From: William Marsh (redcloud54@earthlink.net)
Date: 08/16/02-07:10:05 PM Z
>From the recently mentioned article in The New Republic:
"...And this show, which was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago,
is not the only Weston exhibition that has been seen in recent months.
"Edward Weston: Photography and Modernism," the last in a triptych of
Weston shows that originated at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, is
completing a national tour at the Phillips Collection in Washington,
D.C. this summer. There is something to be said about the prominence of
Weston, a tough-minded West Coast aesthete, in the age of the
blockbuster show. This artist who believed that a piece of driftwood
could be more beautiful than the Venus de Milo has emerged as a hero for
the fashion-and-design crowd that has cashed in on a growing taste for
minimalist Americana, and perhaps Weston's new admirers are not
incorrect to think that he was, in his own way, a materialist. Weston's
photographs might be said to describe precisely the bleached white decor
that you need if you are setting up a certain kind of ivory tower..."
I happened to see the abovementioned traveling show at the Hunter Museum
In Chattanooga, TN, recently. It is a very comprehensive overview of
Weston's work from the earliest Pictorial to the very last image he
produced - all vintage prints, including early platinum and palladium,
portraits, landscapes, still life - everything. Many I had never seen
before, not in any of the books. Whoever put it together chose wisely.
It may be corny to say, but seeing an original "Pepper #30" in the flesh
was very moving. What Perl sees as "minimalist" makes me think,
instead, of a knack for going to the exact heart of a scene, arranged or
found. This does not preclude complexity, but, rather, fosters it.
Also...
"...There is no denying that photography is messy. At the core of even
the most austere of Edward Weston's images there is a make-do spirit--he
has created his abstractions out of what is at hand..."
Well, DUH!!
Bill
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