For the first time, the exhibition presents the original issues of the magazine Variétés: Revue mensuelle illustrée de l'esprit contemporain , combined with some eighty vintage prints of avant-garde photographs from the extensive Amsab-ISG collection. Throughout the magazine, author's images by artists including Man Ray, Eli Lotar, Eugène Atget, Berenice Abbott, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, and László Moholy-Nagy were consistently combined with reproductions of paintings, film stills, fashion photos, postcards, portraits, anthropological photographs, and all manner of amateur photography. This artistically and culturally progressive magazine ran for only two years, but across 24 issues and one special issue, it succeeded in introducing an indelible and previously unheard-of visual language, fully in line with the modernism of the time.
The exhibition was curated by Dr. Steven Humblet (KASK Antwerp) and Prof. Dr. Steven Jacobs (Ghent University) in collaboration with students and assistants from the Art Sciences Department of Ghent University and Amsab-ISG. It was realized with the support of P&V Insurance, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, MSK, SMAK, and Ghent University Library.
