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| David Levinthal: Modern Romance
     
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Hardcover
200 pages
St. Ann's Press
Published 2000
From Library Journal
American-born photographer Levinthal has earned national recognition by creating potent, ironic, and sometimes controversial visions using miniature figures and toys as characters in staged tableaux. Since publishing his first major work in 1977 (Hitler Moves East: A Graphic Chronicle, 1941-43), he has worked with Barbie, blackface memorabilia, toy soldiers, and various modeling figures to explore the icons and stereotypes of popular culture. Levinthal executed his series Modern Romance in the mid-1980s. Echoing the paintings of Edward Hopper and film noir, these are scenes of urban life in dreamy neon-lit color and television blues. Levinthal shows us figures lingering on street corners, entering movie theaters, passing through alleys, conversing in diners, and interacting in confined spaces. He also depicts the impersonal landscape of the city: cop cars on the streets, doorways, and murky bedrooms. Levinthal's lovely and vaguely troubling photographs house a tension of possibilities; with details obscured, they speak of solitude, sexual isolation, and urban anxiety. An illuminating essay by Eugenia Parry opens the book, nicely placing this formative series in both a personal and an artistic context. This is serious art, dealing with fascinating ideas. Highly recommended for contemporary art collections of academic and public libraries. Deborah Miller, Minneapolis
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Library Journal, March 15, 2001 -Deborah Miller
Levinthal's lovely and vaguely troubling photographs house a tension of possibilities…This is serious art, dealing with fascinating ideas.
Book Description
Introduction by Eugenia Parry
In the mid-80s, David Levinthal worked on the body of work that would become the defining art of his career. Using only a Polaroid SX70 camera, he created a series of tableaux set-ups depicting an American world of the 40s and 50s reminiscent of Edward Hopper & classic film noir. These scenes of solitary characters, in dimly lit restaurants and hotels, by swimming pools and on street corners, transcend their toy figure composition and childlike scale to become atmospheric, adult scenarios, heavy with the search for romance in a hostile, lonely environment. While selections of this series have been published in various books, this is the first time a whole book has been devoted to these important images, many of which have not been published previously. Accompanying the images is an essay by acclaimed photographer and photo historian Eugenia Parry.
"Modern Romance is secretive, illicit. A woman stands under a street lamp. She is (a) waiting for her husband, (b) waiting for her lover, (c) waiting for a customer, (d) waiting, (e) all of the above." Roger Rosenblatt "Levinthal questions how much we substitute image for actuality" Eric P. Nash, The New York Times |
Small Wonder: Worlds in a Box (American Scene (Washington, D.C.), 4,)
David Levinthal; David Corey (Editor); & National Museum of American Art |  |
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The Simpsons: Photographs by David Levinthal
David Levinthal (Photographer); & Matt Groening (Introduction) |  |
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