August 2005 Archives

SVA is holding an alumni auction on Sept. 13th, but tomorrow is your last chance to submit online bids. Mostly painting (it's dead, guys!), but a few photographs intermingled, too.

Tickets are $150 for patrons and $100 for SVA students, alumni, faculty and staff. and can be purchased by phone at 212.243.7300 or via e-mail at info@mfproductions.com.

The Sunday Times had a review of the documentary "William Eggleston in the Real World." The reporter highlighted the fact that Mr. E (writing Eggleston over and over is a chore) doesn't like to talk about his photography much and that makes the movie all that more enjoyable. It lets you draw your own conclusions. Well, if that isn't good enough for you, Eggleston will participate in a live Q&A after Film Forum's 6:30pm showing on Wednesday, Aug. 31.

I tend to agree with Eggleston, which is why there isn't a huge amount of theoretical commentary here (or maybe its that I don't always have anything intelligent to say.) I do enjoy theoretical conversations, but those tend to cross the borders of any individual image or photographer, so I can understand his position on his own photographs. Plus, when you take so many and publish only a subset, I imagine its somewhat confusing to recall what you were thinking or how a particular image came about. But maybe I'm oversimplifying. Pure conjecture, regardless.

The movie poster just screams "independent film" and that sky photo doesn't really seem all that connected to Mr. E's own work. (UPDATE: I stand corrected. Eggleston's "Wedgewood Blue" series is nothing but sky. Thanks, Davin.)

Aug 31 - Sept 13 at Film Forum
Showtimes: 1:00, 2:50, 4:40, 6:30, 8:20, 10:10

The film will also be shown at London's ICA in November.

Arts Journal missed the boat and linked to a third party summary press release of a RAND report on the visual arts. Luckily, RAND has published the full report (100+ pages!) for your subway reading pleasure. Or displeasure. The report isn't all that positive. A summary of findings: (even more digestable than the press release.)

• Increases in museum attendance are the result of broad demographic changes, not anything done by the institutions themselves. And the shift is done, so things are likely to get tough real quick.
  
• Most artists don't make much money selling art. (Duh.)
  
• The art market is increasingly controlled by a few influential buyers, not dealers or critics. Investment value is the king criteria. (Which reminds me of the mid-90s comicbook speculation bubble.)
  
• Powerhouse institutions are sucking up all the available money, people and objects, leaving small museums gasping for air.
  

Honestly, it looks like the art world is rich with opportunity to make some sense of this mess. But who'd have thought we'd get this kind of research out of an Air Force think tank? (Interestingly, RAND used blogs as a source of information on the state of the arts. I imagine hundreds of bloggers going back to their log files to find RAND.org footprints.)

UPDATE: Edward Winkleman has posted his initial commentary about this report.

It is strange how long it took color photography to come into its own. Now that the photography world is awash in color prints of one kind or another, it's difficult to conceive a time when color was strictly equated with tourist photos and crass commercialism. Actually, that hasn't changed. But art photography now is a strictly color business, and the Philidelphia Museum of Art has ransacked its collection to show some prime examples of the medium's pioneers.

Apples, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, 1942 by Eliot Porter

In some ways it almost seems that William Eggleston single handedly brought respectability to color. This show rectifies that misconception with its inclusion of even earlier pioneers Eliot Porter and William Christenberry. Porter started his work with nature photography in the 40s and stands out from this crew as more of a technician, objectively cataloging birds and plants but pushing the limits of both his color film and flash technology. The others combined the vivid psuedo realism of color with a focus on the vernacular and the Bruegel-esque everyday - both unwelcome in an art world more concerned with art as a concept than a tangible thing.

Through Nov. 27 at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Last weekend, I visited Kiasma, Helsinki's contemporary arts museum. There are at least two large shows currently on display. Another Life is a collection of Finnish and other European outsider art and the other, Fractures of Life, is ostensibly about some ill-defined sense of political protest and/or bringing cultures together. Like a lot of contemprorary art, it's a mixed bag and detecting the curator's thematic intent is a bit like finding the face of the Madonna in a piece of toast - some see it and others don't. This second show contained a fair bit of photography, which was good since I did not get time to visit the Museum of Finnish Photography as I'd planned. The photographers participating in the Kiasma show exhibit global trends in photography, albeit with local subjects and interests.

Miklos Gaál uses variations in depth of field and depth of focus to create large scale prints that deceive the viewer into thinking the subject is actually a miniature diorama rather than a life photograph. A View from the Edge has written recently on this trend, including a bit on Gaál. Erik's distressed about the simultaneous appearance of this technique in a number of emerging photographers, but I think its exciting to run across this sort of a pattern. Just based on the sheer number of people engaged in art photography worldwide coincidences such as this are inevitable. It's probably always been so, with a handful mastering the process and others being forgotten. The question always boils down to how masters the technique and then drives a thoughtful message through it.

Two other photographers in the show - Ari Saarto and Juha-Pekka Inkenin (above) - mine a local vein similar to Alec Soth's work in the US. Saarto's work representated in the Kiasma show is "architectural" photographs of the ramshackle lean-tos constructed by the homeless. Inkinen catalogs deserted (at least temporarily) rooms piled with the detris of transitory residents. Like much of Soth's work these photographs are protraits in absence, hinting at the personalities of forgotten and ignored segments of society - this time from a Finnish perspective.

Coincidentally, I ran across a Chinese photography show on display at the Tennis Palace Art Museum (?!) when I arrived back in the US. I walked by the building at least twice.

One way of making a photograph unique is to find a subject that is rare and no other photographer can duplicate without significant effort. From the earliest days of photography, cameras have been hauled around the world in search of that special something that no one has seen before.

Posts have been infrequent as I'm on a business trip to Helsinki, Finland. Today's my first day "off-duty" so planning a trip to the Kiasma, Helsinki's contemporary art museum, and the Museum of Finnish Photography. I'll post reports next week. In the mean time, the online magazine Clandestina has an impressive range of photography from around the world if not necessarily travel photography. Current issue covers Berlin, Asuncion, Barranca, Madurai, and Riga.

If you want to get to the galleries in the summer, it helps to be a stay-at-home parent, unemployed or,, of course, independently wealthy. Galleries hours in the summer are working hours, so unless I want to play hookie, there's no photography for me this summer.

Which is a shame because this summer there has been a lot of interesting stuff on display. As I've said before, group shows are a great way to get exposure to a range of styles, subjects, photographers as it's an opportunity for galleries to show off the inventory. The two below feature primarily contemporary works.

Painter in Diorama, Museum of Natural History by Lisa Kereszi

In the same vein as recent shows by Thomas Struth and Justine Cooper, Yancey Richardson Gallery has organized a collection of photos taken within the museum environment. The show has a Russian doll feeling: a show where you can look at pictures of people looking at pictures. Or perhaps it's just another example of the art world's self-infatuation, much like the prevelance of Hollywood movies about making a movie.

On View: Photographing the Museum
Through Aug 26 at Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd St
(646) 230-9610

View from Villa Franca by Jack Pierson

"What I Did on My Summer Vacation"
Dealers are apparently not an imaginative lot. (If they were, they'd be artists, not dealers.) So we get the obvious summer themed shows like this. Which is not to say the collected pictures aren't interesting themselves. It's fun and who wants to think so hard when it's hazy/hot/humid and no end in sight?

Through Aug. 19 at ClampArt
531 W 25th St
(646) 230-0020

A few intersting links:

Edward Winkleman's new blog has shot out of the gate with blazing speed. Today he's posted some great pics from Kim Keever, (seen previously on Gallery Hopper) and some thoughts about whether seeing behind the Wizard's curtain lessens the impact of the Wizard's magic.

Gizmodo's interviewed Jonathon Keats about his plans to make a 100-year-long exposure of a San Fran hotel room. Interesting idea, in a similar vein to the long-exposure shots of the MoMA rennovation done by Michael Wesely. Wesely's images were only 4 years long and had something like a 50% success rate, so I'm afraid Keat's project really falls in the category of conceptual art - not real photography.

The third issue of SeeSaw has arrived. Interview with Stephen Shore, a project called "Insecurity" by Christoper Stewart which is meta-commentary on being watched, and some rather eerie landscapes by Edgar Martins.