Friday, June 29, 2012

George Dureau, Black 1973-1986 @Higher Pictures

JTF (just the facts): A total of 15 black and white photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung in the main gallery space. All of the works are vintage gelatin silver prints, taken between 1973 and 1986. The prints are square format on 20x16 paper, and were not reliably editioned. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: George Dureau's 1970s era portraits of muscular black men from New Orleans offer plenty of entry points for discussion, so many that I think the recent dialogue around the work has gotten somewhat misplaced. His photographs are both classical in structure and intimate in nature, capturing both the sculptural forms of the male body and the individual personalities of his sitters. His authentic connection to his models is undeniably visible in these portraits, and this trust is what makes the images durably engaging.

The bodies in Dureau's photographs range from tight and gangly to thick and burly, with a wide range of bushy afros and dreadlocks as decoration. Perfect athletic muscles flank the deformed bodies of dwarves and amputees, and humanistic beauty is evident in all of them. With an echo of Avedon, his subjects are quietly posed against flat white backgrounds or simple interior walls, focusing the viewer's attention on the shapes and forms of torsos and full length figures. There is a deliberate use of contrast in nearly all of the images, placing bright white clothing and featureless environments in contrast with the dark skin of the sitters, almost like silhouettes.

There are three lines of critical analysis around this work that I find to be distracting, if not downright misleading. There is the "white man taking photographs of black men" racial angle, the "male nude must mean homoerotic" angle, and the "Mapplethorpe was influenced by Dureau, so that's why these pictures are important" angle. All three unnecessarily pigeon hole the work into "black photography", "gay photography" and "Mapplethorpe knock-off photography", none of which is particulalrly accurate or representative of what the portraits really show us. I think this overly easy tagging of the work also inverts the causality -  we should first determine the merits of the photography on its own before we attempt to place it into larger contextual frameworks, not the other way around. As a collector, I can't really imagine buying one of these portraits and then telling visitors to my home "it's a George Dureau; he influenced Mapplethorpe" as if that was some kind of logical explanation for why I purchased it. The Mapplethorpe connection is of course interesting in tracing the evolution of visual motifs between the artists, but it wouldn't matter if the Dureau photographs themselves weren't accomplished in their own right.

So bypass the critical red herrings that fly around this show and see these images for what they are: well-executed, empathetic, classically-influenced male portraits, distilled down to an essential mix of truth, strength, and vulnerability.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced between $8000 and $12000. Dureau's work does not have much history in the secondary markets for photography, so gallery retail is likely the best option for interested collectors at this point. Dureau is represented in New Orleans by Arthur Roger Gallery (here).
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Reviews/Features: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), Gallerist NY (here), Photograph (here)
Through July 13th
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980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075

Thursday, June 28, 2012

The Checklist: 6/28/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Spies in the House of Art: Met: August 26: review
TWO STARS: Heinrich Kuehn: Neue Galerie: August 27: review
ONE STAR: Naked before the Camera: Met: September 9: review

Midtown

THREE STARS: Weegee: ICP: September 2: review
ONE STAR: Taryn Simon: MoMA: September 3: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Maurizio Cattelan/Pierpaolo Ferrari: High Line: June 29: review
ONE STAR: Julia Fullerton-Batten: Jenkins Johnson: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Ulrich Gebert: Winkleman: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Sigrid Viir: Winkleman: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Lisa Kereszi: Yancey Richardson: July 6: review
ONE STAR: Rachel Perry Welty: Yancey Richardson: July 6: review
ONE STAR: Mitra Tabrizian: Leila Heller: July 7: review
ONE STAR: Image Object: Foxy Production: July 13: review
ONE STAR: Seung Woo Back: Doosan: July 14: review
ONE STAR: Katarzyna Majak: Porter Contemporary: July 14: review
ONE STAR: Milcho Manchevski: Miyako Yoshinaga: July 14: review
THREE STARS: Richard Avedon: Gagosian: July 27: review
ONE STAR: Joni Sternbach: Rick Wester: August 10: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Alfred Leslie: Janet Borden: July 27: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Rising Dragon: Katonah Museum of Art: September 2: review

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

June 28: Post-War and Contemporary Art Day: Christie's: catalog
June 28: Contemporary Art Evening: Phillips de Pury: catalog
June 29: Contemporary Art Day: Phillips de Pury: catalog

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Milcho Manchevski, Five Drops of Dream @Yoshinaga

JTF (just the facts): A total of 16 color works, mounted and unframed, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and the smaller project room in the back. Each work is made up of 5 photographs arranged and printed together as one single unit. All of the works are archival pigment prints, made in 2012 from negatives taken between 1999 and 2010. Each of the prints is sized 10x43 and is available in an edition of 5. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: When a recognized filmmaker exhibits still photographs, I think we all come with the expectation that these images will be "cinematic" in some identifiable way, perhaps in their use of motion, their exploitation of camera angles or their building of narrative arcs. But Macedonian filmmaker Milcho Manchevski's globe trotting street photographs consistently turn on formal and structural elements, abstracting scenes and compositions from everyday life into two dimensional lines, geometries, and blocks of color. His sense for the cinematic comes through in their presentation, where the individual photographs are grouped into sets of 5 and then sequenced into what he calls "strings", resulting in finished works that combine abstraction with narrative progression, visual echo, repetition, and formal interplay.
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One series begins with an image of a dog seen in profile, looking to the right. This is followed by an outstretched arm pointing to the left, and then a triangular shadow pointing back to the right. The next image finds another angular storefront shadow pointing to the left, and the last image caputres a stone filled excavation site, once again shaped into a triangular form pointing to the left. The sequence of found shapes moves us back and forth, almost like the turning of heads at a tennis match. A second series begins with an American flag, followed by an orange metal railing flanking patterns of cement being poured and flattened. The third image shows a shadowy reflected silhouette with edge of an American flag stuck on the window, next to a nude dappled in shadow. The last image brings back more crowd control railings, this time in silver. The series seems to fold back on itself, with multiple refrains of visual tunes heard earlier. A third series plays with linear directions: the horizontal stripe on a bus, followed by the vertical stripes of fish, followed by the vertical frames of windows, followed by the diagonals of the sidewalk, followed by the repeated verticals of architecture in a reflected window. Once again, Manchevski's groupings add an additional layer of connection between seemingly unrelated images.

Each of these works is almost like a puzzle to be unraveled or a rebus to be decoded, and slower, more deliberate looking uncovers more progressive harmonies and repetitions, especially using shadows and window reflections. Or maybe each is some form of photographic sonata, taking primary and secondary themes through introduction, exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda. Whatever the underlying structure, Manchevski's strings being movement to his formal street photographs, adding a sense of playful, symbiotic interconnection to his found abstractions.
Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced at $1800 each. Manchevski's work has not yet found its way to the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
Milcho Manchevski, Five Drops of Dream
Through July 14th

Miyako Yoshinaga Art Prospects
547 West 27th Street
2md Floor
New York, NY 10001

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Seung Woo Back, Memento @Doosan

JTF (just the facts): A total of 48 color photographs, framed in brown wood and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the two room gallery space. All of the works are digital c-prints, grouped into 6 sets of 8. The original found photographs are on display in an album on the desk; the prints on view are recent reprints, made in 2011, with handwritten dates/titles. Information on physical dimensions (one group was made up of images sized roughly 17x12) and edition sizes was not generally available. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Is you take an ordinary snapshot photograph and separate it from its maker, its subjects, and those who could provide evidence of its original meaning or context, what information is left behind and what conclusions can we draw from it? Korean photographer Seung Woo Back is interested in exploring these conceptual limits of the medium, and his newest project cleverly exposes the failure points in our natural tendency to construct narratives out of the simplest of visual clues.

Starting with a treasure trove of some 50000 found photographs purchased at flea markets, he selected groups of eight images, which he then gave to friends and colleagues who were asked to add their own dates, titles, and inscriptions in ink underneath the photographs. In effect, the photographs have been disassociated from their original purpose and remade into an alternate reality by someone completely unconnected in time and place. At first glance, the outcomes of this recontextualization are hard to notice; the images just look like a grab bag of random snapshots. But slowly the details start to fall apart: a smiling woman in front of a bushy patch of greenery is titled 24th Dec 1972 in one print, and later along a different wall, the exact same image (with different adjacent pictures) is called Rainforest, 1998.6.1. Two men shooting trap off the back of a ship are alternately Double Vision and Jeff. London. 1972 in different groupings. A selection of images of cruise ships, cargo vessels and other ocean going boats are seen in color, some of the images dated 1935, 1940, or 1945, while the cars and architecture in the background clearly come from decades later and the photographic process is out of chronological order. These photographs are obviously "wrong" in some manner or at least inconsistent with our notion of "truth", so what does that tell us about what they actually document? Anything? Is one set of captions more "real" than another, given that they are both unrelated to the original context?

Back's conceptual framework and exploration of appropriation is at once extremely simple and fascinatingly complex. It's a delightful proof of how we construct our own stories, even from arbitrary or chance combinations of data. Back takes his idea further by offering posters on a table in the middle of the gallery, encouraging viewers to put their own captions on additional groups of eight images, complete with envelopes to send to him in Korea so they can be included in a future version of this same show. While the photographs on view here are entirely forgettable, I found this show to be a mind-bendingly thought provoking and resonant investigation of how we impose meaning on the snapshots we all take for granted. It's smart photography about the boundaries of photography.

Collector's POV: The works in this show (sets of 8 prints) are priced at $25000 each, although it was unclear whether collectors would be purchasing from Doosan or some other source, perhaps the artist directly. Back's work is not regularly available in the secondary markets at this point, likely the only option for those collectors interested in following up. Back is represented on the West coast by Rose Gallery (here).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
Seung Woo Back, Memento
Through July 14th

Doosan Gallery
533 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Monday, June 25, 2012

Mitra Tabrizian, Photographs @Heller

JTF (just the facts): A total of 7 color photographs, alternately framed in grey/white and unmatted or unframed, and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. All of the works are c-prints made between 2006 and 2012. Physical dimensions range between 61x48 and 42x121, and edition sizes are 5+2AP. A recent monograph of Tabrizian's work, Another Country, published by Hatje Cantz (here), is available from the gallery for $57. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: With the widespread use of the wall-sized, photographic tableau, the underlying form has become as predictable to contemporary viewers as the structure of a minuet or rondo would be to classical music listeners. It's a style that is big, and glossy, and staged, mixing elements of realism and fiction into a heady brew of subtly dissonant, often cinematic or surreal ideas, continually evolving down a genetic line that can be traced back to Wall, diCorcia, Crewdson and others. Standing where we are today, with hundreds of tableaux in the rear view mirror, we're no longer particularly interested in the mechanics of this now commonplace form, but rather in how and whether the artist has employed the approach to show us something we haven't seen before.

Iranian-British photographer Mitra Tabrizian's new works use the tableau form to examine the abstract idea of cultural and political dislocation, of being simultaneously both part of a crowd and entirely alone. In many ways an outsider to both of her homelands, she has taken this feeling of alienation and expressed it in scenes that are quietly tied down by invisible weights. Moving back and forth between settings in Iran and England, her subjects inhabit a disconnected version of seemingly everyday reality, passively enduring forces of isolation, oppression, and sadness. Tabrizian's groups of Tehran citizens and London bankers face in all directions, each a solitary individual in the of expanse of the grubby desert (never far from the watchful eyes of the ayatollahs on the nearby billboard) or the polished marble of an anonymous corporate lobby. Even when clustered into bunches of people, there is a visible lack of cohesion, as if the situation was only temporary; while a mass of black clad women trudge along a dusty, soul-sucking road, there is no sense that they are unified by the circumstances. Her most recent images pare down the trauma to a single individual. Posed outside the empty, decaying factories of Leicestershire, solitary older men in dark suits ponder moss covered windows or fallen brick walls with a look of weary, resigned despondency, as if they were the only mourners at long overdue funerals.

Overall, Tabrizian has taken the tableau form and infused it with tough, deadpan desperation, a sense of resigned survival in the face of overbearing ruin. Her single frame narratives of dissociation are surprisingly lonely and forsaken, piling layers of subtle separation into something altogether more heavy and dispiriting.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between £12000 and £40000 each (note the currency), based on size. Tabrizian's work has started to show up in auctions of Contemporary Arab and Iranian Art as well as in broader Contemporary Art sales in the past few years. Prices have ranged from roughly $10000 to $28000, but I haven't tracked the photography in all of these sales, so there may be more data points to consider when building up a relevant price history.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Reviews/Features: ARTINFO (here), New Yorker (here)
Through July 7th

Leila Heller Gallery
568 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Friday, June 22, 2012

High Line Billboard: Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari


JTF (just the facts): A single billboard by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, displayed at the corner of 18th Street and 10th Avenue in Chelsea. The work is print on vinyl, 25x75 feet, from 2012. The work was originally made for Toilet Paper magazine (here).

Comments/Context: The newest image in the series of billboard installations near the High Line amps up the shock value for early summer. Ten delicately severed fingers float against a background of blue velvet, their luscious, color saturated ghoulishness monopolizing attention from blocks away. Whether the fingers have actually been cut off (unlikely) or are just the deft illusion of some devious magician or Photoshop technician doesn’t really matter; they sit disembodied, like secret treasured objects on display for our amazement, their red polished nails sparkling with electric lavishness. Photographed with the high style of a glossy jewelry advertisement, the fingers recall classics of photographic Surrealism from the 1920s and 1930s (Man Ray, Tabard, Cahun, Moholy-Nagy etc.), but add in a layer of sleek 21st century commercialism, making the picture even more gruesomely excessive. It’s a wonderfully playful interlude, and there’s nothing like a jolt of the fiendishly macabre to lighten up an afternoon of sweaty gallery hopping.

Collector's POV: This work was not overtly for sale, nor are there many comparables in terms of scale in recent auction history. Cattelan has recently opened a new gallery in Chesea with Massimilano Gioni called Family Business (here).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
 
Transit Hub:
  • Reviews: NY Times (here)
Through June 29th
 
Billboard at 18th Street and 10th Avenue

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Checklist: 06/21/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Spies in the House of Art: Met: August 26: review
TWO STARS: Heinrich Kuehn: Neue Galerie: August 27: review
ONE STAR: Naked before the Camera: Met: September 9: review

Midtown

THREE STARS: Weegee: ICP: September 2: review
ONE STAR: Taryn Simon: MoMA: September 3: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Evelyn Hofer: Danziger: June 22: review
TWO STARS: Constantin Brancusi: Bruce Silverstein: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Marco Breuer: Von Lintel: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Thomas Demand: Matthew Marks: June 23: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Lehmann Maupin: June 23: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Sonnabend: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Lisa Oppenheim: Harris Lieberman: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Joni Sternbach: Rick Wester: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Julia Fullerton-Batten: Jenkins Johnson: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Ulrich Gebert: Winkleman: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Sigrid Viir: Winkleman: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Lisa Kereszi: Yancey Richardson: July 6: review
ONE STAR: Rachel Perry Welty: Yancey Richardson: July 6: review
ONE STAR: Image Object: Foxy Production: July 13: review
ONE STAR: Katarzyna Majak: Porter Contemporary: July 14: review
THREE STARS: Richard Avedon: Gagosian: July 27: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Lehmann Maupin: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Alfred Leslie: Janet Borden: June 29: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Rising Dragon: Katonah Museum of Art: September 2: review

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

June 26: Contemporary Art Evening: Sotheby's: catalog
June 27: Contemporary Art Day: Sotheby's: catalog
June 27: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening: Christie's: catalog
June 28: Post-War and Contemporary Art Day: Christie's: catalog
June 28: Contemporary Art Evening: Phillips de Pury: catalog
June 29: Contemporary Art Day: Phillips de Pury: catalog

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Katarzyna Majak, Women of Power @Porter Contemporary

JTF (just the facts): A total of 9 color photographs, framed in brown and matted, and hung in the single room gallery space. Each of the prints is sized 32x22 and available in an edition of 10+2AP; no process information was given, except that the prints are on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308. The works were made in 2011 and 2012. (Installation shots at right.)
 
Comments/Context: As a country dominated by Catholicism, Poland isn't a place that is particularly tolerant of alternative mysticism and spirituality. Katarzyna Majak went searching for local women who were thought to possess traditional wisdom or healing power, and uncovered a broad spectrum of underground beliefs. Her portraits capture witches and whisperers, druids and coven leaders, each a representation of female knowledge passed down from generation to generation, outside the normal pathways of organized religion.
 
In each image, the subject poses in washed out brightness, squarely centered against a white background and staring directly into the camera. The women are wearing various forms of ceremonial clothing (or nothing at all) and each holds a symbolic object thought to contain some kind of spiritual power. The combinations range from the quietly regal to the outlandishly kooky: a geometric poncho and a seashell, a brown sack cloth hooded cloak and a scythe (held by black fingernails), a strapless black dress with a long silver dagger and scabbard, and a colorful knitted blanket and a wooden pipe. Chunky necklaces, glass balls, amber beads, feathers, and plastic flowers all make an appearance, but Majak's portraits never waver from a dignified, almost saintly respect.
 
While this show could be easily characterized as a lineup of oddballs and outsiders, the photographs resonate with calm confidence and knowing seriousness; these women believe in their own power, and from that conviction flows the energy that they pass on to others. Majak's project is both varied and self-contained, tying all of these loose ends of spirituality into one neat package.
 
Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced at $1800 each. Majak's work has no secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail is likely the only option for collectors interested in following up.
 
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
 
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Reviews/Features: Huffington Post (here)
Through July 14th
 
548 West 28th Street
New York, NY 1001

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Heinrich Kuehn and His American Circle: Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen @Neue Galerie

JTF (just the facts): A total of 105 photographs, variously framed and matted, and hung in a series of five rooms on the third floor of the museum. 76 of the works were made by Heinrich Kuehn, between the years of 1894 and 1929; the rest were made by other photographers. The exhibit was curated by Monika Faber. A catalog of the exhibition is available from the museum for $50 (here). (Installation shots at right, courtesy of the Neue Galerie.)

For each room of the exhibit, a list of photographers included is provided, followed by the total number of images on view, the print process and the print date information in parentheses:

Gallery 1
Heinrich Kuehn (1 gum gravure, 1911, 1 platinum print on Japanese paper, 1907, 1 collotype on Japanese paper, 1907, 3 platinum prints, 1904)
Frank Eugene (4 platinum prints, 1907)
Alfred Stieglitz (1 carbon print, 1893, 1 heliogravure, 1904)
 
Gallery 2
Heinrich Kuehn (3 platinum prints, 1894, 1895, 1904, 1 bicolored gum bichromate print, 1896, 1 tricolor gum bichromate print, 1897, 14 gum bichromate prints, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1906, 1908, 1 ozotype, 1902, 2 gum gravures, 1905, 1909, 1 multiple oil transfer print, 1906)
Hugo Henneberg (3 gum brichromate prints, 1898, 1901, 1903)
Hans Watzek (1 multicolored gum gravure, 1901, 1 multicolored gum print, 1901, 1 gum bichromate print, 1900)
 
Gallery 3
Heinrich Kuehn (1 duplex half tone reproduction from Camera Work, 1911, 1 gum bichromate print, 1902, 1 Camera Work gravure, 1908, 1 multiple oil transfer print, 1908, 1 heliogravure, 1911)
Hugo Henneberg (2 Camera Work gravures, 1906)
George Henry Seeley (1 Camera Work gravure, 1907)
Edward Steichen (3 color half tone reproductions from Camera Work, 1906, 1 Camera Work gravure, 1906, 1 half tone reproduction from Camera Work, 1901)
Alfred Stieglitz (1 Camera Work gravure, 1905)
Hans Watzek (1 Camera Work gravure, 1906)
Clarence White (1 Camera Work gravure, 1905)
In glass case: 1 complete issue of Camera Work, 1 letter from Stieglitz to Kuehn
 
Gallery 4
Heinrich Kuehn (7 gum bichromate prints, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1912, 6 gum bichromate over platinum prints, 1905, 1906, 1908, 1909, 1911, 2 multiple oil transfer prints, 1913, 1920, 1 pigment print on tissue, 1920, 2 gelatin silver prints, 1912, 1920, 1 double oil transfer print on Japanese paper, 1915, 2 bromoil transfer prints on tissue, 1908, 1914, 1 multiple oil transfer print on watercolor paper, 1911, 1 carbon print, 1915, 1 bromoil print, 1929, 3 gum gravures, 1908, 1911, 2 platinum prints, 1906, 1907, 2 multiple oil transfer prints on Japanese paper, 1908, 1912, 1 bicolor gum bichromate print, 1909, 1 gum bichromate over platinum print on Japanese paper, 1913, 1 platinum print on Japanese paper, 1912)
Gertrude Kasebier (1 carbon print, 1902)
Edward Steichen (1 gelatin silver print, 1903, 2 waxed platinum and gum prints, 1901, 1902)
Clarence White (1 platinum print, 1902, 1 carbon print, 1903)
In glass case: paper samples, sketchbooks, technical manuals, color charts, photo micrographs
 
Gallery 5
Heinrich Kuehn (5 multiple oil transfer prints, 1907, 1914, 1915, 1924, 1 gum bichromate over platinum print, 1915, 2 platinum prints, 1906, 1913)
1 film, explaining Kuehn's autochromes
 
Comments/Context: Imagine reading this one line event listing in some current magazine: "Heinrich Kuehn at the Neue Galerie - carefully staged photographic portraits and landscapes, augmented by complex technical manipulations". Based on this description alone and without any clue that most of these images were made more than a century ago, it would be perfectly natural to assume the show contained cutting edge contemporary work, as our digital world is now full of staging and manipulation. Of course, these works were made in a turn of the century Pictorialist style that now seems dreamy and dated, but the parallels between the two time periods make a case for reconsidering just how relevant these works might be to our current dialogue.
 
This exhibition lies somewhere between a retrospective and a closely reasoned argument, tracing Kuehn's artistic development in a roughly chronological manner, intermittently tying in the influence of Stieglitz and Steichen. After an opening hallway of back and forth portraits among Kuehn and his famous contemporaries and handful of introductory images, the show moves on Kuehn's early work, almost all of it in colored gum bichromate, where rolling landscapes, cypress trees, and Italian villas are executed in intense atmospheric hues. Using textured papers with mottled surfaces, these images have the look of painterly blurred watercolors, tinted in various pigments from thick grey and warm brown to soft blue and rich orange. One wall in this room has recreated the show that Stieglitz installed in his gallery 291, showing Kuehn's work (as well as those of a few others in his Viennese avant-garde circle) against a light brown wall with a pleated green cloth curtain below (installation shot at right, second from the top). This was a time when photography was still struggling to secure its place as fine art, and these works (and the installation) did their best to strip away the mechanized reproduction of the camera and substitute in a more intimate, personal, hand crafted aesthetic, reminiscent of painting.
 
After a small room of images by Kuehn and others which were reproduced in Stieglitz' influential journal Camera Work, the show moves on to document Kuehn's evolution as an artist over the next decade or two, where his windy colored landscapes are entirely replaced by portraits of his children and their nanny, nudes, still lifes, and other carefully composed outdoor genre scenes. Led by Stieglitz and Steichen, Kuehn clearly started down a path toward Modernism, changing his camera angles and subject matter, only to ultimately reject the forward momentum of that movement, turning back and recommitting himself to the painterly perfection and compositional harmony he preferred.
 
In these works, Kuehn's control over all the elements of his photographic process is extremely rigorous, eliminating any chance elements or spontaneous moments. The images are entirely pre-visualized, often sketched out beforehand and then executed with methodical attention to detail, his models posed in custom color-coded clothing to ensure proper tonal matching and contrast, the light managed to avoid unwanted shadows. The resulting images have a timeless, peaceful, almost fairy tale quality, looking back to happier, better times, rather than forward. Many of the works are meticulous, nearly scientific studies of tonal values, catching the highlights on a white dress and contrasting them with the dark areas of a formal hat, or letting light dissolve into abstraction when seen through a drinking glass or still life vase. Outdoor scenes play with the balance of black and white smocks and dresses against the land, using them to manage the weights of a wider composition, and Kuehn's sensual nudes of Mary Warner use her long dark hair as a counterweight to the lightness of her skin. The final room displays a series of images of hikers on a hillside and beneath a tree, where Kuehn's total management of the process is reinforced; one scene waits for a certain cloud formation, another times specific distances between the individual subjects in the group, and a third retouches out a hiker who has strayed into the wrong place.
 
While the show does connect the dots between Kuehn's artistic evolution and the influences of Stieglitz and Steichen, what was most surprising to me was just how far Kuehn had taken his efforts to control the look and feel of his output. The show is a parade of different arcane print types and technical innovations, each one carefully optimized by Kuehn and then matched to certain pictorial circumstances and desired outcomes. And then each composition left nothing to chance, every single fold of a dress, tilt of a hat, or roll of a background meadow placed just so. If these works are not dreamy stolen moments from a bucolic, soft focus, 19th century childhood but instead premeditated scenes designed and built for particular effect, there is certainly an added dimension of exacting intent and thoughtful execution to be considered. I came away from this exhibit with an entirely different view of Heinrich Kuehn than I had previously had, one of an artist painstakingly struggling to bring forth his own vision of the best of photography, using every trick in the book, even when he defiantly knew that the world was passing him by.
 
Collector's POV: This is a museum show, so of course, there are no posted prices. Kuehn's work has been consistently available at auction in the past decade, with prices ranging from roughly $1000 (generally Camera Work photogravures) to $26000. There are two gallery shows of Kuehn's work on view in New York for those collectors interested in following up: one at Howard Greenberg (here, through August 3rd), and the other at Hans Kraus (here, through June 29th).
 
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
 
Transit Hub:
  • Reviews/Features: NY Times (here), The Economist (here), Huffington Post (here)
Through August 27th
 
1048 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028

Monday, June 18, 2012

Rachel Perry Welty @Richardson

JTF (just the facts): A total of 5 large scale color photographs, framed in white with no mat, and hung in the smaller back room gallery space. Each of the archival pigment prints is sized 40x30 and available in an edition of 6. The works were made in 2011 on a commission for Vogue. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Rachel Perry Welty's newest show is a straightforward example of taking a visual aesthetic created in a fine art mode and applying it to a commercial project. Expanding on the optical illusion via everyday household items conceptual approach she developed in her series Lost in My Life, these works push further into the realm of branded luxury culture, taking on a more Pop Art feel.

On an accessories shoot for Vogue, Welty used signature fabrics from various fashion houses as the basis for her camouflage, matching generally flat patterned backgrounds with objects made out of the same prints to create her disappearing effect. These mirages are simpler and less sculptural than her earlier efforts, with less of a sense of drowning in hoarded piles of twist ties, bread tags, or vegetable price stickers. Instead, Welty vanishes into a brightly patterned pink and blue floral golf bag from Prada and a jumble of purple and green tote bags from Givenchy. Other visual tricks play on the black and white pansies of an Alexander Wang motorcycle helmet, the impressionistic flowers of a Kirkwood shoe, and the snakeskin bag and leather boots of a head to toe Balenciaga look.

While getting lost in couture brands might imply the seditious bite of anti-consumerist irony, these images are surprisingly light and decorative, the criticism muted to a quiet undercurrent. In the pages of Vogue, being defined by possessions or reveling in a luxurious pattern isn't necessarily a negative.

Collector's POV: The works in this small show are priced between $5000 and $7000 each. Welty's work has limited secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail is likely still the best option for collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
Rachel Perry Welty
Through July 6th

Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Friday, June 15, 2012

Image Object @Foxy Production

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing a total of 13 works by 4 artists/photographers, variously framed, and hung in the main gallery space and the smaller back room. (Installation shots at right.)

The following artists/photographers are included in the show, with the number of works on display and image details listed after the names. No edition information was available on the checklist.
  • Andrea Longacre-White: 3 archival inkjet prints, framed in white and unmatted, each 36x26, from 2012
  • Travess Smalley: 3 digital c-prints, framed in white and unmatted, each 40x30
  • Kate Steciw: 3 c-prints with mixed media and plexiglas, framed in oak and unmatted, each 40x30, from 2012; 1 sculpture (customized metal), 2012
  • Artie Vierkant: 1 six-pass UV print on Sintra, unframed, 54x16, from 2012; 1 sculpture (IKEA Vilgot, IKEA Dignitet, screws), from 2012; 1 sculpture (IKEA Grundtal, North Face Etip gloves), from 2012
Comments/Context: We tend to hear the phrase "on trend" when it's used to judge the ins and outs of the seasonal variations in the fashion industry, but the truth is, we could just as easily apply it to the patterns and groupings found at the emerging edge of the art world. In our contemporary photography subculture, we might say that digital aesthetics are on trend this year, or process centrism, or the exploration of photography as archive. One cluster of activity that is undeniably on trend for 2012 is the continued objectification of photography. This well-edited show contains plenty of fresh examples of work from this burgeoning genre, where artists are leveraging layers of construction steps into finished works that play with three dimensionality.

Andrea Longacre-White's images are complex and interlocked, using meticulous stratified rephotography to build up textural monochrome abstractions (installation shot at right, top). Her works contain areas that alternate between the crisply sharp and the softly blurred or pixelated, paper layers ripped and cut into angular lines and geometric forms again and again, covering the narrow spectrum from black to white. I was impressed by both the conceptual sharpness and the elegant balance of these works, and I liked the small digital cursors that popped up in expected locations, confusing my ability to unpack the overall temporal order.

At first glance, Travis Smalley's all-over abstract works look like colorful swirled finger paints, but as you move in closer, they begin to have an unexpectedly undulating texture. This is when you realize that things are not as they seem. The works were made by putting modeling clay on the glass bed of a scanner, and the resulting flat images document the squishiness of the clay and the artist's left over smears and fingerprints (installation shot at right, second from top). It's a new twist on intermediated process, offering unexpected avenues for exploring fluid abstraction.

Kate Steciw's works are unabashedly digitally manipulated, taking garish stock photos in blazing lurid colors and bending and chopping them into busy angles and smooth curves, almost like marbled Italian papers, albeit with a harsh dizzying brightness (installation shot at right, second from bottom). Her images are then adorned with lines of colored tape, pink sponges, carpet remnants, silvery stickers, and chrome car parts stuck right on prints and frames, bringing them into the realm of collage or combine and adding texture and depth to her brash, knife-edged palette.

Finally, Artie Vierkant's pastel gradient object has perhaps traveled the farthest from photography, forgoing any camera based imagery at all for a dive into software (installation shot at right, bottom). This work is clean and machined to perfection, almost like a blurred Bauhaus photogram, reinterpreted in a 21st century aesthetic.

Overall, this show is an insightful sampler of some of the recent approaches being used to reconsider contemporary photography in object form. All the works play with conversion and transformation, starting with one visual idea and rendering it in an altered form, where the reconstruction process modifies the original in innovative ways. While we're clearly still in the first phase of this trend, the overall concept has certainly opened up some new, uncharted white space for photographers to investigate.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows:
  • Andrea Longacre-White: $2500 each
  • Travess Smalley: $1700 each
  • Kate Steciw: $3000 each for the prints, $1800 for the sculpture
  • Artie Vierkant: $4500 for the print, $2400 and $1600 for the sculptures
None of these artists/photographers has much if any secondary market history, so at this point, gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors looking to follow up.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Andrea Longacre-White artist site (here)
  • Travess Smalley artist site (here)
  • Kate Steciw artist site (here)
  • Artie Vierkant artist site (here)
Through July 13th
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623 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Thursday, June 14, 2012

The Checklist: 6/14/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Spies in the House of Art: Met: August 26: review
ONE STAR: Naked before the Camera: Met: September 9: review

Midtown

THREE STARS: Weegee: ICP: September 2: review
ONE STAR: Taryn Simon: MoMA: September 3: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Ari Marcopolous: Marlborough Chelsea: June 16: review
ONE STAR: Evelyn Hofer: Danziger: June 22: review
TWO STARS: Constantin Brancusi: Bruce Silverstein: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Marco Breuer: Von Lintel: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Thomas Demand: Matthew Marks: June 23: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Lehmann Maupin: June 23: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Sonnabend: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Lisa Oppenheim: Harris Lieberman: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Joni Sternbach: Rick Wester: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Julia Fullerton-Batten: Jenkins Johnson: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Ulrich Gebert: Winkleman: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Sigrid Viir: Winkleman: June 30: review
ONE STAR: Lisa Kereszi: Yancey Richardson: July 6: review
THREE STARS: Richard Avedon: Gagosian: July 27: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Lehmann Maupin: June 23: review
ONE STAR: Alfred Leslie: Janet Borden: June 29: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Rising Dragon: Katonah Museum of Art: September 2: review

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

June 20: Photography: Van Ham: catalog
June 26: Contemporary Art Evening: Sotheby's: catalog
June 27: Contemporary Art Day: Sotheby's: catalog
June 27: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening: Christie's: catalog
June 28: Post-War and Contemporary Art Day: Christie's: catalog
June 28: Contemporary Art Evening: Phillips de Pury: catalog
June 29: Contemporary Art Day: Phillips de Pury: catalog

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Ulrich Gebert, The Negotiated Order @Winkleman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 photographic works hung unframed in the entry and the main gallery space. All of the works are gelatin silver prints mounted to Dibond, with cardboard, MDF, wallpaper, lacquer and/or linen, and were made in 2012. Physical dimensions range from 9x11 to 23x15, and each work is available in an edition of 3+1AP. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Ulrich Gebert's newest works continue his conceptual exploration of the human urge to order the natural world, once again using our relationship with animals as the basis for investigating our controlling behavior. In his previous series, Life Among Beasts, he used appropriated images of humans interacting with domesticated animals to highlight the weirdly disturbing way we touch and handle these creatures. In these new works, he once again returns to archival and found imagery, this time deftly removing the animals, leaving the humans in strange one-sided exchanges and conversations.

While a trainer holding a hoop for a jumping dog or using a fish to entice a seal to do tricks in the air might seem like ordinary events, when the animal is erased, the narrative is interrupted and left unresolved, the human stuck in a kind of awkward, surreal pantomime. People call and pet invisible dogs, feed invisible horses, and stand back apprehensively, with sticks and whips at the ready for who knows what kind of invisible animals. Our gestures in this absence are disorienting, oddly formal, and often completely ridiculous. Instead of matting and framing these manipulated black and white photographs in a traditional manner (which would have made them look like a 1970s conceptual throwback), Gebert has embedded the photographs in off center rectangular canvases, which have been painted in muted colors. The effect is to make the works feel more like objects, reducing their tendency to seem like inexplicable documentary evidence.

The best of the images in this show avoid the trap of the obvious visual one-liner and leave us with something more open ended and uneasy. Gebert's sleight of hand has removed the certainty in our interactions with these animals, leaving behind a unsettling sense of not knowing what might happen next.
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Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced at either $2800 or $3300 each, based on size. Gebert's work is not yet available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Review: TimeOut New York (here)
Ulrich Gebert, The Negotiated Order
Through June 30th

Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Alfred Leslie, The Lives of Some Women @Borden

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 large scale color photographs, framed in brown wood and unmatted, and hung in the divided gallery space. All of works are digital c-prints mounted on Dibond, made in 2012. The prints come in two general sizes: single heads, each sized 25x22, in editions of 16, and images containing multiple figures, sized between 63x50 and 86x66, in editions of 6. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In the past decade, we've seen the rigid edges of what we define as "photography" get more loose and permeable, especially as previously discrete artistic mediums have begun to overlap with more regularity. One heuristic I have developed to find the limit is to state that if the end product artwork is a photographic print of some kind, then we are still in the realm of photography in some manner. Famed painter and film maker Alfred Leslie's new photographic images just barely fit inside this definitional boundary line, but challenge almost everything else we hold sacred about the medium. We're way out on the bleeding edge here, which is why we ought to pay attention.

Perhaps the best way to explain what Leslie has done is to say that he is probing the intersection of painting and computer-based art, and then using the photographic print as his output. The works on view were made by "drawing" or "painting" on a tablet computer; I put those words in quotes not to be clever but to show that I am not certain that those words really represent his artistic process anymore. There is no ink or oil paint here (no camera either), no digital scanning of physical works made by himself or others, no appropriation or collage; it is all direct input of gestural motion, captured by a stylus as colored pixels, then further modified and manipulated via software.

What is truly fascinating about these images is the way Leslie moves back and forth between the realistic and the representational, making hybrid portraits that have alternating moments of rich detail and unexpected paint program flatness. In a few images, there are hands that seem crisp and lifelike, with convincing skin and fingernails (which raises the mind bending question - is it possible to make a photo-realistic photograph)? Right alongside, there are areas of computer-generated polygons used to create kimono patterns and decorate backgrounds, as well as oddly blank slabs of color that seem to float right on the surface. There are portions of the works that have all the hallmarks of layered underpainting, creating translucence and depth of color, flanked by stark undifferentiated, untextured notional items (a cup, the edge of a gown), with a minimum of explanation. What is hard to see in scans and only really visible up close is the revolutionary way these layers interact and overlap, moving from plausibly real to obviously not in continuous exchange.

These images are full of women, bare breasts and exposed skin galore, and at some level these scenes could be considered confrontational. But there really is no evidence of narrative here, and the fact that an arm or a breast or a crotch is front and center is remarkably unimportant. What draws you in is the experimentation with spatial dimensions, with different types of representation, and with the push and pull of simple abstraction and nuanced features. This isn't a love affair with New Aesthetics machine generated imagery and artifacts, but instead a ground breaking combination of old and new. In many ways, these works have nothing to do with issues inherent to photography, at least as we know it today. But the real reason to see this show is to be forced to consider what photography might evolve to mean (and include) if "painting" and "computer art" are permanently swirled into the mix, and what might emerge if these tools are then pushed to their limits by artists who defy categorization.
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Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The smaller single heads are $12500 each, while the larger multiple figure images range from $18500 to $23500, based on size. Leslie's new photographic work has no secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
Alfred Leslie, The Lives of Some Women
Through June 29th

Janet Borden, Inc.
560 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

Monday, June 11, 2012

Sigrid Viir @Winkleman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 4 color photographs, shown in custom wood frames and unmatted, and displayed against white walls in the small back room (the Curatorial Research Lab). All of the works are pigment prints, made in either 2009 or 2011. Physical dimensions of the prints range from 9x14 to 23x28 (or reverse), and the works are available in editions of 5+1AP. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Estonian photographer Sigrid Viir's exploration of the intersection of photography and sculpture goes a step beyond the now commonplace practice of building something to be photographed. While she does indeed construct and make pictures of elaborate installations of everyday objects, she brings her images into the realm of the three dimensional by displaying them in angular wood frames that stand on thin pedestals, roll on wheels, and drop down from high on the walls. It's a double layer of sculptural thinking, entirely upending our expectations for how we are supposed to interact with a photograph.

Inside Viir's photographs, objects are piled into dense interlocking forms, with an eye for simple geometries and color interactions. The jutting legs of overturned tables are balanced by the roundness of two white teacups, while an upended leather couch is decorated with silver chairs, yellow plastic bins, and doilies, creating the hint of an anthropomorphic face. Other constructions recall the odd precariousness of Fischli and Weiss, with stacks of glassware and eggs built up in towers and a white folding chair embellished with blue plastic bags filled with air, a green colander, a shiny silver pot lid, and a yellow sponge.

What I found new and exciting though was Viir's sculptural framing. Suddenly, these photographs become objects that take up space, that need to be navigated around. Images are high and low, out and in, forcing an entirely different path through the tiny gallery space. With the work on wheels, there is even the potential for motion, or at least reconfiguration. I liked the crowded physicality of the works, they drew me in and forced me to consider not only the constructions in the photographs, but the larger construction going on in the room. These ideas were thoughtfully and elegantly nested rather than gimmicky, and I came away impressed by the potential of this approach to smartly extend the definition of photography away from the flat surface of the wall and into the open air of the space in between.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced at $2500 each. Viir's work has not yet found its way to the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Pulse Prize, 2012 (here)
Sigrid Viir
Through June 30th

Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Friday, June 8, 2012

Richard Avedon, Murals & Portraits @Gagosian

JTF (just the facts): A total of 4 monumental photographic murals, 46 individually framed works and miscellaneous additional ephemera, hung in the large gallery space interrupted by four V shaped interior walls. The murals hang unframed behind protective barriers at the ends of each axis, while the prints are framed in silver and matted, and displayed against black walls inside each of the Vs. The smallest items and other ephemera are shown under glass in the small triangular area at the point of each V. A catalog of the show has been published by Gagosian/Abrams (here) and is available from the gallery for $100. (Installation shots at right.)

The exhibit is effectively divided into four sections, each led by one of the murals. Each section is outlined starting with the mural itself, followed by the details of the photographs and archival material on view in the adjacent/supporting V:

Andy Warhol and members of The Factory

Mural: gelatin silver prints, three panels mounted on linen, 1969/1975, 123x375, edition of 2+2AP
Prototype mural: gelatin silver prints,  three panels mounted on masonite, 1969, 30x115, unique
7 gelatin silver prints, 59x48, 38x51, 34x42, 24x20, 20x16, 1969-1971 (some printed 1975, 1993, 1997)
1 c-print, 20x16, 1969
Vitrine: 6 gelatin silver contact prints, 8x10 or reverse, 1969, 2 sheets of loosely mounted contact prints, 1968, 1 Candy Darling model release

The Chicago Seven

Mural, gelatin silver prints, three panels mounted on linen, 1969/1969, 122x243, edition of 2+1AP
12 gelatin silver prints, 67x61, 37x29, 36x28, 24x20, 20x16, 14x14, 10x8, 1963-1975 (some printed 1975, 1998)
Vitrine: 1 comic book, 1975, 1 book cover, 1968, 3 gelatin silver contact prints, 1969, 1 contact sheet, 1969, 1 newspaper article and opening photograph from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1970

The Mission Council

Mural: gelatin silver prints, five panels mounted on linen, 1971/1975, 120x390, edition of 2+1AP
14 gelatin silver prints, 41x33, 40x32, 20x16, 10x8, 1971, 1975, 1976 (some printed 1993, 1998, 1990-1999)
Vitrine: 2 gelatin silver contact prints, 1971, 3 gelatin silver prints of Avedon at work by Denis Cameron, 1 Vietnam sittings book belonging to Avedon, 1 edited model release, 1 Department of Defense ID card, 1 NY Times article, 1971, 1 metal engraver's block

Allen Ginsberg's family

Mural: gelatin silver prints, two panels mounted on linen, 1970/1993, 96x240, edition of 3
6 gelatin silver prints, 40x30, 24x20, 20x20, 20x16, 11x14, 1960, 1963, 1970 (some printed 1970, 1980)
6 gelatin silver contact sheets, 20x16, 1963
Vitrine: 3 gelatin silver contact prints, 8x10, 1963, 1970, 1 poetry magazine, 1971, 2 photographs of Ginsberg by Elsa Dorfman, 1977, 1978, 2 books, 1980, 2001, 1 postcard, 2 magazines, 1970, 1973

Comments/Context: When the announcement came earlier this spring that Gagosian had taken over the representation of the estate of Richard Avedon, it stood to reason that an exhibit would follow soon afterward that would both make a splash and create some separation from the shows of Avedon's fashion images and celebrity portraits that had been seen in New York at other venues in the past few years. It comes as no surprise therefore that the gallery has flexed its muscles in this inaugural Avedon exhibit, pulling out nearly all the stops, from a custom-built architectural space and a thick supporting monograph to a massive advertising billboard near the High Line. It would of course be natural to be intensely skeptical of such comprehensive and lush marketing, but the fact is, this is a truly spectacular show, one of the best of the year in my view.

Before I get to the photography itself, the modifications to the normal gallery experience made by the special architectural elements here deserve some discussion. As a reminder, the Gagosian space in Chelsea is truly cavernous, with extremely high ceilings and the possibility for broad open areas. But instead of the usual room to room linear progression common to most large shows, this space is built on a central axis, like an X of hallways through the larger overall rectangle. As you enter the gallery, all that you can see is a fairly narrow, all-white pathway to the center, where a snippet of one of the large murals is partially visible in the background. So you walk through this thin empty area and then emerge into the expansive middle space, with long views down the four cardinal points to the murals on the outside walls (see the guards in the installation shots above for a sense of the scale). It's a dazzling, smile-inducing piece of theater, and allows you to see the monumental images from a decent distance.

The way the walls are aligned, once you pick your first mural to explore, there is no choice but to walk straight toward it until you are up close, the white walls on the sides funneling you down to the artwork. This forces a gradual change of scale, as the larger than life people now tower above your head, their immensity and crisp detail more pronounced from a few feet away. Now, out of the corner of your eye, you'll see another single print, hanging near the corner of the gallery space, somehow related to the mural you've just examined. As you follow the invisible breadcrumbs to see this photograph, you pass the end of the white wall, and behind it is revealed the interior of a V shaped area, painted all black, and covered in smaller images that support the larger story of the mural. It's another well-orchestrated surprise. And as you dig deeper into this material, you are led into the very apex of V, where smaller bits of ephemera are found under glass. The space is so well designed that this all feels effortless, the transitions in scale managed carefully to support a layered reading of all the work. You then head back to the center of the gallery and repeat the process for the other three murals. Designed by David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates, it's one of the smartest, most well-considered gallery installations I can remember encountering; not cheap, I'm sure, but undeniably extremely effective in showcasing the photographs.

Now all of this showmanship wouldn't matter one iota if the work itself couldn't match the innovations in the architecture. Lucky, the brilliance of these Avedons from the 1960s and 1970s hasn't dimmed at all in the intervening decades; they remain as fresh and original as when they were made. The murals combine Avedon's now signature featureless white background with an expansion of scale that was truly unprecedented at the time; their imposing physicality makes them seem like contemporary versions of ancient marble friezes or triumphant monuments. I was most struck by Avedon's careful control over his compositions in these works, from the individual posing and preening of Warhol's entourage (with Warhol himself almost an afterthought) and the rigid vertical linearity and repetition of the Vietnam-era military and government officials in their dark suits, to the bushy bearded, casual confidence of the Chicago Seven and the overcrowded, multi-generational massing of Allen Ginsberg's family. Each mural creates a complex internal conversation from edge to edge, the subtle relationships between the subjects coming through in the tiniest of gestures.

The portraits and materials in each supporting area broaden the story of each mural. In some cases, this means a deeper exploration of Avedon's methodical journalistic rigor, where incisive portraits were made of all the stakeholders surrounding an issue, taking into account competing viewpoints or downstream effects. So for the Chicago Seven, not only are there fabulous portraits of Abbie Hoffman (including one of him holding a gun with a charismatic cackling laugh, giving the finger to the camera), but there are images of lawyers and writers associated with the case, as well as other radicals and organizers of differing views. For the Mission Council, there are portraits of soldiers and napalm victims, social workers, hookers, and krishnas, flanked by Nixon's secretary in her pearls. This selection of works proves that Avedon sought multi-layered context, not just the single powerful image we might be familiar with.

Other portions of the archival material give insights into Avedon's process. There are work prints (with grease pencil selections and instructions) and contact sheets, as well as plenty of alternates and variant images, like the members of the Factory putting their clothes back on after the mural shoot. This is particularly true in the section devoted to Ginsberg, where there are 6 engrossing contact sheets of Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky trying out countless nude poses. The collected ephemera takes us even deeper, into model releases, images of Avedon working, his DoD ID card, and even his notebooks. I found this getting down into the weeds of Avedon's photographic life fascinating, especially in the context of the gargantuan murals nearby.

While I'm not sure that this exhibit represents a wholesale reappraisal of Avedon's work or a repositioning of his place in the canon, the show has clearly been designed with a sense of seriousness that stands in contrast to more easily consumable gatherings of his fashion shots and celebrity portraits. Here we are shown Avedon in the middle of the momentous events of the day (war, politics, sexuality, counterculture), crafting his own unique visual record of this critical period in our collective history. The nearly perfect production values of this show enable a richer and more complete presentation of this particular body of work, but in the end, the exhibit successfully reinforces Avedeon's versatility and originality, and provides further proof of his importance in the larger sweep of photographic history.
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Collector's POV: While I never saw a detailed item by item price list for this show, the folks from the gallery let me know that the murals were priced at $2000000 "and up" and the individual prints were $30000 "and up". Avedon's work is routinely available in the secondary markets, as many of his most famous images were made in editions and portfolios of 50, 75, 100, and even 200 prints. The artitst's fashion images and portraits are relatively equal in price at this point, with the iconic images generally finding buyers in six figures, and most other images priced in five figures. The recent white glove Avedon sale at Christie's Paris in 2010 (detailed results here) is probably the best proxy for the current market. In that auction, a print of Dovima with elephants, Evening dress by Dior, Cirque D'Hiver, Paris, August 1955, 1955/1978, set a new auction record for Avedon at 841000€ (just over $1100000).

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Avedon Foundation site (here)
  • Reviews/Features: Wall Street Journal (here), New Yorker (here), Daily Beast (here)
Richard Avedon, Murals & Portraits
Through July 27th

522 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011