Lewis "Duke" Baltz (September 12, 1945 – November 22, 2014) was an American visual artist, photographer, and educator. He was an important figure in the

New Topographics "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" was a groundbreaking exhibition of contemporary landscape photography held at the George Eastman House's International Museum of Photography (Rochester, New York) from October 1975 to Febru ...

movement of the late 1970s.Lewis Baltz
Faculty Website at

European Graduate School The European Graduate School (EGS) is a private graduate school that operates in two locations: Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and Valletta, Malta. History It was founded in 1994 in Saas-Fee, Switzerland by the Swiss scientist, artist, and therapist, P ...

. His best known work was monochrome photography of suburban landscapes and industrial parks which highlighted his commentary of void within the " American Dream". He wrote for many journals, and contributed regularly to ''L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui''. Baltz's work is held in the collections of the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

, Art Institute of Chicago,

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (or MCASD), in San Diego, California, US, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present. Mission The stated mission of ...

, Philadelphia Museum of Art and

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...

Early life and education

Lewis Baltz was born on September 12, 1945 in Newport Beach, California. His father died when he was age 11. Baltz graduated with a BFA degree in Fine Arts from San Francisco Art Institute in 1969; and held a Master of Fine Arts degree from

Claremont Graduate School The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges which includes five undergraduate ( Pomona College, Claremont McKenna C ...

(now Claremont Graduate University).

Career

His work is focused on searching for beauty in desolation and destruction. Baltz's images describe the architecture of the human landscape: offices, factories and parking lots. His pictures are the reflection of control, power, and influenced by and over human beings. His minimalistic photographs in the trilogy ''Ronde de Nuit, Docile Bodies,'' and ''Politics of Bacteria,'' picture the void of

the other In phenomenology, the terms the Other and the Constitutive Other identify the other human being, in their differences from the Self, as being a cumulative, constituting factor in the self-image of a person; as acknowledgement of being real; h ...

. In 1974 he captured the anonymity and the relationships between inhabitation, settlement and anonymity in ''The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California'' (1974). His books and exhibitions, his "topographic work", such as ''The New Industrial Parks,'' ''Nevada, San Quentin Point, Candlestick Point'', expose the crisis of technology and define both objectivity and the role of the artist in photographs. His work ''Candlestick Point'' is made of 84 photographs documenting a public space near Candlestick Park, ruined by natural detritus and human intervention. Baltz moved to Europe in the late 1980s and started to use large colored prints. He published several books of his work including ''Geschichten von Verlangen und Macht,'' with Slavica Perkovic (Scalo, 1986). Other photographic series, including ''Sites of Technology'' (1989–92), depict the clinical, pristine interiors of hi-tech industries and government research centres, principally in France and Japan. In 1995, the story ''Deaths in Newport'' was produced as a book and CD-ROM. Baltz also produced a number of video works. Baltz taught at various institutions, including

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

(CalArts),

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...

(UC Riverside),

California State University, San Bernardino California State University, San Bernardino (Cal State San Bernardino or CSUSB) is a public research university in San Bernardino, California. Founded in 1965, it is one of the 23 general campuses of the California State University system. The m ...

, and the IUAV University in Venice, Italy, where in 2006 he co-founded the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation.

End of life, death and legacy

In 2002, Baltz became a Professor for Photography at the

in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. He lived his last years between

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

. Baltz died on November 22, 2014 in Paris at the age of 69 following a long illness.

Awards

He received several scholarships and awards including a scholarship from the National Endowment For the Arts (1973, 1977), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1977), US-UK Bicentennial Exchange Fellowship (1980), and

Charles Brett Sir Charles Edward Bainbridge Brett, Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, KBE, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, CBE (30 October 1928 - 19 December 2005), was a Northern Irish people, Nor ...

Memorial Award (1991).

Publications

*''Landscape: Theory'', Lewis Baltz, Harry Callahan, Eliot Porter, Carol Digrappa and Robert Adams, 1980 *''The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California'', Lewis Baltz and Adam Weinburg, 2001 *''The Deaths in Newport'', onestar press, 2002 *''The Tract Houses: Die Siedlungshauser (English and German Edition)'', Lewis Baltz, 2005 *''The Prototype Works'', Lewis Baltz, 2010 *''Mario Pfeifer: Reconsidering The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974'', Lewis Baltz, Mario Pfeifer, Vanessa Joan Mueller, 2011 *''Lewis Baltz: Candlestick Point'', Lewis Baltz, 2011 *''Lewis Baltz: Rule Without Exception / Only Exceptions'', Lewis Baltz, 2012 *''Lewis Baltz: Texts.'', Lewis Baltz, 2012 *''Lewis Baltz'', Lewis Baltz, 2017

Collections

Baltz's work is held in the following permanent collections: *

* Art Institute of Chicago *

* Philadelphia Museum of Art *

References

External links

Oral history interview with Lewis Baltz, 2009 Nov. 15–17
from the Smithsonian

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

*
Lewis Baltz
' Faculty website at

. (Biography, bibliography and articles) *
George Eastman House Lewis Baltz Series
' * Lewis Baltz Archive, at the Getty Research Institute * Lewis Baltz notebooks and ephemera, at Getty Research Institute {{DEFAULTSORT:Baltz, Lewis 1945 births 2014 deaths Photography academics Photographers from California Academic staff of European Graduate School San Francisco Art Institute alumni Claremont Graduate University alumni 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American photographers New Topographics photographers Pomona College faculty American expatriates in Switzerland California Institute of the Arts faculty University of California, Riverside faculty