From: Jack Fulton (jefulton1@attbi.com)
Date: 12/28/02-04:14:14 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
Here, here now! I'll agree with Arthur here.
I've seen a Close Daguerreotype and IMHO it is not interesting.
What IS interesting is that an artist w/cachet can so much as piss on the
ground
(referring to the comical and erudite previous tangent)
and
it'll be considered important and given splendiferous display by the gallery
system.
Commodity . . mere commodity.
Not the oddity that true art is.
Jack
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