Skip to main content
Untitled (#42 man & nature, canal)
Untitled (#42 man & nature, canal)
Untitled (#42 man & nature, canal)

Untitled (#42 man & nature, canal)

Maker Charlesworth, Bruce American, b. 1950
Date1989
MediumChromogenic development print
Dimensionsoverall: 40 in x 40 in
Credit LineGift of Carole L. Van Ness
Object number2004:50
About the ArtistBruce Charlesworth is a multimedia artist who works with photography, film, video, performance, and interactive installation. His work often portrays ambiguous and absurdist narratives, fusing elements of fiction writing, such as detective and crime stories, with a dreamlike sensibility. Charlesworth’s photography, while serving as fragments of the larger narrative structures available in his film and video work, is imbued with a filmmaker’s narrative sensibility and cultivates a sense of mystery. Constructed sets border on abstraction while simplified versions of everyday objects are rendered in intensely bright colors in his prints, lending a further sense of theatricality and symbolism to his staged images.

Bruce Charlesworth completed a BA in Art at the University of Northern Iowa (1972) and an MA (1974) and MFA in Painting (1975) at the University of Iowa. He has exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; and Tate Britain (formerly Tate Gallery), London. His work is held in many permanent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Charlesworth is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including from the McKnight, Jerome, Bush, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and, in 2007, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Publications include Private Enemy Public Eye: The Work of Bruce Charlesworth (Aperture, 1989). Charlesworth has taught at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Untitled
Davidson, Bruce
1991
Untitled, from the "House Pictures" series
Wessel Jr., Henry
1990, printed 1991
Untitled
Davidson, Bruce
Untitled
Davidson, Bruce
1995
Untitled
Davidson, Bruce
1995
Untitled
Davidson, Bruce
1989
Untitled
Davidson, Bruce
Sleeping Series
Leonard, Joanne
1972; printed 2005
Untitled
Davidson, Bruce
1989