Robert Cumming

Acquired from the photographer, 1970s

cf. Diana Schoenfeld, Symbol and Surrogate: The Picture Within (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Art Gallery, 1989), p. 123

cf. Sarah Bay Williams, "Robert Cumming Invents the Photograph," Aperture, Summer 2013, p. 105

cf. Sarah Bay Gachot, ed. Robert Cumming: The Difficulties of Nonsense (New York, 2016), p. 161

“Robert Cumming’s visual deceptions are so enjoyable, and employ such subtle sleight of hand, that they are almost believable. His settings are familiar, and unlike in other Conceptual work from this period . . . He does not bring in different materials or modes of deconstruction through assemblage or collage, but instead relies on the language of the gelatin-silver print and skillful composition to subvert photography’s history and associations with reality.”

('Feast for the Eyes,’ p. 144)

Early photographs by Robert Cumming rarely appeared at auction. Trained in painting and sculpture, with a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Cumming initially came to photography in the late 1960s as the most obvious means to document his creations. He soon realized, however, that the photographs of his sculptures presented far more creative opportunities than the sculptures themselves. His work is well represented in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.