On Art
MULLER, MARION
On Art PORTRAIT POSSIBILITIES BY MARION MULLER n a section of On Photography that deals with reality and images, author Susan Sontag makes a provocative claim: Given the choice between owning a...
...If I meet them a week later in a room somewhere, I expect they won't recognize me...
...And finally, he introduced, as professional models, personalities of I.e Haute Monde and the Jet Set...
...In repeating studies of objects, it is the artist's concept of the subject that is changing...
...But for insight into character—well, that is another question altogether, one that has as much to do with who is clicking the shutter and who is wielding the brush as it does with the medium involved...
...They [the sitters] leave . . . and I don't know them...
...In charcoal, wa-tercolor and oils (I found the watercolors the most beautiful), the artist has examined and re-examined Joyce's head—working from photographs, a bronze death mask and most important, from an intimate knowledge of the writer and his works...
...I'm not so sure about that...
...This technique seems particularly pertinent in portraiture, however...
...They are searching, many-faceted, lay-er-upon-layer of jewel-colored brush strokes in some areas—only tentatively and delicately stroked in others...
...one gets the distinct lecling that ¦\vedon would have ptoduccd the same exquisite v isii.il expei ictKc had he used as a model a still lite ,u iangeineui ol hull, a swan oi a commonplace household ohicct akin lo I dwaul I Weston's celebrated toilet bowl...
...I he first is Awtlon:Photograph W /v"(Mct ropolitan Museum of Art, through November >), a series ot photos hv Richard Avedon...
...The artist employs almost as many painting techniques as Joyce uses rhetorical devices: He draws, glazes, scumbles, lands heavily on an area with a thick impasto stroke—erases, uncovers and rediscovers passages in what feels like stream-of-consciousness painting...
...For although we recognize the faces, we get no vibrations about the characters of the sitters...
...I've hardly heard what they've said...
...In fact, the portraits are in a sense a metaphor for Joyce's writing style...
...marked contrast to Avedon's detachment from his subject are Louis Le Brocquy's Studies Towards an Image of Joyce...
...Perhaps Avedon expresses it best himself in this excerpt from an anthology of quotations in Sontag's book: "when the sitting is over—when the picture is done—there's nothing left except the photograph . . . the photograph and a kind of embarrassment...
...a total of 69 works, of which 45 can be seen in the Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer show...
...and Twiggy, l-ach is csthetieally impeccable: every standard one might apply to painting and fine art photography—composition, tonal values, light, line, ereative tonus?is satisfied Yet lor all the pcrleetly phoio-giaphed leaiuies, lor all the passion and inleiisitv that went lino iccotding ihein...
...Victoire Cezanne produced, how many water lilies blossomed under Monet's hand, and we have seen the continuous flow of drawings Picasso produced of his Guernica images long after the painting was completed...
...It's through the photographs that I know them...
...Avedon learned his basic skills in the Merchant Marine during World War II, then made his mark early as a fashion photographer...
...In a portrait, the subject itself is forever changing...
...l'riscilla Rat-ui//i...
...The perseveration of an image that we see in this Le Brocquy show is hardly a new idea to artists...
...He posed models bare-breasted, sought out black and Oriental women with distinctive faces in place of the typical anonymous Aryan beauties...
...The magnificent skill, though, always remains subservient to the image, so that one can deduce the penetrating vision, the wit, the nervous energy, the compassion, and the contradictions that characterized Joyce...
...Meanwhile, let us have done with all this talk of which is the better medium...
...I suspect we may see variations and an expansion of this concept in photography as well as painting in the near future...
...The Met exhibit consists of nearly 2(X) photographs, tracing Avedon's career from his early fashion photography to his most recent studio portraits...
...For that reason, Le Brocquy's images are perhaps the truest approach to capturing the essence of a human being...
...Included are formidable portraits—blown up to larger-than-life si/e—of Marella Agnelli, Joan Baez, Claude and Paloma Picasso, Bette Midler, Penelope I ree...
...At least the part of me that was...
...And the photographs have a reality for me that people don't...
...Two exhibitions—both stunning visual experiences—have provided scope for further consideration...
...As a relic—a document of the actual appearance of a famous person?the photograph would certainly be preferable...
...Thus it is in a series of studio portraits of famous and not-so-famous personalities thai we suspect Avedon wishes to be judged...
...Maybe it's in the nature of being a photographer...
...is now in the photograph...
...We know how many versions of Mont St...
...On Art PORTRAIT POSSIBILITIES BY MARION MULLER n a section of On Photography that deals with reality and images, author Susan Sontag makes a provocative claim: Given the choice between owning a portrait of Shakespeare painted by Holbein the Younger (had he lived long enough) or an actual photograph (had the camera been invented), most Bardolators would choose the photograph—it being "something akin to a nail from the True Cross...
...I'm never really implicated...
...Not only did Le Brocquy know Joyce, but he is also a native Dubliner who lived in London and France for 30 years without being able to get Ireland out of his system...
...1 he second is X/j/,/V\ /'<mw<A an Innwc <>l .lainc* Voiiv, a group ot paintings hv 1 oins I e Hroc-i|uv (a traveling exhibit that has nisi completed its si,iv .11 the Gun pel and Weitzenhoffer Gallery in New York...
...The coincidences of biography are coupled with a fascination for his subject's novels and stories...
...While his fashion photography has always been recognized as first rate, Avedon, like every commercial artist, wants to be accepted as a fineartist—to have his work stand on its own, apart from its commercial value...
...In the freewheeling postwar era, he proved himself daring, innovative and brilliant: Photographing the couture collections of Paris designers for Harper's Bazaar (he remained on the staff there until 1965, when hejoined r«Kitf), hedisen-tangled the languorous cold-blooded mannequins from the standard cliche props like Greek columns and Rolls Royces, and set them in motion?jumping, running, cavorting with animals, alive with joyous energy...
...Because 1 don't feel I was really there...
Vol. 61 • October 1978 • No. 21
