Joan Fontcuberta (born 24 February 1955)Joan Fontcuberta - biography. New York: Zabriskie Gallery, undated. Retrieved 1 July 2008. is a Spanish conceptual artist and photographer whose best-known works, such as Fauna and Sputnik, examine the truthfulness of photography. In addition, he is a writer, editor, teacher, and curator.
Biography Fontcuberta was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He received a degree in communications from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1977.Joan Fontcuberta. Toronto: Artcore/Fabrice Marcolini. Retrieved 1 July 2008.Joan Fontcuberta. New York: International Center of Photography. Retrieved 1 July 2008. He worked in advertising in his early career, and his family had also worked in advertising.Casper, Jim. Wait a minute... audio interview with the artist and a look back at some of the work of Joan Fontcuberta. Lens Culture, volume 8 (7.2006-10.2006). Retrieved 1 July 2008.Joan Fontcuberta speaks with Cristina Zelich. In Richardson, Nan, editor. Conversations with contemporary photographers. New York: Umbrage Editions, 2005. . From 1979 to 1986 he was a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona, after which he earned a living through his art.Joan Fontcuberta. Paris: Nathalie Parienté Hors Les Murs Agency for Specific Artistic Projects. Retrieved 1 July 2008.Joan Fontcuberta (interview with A. D. Coleman). Journal of Contemporary Art 1991;4(1):34-48. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
In 1980 he co-founded the Spanish/English visual arts journal PhotoVision, and he is still Editor in Chief. Since 1993 Fontcuberta has been a professor of audiovisual communication at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Among other teaching appointments, he was visiting lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University in 2003.Garvin, Diana E. The art of deception. Harvard Crimson magazine, 4 December 2003. Retrieved 1 July 2008. Among other awards, he was named an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 1994. His curatorial experience includes serving as the artistic director of the 1996 Rencontres d'Arles, an international photography festival. He exhibited at Les Rencontres d'Arles, France, in 2005 and 2009.
One of his fingers is missing as a result, he said in a 2014 interview, to a home-made bomb blowing up in his hand. He says that the missing finger makes him a terrible photographer, although in 2013 he won the Hasselblad International Award in Photography.The Guardian newspaper - Joan Fontcuberta: false negatives, 8 July 2014
Approach to art Fontcuberta describes himself as "self-taught in photography" and considers himself "a conceptual artist using photography." He states that the propaganda and dictatorship of Spain under Franco in his first 20 years led him to be skeptical about authority, which is reflected in his art. His background in communications and advertising led him to contemplate the relationship between photography and truth, and Fontcuberta believes that humor is an important component of his work. His art has been described as "postmodern."Parr, Martin, and Gerry Badger. The Photobook, a History. Volume II. London & New York: Phaidon, 2006. .
Works in museums Fontcuberta's works are held in the permanent collections of many museums, such as Art Institute of Chicago; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; George Eastman House, Rochester; Los Angeles County Museum of Art;Los Angeles County Museum of Art. LACMA collections online. Retrieved 1 November 2008. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Exhibitions Solo exhibitions of single series of Fontcuberta's works include the following (with earliest known year of exhibition in parentheses):
Herbarium (1984) In this series, Fontcuberta "arranged inanimate objects such as electrical cord, plastic, a shaving brush or a rubber hose into what appear to be exotic plants",Foerstner, Abigail. Focus on fine art with a Spanish accent. Chicago Tribune, 13 February 1987. thereby creating "pseudoplants".Moltó, Ezequiel. Objetivo manipulador. El País, 1 May 2001. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The black and white still-life photographs of these constructions were "drily classified in Latin"Perivolaris, John. Mirrors and windows: photography after postmodernism. The Bigger Picture The Redeye Newsletter 2004 Autumn, Issue 17. Retrieved 1 July 2008. and thereby resembled the photographs of Karl Blossfeldt.Cheval, François. Joan Fontcuberta. Bourgogne, France: Fonds Régionaux d’Art Contemporain. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The photographs were exhibited in Belgium, the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, Canada, and France.
Fauna (1987) Also known as "Dr. Ameisenhaufen's Fauna" or "Secret Fauna", Fontcuberta created this series in collaboration with the writer and photographer Pere Formiguera. The premise was that Fontcuberta and Formiguera discovered the long-lost archives of German zoologist Dr. Peter Ameisenhaufen, who was born in 1895 and who disappeared mysteriously in 1955.Fontcuberta, Joan, and Pere Formiguera. Secret fauna. December 1987. Retrieved 1 July 2008. Ameisenhaufen had catalogued a number of unusual animals; for example, Cercopithecus icarocornu resembles a monkey with a unicorn-like horn on its head and wings; and Solenoglypha polipodida resembles a snake with 12 feet.Fontcuberta, Joan, and Pere Formiguera. Fauna. Eko.fi Gallery. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
A review of the exhibition as presented in 1988 at the Museum of Modern Art noted that the evidence presented for the existence of the animals included "photographs... both in their natural habitats and in laboratory situations; detailed field notes, both in the original German and English translations; an occasional skeletal X-ray or dissection drawing; two or three tapes of the animals' cries, and in one case, an actual stuffed specimen".Smith, Roberta. Review/art; a furry-footed fish and other gallery rogues. The New York Times, 29 July 1988. Retrieved 1 July 2008. Furthermore, a video displayed interviews in which various people discussed Ameisenhaufen's life.
The exhibition was shown in England, Spain, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada and the United States. The fake animals displayed at the exhibitions varied according to the "legends, traditions, and superstitions" of the place hosting the exhibition. Among other clues suggesting that the exhibition was a hoax, "Formiguera" and "Ameisenhaufen" both mean "anthill," and the name of "Hans von Kubert" (Ameisenhaufen's research assistant) sounds like "Joan Fontcuberta."Roth, Andrew, et al. The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the 20th Century. New York: PPP Editions in association with Roth Horowitz, 2001. .
Fontcuberta reported that responses to the exhibition ranged "from people who understand that it is a farce and appreciate the satire and the humor of it, to people who understand it's a farce and are angry at you for trying to fool them, to people who believe it and are angry, to people who believe it and are delighted." He said in another interview that during the 1989 exhibition in the Barcelona Museum of Natural Science, Barcelona: Museu de Ciències Naturals. Retrieved 1 July 2008. "30% of the visitors aged 20 to 30, with university training, believed that some of our animals could have existed."Joan Fontcuberta interview with Diane Neumaier . In: Campany, David. Art and photography. London: Phaidon, 2003. Page 285. .
Constellations (1993) In this series, "the images of the cosmos are strewn with a fine stardust",Malherbe, Anne. Joan Fontcuberta, Musée de l'hôtel-Dieu, 9 avril - 3 octobre 2005. Art Press 2005 July/August;314:84-5. but "what they actually record is dust, crushed insects and other debris that accumulated on the windshield of Mr. Fontcuberta's car."Johnson, Ken. Joan Fontcuberta "Constellations." The New York Times, 30 January 1998. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The photographs were created "by applying sheets of 8-by-10-inch film directly to the glass and shining a light through, creating photograms, which were then made into Cibachrome prints."
Artist and the Photograph (1995) In this series, Fontcuberta "imagine[d] and realize[d] photographic works by the four greatest Spanish artists of the twentieth century, namely Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí and Antoni Tàpies." He mixed fact (e.g., that Picasso and André Villers collaborated on a series of lithographs called "Diurnes") with fiction (e.g., that a researcher recently found discarded images from the series).Fontcuberta, Joan. The artist and the photograph. ZoneZero, 2001. Retrieved 1 July 2008. The purpose of this series was to explore how curators and museums influence the public's perception of art.University of Alicante. Contranatura. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
Sputnik (1997) For this project, Fontcuberta fabricated evidence that the Soyuz 2 spacecraft was crewed by cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov.Auer, Catherine. Ground control to Comrade Ivan. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2002 Mar/Apr;58(2). Soyuz 1, an actual Soviet space mission in 1967, had ended with the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov when the spacecraft crashed on landing. In 1968, according to the fabricated story, "Istochnikov and his canine companion Kloka mysteriously vanished after leaving the Soyuz 2 capsule for a routine space walk. When the Soyuz 3 arrived for a docking maneuver, it found only a vodka bottle containing a note, floating in orbit outside the empty, meteorite-damaged ship." The real Soyuz 3 spacecraft did rendezvous with Soyuz 2, but Soyuz 2 was an uncrewed mission launched as a rendezvous target for Soyuz 3. According to Fontcuberta, Soviet officials deleted Istochnikov from official Soviet history to avoid embarrassment; however, the "Sputnik Foundation" discovered Istochnikov's "voice transcriptions, videos, original annotations, some of his personal effects, and photographs taken throughout his lifetime." The exhibition of artifacts (e.g., photographs) related to "Soyuz 2" was shown in many countries, including Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Japan, and the United States.Pérez de Albéniz, Javier. El cosmonauta fantasma. El Mundo magazine, 25 May 1997. Retrieved 1 July 2008.Curtis, Mary Jo. Artists mix fact and fantasy in False Witness exhibition at Bell Gallery. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University, 17 January 2001. Retrieved 1 July 2008. Among other reactions to the exhibition, a Russian ambassador "got extremely angry because [Fontcuberta] was insulting the glorious Russian past and threatened to present a diplomatic complaint."
Several lines of evidence available since the first exhibition of "Sputnik" in 1997 in Madrid suggested that the story and artifacts form an elaborate hoax: The name "Ivan Istochnikov" is a Russian translation of Joan Fontcuberta's name; in specific, "Joan" and "Ivan" both translate to "John". Retrieved 1 July 2008.Online Etymology Dictionary: Ivan.. Retrieved 1 July 2008. and "Fontcuberta and Istochnikov both mean 'hidden fountain'". The photographs of Istochnikov show Fontcuberta's face. Pages of the official Web site of the Madrid exhibition contain the words "PURE FICTION" toward the top of each page in light red text on a dark red backgroundSputnik Foundation. "From May 21st to July 20th, 1997." Retrieved 1 July 2008. or light pink text on a white background.Texts from the SPUTNIK catalog. Retrieved 1 July 2008.