Stephen Shore Reflects on Walker Evans's 'Breakfast Room at Belle Grove Plantation' and the Mind Behind the Camera
In the latest issue of Aperture, No. 264, Stephen Shore, now in his late seventies, reflects on Walker Evans's 1935 image, Breakfast Room at Belle Grove Plantation, and the factors that shaped Evans's artistry. Shore reminisces about attending a lecture by Evans at MoMA during the early 1970s, where Evans referred to Corrugated Tin Façade (1936) as a "transcendent document." He draws a parallel to Evans's use of Matisse’s epigraph in Message from the Interior (1966) and revisits the 1971 MoMA retrospective and an interview with Leslie George Katz. Shore notes that the Belle Grove photograph, captured in March 1935 after a picnic at the mansion, which John Andrews constructed in 1857, reflects decay reminiscent of Giulio Romano's art and explores Evans's insights on photography's ties to the mind.
Key facts
- Walker Evans had a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971.
- In 1971, Evans collaborated on an extensive interview with Leslie George Katz, publisher of Eakins Press.
- The interview and eight selected photographs appeared in Art in America and were published in book form in 1995 as Walker Evans: Incognito.
- Evans described his 1930s hot streak as "a very exciting, heady thing" that "goes like magic" and used the word transcendent.
- Evans chose Matisse's "L'exactitude n'est pas la vérité" as the epigraph for Message from the Interior (1966).
- Breakfast Room at Belle Grove Plantation was taken in March 1935 after Evans, Jane Ninas, and Christine Fairchild broke into the Belle Grove mansion.
- Belle Grove Plantation in White Castle, Louisiana, was built in 1857 by sugar planter John Andrews and had seventy-five rooms.
- Shore compares the photograph's decaying Corinthian columns to Giulio Romano's Sala dei Giganti in the Palazzo Te, Mantua, ca. 1532–34.
Entities
Artists
- Stephen Shore
- Walker Evans
- Leslie George Katz
- Charles Baudelaire
- Jane Ninas
- Christine Fairchild
- John Andrews
- Giulio Romano
- Henri Matisse
- Hiroshi Sugimoto
Institutions
- Museum of Modern Art
- Eakins Press
- Art in America
- Aperture
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- SCALA/Art Resource
- Art Resource
- Erich Lessing
- Palazzo Te
Locations
- New York City
- United States
- Alabama
- White Castle
- Louisiana
- Mantua
- Italy