¶ … Irving Penn's Cigarettes Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art" Irving Penn's exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975 showed "14 platinum print photographs of cigarette butts" which were described by the Museum's Director of the Department of Photography "as works of art."[footnoteRef:1] The exhibition marked a departure for Irving, the renowned photographer for Vogue, whose stylish work with actors and actresses and other models had been a mainstay of his career over the years. His cigarette butt exhibition, however, pushed photography in a new direction -- one in which "subject matter" was both identified as controversial and inconsequential; but then that was the essence 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 -- and that impact that would not have been as sharp had the subject been rose petals.[footnoteRef:2] In other words, Penn's photographs were meant to shock. The aftereffect was up to the viewer: whether he or she raised startling questions about the beauty of such an unhealthy habit as smoking or whether the viewer simply acknowledged that even ugliness could be made into beautiful art if depicted in such a way as Penn depicted these cigarette butts, was part of the deal. However, 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 over the years -- "barefooted Peruvian children and mud-daubed New Guinea tribesman photographed like high-fashion models."[footnoteRef:3] Penn's exhibition, therefore, was 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. [1: "Recent Work by Irving Penn on View at Museum of Modern Art." Press Release, May 23rd, 1975 (Museum of Modern Art Press Release Archives), 1; http://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/5262/releases/MOMA_1975_0047_37.pdf?2010] [2: Gene Thornton, "Photography View: Penn Transforms Cigarette Butts into Works of Art." New York Times, July 6, 1975, 91.] [3: Thornton, 91.]

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 donnee for an art that aspires to be purely itself."[footnoteRef:4] For Kramer the exhibition was a lesson in form -- a coupling together of absence with presence -- except what is presented is something that 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."[footnoteRef:5] It was just this sort of expose -- an exhibit that focused attention on the peripheral, the discarded or 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 underworld, or the transgender couples of NYC. Here, 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. [4: Hilton Kramer, "Notes on Irving Penn." New Republic 177, no. 18 (1977), 29.] [5: Kramer, 28.]

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 ad campaign, or that it was meant to find beauty even in trash, or that it was purely a study in forms, light, shadow, etc. As Thornton asserted, much to his own displeasure, the subject is what matters. It is that which captures the attention of the photographer and of the audience. Penn's exhibit caught the attention of the Museum and of the public by doing something brash -- by exposing the public to a reality that it chose to ignore: the cigarette butt, the litter that smokers tossed everywhere thinking nothing of it. Here, Penn could shove those butts back in...

Goldin's intrepid viewpoint allowed for such pictures as Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC, 1991 to take place, and Penn's exhibition set the stage for it -- just like Duchamp's Fountain set the stage for a new era in art -- the era of art that was self-aware, cynical, and willing to push the edge as far as it could go in order to elicit a response from the public. Penn's exhibit was a confrontation with public malaise, with 20th century boredom. Thornton was right: rose petals would not have raised the slightest eyebrow -- but cigarette butts would get people talking.
What did they talk about? As the Museum's Director of Photography implied, what they talked about did not matter so much as the fact that they talked and recognized it as art. Words were exchanged, comments made, theories articulated, reactions catalogued. And along the way, some were inspired. The exhibit was the elevation of an aspect of reality typically left out in the gutter. Was the viewer meant to view it ironically? If one looked at Penn's career as a whole, the answer was perhaps clearer, as Owen Edwards intimates: "Penn's ironic inclusion of beat-up stepladders, a clump of scruffy carpet and a wad of crumpled wrapping paper places the picture in the modern tradition."[footnoteRef:6] Modern art had a touch of the ironic about it from the start: there was the text and then the subtext of the message, going back all the way to Picasso, if one so chose. For Penn, his photography always had this aspect to it. The cigarette exhibit was really nothing new -- it was just something different, something bold and emboldening for some. [6: Owen Edwards, "Dazzle by the Dozen." Smithsonian 35, no. 4 (2004): 17-18.]

As Paul Belford notes, Penn had a very specific way of looking at art and it can be seen in the cigarette exhibit: according to Belford, Penn believed that "Photographing a cake can be art' and 'A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it; it is in one word, effective'."[footnoteRef:7] So it stands to reason that Penn would see artistic value even in the photographing of cigarette butts. The Museum of Modern Art therefore asserts that art is about how an image is conveyed, what it suggests, how it impacts people. It does not avoid controversy or adhere to the status quo simply because that is the way things done. Modern art challenges people. It makes the viewer question himself just as much as he questions the art. It is about reflecting something real and asking the audience to respond to it. [7: Paul Belford, "The Pennis mightier." Creative Review 35, no. 6 (June 2015): 90.]

The exhibit was a success in the sense that it furthered the parameters of modern art by bringing the class of the Vogue photographer and juxtaposing it with the reality of the streets, represented by the cigarette butt. No matter what the intention of the artist, the cigarettes exhibition showed how beauty and style can be applied to even something as ordinary and crass as a burnt cigarette. What it said or meant to people was not so important as the fact that it was said. People could argue and debate about the purpose of the exhibit, as they did, or they could question its merits -- but what they could not do was challenge its artistry. Clearly, as even Thornton acknowledged, there was art to it: it was just something strikingly different from what Penn had done before. It was, in a way, abstruse -- but that fits in with the theme of modern art in the 20th century. Looking back from the 21st century, one could say that the exhibit comes across as even more meaningful today if only because of the awareness that people now have about littering cigarette butts and about smoking in general.

In conclusion, Irving Penn's Cigarettes Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art evoked a variety of reactions among those who viewed it. Some expected more of the same from Penn; others were impressed by the Vogue photographer's willingness to venture into…