DAVID LEVINTHAL: Photographs: 1974 – 2008
Gallery 169 is pleased to present DAVID LEVINTHAL: Photographs: 1974 – 2008
This exhibition of 35 photographs takes us through fifteen distinct bodies of work by world-renowned artist, David Levinthal, spanning a period of 35 years.
Born in 1949 in San Francisco, CA, David Levinthal has been confronting society and its mores through the playful use of toy figurines since 1972. The myths of the American West, the idealized 'perfection' of the female icons of the fifties, the realm of sexual fantasy, and war are all topics of Levinthal’res and structures as subject matter for the creation of a surrogate reality, I have endeavored to create a 'fictional world' th toys as one way that society socializes it’
Writing in The New York Times, Charles Hagen said that, "What distinguishes Mr. Levinthal's work is his interest in emotionally charged historical material. But the real force of his images comes not from his choice of subjects but from the way he tells their stories."
David Levinthal has released numerous publications including, Hitler Moves East: A Graphic Chronicle, 1941-43, which he co-authored with Garry Trudeau, Bad Barbie, Blackface, and IED: War in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 1997 the International Center of Photography in New York presented the first retrospective. He was the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1995 and the National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Artists Fellowship in 1990-91. Levinthal’s works are featured in major museum collections, such as: the Smithsonian, the San Francisco Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou. They are also part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Menil Collection, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.