This multi-image diazotype by Francesca Woodman comes from the collection of artist Anita Thacher, who was a friend and mentor to Woodman during her time in New York City from 1979 to 1981. Featuring a series of profile portraits of women, this composite image is related to Woodman’s monumental Blueprint for a Temple, the artist’s largest and most ambitious work, executed in 1980 and exhibited in that year at the Alternative Museum in New York City. Anita Thacher appears as the ‘caryatid’ in the first frame on the left. Woodman’s friend Betsy Berne, who would take over Woodman’s loft directly across the hallway from Thacher’s studio, appears as the second profile in this work.

Francesca Woodman, Profiles of Possible Modern Caryatids, detail showing Anita Thacher

Francesca Woodman’s Blueprint for a Temple was completed in 1980 and was a monumental collage of large-format dizaotypes that measured roughly 14 by 9 feet. Patterned after a classical Greek temple, the composition includes four studies of draped models, referencing caryatid figures, supporting a cornice and pediment of photographs of tilework and columns. Temple, like the photograph offered here, was made with the diazotype technique, a positive-to-positive imaging process used primarily by engineers and architects. Woodman adapted this industrial process to her own artistic purposes. To create this print, she placed photographic transparencies on a sheet of transparent paper (whose outline is visible in this work’s margins) creating a template which was contact-printed onto diazotype paper and developed with ammonia vapor. The diazotype process gave Woodman a great deal of latitude in the size of her prints, and she used it to create composite images such as the one offered here, as well as the life-sized images she made for the Temple exhibition. When Blueprint for a Temple was exhibited at the Alternative Museum, a composite image of profiles closely related to that offered here was incorporated into the larger work, appearing at the bottom of the monumental composition, serving as a visual pedestal upon which the temple rests.

Anita Thacher, Untitled (Loose Corner, woman [Francesca Woodman] with self and dog), 1980; Courtesy of the Estate of Anita Thacher and Microscope Gallery, New York

Phillips is honored to present, in Lots 305 through 310, a previously unknown trove of Francesca Woodman photographs from the collection of artist Anita Thacher (New York, 1936-2017). When Woodman moved to New York City in 1979 after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, she had the good fortune to rent a loft in a building on lower 2^nd Avenue directly across the hallway from Thacher, an older and more established artist. This was a pivotal period in Woodman’s career when for the first time she was working outside an academic environment while learning to navigate New York City’s artworld. Thacher became a friend, mentor, and guide to the younger artist. The photographs in Thacher’s collection, many extensively inscribed to her by Woodman, are a tangible manifestation of their friendship and demonstrate the impact both artists had upon each other.

When Thacher began conceptualizing her groundbreaking 16mm film Loose Corner in 1980, she asked Woodman to perform in it. The first takes show Woodman on set, interacting with a dog (Thacher’s dog, George), a ball, and various other props. These silent scenes are notable for their interactive quality, with Woodman clearly reacting to Thacher’s off-camera direction, but also directing her own performance. However, these first scenes would never be seen as a few months later Woodman died. When Thacher was ready to return to the work, she began by reshooting the scenes with another actor assuming the role. The finished film — described by Johanna Fateman in The New Yorker as ‘gaily desultory yet precisely constructed’ — features a remarkable array of optical effects that toys with viewers’ expectations and sense of scale. This wildly creative, playful spirit is visible in Thacher’s early takes of Woodman, as well as in a series of photographs shot concurrently on the original set of Loose Corner.

Anita Thacher, Untitled (Loose Corner, woman [Francesca Woodman] with dog and two balls, 1980; Courtesy of the Estate of Anita Thacher and Microscope Gallery, New York

The warm and collaborative nature of their friendship is illustrated by Woodman’s correspondence, present on the versos of many of the photographs offered here, and by their mutual engagement in each other’s work. Just as Woodman had been a subject for Thacher’s camera, Thacher served as a model for Woodman, appearing in profile in the present lot as one of several ‘possible modern caryatids’ in a study for Woodman’s monumental collage Blue Print for a Temple. Woodman attended the prestigious McDowell Artist Colony with Thacher’s support as a previous Fellow there. Shortly after Woodman’s death in 1981, when Thacher’s multi-projection 35mm slide installation Light House was exhibited at PS1 and the New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall, she dedicated it, ‘In memory of a friend, Francesca Woodman.’

Educated at the New School for Social Research and the New York Studio School, Anita Thacher maintained a decades-long artistic practice encompassing film, video, architectural and sculptural installation, painting, and photography. She was the recipient of numerous grants and awards, among them The National Endowment for the Arts (four grants), The New York State Council on the Arts (five grants), The Ford Foundation, The American Film Institute, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and The New York Women in Film and Television Preservation Fund. She was a McDowell Colony Fellow, and later a member of its board. Her work has been exhibited and collected by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Hirshhorn Museum, among others. Her moving-image work has been screened by The New York Film Festival, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Jeu De Paume (Paris), among many others. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is currently preserving Thacher’s works on film. Thacher was a significant proponent of public art, and her light installation Illuminated Station is permanently on view at the Greenport Station of the Long Island Railroad, now the East End Seaport Museum.

Anita Thacher in front of The Blues, © 2013 Geanna Merola
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- Description
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- Provenance
  Gift of the artist to Anita Thacher, circa 1980
- Artist Biography
  Francesca Woodman
  American • 1958 - 1981
  During her brief 22 years, Francesca Woodman created an extraordinary body of work, exploring gender, selfhood and the body in relation to its surroundings. Woodman often experimented with a slow shutter speed, which slightly blurred and distorted her body as it moved throughout the exposure, creating a haunting, almost ghost-like effect. Her ethereal presence draws our attention to traditional depictions of the body, forms of portraiture and self-portraiture, illuminating the desire for self-preservation against the passing of time.
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