Exceptional Works: William Eggleston

"Anyone who knows Eggleston’s work knows that he’s a great poet of the color red."

William Eggleston

Untitled, 1973

Dye transfer print

Print: 20 x 30 inches (50.8 x 76.2 cm)
Framed: 26 7/8 x 36 inches (68.3 x 91.4 cm)

Ahead of William Eggleston: The Outlands, a solo exhibition opening in November at our New York gallery, we’re delighted to present Untitled (1973), an iconic work by the celebrated American artist. Known unofficially as “The Red Ceiling,” this early photograph is considered by Eggleston to be one of his most important works, and was the image that sparked his groundbreaking solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1976.

A vivid dye-transfer print—and one of the first photographs Eggleston originally produced in this medium—this work reflects the artist’s intentions to the highest degree. While other editions are included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others, this print is the largest to have been made in this uniquely impactful medium.

William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970 (detail)

Developed by Kodak in the 1920s and originally used for magazine and advertising copy, the dyes used in the dye-transfer process are extremely pure, and possess a wider color range and tonal scale than any other process.

“[Eggleston] admired the ‘overwhelming’ vibrancy of certain cigarette ads and Hitchcock films,” Will Stephenson writes, “and saw no reason why he couldn’t incorporate that same textured color into his own work.”

A 1960s magazine advertisement advertising Marlboro cigarettes.

An Eastman Kodak Dye Transfer brochure

To create a dye-transfer print, an image is transferred to three film matrices, forming photographic relief images for each of the three dyes used in the process. Each of the matrices is then immersed in a dye bath of cyan, magenta, and yellow, respectively, a gelatin holding the dye. Each film is then hand pressed onto a specific kind of fiber paper that is receptive to the dye in a process that is, in some ways, more like traditional printmaking. The result is a richness and depth of color that is not replicable by other analog or digital print processes. In 1994, Kodak discontinued the chemicals and the pan matrix film needed for the process, making dye transfer prints a rare medium.

William Eggleston, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, exhibition publication, 2002 (left); Spread from William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961–2008, The Whitney Museum of American Art, exhibition publication, 2008 (right)

“When you look at a dye-transfer print it’s like it’s red blood that is wet on the wall. . . . It shocks you every time.”

—William Eggleston

Installation view, William Eggleston: Ancient and Modern, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, 1992

Installation view, Color Photographs by William Eggleston, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976

The photograph was taken in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the guest room of the home of T.C. Boring, a close friend of Eggleston’s. Upon first printing the image as a dye transfer, Eggleston was so pleased with the results that he immediately sent a print to John Szarkowski, the legendary photography director at The Museum of Modern Art, who recognized its unusual power. Soon afterwards, Szarkowski gave Eggleston his groundbreaking 1976 solo exhibition at the museum.

William Eggleston, Untitled (The photographer with T. C. Boring, Greenwood, Mississippi), c. 1974 (detail)

Boring, and the eccentric environment of his home, feature in a number of important works by Eggleston. Here, the artist recalls the day the photograph of the red ceiling was taken:

“Brenda and T.C. and I were the three people who were lying in bed when I took that picture. . . . We were just having a nice time, talking about this and that, talking about nonsense. . . . And I remember one split second I looked up. I thought, that’s a great picture. And then I took the picture.”

William Eggleston, Greenwood, Mississippi, c. 1972 (left); William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1969-1974 (right). This work is featured in the upcoming exhibition William Eggleston: The Outlands at David Zwirner New York

“In the photograph of the ceiling . . . which skews your vision unusually upward in the room, as if you were seeing with the eye of a fly drawn to the swelling lightbulb . . . color reinforces the visual structure’s reference to the Confederate flag—metaphorically a field of blood.”

—Mark Holborn

Radio City Big Star, album cover, 1974

In 1974, this work became the cover of the album Radio City by Big Star. One of Eggleston's most emblematic works, the red ceiling has continued to influence popular culture, including the films of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick.

“The red was unreal, or hyperreal—it seemed to drip from the print, as if the paint would smudge if touched. The picture was both conventionally beautiful and somehow aberrant, a duality Eggleston acknowledged.”

—Will Stephenson

David Lynch, Lost Highway, 1974 (film still)

Stanley Kubrick, The Shining, 1980 (film still)

William Eggleston (left) and David Lynch, Paris, 2007

Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968 (film still)

Installation view, William Eggleston: Paris, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2009

“Still photography for me grew out of filmmaking: you see this thing through the lens and you just get filled with euphoria. It’s an amazing art form: I especially love William Eggleston.”

—David Lynch

“Red, I find, always seems to bite every other color.”

—William Eggleston

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