ARTHURWG@aol.com
Date: 12/28/02-03:08:46 PM Z
Just saw the Chuck Close show at Pace Wildenstein here in NYC and can
honestly say it just goes to show what can happen when a wonderful idea/
medium like the Daguerreotype falls into the wrong hands. These pictures
have none of the charm, mystery, expressiveness or beauty of a classic Dag --
or even most of the other contemporary Dags I've seen. Instead, they are
slick, machine-made parodies of the traditional form.
What's the problem? Perhaps it's the industrial finish of the plates,
which look more like mylar than silver. It probably also has something to
do with the 30,000 watt-seconds of Elinchrome stobes (6 power packs) that has
only worked to kill the portrait subjects. These pictures look more like they
came from a NASA lab then an artist's studio. But my guess is that it has
something to do with Chuck's sensibility, which can't distinguish between the
good, the bad, and the ugly.
There, now I feel better. Arthur
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 01/31/03-09:31:26 AM Z CST