Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lewis-baltz-5373" aria-label="More by Lewis Baltz" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Lewis Baltz</a>
Dana Point 1
Presented by Slavica Perkovic 2012
architecture
banality
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
countries and continents
Dana Point
documentary
emotions, concepts and ideas
features
formal qualities
places
signage
townscapes / man-made features
universal concepts
USA, California
wall
<p>While still an undergraduate at the San Francisco Art Institute, Baltz began a series that he would later title <span>Prototypes</span>, showing close-up, textured and cropped fragments of the man-made industrial landscapes that he found around his home town of Newport Beach and the Los Angeles Bay Area. The everyday American landscapes captured by Baltz are strikingly close to the abstract and stark forms of contemporary American sculpture. These small hand-printed photographs were themselves treated like minimalist objects, and in the early 1970s Baltz began to exhibit his work with Leo Castelli, a New York gallery at the forefront of showcasing minimal and conceptual art.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2016</em></p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
Dana Point #1
support: 150 × 225 mm
Presented by Slavica Perkovic 2012
<div class="text">
<p>
<b>Lewis Baltz </b>1945–2012<br/>
<i>Dana Point #1</i> 1970<br/>Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper<br/>152 x 225 mm<br/>P13261</p>
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</p>
<p>
<i>Dana Point #1</i> is a black and white gelatin silver print on paper by the American artist and photographer Lewis Baltz. The composition features an exterior, light-coloured stucco wall on which a large generic sign made of commercial lettering placed at the top centre reads ‘Point Realty’ in commercial lettering. The formal minimalism of the photograph is punctuated by the seam of the asphalt at the bottom of the frame.</p>
<p>The work was made in 1970<i> </i>with <i>Dana Point</i> <i>#2 </i>(Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/baltz-dana-point-2-p13262" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P13262</span></a>) as part of a series which Baltz called<i> Prototypes</i>. Another diptych from the same series, <i>Houston A,</i> <i>Houston B</i> 1972 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/baltz-houston-a-houston-b-p80062" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P80062</span></a>), is also in Tate’s collection. This series was inspired by Baltz’s interest in minimalist practices in painting and sculpture. The title of the diptych, like other works in the series – which Baltz produced throughout the United States – refers to the city where the photograph was taken, in this case Dana Point in Orange County, California. In each work of the <i>Prototype</i> series Baltz identified a feature in the urban environment and photographed it according to the qualities of minimalist art, whether the restriction of form to its most basic element (as in <i>Houston A, Houston</i> <i>B</i>) or in the serial repetition of particular view, as seen in <i>Dana Point #1 </i>and <i>Dana Point</i> <i>#2</i>. </p>
<p>The tendency toward serial form continuesd in Baltz’s later works and is characteristic of the ‘New Topographic’ movement in American landscape photography. Many of these works, including <i>San Quentin Point</i> 1982 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/baltz-san-quentin-point-p79978" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P79978</span></a>), are comprised of multiple units shown together in a grid. Baltz first showed the <i>Prototypes</i> at the Castelli Gallery in New York in the early 1970s, the same gallery that showed exhibited the work of minimalist artists Carl Andre and Donald Judd. Baltz’s photographs thus offer a record of the links between avant-garde photographic practice at the time and artworks in other media. This interplay was explored in the display ‘<i>Lewis Baltz and Carl Andre: Photography and Minimalism</i>’ at Tate Modern, London,  in 2012. </p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>
<i>Lewis Baltz: The Prototype Works</i>, exhibition catalogue, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 2010.<br/>Lewis Baltz, <i>Works</i>, Göttingen 2010.</p>
<p>Simon Baker <br/>July 20122</p>
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Summary
2016-06-03T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>While still an undergraduate at the San Francisco Art Institute, Baltz began a series that he would later title <i>Prototypes</i>, showing close-up, textured and cropped fragments of the man-made industrial landscapes that he found around his home town of Newport Beach and the Los Angeles Bay Area. The everyday American landscapes captured by Baltz are strikingly close to the abstract and stark forms of contemporary American sculpture. These small hand-printed photographs were themselves treated like minimalist objects, and in the early 1970s Baltz began to exhibit his work with Leo Castelli, a New York gallery at the forefront of showcasing minimal and conceptual art. </p>
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Display caption
2016-10-12T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
architecture banality cities, towns, villages (non-UK) countries and continents Dana Point documentary emotions, concepts and ideas features formal qualities places signage townscapes / man-made features universal concepts USA, California wall