Misc.: December 2004 Archives
I was flipping through the channels the other day and landed on C-SPAN. They were showing a repeat of an "in-depth" interview with Susan Sontag from early 2003. I thought that was weird, but stopped and watched it for a while. I've just finished Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others which is an excellent and timely book, prescient in so many respects as we are now saturated with painful photography. Turns out they were running that show in relation to her death. She discussed her two previous bouts with cancer during the interview.
I've been on vacation, so this post is late to the table. Best list of links to Sontag obits is on Arts & Letters Daily.
Ah, it's that time of the year again, the time for making arbitrary lists of the best of what have you. Despite having only sampled but a smidgen of the photo work showing in New York this year, here's my personal list of the year's best. (Note, just because a work was originally shown elsewhere prior to 2004, I still count it as 2004 if it was shown in NYC this year. So, my 2005 list will likely include the Roger Fenton show that's currently at the National Galleries in DC, since it'll show at the Met this coming spring.) In reverse order:
10) Loretta Lux at Yossi Milo
Most high profile practitioner of new merger of digital technologies and photography. Not seamless, but an emotional, sensory, unsettling tug nonetheless.
9) Beate Gütschow at Danziger Projects
More examples of the effect of digital tools on the photographer, working in the tradition of multiple exposure, dark room manipulation and collage. Seamlessness nearly achieved. The rejoining merger of photography and painting is on the horizon.
8) Lisa Kereszi and Andrew Moore - Governor's Island: Lost and Found at Municipal Art Society
Fine addition to the abandoned environmental landscape niche genre, plumbed by the likes of Robert Polidori, Stanley Greenberg, and a multitude of Ellis Island infirmary trespassers.
7) August Sander - People of the 20th Century at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Long awaited display of the seminal German typologies and the a significant influence on the idea that a photographic work is more than a single photograph. The single photograph without the larger context is nearly meaningless.
6) Richard Misrach - On the Beach at PaceWildenstein
Puts to rest the value of the large scale color print. The isolation, loneliness, solitude and pattern repetition represented in these photographs could not be achieved in a 8x10 print. Should the format fall completely out of favor in the coming years, this could be the last hurrah.
5) Edward Burtynsky - Before the Flood at Charles Cowles
This Canadian photographer continues to make striking landscapes across a range of thematically connected locations while impressing on each his personal style. Although I saw it in Ottawa last year, I'm looking forward to his retrospective arriving at the Brooklyn Museum of Art next Sept., expanded to include his new aerial work.
4) Michael Wesely - Open Shutter at Museum of Modern Art
For the first 50-70 years of photography, it was absolutely essential for a photographer embrace both the art and technology of the camera. Wesely's extreme long exposure photographs once again make the same embrace.
3) Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855 at Metropolitan Museum of Art
I attended this show shortly after completing the early chapters of Seizing the Light, a photo history textbook by Robert Hirsch. Viewing today's photography without an understanding of how we arrived at this point and what had been explored before is a dead endeavor. Almost all the themes, styles, genres we have today were explored by the early French pioneers (of course many were simply translated from painting.)
2) Alec Soth - Sleeping by the Mississippi at Yossi Milo
Soth's wonderful work has achieved breakthrough status, appearing virtually everywhere you turn.
1) Larry Sultan - The Valley at Janet Borden
While NYC seemed awash in porn-themed shows this year, Sultan's work documenting on location film shoots in the San Fernando Valley was the only one worth seeing for anything beyond simply prurient interest. "The Valley" generated the most interesting discussion between my wife and I of anything we saw this year as it touches on a range of issues from economics, domesticity, sexual roles, to the nature and definition of pornography. However, I can't imagine anyone putting this stuff up on the wall.
Well, it appears that the NetJets ads in the NY Times paid off. The luxury jet rental co. made 10 times the trips to Miami it normally makes this time of year, assumedly for Art Basel Miami Beach. The Times has gone gossip...
"Some seasoned fairgoers grumbled at the shortage of top-quality works and the large number of photographs." The rubes.
Perhaps a souvenir for all the Art Basel Miami attendees?
Two professors from my alma mater, NYU Stern, are mentioned in an article from today's NY Times about economic analysis of the art market. They and others studying art's economic aspects have come up with some rather interesting findings, including purchases of masterpieces tend to be poor investments. Since economics is basically the study of human choices, it might offer some insights into how we pick what we like.
"A persistently high demand for artistic innovation has produced a regime in which conceptual approaches have predominated," Mr. Galenson wrote in a paper. "The art world has consequently been flooded by a series of new ideas, usually embodied in individual works, generally made by young artists who have failed to make more than one significant contribution in their careers."
We can only hope for such a fate for some of the current superstars.
