Richard Misrach
Desert Fire #249

Desert Fire #249

© 1985 Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles

Desert Fire #249
Desert Fire #249
ArtistAmerican, born 1949
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Desert Fire #249
  • from Canto IV: The Fires
Date1985
PlaceCalifornia, United States
MediumChromogenic print
DimensionsImage: 18 5/16 × 23 in. (46.5 × 58.4 cm)
Sheet: 20 × 23 15/16 in. (50.8 × 60.8 cm)
Credit LineGift of Joan Morgenstern in honor of Clinton T. Willour
Object number90.462
Non exposé

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Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

As a student at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1960s, Richard Misrach developed a keen sense of activism. He produces provocative photographs of man-altered landscape and is most famous for his lifetime project the Desert Cantos series. Begun in 1979, these images examine the complex interaction between humans and nature, aesthetics, politics, and ecology, particularly of the American West. Misrach's photographs are incredibly beautiful, yet they address social issues in a critical and provocative way.


 Although Misrach considers all of his desert photography to be part of one single work, he has divided the pictures into subseries called "cantos," each representing a song in a song cycle or a stanza in a love poem, visually examining a different aspect of desert life. Though he originally started with four cantos (representing the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire), he continually adds new ones. This image from Canto IV shows a controlled agricultural fire, set to clear alfalfa fields. The beauty of the scene of a desert fire demonstrates the complexity of Misrachís approach, juxtaposing the formal splendor of the dramatic and expressive color against the sobering implication of air pollution.



 


ProvenanceJoan Morgenstern, Houston; given to MFAH, 1990.
Exhibition History"Past/Present: Photography from the Permanent Collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, December 8, 1991–February 9, 1992.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Signed and inscribed in ink below image, lower left to lower right: "19 - 25 DESERT FIRE #249"..."(c) Richard Misrach 1985". "c" = copyright symbol.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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