaroid negatives with inkjet prints and ink 20" × 24" (50.8 cm × 61 cm), overall signed, titled and dated recto in ink © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy Pace Gallery
Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions will focus on Frank’s later work from the 1970s onward: the decades he spent experimenting with various cameras, printing methods, and media. Curated by Shahrzad Kamel, Director of The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, the exhibition takes its title from a sketch Frank made of his work Fire Below—to the East America, Mabou (1979), which was included in a bequest the artist made of his photographs and papers to The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation upon his death in 2019, and one of many discoveries that inspired this presentation of previously unseen works from his oeuvre.
Robert Frank, Look Out for Hope, Mabou – New York City, 1979 GELATIN SILVER gelatin silver print enlarged from three Polaroid negatives 23" × 19-1/2" (58.4 cm × 49.5 cm), image 24" × 20" (61 cm × 50.8 cm), paper © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy Pace Gallery
Pace’s show will feature groupings of multimedia works based on various motifs that Frank revisited throughout his career, offering a new way of seeing his work that will deepen viewers’ understanding of his artistic processes and motivations. The photographs on view, some of which feature multiple frames in a single image, hand-drawn etchings, and inscribed phrases, will showcase his long-standing interest in re-presenting older photographs from his past as new compositions, or ‘variants.’ Frank’s 2004 autobiographical short film True Story will also be presented in its entirety at the gallery. The atemporality of his photography and filmmaking—for which he pieced together fragments of not only images but also his own memories, dreams, and ideas—will be on full view in the exhibition.
Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 November 15 – December 21, 2024 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
The artworks in the presentation will be complemented by a selection of archival materials, including glass plates with etchings, journal pages, sketches, and other rarely exhibited pieces. Enriching viewers’ experience of the photographs on the gallery walls, these objects will invite a holistic and personal view of Frank’s life and his inventive, genre defying approach to image making.
Robert Frank, Andrea, Mabou / The War is Over, Mabou, c. 1976-1978 / 1998 GELATIN SILVER group of 3 works © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy Pace Gallery
Early in his career, after receiving his first Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955, the Swiss-born photographer embarked on a two-year trip across the United States during which he captured over 28,000 candid, poignant images of American life in the mid 20th century. Eighty-three of those images were ultimately included in his groundbreaking monograph The Americans, first published by Robert Delpire in 1958 in Paris (as Les Américains) and the following year by Grove Press in New York, with an introduction by Jack Kerouac.
Robert Frank, Fire Below - to the East America, Mabou, 1979 GELATIN SILVER gelatin silver print enlarged from six Polaroid negatives with paint and ink 19-1/2" × 23" (49.5 cm × 58.4 cm), image 20" × 23-13/16" (50.8 cm × 60.5 cm), paper© The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy Pace Gallery
Aperture is re-releasing Frank’s seminal photobook in this anniversary year, and, as part of Art Basel Unlimited this summer, Pace, in collaboration with Zander Galerie, presented all 83 photographs in this iconic body of work—plus an eighty-fourth print, a triptych image, that the artist added to the end of the sequence for Aperture’s 1978 edition of The Americans.
Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 November 15 – December 21, 2024 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions coincides with three other major presentations of the artist’s work: Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue, a survey tracing six decades of his career, as well as a complete retrospective of his videos and films, at The Museum of Modern Art in New York; Robert Frank: Mary’s Book, an in-depth look at the personal scrapbook of photographs that Frank made for his first wife Mary Lockspeiser, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Robert Frank: Be Happy, a show of 34 photographs and select documents, at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. This fall, ahead of the opening of Robert Frank: Hope Makes Visions, Pace will spotlight a selection of works by Frank on its booth at Paris Photo—further details about the gallery’s presentation at the fair will be revealed in due course.
From left to right: Robert Frank, Possessions and Souvenirs from Flamingo, Goteborg, March 7, 1997 PHOTO two gelatin silver prints, each enlarged from two Polaroid negatives, with paint and ink 18-1/4" × 27-1/4" (46.4 cm × 69.2 cm), overall signed, titled and dated recto (etched) © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy Pace Gallery, Robert Frank, Look Out for Hope, 1979 GELATIN SILVER gelatin silver print enlarged from one Polaroid negative 14" × 11" (35.6 cm × 27.9 cm), image and paper unsigned, © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy Pace Gallery, Robert Frank, Mabou, 1995 GELATIN SILVER gelatin silver print 10-15/16" × 13-7/8" (27.8 cm × 35.2 cm), image and paper signed, titled and dated recto in ink
Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of photography, Robert Frank (b. 1924, Zurich, Switzerland; d. 2019, Nova Scotia, Canada) redefined the aesthetic of both the still and the moving image via his pictures and films. Soon after his emigration to New York in 1947, Alexey Brodovitch hired Frank as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. The position brought many occasions for travel, and Frank’s impressions of the United States, in comparison to other places, impacted his work. After receiving his first Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955, Frank embarked on a two-year trip across America during which he took over 28,000 pictures. Eighty-three of those images were ultimately published in Frank’s groundbreaking monograph The Americans, first by Robert Delpire in 1958 in Paris, and a year later by Grove Press in the United States. Frank’s unorthodox cropping, lighting, and sense of focus attracted criticism. His work, however, was not without supporters. Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg felt a kinship with Frank and his interest in documenting the fabric of contemporary society. Eventually The Americans jettisoned Frank into a position of cultural prominence; he became the spokesperson for a generation of visual artists, musicians, and literary figures both in the United States and abroad.
Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.
Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program— comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.
Today, Pace has seven locations worldwide, including European footholds in London and Geneva as well as Berlin, where the gallery established an office in 2023. Pace maintains two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace’s long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which was open from 2016 to 2022. Pace’s engagement with Silicon Valley’s technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, along with an office and viewing room in Beijing. In spring 2024, Pace will open its first gallery space in Japan in Tokyo’s new Azabudai Hills development.
This exhibition opened on November 15th and will be on view until December 21, 2024, at Pace Gallery 510 West 25th Street in New York. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Pace Gallery’s website here. The magazine also highlights the book of the same title here. Pace Gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.
