Irving Penn's Cigarettes Exhibition at MoMA (1975)

Introduction: A Controversial Debut at MoMA

Irving Penn's exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975 presented fourteen platinum-print photographs of cigarette butts, which were described by the Museum's Director of the Department of Photography as works of art. The exhibition marked a departure for Penn, the renowned photographer for Vogue, whose stylish work with actors, actresses, and other models had been a mainstay of his career. His cigarette butt exhibition, however, pushed photography in a new direction — one in which subject matter was simultaneously identified as controversial and inconsequential. That was, in essence, the spirit of modern art: as Gene Thornton pointed out, it was the "contrast between Mr. Penn's impeccable technique and his revolting subject matter" that made the impact on the viewer, an impact that would not have been nearly as sharp had the subject been rose petals.

In other words, Penn's photographs were meant to shock. The aftereffect was left to the viewer: whether one raised startling questions about the beauty of an unhealthy habit like smoking, or simply acknowledged that even ugliness could be made into beautiful art if depicted in Penn's manner, was part of the deal. Subjective response aside, Thornton was at least one critic who regretted that Penn should waste his talent on such an unusual subject. Thornton lamented that Penn did not, in his first one-man show at the Museum, showcase the kind of photographs that had built his reputation — "barefooted Peruvian children and mud-daubed New Guinea tribesman photographed like high-fashion models." Penn's exhibition was therefore a perfect representative of modern art in the 1970s: it divided critics, received scorn from some for its ugly subject matter, and high praise from others for its inventiveness, daring, and ability to arrest an audience.

Critical Reception and the Question of Subject Matter

Hilton Kramer, art editor of the New York Times, wrote of Penn's exhibition that it represented a "flight into the abstractions of the gutter," with the cigarette butt becoming "the perfect donnée for an art that aspires to be purely itself." For Kramer, the exhibition was a lesson in form — a coupling of absence with presence — except that what is presented is something society would rather not have to look at. Kramer described the underlying theory of the artwork as the "elimination of both a 'human' context … and the kind of modeling that makes the flesh palpable and sensuous to the eye."

It was just this sort of exposé — an exhibit that focused attention on the peripheral, the discarded, or the underrepresented side of life — that would later be apparent in photographic artists like Nan Goldin, whose work would display a similar shocking tendency to showcase a side of life ignored or unknown by polite society — the LGBT underground, or the transgender couples of New York City. In this respect, Penn was paving the way for artists like Goldin to bring high society into the streets and underworld, where life beneath the surface of the glitz and glamour could be explored.

The Exhibit as Social Confrontation

For this reason, it is not so imperative that a precise meaning be attributed to Penn's exhibition. It is not necessary to assert that it was really a high-end anti-smoking campaign, or that it was meant to find beauty even in trash, or that it was purely a study in forms, light, and shadow. As Thornton asserted, much to his own displeasure, the subject is what matters — that which captures the attention of the photographer and of the audience alike. Penn's exhibit caught the attention of the Museum and of the public by doing something brash: by exposing viewers to a reality they had chosen to ignore. The cigarette butt, the litter that smokers tossed everywhere without a second thought, was here thrust back in the public's face. It was as though Penn were tapping the individual on the shoulder and reminding him that just because his cigarette butt was out of his mind did not mean it was out of everyone else's — or out of reality at all.

Works Cited

Belford, Paul. "The Pennis mightier." Creative Review 35, no. 6 (June 2015): 90. Art & Architecture Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 3, 2016).

Edwards, Owen. "Dazzle by the Dozen." Smithsonian 35, no. 4 (2004): 17–18.

Kramer, Hilton. "Notes on Irving Penn." New Republic 177, no. 18 (1977): 27–29.

"Recent Work by Irving Penn on View at Museum of Modern Art." Press Release, May 23, 1975. Museum of Modern Art Press Release Archives. http://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/5262/releases/MOMA_1975_0047_37.pdf?2010

Thornton, Gene. "Photography View: Penn Transforms Cigarette Butts into Works of Art." New York Times, July 6, 1975, 91.