Erika Esau
After 20 years of teaching modern art history and the history of photography in the U.S. and in Australia, I returned to work as Librarian in the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. My scholarly interests consequently straddle several different fields: my most recent book was the stories of three German women of the 20th century, and the book before that was a comparative discussion of aesthetic connections between Australia and California. I now live in Chico, California, after 20 years in Pasadena, California. In retirement, I may not be planning to publish anything else! We'll see....
Phone: 626 644 2389
Phone: 626 644 2389
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Despite his eccentric personality and his eventual position as a delusional outsider in an artistically conservative environment, Romako's intensely expressive portraits provide revelations not only about his own personality but about Viennese society as well.
Misunderstood in his own time, Romako was rediscovered by the Expressionists of the early twentieth century, who considered him as a forerunner of their own psychological concerns. Romako, then, is an important link in the development of modernism in Vienna.
July 26, 2014–January 18, 2015
Of particular interest in these early photographic records is to compare the photographers’ stylistic responses to the landscapes of these frontiers. Photographic images of California most often emphasized the land’s grandeur as evidence of concepts of the Sublime, with a focus on the pioneers’ efforts to conquer and tame the wilderness. In contrast, Australian photographs of the period most often focussed on ‘civilized’ settlement itself, and revealed a deflection of any grandiose sentiments about a landscape of ‘otherness’ for which early settlers initially felt ambivalent. These views give evidence of different ideological attitudes about the landscape in seemingly straightforward images of place. Nonetheless, a photographic iconography of the land, first formulated in California in the 1850s, continued to inform view photography into the 1880s, by which time the conquest of the American West was already becoming romanticized by writers and artists, and Australian photographers began to apply some of these tropes to their own renditions of this ‘other’ landscape. The question of how and when this photographic aesthetic arrived in Australia remains an intriguing one, and provides fascinating possibilities for further research.
Despite his eccentric personality and his eventual position as a delusional outsider in an artistically conservative environment, Romako's intensely expressive portraits provide revelations not only about his own personality but about Viennese society as well.
Misunderstood in his own time, Romako was rediscovered by the Expressionists of the early twentieth century, who considered him as a forerunner of their own psychological concerns. Romako, then, is an important link in the development of modernism in Vienna.
July 26, 2014–January 18, 2015
Of particular interest in these early photographic records is to compare the photographers’ stylistic responses to the landscapes of these frontiers. Photographic images of California most often emphasized the land’s grandeur as evidence of concepts of the Sublime, with a focus on the pioneers’ efforts to conquer and tame the wilderness. In contrast, Australian photographs of the period most often focussed on ‘civilized’ settlement itself, and revealed a deflection of any grandiose sentiments about a landscape of ‘otherness’ for which early settlers initially felt ambivalent. These views give evidence of different ideological attitudes about the landscape in seemingly straightforward images of place. Nonetheless, a photographic iconography of the land, first formulated in California in the 1850s, continued to inform view photography into the 1880s, by which time the conquest of the American West was already becoming romanticized by writers and artists, and Australian photographers began to apply some of these tropes to their own renditions of this ‘other’ landscape. The question of how and when this photographic aesthetic arrived in Australia remains an intriguing one, and provides fascinating possibilities for further research.