291 (art gallery)
Pioneering artistic photographers such as Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence H. White all gained critical recognition through exhibitions at 291.
By the following year they had conceived of a great exhibition of photography, the first to be judged by photographers themselves, and had found a venue at the National Arts Club in New York.
The following year Stieglitz further cemented his reputation as the leading proponent of fine art photography by launching the famed journal Camera Work with the assistance of his friend and fellow photographer Joseph Keiley.
He expected that Camera Work would soon not only be funded completely by its subscribers but that additional income from the sales of the journal would allow him to further promote "photography as a medium of individual expression.
It was judged by a jury of eminent American painters, including William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, which gave it considerable standing in the art world.
He traveled to London to meet with some of the founders of the important photographic group The Linked Ring, including J. Crag Annan, Frederick H. Evans, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Alfred Horley Hinton.
The two of them began planning how to use the new space most effectively, not only as a gallery but as an educational facility for artists and photographers and as a meeting place for art lovers.
Many of the prints had been selected for this purpose, but owing to the impossibility of securing at any price adequate gallery accommodations during the desirable New York season, this exhibition must be deferred.
[6] Stieglitz and Steichen had planned the gallery as a commercial space, saying that it would "negotiate sales in behalf of owners of picture exhibited, charging a commission of 15 percent for the benefit of the Photo-Secession treasury.
After a highly successful first year, Stieglitz and Steichen felt that they had made their point about the stature of fine art photography.
So confident were they of their success that their colleague Joseph Keily wrote "today in America the real battle for the recognition of pictorial photography is over.
"[8] Ironically, Stieglitz began to feel that he had succeeded in transforming the Photo-Secession into something he once disliked – an established institution, set in its ways and complacent in its approach to art.
The show, drawings by artist Pamela Colman Smith, initially attracted little attention, but after a prominent critic praised the work it became the best attended exhibition to date.
[5] Stieglitz began planning for future non-photography shows, but for the remainder of 1907 the walls were filled with exhibits by such photographers as Adolf de Meyer, Alvin Langdon Coburn and, once again, members of the Photo-Secession.
The 1908 gallery season started with the show "Drawings by Auguste Rodin", the first exhibit in the United States of his works on paper.
The show caused a significant amount of controversy in the press, with one critic saying "they are not the sort of thing to offer to public view even in a gallery.
After some convincing by Haviland that the new space was workable, Stieglitz gathered some other friends and came up with additional funds for utilities, supplies, printing and framing.
At one point Stieglitz wrote "To my dismay, jealousies soon became rampant among photographers around me, an exact repetition of the situation I rebelled against at the Camera Club.
"[13] These differences of opinion were to increase over the next two years, exacerbated in part by Stieglitz's stubbornness and his refusal to include many of his long-time photographer friends in decisions about the direction of the new gallery.
Moreover, Stieglitz continued to make sure that the gallery was not just an exhibition space; he strongly believed in its original mission as being an educational facility and meeting place for those with avant-garde ideas.
The new art and the public's reactions to it were very vitalizing to Stieglitz; it gave him a brand new set of admirers and followers at a time when he was feeling less and less connected to his old colleagues at the Photo-Secession.
[14] The change in the focus of the gallery led to a coalescence of group of intellectuals and artists who both sympathized with Stieglitz's aims and who themselves were invigorated by the atmosphere there.
On any given day, Stieglitz might have been surrounded by artists John Marin, Max Weber, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley or Marius de Zayas; authors and art critics Sadakichi Hartmann and Benjamin De Casseres; financial supporters Paul Haviland and Agnes Ernst Meyer; and editors and collaborators Joseph Keiley and John Kerfoot.
His interest in African tribal art and admiration for Picasso's Cubist work convinced Stieglitz to hold groundbreaking exhibitions of these subjects at 291.
Whether it was already controversial European artists like Picasso, Matisse or Cézanne, or relatively unknown but soon-to-be-famous Americans like Marin, Weber, Dove or Hartley, Stieglitz had both the aesthetic sense and the nerve to showcase individuals who are now acknowledged to have been at the forefront of modern art.
He assembled a close circle of relatively well-off friends, including Agnes Meyer and Dorothy Norman, and together with Stieglitz they came up with the idea of publishing a new magazine.
He made a photograph called The Last Days of 291 (National Gallery of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection) which symbolized his feelings at the time.
To his side is an older, bandaged warrior looking on, possibly representing Stieglitz himself as someone who had been wounded in the battle to protect the art that must now be guarded by a new generation.
From 1925 until 1929 he directed the Intimate Gallery, showcasing the work of American artists, including Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Paul Strand, Charles Demuth, and Georgia O'Keeffe, who by then had become his wife.
To him 291 represented: An oasis of real freedom A sturdy Islet of enduring independence in the besetting seas of Commercialism and Convention A rest – when wearied A stimulant – when dulled A Relief A Negation of Preconceptions A Forum for Wisdom and for Folly A Safety valve for repressed ideas An Eye Opener A Test – A Solvent A Victim and an Avenger J.
