My friend, Kelly, sent me this video of Vik Muniz speaking for TED (which are often excellent talks if you’ve never seen them).

It’s welcome relief, and also I think rare, in the visual arts to see someone do work that is thoughtful and technically interesting but moreover that is inspired with humor.

Nice start to the day.

For those of you who didn’t hear, Andrew Wyeth passed away last Fri.  Christina’s World is the one painting I’ll always stop to visit with when at the MOMA.

RIP

photo: “PENNSYLVANIA—Painter Andrew Wyeth, 1991.”  ©David Alan Harvey/Magnum.

poem: by E.E. Cummings

(

photo: E.E. Cummings, 1953, by Walter Albertin for New York World Telegram

)

Makes me think of smoking poets and then of Richard Prince‘s Untitled (Cowboy):

photo: Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), ©Richard Prince.

And that’s plenty for now.

Tons.  Masses.

Like when at the MOMA the other day and I saw for the first time Edvard Munch’s The Storm.

painting: The Storm (1893) by Edvard Munch.

I couldn’t possibly look at anything after that – it was entirely too much already.

A article on Robert Frank in the Times, here.  Including a multimedia feature, here.

photo: “Canal Street – New Orleans, 1955″ from The Americans, ©Robert Frank.

photo: “Robert Frank, photographer, Mabou Mines, Nova Scotiam July 17, 1975″ ©Richard Avedon.

(Of course another artist initialed R.F. who defined a sort of America

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

“The Road Not Taken”
-Robert Frost

.)

And as much as I try to avoid regurgitation by linking to blog posts elsewhere, this interview with Chris Buck is enough for an exception, part 1 and part 2.

photo: Philip-Lorca diCorcia for PDN magazine, ©Chris Buck.

That portrait by Chris is of, as you probably know, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who’s work isn’t trivial.  I thought he’d be a good end note to kick the week off with.

photo: “Gianni,” ©Philip-lorca diCorcia.

Last week I’d been asked 4, 5 times, have you been to the Eggleston show at the Whitney?  So I finally made it, and now I’m asking everyone, so have you been to the Eggleston…?

It’s a beautiful show, the first retrospective of one of the fathers of modern fine art photography; it’s the kind of show that reminds one why; why photography; why take pictures; why get out of bed in the morning.

There were two things that distinctly crossed my mind.

1) How remarkable Eggleston’s early prints are.  There were lightjets, inkjets, C-prints, silver-gelatin, but his early dye transfer prints were in a different ball park.  They were interpretive and captivating and technically remarkable.

2) There’s no way to speak what it is or why it is or how it is, the only thing that is certain is that work like Eggleston’s is something that can’t be faked.  It’d be like faking being human or faking being in love.

photo: the Eggleston Retrospective at the Whitney.

“I’m at war with the obvious.” -William Eggleston

Came by a book of Saul Leiter’s work in the painting section (very fitting as it happens) of a book store, which had some gorgeous work that actually made me think of Ghirri.  I think it is safe to name Leiter as part of the 40s-50s New York School (Louis Faurer, Weegee, Robert Frank, etc), and if is so he’s the only one I’m aware of that shot in color.  Beautifully, I might add.  (A decade pre-Eggleston too).

photo: Lanesville, 1958. ©Saul Leiter.

photo: Reflection, New York, 1958. ©Saul Leiter.

I came by this incredible apocalyptic (chic right now) sci-fi (ditto) film, La Jetée, over at Amy Stein’s blog.

To say this short film is visually remarkable is a remarkable understatement.  And further, the minimal creativity of it will make you long for a time when work like this was conceived, let alone completed.  It’s at once brilliant and beautiful, which are two things not easy to couple.  Needless to say, it got into my head b/c I’ve never really seen anything like it.

But watch it for yourself, here in 3 parts.  It might be one of the best half hours of your week.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

(Amy also mentioned on her blog that there is a book version of La Jetée‘s images with the narrative as text by MIT press (here).  My notion is that it’d be excellent.)

(Also, it occurred to me by the end that this short was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys.)

(And while we’re on the video blitz of gloom.  T.S. Eliot’s great poem “The Hollow Men” as recited by Marlon Brando (playing Kurtz in Apocolypse Now (Redux version), which makes sense, b/c one of Eliot’s main inspirations for “Hollow Men” was Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, which as you know was the basis of Apocalypse Now.  The film does leave out the opening line of Eliot’s poem, “Mistah Kurtz – he dead”):

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper”
-final stanza of “The Hollow Men”

photo: T.S. Eliot at his desk, Jan 18, 1944. ©Bob Landry/Life Images.

…)

And it comes full circle, B/c the French film maker Chris Marker who did La Jetée also did a multimedia installation on Eliot’s “Hollow Men” titled OWLS AT NOON Prelude: The Hollow Men.  I’ve not seen it nor can I find it.

Things have been slow here b/c I was knocked flat down by the flu for nearly a week.  Just shook the last remnants.  Getting back to it.

So, to begin, last night I went to the Aperture Gallery for an opening for Luigi Ghirri, an Italian photographer who worked in color, sort of along the lines of Eggleston and Parr, or even Shore and his likes, but Ghirri’s work has a succinct surreal and meta-fictional-layered-realities-thing going on that really pulls you in and spins you around.  I was rubbing my eyes like I was in a house of mirrors.  A few people commented on how this surrealism was specifically European – and I agreed that an American couldn’t have done it so effortlessly and authentically, not without heavy irony (or tackiness), maybe this is b/c Europe’s heritage lies in all the old ideas of painting, while America’s photographic sensibility lies in Realism…

photo: “Rimimi,” 1985, from Paesaggio Italiano.  ©Luigi Ghirri.

photo: “Rome,” 1979, from Diaframma. ©Luigi Ghirri.

After that we headed to a film, Let the Right One In; well, it’s literally a Swedish vampire movie, but I thought it was much more of a love story.  Really really worth finding and seeing.  There’s an American remake coming out soon, but how anyone could possibly remake this…I mean even the Swedish language seems perfect for the film.  One of the better films I’ve seen in awhile.

video: clip from Let the Right One In

(Update: I went back and specified above “America’s photographic sensibility”, adding photographic, b/c I wasn’t clear to begin with that I’m talking specifically photography. Sparked b/c I had a long winded discussion with a friend who argued about my suggesting that there was different sensibilities in different cultures/countries, as I recently made a similar comment in a post on Japanese photogaphy.  They seemed to take it as sort of jab at their patriotism, which is not what I meant at all…admittingly, I don’t often do an excellent job of speaking my mind and keeping my foot out of my mouth, but I’ll stand by this comment…even though generalizations are meant to be over a beer at the bar top b/c exceptions are always rife.  In this case, after I told my friend I was talking only photography, they simply said, Dusseldorf school and Germany.  …Point taken.  But still, look at Ghirri’s book.  Then look at Eggleston’s (they’re compared and Eggleston writes the forward to Ghirri’s book).  It’s like speaking Italian and then speaking colloquial-american-english.  What do you think out there in internets land?)

I read today that Goya‘s head was stolen when his body was being moved from France (his place of death) to Spain (where he spent most of his life).  It was never retrieved.  He was a remarkable artist, one that peered, no stared, right into the most deplorable haunts of himself and human-fate.  (“Stare.  Listen Eavesdrop.  Die knowing something.  You’re not hear long” -Walker Evans).

But Goya’s head…I don’t know why I’m bringing it up; maybe some might gloss over its missing as neat trivia, but I found it to be the sort of stuff odd dreams and fantastic tales are made of.

Painting: Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819.  By Francisco Goya.

Print: What more can one do?, from The Disasters of War, 1812-15.  By Francisco Goya.

To tie this into photography…well, Sorrenti has always drawn a lot of inspiration from the old masters, a lot of time in very literal interpretations or homages.  He did a Goya inspired story years ago for Another Magazine.

photo: “Silent Scream” in Another Magazine Fall/Winter 04.  © Mario Sorrenti.

Or a more true reference to the spirit of Goya would be the most Classically alluding contemporary photographer, the prince of photo darkness, and the taker of heads himself: Joel-Peter Witkin.

photo: The Kiss (La Baiser), 1982. © Joel-Peter Witkin.

I’ve been having a certainly wonderful and kind of ecstatic email conversation with the author Haven Kimmel.  We started on the topic of Avedon and Ezra Pound, but quickly found ourselves immersed in topics as various a Faulkner and God, insomnia and work, Milanese art collectors and, then of course, wedding gowns, taxidermic lions in the rearing-ferociously position and inordinately sized dogs in the sleepy-supine position, and, so on and so forth.  At some point in the conversation Haven pointed to the Southern photographer John Rosenthal.  Excellent!  Needless to say, knowing my proclivities, you’ll quickly understand why I think this is brilliant work, or to quote Haven, “ambrosia.”

photo: Wilmington, North Carolina, 1977. © John Rosenthal

And of this second picture I’ll quote Kimmel again who explained the print to me, “Rosenthal was walking through a cemetery in Wilmington, NC, and he came across this man digging a grave.  It turns out it was the family’s cemetery for three generations, and they allowed no machinery over the graves, so everything was dug by hand.  Bellamy [the gravedigger] was a man of intense pride and dignity.  Rosenthal asked him if he could take a photograph of him, and Bellamy, ‘You may take one.’  And this is it:”

photo: Pine Hill Cemetery, Wilmington, NC, 1990. © John Rosenthal

I feel like the universe just grew.

As far as I know, very often overlooked in the canon of American photography is Ray Metzker, and I suggest seeing his work whenever you have a chance b/c he takes the formal conventions of photography to their maximum.  In effect, through such things as double exposures, cropping, or something as simple as displaying in diptychs, he takes every day realities and creates new realities – and not in the simple Winogrand sense of photographing things to “see what they look like photographed,” but in a more deep, controlled, and impressionistic sense of transforming things in an act of creating truths.

Making work that is autotelic like this is something…well, let’s just say it’s not exactly the style of the moment; that is, creating with politics that refuse conventional politics/content – and it’ll have trouble ever becoming fashionable b/c in a way it is something that has to be done in silence, and silence, needless to say, doesn’t sell.  To be clear, I don’t write here thinking in terms of the old Romantic vain of l’art pour l’art, but I mean something in the post-post-modernly sense of, say, the “inaesthetics” of Alain Badiou, were art can be “immenent” and not mimesis (see his text, The Handbook of Inaesthetics).  Though, stubbornly, I’m still grappling with the mathematical and inhuman definitions of art in Badiou’s approach, but that is another discussion for another time.

Philadelphia, 1963. © Ray Metzker.

Pictus Interruptus, 1977. © Ray Metzker

The point of this nearly loses its poignancy when I fess to not remembering where it was (not even in what country) that I saw a print of Andre Kertesz’s Chez Mondrian, but the point still feels very valid that it was one of those transformative photographs for me when I saw it, not in content in so much as the quality of the print itself.  A photographer can have epiphanies regarding the possibility of expression through technique when they see for the first time the completed print of a master.  Quality becomes, after all, a relative thing.  Needless to say, these are not ink jets.

This is not meant to overlook the content of this photograph though, as it might as well be a example in perfect composition, rhythm and balance.  I dare anyone to start, “well, if I had of shot it I would have…”

photo: Ches Mondrian, 1926, by Andre Kertesz.

(I know for sure I had the same sort of, jesus that’s good moment while seeing Sander‘s prints for the first time.  I’d have to think for a bit to come up with others.)

A certain favorite: Alfred Stieglitz‘s photo of Georgia O’Keeffe titled, aptly, “hands.”

photo: Hands, 1918.  By Alfred Stieglitz.

In case you’re thinking you’re a fan too and would like to have it for the ol’collection, it went for nearly 1.5 million U.S. at a Sotheby’s auction two years ago…  Worth every brass penny imo.  Not to mention probably a brilliant investment as I would imagine it would fetch much much more today with the hungry Russian and Asian art markets.

And on the topic of Steiglitz: there’s an excellent PBS documentary in the America Masters series (here), which is worth picking up.  It thoroughly explores his relationship with O’Keeffe, and shows how much he spearheaded photography and, more interestingly, modern painting.  A tireless activast for the arts.

Maybe 100 times I’ve walked by Dashwood Books on Bond street w/o walking in until today, and boy that walking in was a bit of mistake as I was hoping to make it to the grocery store but instead managed to absolutely loose myself for over an hour in the small store.  It’s a little space, rather sparse, housing only photography books, but every title is of such interest and quality I spent more time in there than I’d ever spent in the photography section of Strand.  If you’re in NYC check it out.  It’s right across the street from Chuck Close‘s studio.  You might see him out sitting in the sun.  And, well, I find a picture of Close’s studio entrance more intriguing than a picture of entrance to Dashwood Books, so…

photo: Chuck Close’s studio entrance, Bond St. NYC.

First, I’ll admit that I’m pinching this find from Dossier’s blog.  I don’t spend enough time online to dig this stuff up on my own.  Speaking of pinching, this scene from John Schlesinger’s film, Midnight Cowboy is ripe to be ripped off and made into a fashion story.  (If you can do it.  Do it!  Play your cards right and you could build a fashion career on psychedelia right now.  Which would be as ironic as the new John Varvatos in the old CBGB space on the Bowery.  Sigh – alas, I think it’ll take an apocalypse of sorts (entirely feasible) before our post-modernist sensibilities of relative-truth and irony make the chance of a certainty – a sensibility unmistakable in this video clip – possible again.  Until then the safest bet is inaction, un-care, or insanity…or likely a mix of the three.  Or maybe there’s a fourth path too: engaging some Warhorlian high-intelligence.  (Wait though, Dylan did write “Lay Lady Lay” for this film and it didn’t make the cut, which for some probably critically flawed reason on my part makes me think sentimentalizing the past is always a fallacy, b/c I can only imagine the reason for a song like “Lay Lady Lay” to be rejected would be a crude reason.))   Check out this clip anyway, for me its like a feverish susurration, and a self-aware requiem of an era to boot.

video: Party scene from Midnight Cowboy, 1969.