From: Shannon Stoney (shannonstoney@earthlink.net)
Date: 08/18/02-12:50:58 PM Z
Carl,
Thanks for the technical info about the lightbulb. I can't wait to try
this.
>
> Weston's work has suffered from having a few iconic images reproduced over
> and over again making his work seem more limited than it was.
I think this is exactly right. I had only seen these images in books and
slides until this show, and I had no idea how varied the work was, and how
incredibly satisfying it is to look at until I saw the real prints
yesterday. I am beginning to think that the essential thing about anybody's
photographic education is to do whatever is necessary to see the real prints
of the masters and mistresses of the art.
The nude that
> so upsets Judy is a good example of this. It's been reproduced ad nauseum,
> but one reason it got that status is that of the eight or nine pictures in
> the series, it's the only one that *could* be reproduced for many years
> because the others all showed pubic hair, which back in those days meant
> they could not legally be sent through the U.S. mail, and few galleries
> would risk showing them. (See the fascinating book-length memoir by Charis
> Wilson for a discussion of this and other sessions for which she was the
> model, and a lot of refreshing myth-debunking.)
Charis and Beaumont Newhall talked about this in the video. Apparently the
MOMA board was very upset by what one of the secretaries called "public
hair." Nancy Newhall insisted on putting some of those prints in the
show, knowing that the board or trustees or whoever would throw them out.
>
> It's amazing how many incorrect myths surround Weston. That he was a
> doctrinaire, concept-driven artist, that he can be defined by "the group
> f.64" theories, that he used the Zone System, that he was "an austere
> sensualist" (would someone please tell me what in the world Jed Pearl can
> mean by that?) Who cares whether an artist is labeled modernist, or
> post-post, or anything else by a yammering critic. Weston made fabulous
> pictures, and they're worth looking at.
That's it in a nutshell.
Although I think I am beginning to understand the idea of "austere
sensualist." I think it's sort of like the Japanese idea of "shibui" or
"wabi sabi," the idea of very simple, very stripped-down things having a
kind of material presence that is sensual, while being the opposite of
baroque. Like tea ceremony bowls. I had never really liked minimalism
until I went to the Chinati foundation this summer in Marfa and saw Judd's
concrete boxes, which I photographed with a lot of pleasure, and also the
aluminum boxes, which I was only allowed to take digital pictures of (no
tripods allowed for some reason.) If you said, "Judd made 200 aluminum
boxes of slightly varying design, but all basically the same size, and put
them in two big rooms," I would say, "So what?" But when you see them, they
are, well, sensual. You want to touch them, although you're not allowed.
The light plays all around them and on their surfaces in fascinating
reflections and mirrorings of the other boxes and the outside grasses and
sky. IT's austere, but it's sensual. Go see it! Marfa is cool. (Another
must-see is the Mystery Lights.)
I'm not sure I would agree with Jed Perl that Weston is a minimalist
photographer, but there's something of the minimalist aesthetic in some of
his work.
--shannon
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