Addison Gallery of American Art Permanent Collection ...addison.andover.edu/Education/MLC/Documents/House...F Francesca Woodman (1958–1981), House #4, 1976, from Abandoned house

Addison Gallery of American Art Permanent Collection Portfolio Guide: Houses and Homes 1

Houses and Homes

This Portfolio Guide contains selected artworks and ideas to connect the Addison’s collection with classroom themes, disciplines, and curricula.

Digital images of works from this Guide can be downloaded from the Addison’s website for use in classrooms. Visits to explore works in the Addison’s Museum Learning Center can be arranged as a complement to the viewing of current exhibitions.

www.addisongallery.org

How do artists visually explore ideas of home and all that home can mean?

What can we learn about those who inhabit a space from the way in which an artist depicts it?

The words house and home carry powerful and emotional associations. While house refers to a physical structure meant for habitation and shelter, the meaning of home is infinitely varied, complex, and evocative. This Permanent Collection Portfolio Guide of historic and contemporary works from the Addison’s collection offers varied perspectives and discussion points for the multiple types of dwellings that humans have constructed for themselves, the many ways in which those spaces are inhabited, and the wide range of emotions and associations attached to them.

Educators are encouraged to use this Guide and the expanded Portfolio Image List as a starting point, a place from which to dig deeper, ask questions, and make new connections for class plans and projects.

For online use, click the images in this guide to access digital images in the Addison’s online database.

S E L E C T E D T H E M A T I C A P P R O A C H E SHomemaking — How do artists represent women’s roles in the family and home?Roles and Role Play — How do images question the roles we enact in play and in life? Perspectives on Domestic Life — What choices do artists make in representing domestic spaces?Portraiture through Objects — How can photographers imbue everyday objects with meaning? Beneath the Surface — How do artists reveal the cracks in the veneer of the American Dream? Displacement — What choices are made by artists documenting the impact of natural disasters on communities?

www.addisongallery.orghttp://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj7095http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj5587http://accessaddison.andover.edu/OBJ24966http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj4115http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj13441http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj20520http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj6989http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj24678


HomemakingHow do artists represent women’s roles in the family and home?

How do artists and the media represent women in the home today?

The adage, “A woman’s work is never done,” is played out in this selection of images of women doing the work of women. Artists such as Edward Burill and Hugh Newell represent the unnamed maids, cooks, and servers, whose domain is the kitchen and the rooms designated for homemaking; the ones who keep the household functioning and remind us of the never-ending work involved in daily living. In contrast, artists such as John Singer Sargent and Philippe Halsman portray women in quite different roles—leading lives of leisure as ornamentation in the domestic environment. With daily chores assigned to others, these women could spread a voluminous skirt around a child in a stylishly appointed living room, or pause at a blue ceramic bowl while wandering through an empty room, all in a world in which time is suspended and the messy business of living is occurring elsewhere.

In the absence of a permanent home, daily life and the details of homemaking must continue. Dorothea Lange’s unpublished image of Florence Thompson caring for one of her children in a migrant worker camp during the Great Depression demonstrates human strength amid great suffering.

A Edward Burrill (1835-1913), The Hired Girl, c. third quarter of the 19th century, oil on canvas, 14 x 10 1/2 in., museum purchase, 1940.14

B Hugh Newell (1830-1915), Cleaning Up, 1878, charcoal and white chalk on wove paper, 19 1/4 x 12 1/2 in., museum purchase, 1966.18

C John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), The Blue Bowl, c. 1885-89, oil on board, 31 x 26 in. museum purchase, 1987.56

D Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, neg. 1936, print c. 1950, gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in., museum purchase, 2005.8

E Philippe Halsman (1906-1979, Dorothy Kilgallen (with son-top view), 1957, gelatin silver print, 13 11/16 x 10 13/16 in., gift of Bunny Freidus, 1982.133

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http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj10457http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj17372http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj6989http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj2457http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj4787


Roles and Role PlayHow do photographers examine what is real and what is artifice?

How do images question the gender, race, or other roles we enact in play and in life?

In her brief but influential life and career, Francesca Woodman explored the human form in architectural space and issues of self-representation. In her House series, made in an abandoned house using her body as her primary subject, she staged interventions with the architecture. The artist’s figure, which is alternately nude or clad in vintage dress, slips back and forth between visibility and invisibility, sexuality and innocence. In this image of the artist’s blurred figure crouching behind a fireplace, her body seems to dematerialize and meld with the house itself.

To activate a dollhouse interior, photographer Laurie Simmons poses female dolls performing the stereotypical chores of a 1950s housewife. The images of her series In and Around the House are paradoxically sentimental and critical. In describing this work Simmons has said, “I was simply trying to recreate a feeling, a mood . . . a sense of the fifties that I knew was both beautiful and lethal at the same time.”

F Francesca Woodman (1958–1981), House #4, 1976, from Abandoned house #1, c. 1975–77, gelatin silver print, 5 x 5 1/8 in., museum purchase, 1977.14

G Francesca Woodman (1958–1981), Door #4, 1976, from Abandoned house #1, c. 1975–77, gelatin silver print, 4 15/16 x 5 1/16 in., museum purchase, 1977.12

H Laurie Simmons (b. 1949), Woman / Interior III, 1978, gelatin silver print, 5 1/4 x 8 in., museum purchase, 2003.18.12

I Laurie Simmons (b. 1949), Untitled (Woman Standing on Head), 1976, gelatin silver print, 5 1/4 x 8 in., museum purchase and partial gift of the artist, 2015.34

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http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj5587http://accessaddison.andover.edu/OBJ24966http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj14162http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj5565


Perspectives on Domestic LifeWhat assumptions do we make about personal spaces, based on our own preferences and experiences?

What can we learn about those who inhabit a space from the way in which an artist depicts it?

George Henry Story’s portrait of a family in their dining room and Enoch Wood Perry’s genre scene of a family preparing Thanksgiving dinner in their kitchen, both executed in 1872, provide two contrasting glimpses into late-nineteenth-century domestic life. Story depicts the affluent Boston banker Abner I. Benyon in his fashionably furnished residence in Newton, Massachusetts. Perry paints a more generic family in a happy, if romanticized, scene. The bare wood floor, enormous cooking fireplace, and furnishings reflect the post- Civil War’s Colonial Revival nostalgia for simpler times.

As a news photographer covering the newly sprung suburban communities in California’s Amador Valley, Bill Owens set out like a visual anthropologist to record the customs, environments, and relationships that characterized American middle-class culture in the 1970s. Owens’s relationship with his subjects—friends and neighbors whom he allowed to speak for themselves via surprisingly candid captions, such as the one above—speaks to the trappings of suburban domestic life.

J Enoch Wood Perry (1831–1915), Preparing for Thanksgiving Dinner, 1872, oil on canvas, 28 x 36 in., museum purchase, 1954.6

K George Henry Story (1835–1923), The Family, 1872, oil on canvas, 38 x 48 in., gift of the Leland Stillman Foundation in memory of Thomas Cochran (PA 1890) in recognition of the Gallery’s 25th Anniversary, 1957.2

L-M Bill Owens (b. 1938), We lived in our house for a year without any living room furniture. We wanted to furnish the room with things we loved, not early attic or leftovers. Now we have everything but the pictures and lamps., from series Suburbia, neg. 1972, print 1998, gelatin silver prints, 8 x 10 in., gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2006.77.46 and 2006.77.85

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ccessaddison.andover.edu/Obj4063http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj4115http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj18902http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj18941


Portraiture through ObjectsWhat assumptions do we make about personal spaces, based on our own perspectives and experiences?

How can photographers imbue everyday objects with meaning and relevance?

William Eggleston transforms the banal “stuff” of everyday life through photography. Photographing “democratically” since the late 1960s, Eggleston considers anything in front of the camera to be worthy of a picture, asking viewers to consider the meaning and relevance of objects and setting.

The images with which we adorn our spaces reflect a portrait of ourselves. William Greiner’s photograph of a refrigerator door shows the influence of the work of his friend Eggleston. Aaron Siskind’s photographs of Harlem and its residents in the 1930s call attention to the cross-class and interracial looking both documented and inherent in their creation.

In 1967, photographer Danny Lyon spent fourteen months documenting six prison units in Texas, where he became friends with prisoners and recorded his experience through photography and writing. The result of this journey is a series of images showing an unprejudiced portrait of real people and the spaces they are ordered to inhabit, marked by a high degree of emotion and empathy.

N William Eggleston (b. 1939), Untitled, 1974, from 14 Pictures, dye transfer print, 13 x 19 1/8 in., museum purchase, 1990.38.1

O William Greiner (b. 1957), Refrigerator with Photos, New Orleans, from series Symbols of Commitment, 1994, chromogenic print, 16 x 20 in., museum purchase, 1998.155

P Aaron Siskind (1903-1991), Man in Bed, from series Harlem Document Portfolio, 1940, printed 1976, gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in., purchased as the gift of Thomas C. Foley (PA 1971) and Leslie A. Fahrenkopf, 2008.24.9

Q Danny Lyon (b. 1942), Cell of two Chicano convicts. The Walls, Huntsville, Texas, USA. The Walls is a walled penitentiary, it is the oldest unit of the system and is located near the center of the town of Huntsville, from series Conversations with the Dead, 1968, gelatin silver print, 8 1/4 x 12 in., purchased as the gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2014.34.26

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http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj11232http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj13441http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj20520http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj24777


Beneath the SurfaceHow do artists reveal the cracks in the veneer of the American Dream?

How can images use surrealism and the bizarre to prompt viewers to question assumptions about normalcy?

In contrast to the usual critical depiction of the suburbs as a sterile, even sinister, cultural vacuum, Bill Owens’s photos of cookie-cutter houses and backyard barbeques offer a more even-handed and complex view. (See additional images on page 4) While capturing the post-war optimism about the better life afforded by these suburban enclaves, his series Suburbia, with powerful captions quoted from those photographed, such as those above, also reveals cracks in the veneer.

In the photographic series Dream House by Gregory Crewdson, suburbia and surrealism collide. Casting a number of Hollywood actors in the roles of nameless suburbanites, Crewdson collaborated with a team of twenty production professionals to convert a vacant ranch house in rural Vermont into an elaborate stage set with precise compositions and elaborate artificial lighting. The moments captured in each of the frames range in character from the mundane to the forlorn, from the bizarre to the tragic.

R Gregory Crewdson (b. 1962), Dream House, 2002, twelve chromogenic prints, 25 x 40 in., gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2014.2.6

S Bill Owens (b. 1938), I enjoy the suburbs. They provide Girl Scouts, PTA, Little League and soccer for my kids. The thing I miss most is Black cultural identity for my family. White middle-class suburbia can’t supply that. Here the biggest cultural happening has been the opening of two department stores., from series Suburbia, neg. 1972, print 1998, gelatin silver prints, 8 x 10 in., gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2006.77.16

T Gregory Crewdson (b. 1962), Dream House, 2002, twelve chromogenic prints, 25 x 40 in., gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2014.2.11

U Bill Owens (b. 1938), How can I worry about the damned dishes when there are children dying in Vietnam., from series Suburbia, neg. 1972, print 1998, gelatin silver prints, 8 x 10 in., gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2006.77.31

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DisplacementHow can connecting with objects and spaces reflective of those in our own lives prompt viewers to empathize with the experiences of others?

What are the moral implications of finding beauty in destruction?

Devoid of human presence yet packed with detritus, the color photographs of Robert Polidori, Joel Sternfeld, and Katherine Wolkoff capture moments in which the sanctity of home has been violated by natural disaster. Scattered objects, deteriorated surfaces, and severe damage to the structural integrity of the houses depicted in the artists’ images-whether interior spaces or exterior views-reflect the larger issues of physical and social displacement that societies experience in the wake of such natural disasters as floods and hurricanes. The aftermath of these tragic events, which affected areas of the United States as geographically diverse as the West coast and the Gulf coast, provided, nonetheless, fertile ground for the creation of aesthetically rich and emotionally captivating imagery. Artists have been compelled to record the mighty force of nature overpowering mankind for centuries; by choosing to show the quiet after the storm instead of focusing on the phenomenon at its climax, these three artists have found an unexpectedly contemplative pictorial strategy.

V Joel Sternfeld (b. 1944), McLean, Virginia - December 4, 1978, neg. 1978, print 1981, chromogenic print, 15 1/4 x 19 in., gift of Mrs. Ayako Ishizuka, 1982.190

W Joel Sternfeld (b. 1944), After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California, neg. 1979, print 1989, chromogenic print, 16 x 20 in., museum purchase, 1995.28

X Katherine Wolkoff (b. 1976), Katrina, New Orleans, 2005-2006, chromogenic print, 30 x 40 in., gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2009.50

Y Robert Polidori (b. 1951), 5417 Marigny Street, page 49, from series After the Flood, 2005, chromogenic print, 40 x 54 in., gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2009.68

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Curriculum Connections and ResourcesS U G G E S T E D C L A S S R O O M C O N N E C T I O N S History/Social Studies • The American Dream• gender roles• social documentation

English• texts that explore the various

meanings of home• symbolism• setting as character• identity and place• character development• interiors and exteriors• gender identity• roles and role play

• The American Dream• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel• Domestic Work: Poems by

Natasha Trethewey

Art• architecture• drawing in perspective• narrative• works in series• landscape• mapping• social documentation

Science• ecology• urban development and

environmental impact• relationships between

humans and nature• environmental ethics• developing sustainable

communities

C O N N E C T I O N S T O A D D I T I O N A L T H E M A T I C P O R T F O L I O SRepresenting the LandAmerican IdentityGenderTypes/StereotypesHumans and NatureUrbanizationFamily

T E A C H E R A N D S T U D E N T R E S O U R C E SDownload the Teacher Exhibition Guide Home Sweet Home from the Winter 2016 exhibition Walls and Beams, Rooms and Dreams: Images of Home. http://www.andover.edu/Museums/Addison/Education/PreK12/Pages/CurriculumPackets.aspx

Eggleston, William and John Szarkowski. William Eggleston’s Guide. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002.

Halberstam, David and Bill Owens. Suburbia: Bill Owens. New York: Fotofolio, 1999.

Lyons, Danny. Conversations With the Dead. New York: Henry Holt & Company, Inc, 1971

Parks, Gordon and Aaron Siskind. Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940. Providence, R.I.: Matrix Publications, 1981.

Shapiro, Ben. Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. http://www.gregorycrewdsonmovie.com/ A documentary film about the acclaimed photographer, filmed over a decade as he creates his most haunting, stunningly elaborate images.

Simmons, Laurie. In and Around the House: Photographs 1976-78. Carolina Nitsch Editions, 2003. Read the intro essay at http://www.lauriesimmons.net/writings/in-and-around-the-house/

Arranging a Visit to the Museum Learning Center At least two weeks in advance or preferably more, contact:

Jamie Kaplowitz (978) 749-4037 [email protected]

to schedule your visit and discuss possible themes, applicable portfolios of works, and related activities.

Addison Gallery of American Art Phillips Academy, Andover, MA Education Department

Rebecca Hayes Curator of Education

Jamie Kaplowitz Manager of Curriculum Initiatives

Christine Jee Education Associate for School and Community Collaborations

www.addisongallery.org
http://www.andover.edu/Museums/Addison/Education/PreK12/Pages/CurriculumPackets.aspxhttp://www.andover.edu/Museums/Addison/Education/PreK12/Pages/CurriculumPackets.aspxhttp://www.gregorycrewdsonmovie.com/http://www.lauriesimmons.net/writings/in-and-around-the-house/mailto:jkaplowitz%40andover.edu%0D?subject=