Richard Avedon. Performance

Performance, von der Richard Avedon Foundation zusammengestellt, ist Avedons Hommage an alle Spielarten der darstellenden Kunste. Avedon liebte das Theater und war vom Buhnengeschehen seiner Zeit ebenso fasziniert wie von dessen Protagonisten. Alles, was in dieser schillernden Szene in den vergangenen 50 Jahren Rang und Namen hatte, landete fruher oder spater in seinem Studio: Judy Garland und Chaplin, Horowitz und Bernstein, die Beatles und Bob Dylan, Marlon Brando und Frank Sinatra, Martha Graham, Rudolf Nurejew, Merce Cunningham …

"We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be."
 - Richard Avedon, 1974

The preeminent stars and artists of the performing arts from the second half of the 20th century offered their greatest gifts - and, sometimes, their inner lives - to Richard Avedon. More than 200 are portrayed in Performance, many in photographs that have been rarely or never seen before. Of course, the great stars light the way: Hepburn and Chaplin, Monroe and Garland, Brando and Sinatra. But here too are the actors and comedians, pop stars and divas, musicians and dancers, artists in all mediums with public lives that were essentially performances, who stand at the pinnacle of our cultural achievement.

The celebrated author and critic John Lahr offers an elegant assessment of Avedon’s achievement. Four supremely talented artists from the performing arts - Mike Nichols, André Gregory, Mitsuko Uchida, and Twyla Tharp - contribute lively and moving memoirs about their collaborations with Avedon.