Color Field painting meets Color Field Photography. Mitchell Funk’s investigation into the essential nature of color photography’s potential is on full display in this radical statement of color and shape. As an pioneer of color photography, Funk looks at color as if it were iconography. Color is the subject. In this case, the color is the hyper-bright orange of a highway Road Cone.
To a motorist, the color is designed to alert and direct. To a color photographer the color is a creative resource unto itself. In a blandscape of dull grays and browns, the hyper-bright orange of a Road Cone is an artistic beacon to be exploited. Funk exploits and communicates that it’s all about the color and not the cone. He yanks the Road Cone out of context, leans it up against a shinny aluminum street light and creates a dramatic composition of orange, silver and blue.
Funk produced 20 covers for Modern Photography magazine in the 1970’s and 1980’s. His images were chosen by Modern Photography’s visionary editors Herbert Keppler and Ernest G. Scarfone.
Mitchell Funk
American, b.1950
American, b.1950
Modern Photography Cover
June 1980
Photographs, Chromogenic Print
Edition 3 of 20
Road Cone, created 1978. Published 1980. Printed later
Signed and dated lower right
June 1980
Photographs, Chromogenic Print
Edition 3 of 20
Road Cone, created 1978. Published 1980. Printed later
Signed and dated lower right
Other works by this artist:
