Shimon Attie

Shimon Attie (born in Los Angeles in 1957[1]) is an American visual artist. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, The Rome Prize in 2001 and a Visual Artist Fellowship from Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study in 2007. His work spans a variety of media, including photography, site-specific installation, multiple channel immersive video installation, performance, and new media. Much of Attie's practice explores how a wide range of contemporary media may be used to re-imagine new relationships between space, time, place, and identity. Much of Attie's works in the 90s dealt with the history of World War II. He first garnered significant international attention by slide projecting images of past Jewish life onto contemporary locations in Berlin.[2] More recent projects have involved using a range of media to engage local communities to find new ways of representing their history, memory and potential futures. Attie's artworks and interventions are site-specific and immersive in nature, and tend to engage subject matter that is both social, political and psychological. In 2013, five monographs have been published on Attie's work, which has also been the subject of a number of films aired on PBS, BBC, and ARD. Since receiving his MFA in 1991, Attie has realized approximately 25 major projects in ten countries around the world. Most recently, in 2013-14, Shimon Attie was awarded the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award in Art.

Life

Shimon Attie was born in 1957 and received an MFA in 1991.[1] In 1991, he moved to Germany from his previous home in Northern California, and began to make work initially about Jewish identity and the history of the second World War. His work later evolved to engage broader issues of memory, place and identity more generally. Attie moved to New York City in 1997.

Critical reaction

Shimon Attie's work has been extensively reviewed by a wide variety of publications, including features and/or reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News, Artforum, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe, and many others.

Samples include:

Yasaman Alipour, writing in "The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics, and Culture", on Attie's solo exhibition "Facts on the Ground" at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City:

"Celebrated for his approach, which blurs the line between installation and photography, Attie has spent his career moving from one city to the next to explore the trauma and history of the marginalized and to reflect on social memory and the construction of Identity. Seductive, daring, and clever, Facts on the Ground dives into the inherently charged and polarized politics of its subject matter. Attie achieves something profound: he presents a unique opportunity to contemplate Israel/Palestine without the distraction that is simultaneously a manifestation of the limitations of visual of written language and the possibilities of their alliance." June 3, 2016

Holland Cotter, writing in The New York Times on one of Attie's works in the traveling exhibition "Art, AIDS, America":

"…Less familiar work makes the strongest impression, benefiting from the element of surprise. A beautiful 1998 photograph by Shimon Attie of a life-size projection of a male's image on a bed, is one." July 28, 2016

Norman Kleeblatt, writing in a cover story for Art in America on Attie's survey exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston:

"Like many other artists in the wake of Marcel Broodthaers, Attie is first and foremost an artist-anthropologist, a practitioner who digs into archives and then reconfigures his nonartistic source material into complicated art works." June 2000

Amei Wallach, writing a feature in a Sunday New York Times on Shimon Attie's public art installation, "Between Dreams and History", in Manhattan's Lower East Side:

"…like the best of evanescent public projects, from Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Wrapped Reichstag to Mr. Attie's "Writing on the Wall," this one will animate real anxieties in real time. Not to mention a sense of wonder." Sept 13, 1998

Laura Hodes in Forward felt his 2012 show at Northwestern succeeded in creating a space that was at once dream like and a memorial to the dead, involving the viewer in the historical situation: "we become simultaneously the hidden Jew, the marching Nazi, the Dutch passersby, the voyeur and even the medium itself."[2]

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions include:

Selected Group Exhibitions include:

In public collections

His photographs Almstadtstrasse 43, Berlin (1930) (car parked in front of Hebrew bookstore) (1991) and Mulackstrasse 37, Berlin (1932) (children and tower) (1991) are owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.[3] Other collections include The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Miami Art Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many others.

References
  1. "Shimon Attie". Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, Rutgers. Retrieved 5 December 2013.
  2. Hodes, Laura (November 16, 2012). "Shimon Attie Projects Past Into Present". Forward.
  3. "The Collection: Shimon Attie (American, born 1957)". MoMA. Retrieved 5 December 2013.

Further reading

Monographs

Facts on the Ground, Shimon Attie, Nazraeli Press, CA 2016; The Attraction of Onlookers: Aberfan – An Anatomy of a Welsh Village, Shimon Attie, Parthian Books, UK 2008;The History of Another: Projections in Rome, Shimon Attie, Twin Palms Press, Santa Fe, NM and The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL 2004; Sites Unseen: Shimon Attie - European Projects, Edition Braus, Heidelberg, Germany (in cooperation with Verve Editions/ICA Boston) 1999; The Writing on the Wall: Projections in Berlin's Jewish Quarter; Shimon Attie - Photographs and Installations, Edition Braus, Heidelberg 1994; Shimon Attie: Finstere Medine, Galerie im Scheunenviertel, Berlin, Germany 1992;

Selected Periodicals and Newspapers

2017 Exhibition at Saint Louis Art Museum features new work by Shimon Attie, Artdaily.org, April 6; " 'Lost' on the Mississippi", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9; Shimon Attie at the St. Louis Art Museum, Modern Art Notes Podcast, Tyler Green, May 4, (from 57'00" on in program: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kellie-jones-shimon-attie/id479811154?i=1000385086670&mt=2 ); Currents 113: Shimon Attie, Lost in Space (After Huck), Hannah Klemm, Saint Louis Art Magazine Magazine, Spring Issue; Mississippi River Culture and Social Conflict Come Together in Lost in Space (After Huck), April 3 (http://www.hectv.org/watch/hec-tv-scope/mississippi-river-culture-and-social-conflict-come-together-in-lost-in-space-after-huck/27704/ ); Auf Leben und Tod: Videoinstallation zeigt das Drama der Flucht als Roulettespiel, Juergen Kleindienst, Leipziger Volkszeitung, June 30

2016 Art of the AIDS Years: What Took Museums So Long?, Holland Cotter, New York Times, July 28; Shimon Attie Facts on the Ground, Jack Shainman Gallery, Yasaman Alipour, The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics, and Culture, June 3; Artist Shimon Attie on Photography, Language, Beauty And Getting Tear Gassed, Alina Cohen, Forbes.com, May 6; Shimon Attie: Sign Lanuage, Place, issue #15, Musee Magazine, New York, NY; Survival Guides: Communities are mechanisms for outliving the end of the world, Rachel Giese, Real Life Magazine, Dec 1

2015 Germany Has Lessons for the South, Letter from America, Anand Giridharadas, New York Times, July 7; "Art AIDS America: An Impressive Exhibition and an Important Curatorial Event", Shana Nys Dambro, Huffington Post, July 13; Safe and Sound, The Architect's Newspaper, July; "SF to Celebrate Grand Opening of New Public Safety Building", San Francisco Chronicle, April 14;

2012 "When Artists Take On Museums", Tom Freudenheim, The Wall Street Journal, March 13

2009 "Outside Time: The Art of Shimon Attie," by John Hanhardt; Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall: History, Memory, Aesthetics, Peter Muir,

Ashgate Publishing, Surrey, UK;"Ruins of Representation: Shimon Attie's The History of Another," Artluk Magazine, Magdalena Wroblewska, Warsaw, PL

2007 "The Mourning Play (Trauerspiel) of Shimon Attie," Peter Muir, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol 11, Nr 4, October; "Shimon Attie Changes History: Memory Pictures", Jeffrey Cudlin, Washington City Paper, April 1

2006

"Shimon Attie at the Miami Art Museum," Elisa Turner, p. 190, ARTnews, November issue; "Life, ripe and robust: Exhibits sift and savor it", Elisa Turner, Miami  Herald, July 30

2004 

"Shimon Attie at Jack Shainman Gallery," Nico Israel, Artforum, Dec. issue; "More than Modigliani," Lindsay Pollock, ARTnews, March, 2004, p. 50; "Interview with Shimon Attie by Irit Batsry", Artwurl on-line Magazine, March issue; "If Walls Could Talk: Haunting Ancient Rome with Images from its Past," Steven Litt, Arts & Life Section, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nov. 25

2003 "Universal Studio," Meredith Mendelsohn, Art talk, ARTnews, May, 2003/ "Finding Comfort in the Safety of Names," Michael Kimmelman, 

The New York Times, Aug 31;  "Using Illumination to Truly See," Benjamin Genocchio, The New York Times,  Dec. 28

2002 "Time Exposures," Jessica Dawson, Feature Article, The Washington Post, Washington, DC, Dec. 5; "Shimon Attie at Jack Shainman Gallery," Elizabeth Schambelan, Art in America, June issue; "Persistence of Memory," Norman L. Kleeblatt, cover image/story and 8 page feature, Art in America, June issue

2000 "Projecting the Past Onto the Present," Leah Ollman, The Sunday Los Angeles Times, (1500 word feature, Calendar/Art and Architecture section), February 13 issue;"Des artistes américains sortens leurs griffes," Harry Bellet, Le Monde, Feb. 20-21, Paris, Fr; "Si les murs pouvaient parler," Frédérique Fanchette, Liberation, Feb. 8th; "The Construction of Self and Other in the Public Art Project Between Dreams and History," Joanne Hinkel, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

1999 "Shimon Attie brings haunting images to the ICA," Christine Temlin, The Boston Globe, Dec. 24; "Photographing Phantoms: Shimon Attie captures ghostly projections of memory in his latest work," Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle, June 19; "Shimon Attie at Jack Shainman Gallery and Rivington Street," Nicole Krauss, Art in America, February issue; "Recasting the Stones," Kate Cambor, The American Prospect, Cambridge, MA, Mar-Apr; Le Monde, Paris, France, Feb. 6 issue, page 13 (full page image reproduction); "Ghostwriter," Amy Traverso, Boston Magazine, September issue

1998 "Writing in Light on the Tenement Walls", Amei Wallach, The Sunday New York Times, (1500 word feature, Fall Preview edition of the Fine Arts section), September 13; "The Memory Wall: Shimon Attie Reveals the Collective Unconscious of the Lower East Side," Cindy Carr, The Village Voice, (1300 word feature), Nov 10; "Metaphysical Graffiti: An Artist Awakens the Ghosts of the Lower East Side," Karrie Jacobs, New York Magazine, October 26; "Spiritual Graffiti," Anita Hamilton, Time Out New York, October 22–29; "Art Talk: Neighborhood Watch," Glen Helfand, ARTnews, November; "Your Life in Laser Lights," Anita Hamilton, TIME digital, November 2

1997 "Shimon Attie's The Writing on the Wall," Anthony Grafton, The New York Review of Books, August 14

1995 "An Artist's Plans to Commemorate Europe's Refugess, Past and Present," The London Times, Jan. 25

1994 "Mixed Images Show the Mutability of Time," Charles Hegan, The New York Times, Dec. 9; "Haunted by History," Susan Shapiro, The Sunday Book Review, The New York Times, Sept. 25; "Sunday on Review," The London Independent, London, UK, May 8; ARTnews, Kenneth Baker, New York, NY, November issue; Artforum, Miriam Rosen, New York, NY, April issue; Artissues, Rebecca Solnit, Los Angeles, CA, July issue; San Francisco Chronicle, April 28; Politiken, Copenhagen, DK, August 20

1993 Liberation, Paris, France, September 28 Politiken, Sunday, Copenhagen, Denmark, March 7; Tages Zeitung ("Tatz"), Hamburg, Germany, March 10

1992 "Slices of Time," Tages Spiegel, Berlin, April 10

Selected Reference Books

2018

The Book of the Word: Contemporary Artists Investigate Language (w/t), Dr. Michael Petry, MOCA London, Thames & Hudson, London;

Museums and Public Art?, edited by Dr. Harriet Senie and Dr. Cher Krause Knight, Cambridge Scholars Publishing;

2017 Photography and Germany, Dr. Andres Zervigon, Reaktion Books, London; The Politics of Form, ed. Sarah Copland and Greta Olson, Routledge

2016 Haunting and Archives in the Time of Now, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Ann Shelton: Dark Matter, The Auckland Art Gallery/Toi o Tamaki, Auckland, NZ; "Israeli-Palestinian Narratives and the Politics of Form: Reading Side by Side," European Journal of English Studies, Francis, Susan Lanser and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, published by Taylor & amp

2015 Art for Rollins: The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Volume II, Goodman, Abigail Ross, Barbara Lawrence Alfond, and Ena Heller. Winter Park, Fla: Cornell Fine Arts Museum; Die doppelte Krise. Ostdeutsche Erinnerungszeichen nach 1989, Leonie Beiersdorf, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, Germany; Oltre il Memoriale: Le tracce, lo spazio, il ricordo, Michela Bassanelli, Mimesis Editions, Italy

2014 Art Since 1980: Charting the Contemporary, Peter Kalb, L. King Publishers (p. 149); A History of Modern Art, H.H. Arnason, 7th ed. Laurence King Publishing, London, UK; Perspectives on Place: Theory and Practice, Jesse Alexander, Bloomsbury, UK The Cambridge History of the Second World War: Volume III, Cambridge, UK

2013 Contemporary Installation Art, Shim Chung, Ancbook, Seoul, South Korea

2012 "The Unexpected Encounter", page 33-46, Rhetoric, Remembrance, and Visual Form: Sighting Memory, edited by Anne Demo and Bradford Vivian, Routledge, New York/London; Photography as Activism: Images for Social Change, Michelle Bogre, Focal Press

2011

100 artistes du Street Art, edited by Paul Ardenne, Editions de La Martiniere, Paris, France

2010

"Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall: History, Memory, Aesthetics, " Peter Muir, Ashgate, UK;  Interpreting Photography, Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw, PL; The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, 10-volume anthology, edited by James Young, Yale University Press

2009 History as Art, Art as History: Contemporary Art and Social Studies Education, Desai, Hamlin, and Mattson Routledge, New York and London

2008 "The Incomplete Spectacle: Aberfan in its Own Image," Art and Death, Chris Townsend, Tauris Publishers, London, UK; After Photography, Fred Ritchin, W W Norton, NY, NY

2007 "Great Art of the Western World," Ori Soltes, The Teaching Company Lecture Series; Searching for Sebald: Photography After W.G. Sebald, ICI Press, Los Angeles, CA; Art after Politics: from Melancholy to Passion, Piotr Piotrowski, Kraków University Press

2002 A History of Modern Art, H.H. Arnason, 5th ed. Laurence King Publishing, London, UK; Art Tomorrow, Edward Lucie-Smith, Vilo Publisher, Paris, France; Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing, Dora Apel, Rutgers University Press

2000 At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture, James E. Young, Yale University Press, chapter 3 (p. 64-89 and book cover)

1999 Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection, Ellen Handy and Willis Hartshorn, Little, Brown, and Company, New York, NY;"Photographic Anamnesia: The Past in the Present," Mette Sandbye, Symbolic Imprints: Essays on Photography and Visual Culture, Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, DK

1997 New Art, 3rd edition, Harry Abrams, Inc., NY, NY; Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory, Marianne Hirsch, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

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