Peter Hujar @Pace/MacGill

JTF (just the facts): A total of 18 black and white photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung against grey and white walls in the two room gallery space. All of the works are either vintage gelatin silver prints or posthumously printed digital pigment prints, made from negatives taken between 1973 and 1985. The individual prints range in size from 15x15 to 16x16 and there is one triptych. There is no edition information for the vintage prints; the digital pigment prints come in editions of 10. (No photography is allowed in the gallery, so the installation shots at right are via the Pace/MacGill website.)

Comments/Context: Pace/MacGill has recently taken over New York representation of the estate of Peter Hujar, so this show provides an introductory entry point for those who might be unfamiliar with the artist's work. For the most part, it gathers together a selection of Hujar's penetratingly spare portraits of 1970s/1980s downtown artists, writers, and other scene makers, with a few animals and nudes thrown in for good measure.

Hujar was particularly adept at taking a simple, straightforward, some might say classical, center-focused compositional style and infusing this approach with surprising intensity and personal connection. Regardless of whether his subject was a drag queen, a friend, or a famous name, he was consistently able to come away with portraits that were sharp and perceptive without sacrificing sensitivity. Candy Darling on her deathbed and the deadpan face of David Wojnarowicz will be familiar to many, but other lesser known figures peer out from subtle cones of light here as well and demand our respect and attention with equal force and presence.

While many of Hujar's portraits are important both as documents and artworks, his trio of male nudes in the second room is to my eye a riskier and more durably original artistic expression. Not only are these three portraits full frontal male nudes, which by itself would be somewhat unusual, they boldly celebrate the male erection, a visual taboo for many even today. What is thought provoking about these photographs is not exactly that Hujar took forbidden pictures, but that he bypassed both a Modernist abstraction of the body into line and form and a campy beefcake style aimed at a queer audience and instead opted for a stripped bare structure, using a subject with a sinewy dancer's body and posing him in an unadorned, featureless space. The effect is both quietly pure and extremely personal, the power of the experience reflected in each tensed muscle. The images are erotic to be sure, but taut and elemental rather than lightly titillating.

All in, this is a solid first-level sampler of the artist's career. Go for the discerning parade of John Waters, Divine, Peggy Lee, William Burroughs, and others, but my guess is you will come away haunted by the unexpected intensity of the show-all male nudes.

Collector's POV: The vintage prints in this show are priced at $20000 each, with a few marked "sold out" or "museum sale only". The posthumous digital prints are $10000 each, with the triptych at $25000. Hujar's work has not been consistently available at auction over the years; his prints do pop up from time to time, but not with any great regularity. Prices have generally ranged between $2000 and $25000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: Time Lightbox (here)

Peter Hujar
Through April 20th

Pace/MacGill Gallery
32 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Peter Hujar: Photographs 1956-1958 @Matthew Marks

JTF (just the facts): A total of 21 black and white gelatin silver prints, framed in black and matted, and hung in a single room gallery. The works were taken in Southbury, CT, and various locations in Italy between 1956 and 1958. Most of the prints are 10x10; a few are slightly larger at 13x13. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: Peter Hujar is probably best known for his sensitive portraits and street images chronicling the downtown scene in New York in the 1970s and 1980s and for his downstream influence on photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin. This small show takes us back to Hujar's beginnings and the unknown work he made in his early 20s, a kind of precursor to what would come later.

Nearly all of the images on view are of children, some from a home for the developmentally disabled in Connecticut, others from a convent in Florence and the streets of Rome. There are kids playing with a big ball, climbing on a jungle gym, scrambling in the water, and eating at a long dormitory table. These are simple empathetic pictures, gentle and uncritical, capturing small moments of emotion amidst the chaos of active play. They show the same genuine respect for the humanity and individuality of his subjects that would come to be the hallmark of his later work (and that of Diane Arbus).

While not every picture here is a standout, for those who want to get an expanded view of Hujar's work and his development as an artist over time, this small show is worth a quick visit.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show range in price between $12000 and $15000. Hujar's work is not consistently available at auction; the images that have sold in the past few years have ranged between $2000 and $23000; most prints are unique or in small editions, while a few have been printed in groups of 15 or even 50 (Candy Darling). Hujar is represented on the West coast by Fraenkel Gallery (here). While this work doesn't fit into our particular collecting parameters, my favorite image in the exhibit was Girl Sucking Her Thumb, Florence, 1958, where a child lies sideways on a white iron frame bed, peering out from the shadows.

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

Transit Hub:

• Times review of ICA show, 2007 (here)
• PS1 exhibit, 2005 (here)
• NYTimes review, 1990 (here)

Peter Hujar: Photographs 1956-1958
Through October 24th

Matthew Marks Gallery
526 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10001