"Greenough's chronological structure accomplishes two things. First, she is able to construct a stylistic progression for the work. What she finds is that Callahan moved from experimentation, in work he did in Detroit between 1941 and 1946, to what he called "seeing photographically," in photographs he made from 1946 to 1961, years he taught at the Institute of Design, in Chicago (p. 44). The alternation of order and chaos in this work, Greenough says, then gave way to a "distinct edginess" that began when he returned to Chicago from a sabbatical in France in 1957-58 (p. 51). That edginess became even more marked when he moved to Providence in 1961 to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design. Since 1977, when Callahan retired from academic life, his work, much of it in color, has become simpler. In a wall label in the final room of the exhibition, Greenough claims that these late works are "less about their nominal subjects . . . and more about the act of seeing itself - about observation and contemplation."
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- bill 9-25-2004 11:41 pm