Re: And how sharp I am was/Re: Temperaprint & Gum

To add to this thread, the Becher's work, early on, was more of an idea
and a categorization of types. The visual information and identities
was the important thing. AS they taught and some students met good
success and their own work was purchased and seen in some of the early
auctions of the 70's and 80's they turned to creating archival prints,
made them larger and better.
        An unrelated aspect of how photography is perceived by gallery and
buyer is when I saw a Walker Evans exhibit in Los Angeles with one
image totally ruined by fix . .or, incompletely fixed. It waa yellow
but the dealer (Walker had just passed on) said it a 'rare'
interpretation.
Best
Jack Fulton
On Feb 3, 2004, at 2:06 PM, Judy Seigel wrote:

>
> On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
>> Seeing Bechers' work at the Walker Art Center in Mpls I was appalled
>> to see
>> spots of silvering out creeping in their work.
>
> If anybody has any old prints they're about to "bin" (as the Brits so
> charmingly put it) because they're "silvered out", they can send them
> to
> me, I'll pay postage... In fact I have 3 on the wall to my left,
> utterly
> nondescript photos rendered exquisite by plating in the shadows and
> background turning tan. But the most beautiful I've ever seen was in a
> show of naked people photographs at Robert Mann gallery. A woman
> photographer of the 30s, name I didn't know & now forget... a fine
> photograph to begin with, rendered sublime by the silvering...
>
> Is "Becher" (Bernd and Hilla?) the water silo duo? I'm a fan of their
> work & would guess, if the "silvering out" is as usual, it's
> glorious...
> And, AFAIK, not unarchival in that form... (?)
>
> We have BTW discussed the cause of that silvering out on this list,
> but as
> I recall... What is the authoritative answer? Incomplete removal of
> fixer?
>
>> ....witness the loss of the 2 million dollar Marc Quinn sculpture head
>> of his own frozen blood that melted all over Saatchi's floor when the
>> workmen turned off the freezer accidentally. This is one mere
>> example among
>> many curatorial nightmares.
>
> I would say rather that a member of the Green Party pulled the plug on
> purpose, as protest against art that consumes non-renewable energy,
> ie.,
> round the clock electricity (& not just the energy to keep it frozen,
> but
> the energy to deal with the heat generated by the equipment to keep it
> frozen... & so forth)....
>
> Meanwhile of course the loss to posterity is obviously on a par with
> destruction of Venice. But just for curiosity: About the "2-million
> dollars"... Is that what Saatchi paid for it? What did it cost to
> make?
> (I daresay Quinn has got the mould in a vault somewhere... maybe he'll
> re-edition.)
>
> J.
>
>
If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of
spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man.
Seattle
Received on Tue Feb 3 17:10:07 2004