Nashville
Sheet: 7 1/16 x 10 15/16 inches (17.94 x 27.78 cm)
American
Photographs: Selections From The Hallmark Photographic Collection at the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Mulvane Art Museum, Topeka, KS, September 19 –
29, 2006, no cat.
Rotation 7. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
Kansas City, MO, December 7, 2009- May 17, 2010, no cat.
Rotation 22. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 10, 2016- January 8, 2017, no cat.
Lee Friedlander’s series The Little Screens depicts photographs of television sets in empty interiors. These settings are devoid of people, but often feature faces cropped by the TV sets, such that they seem to gaze into the rooms. The images can suggest a fascination with television as well as recognition of the medium’s unnerving capacity to mesmerize. When photographer Walker Evans wrote about this series in 1963, he interpreted Friedlander’s work as a critique of postwar consumerism and conservative family ideals. Evans described Friedlander’s photographs as “deft, witty, spanking little poems of hate.”
Purchased from Fraenkel Gallery by Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 1994;
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.
