Today I visited the Photographer's gallery in London to see their current exhibition of three well known artists known for non-photographic art, as well as writing and film making.
Andy Warhol: Photographs 1976 to 1987 - Famous for far longer than a mere 15 minutes due to his iconic prints which sell for vast sums, for questioning the idea of what art should be so profoundly and successfully, his bohemian lifestyle and legendary nightclub, The Factory, Warhol (USA 1928-1987) was a prolific photographer who took '36 frames per day' from the 70s onwards. This exhibition celebrates some of the scenes he captured from the area around where he lived, people he knew and spent time with, along with alarming events such as a car crash which took place in the streets directly in front of his apartment.
There are included a series of stitched photographs which were the most interesting for me as they echo some of the work for which Warhol is best known. 'Warhol’s interest in serial and repeated imagery, seen throughout his work, is brought to play though his striking series of "stitched" photographs'1.
I found it difficult to connect with many of the photographs in this collection but the stitched photographs were compelling. Serial images do something strange – perhaps raise the status of the moment or scene depicted by reiterating it again and again and again. Very bizarrely I had commented only last night on some work on Flickr by someone who had used this technique of repeating a single image – saying I thought the photo worked well in a grid, although I have to be honest I don’t really know why I liked it. Is it because the habit of presenting this way is familiar due to Warhol’s success having made it somewhat ubiquitous? Or perhaps a very clear and strong pattern creates a rhythm which is comfortable for a sentient being with a regular heart beat, or is it that the repetition makes us feel safe as it offers us structure – something we humans seem to respond well to, especially in a world that lacks coherent and cohesive internal structures? I really don’t know the answer but suspect much has been written (and not read about by me!) about why Warhol’s use of serial images has become so iconic, sought after and copied.
Apart from the stitched photographs, the work felt to me in the main like something that feeds into his prints rather than standing alone in its own right - am I allowed to say that? I don’t think this understanding in any way diminishes the work and I am reminded of the scrapbooks of Hannah Hoch (my previous gallery visit), which were so important to her lifelong project of making art.
Nevertheless I was immediately more drawn in by Taking Shots: The Photography of William S. Burroughs on the floor above. Burroughs (1914-1997) is considered one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century most famous for his book Naked Lunch amongst others.
“Burroughs’ photographs, striking in their self containment, lack any reference to other practitioners or genres2” were presented beautifully mounted in sturdy frames, which was markedly different to the Warhol pictures. The latter seemed to be far less carefully mounted. One of the Burroughs’ prints was tiny and only a couple of inches across and yet placed in a relatively large, expensive and finely crafted mount – this made me really think about how work is presented because the Burroughs’ work seemed much less ‘grubby’ to me than Warhol’s photographs – although why that should be given that he was an addict who lived quite a grubby existence most of his adult life, and was prosecuted for manslaughter after killing his second wife, I am not entirely sure.
What really fascinated me was that although it says Burroughs’ work lacks any reference to other practitioners or genres, by some sort of weird quirk of synchronicity I found myself looking at and reading about collage and cut-up work again just two weeks after seeing the Hoch show. Burroughs used a similar technique in his written work, notably The Nova Trilogy (1961-64) – cutting up a story and creating a new one by sticking it back together in a different order.
“Cutting
images from different works, Burroughs arranges and assembles photographs and
objects to conceive new connections and meanings. In his more complex collages
his assemblies are photographed and printed, then reassembled and photographed
again and again, creating a near-infinity of images. For him these pieces
functioned as a form of time travel, ones in which the camera was used to
literally cut pieces from the continuum to then be repositioned and
disseminated.”3
It seems
that the artists I (through no concious planning) am becoming more familiar with,
from the modernist to the post modern, are ones that explore a deeply
fragmented world, and find ways and means of expressing the splintered
existence we find ourselves in very graphically by literally cutting out and
pasting and recreating.
Finally on
the top floor was David Lynch: The
Factory of Photographs (b. 1946, USA).
As soon as you enter you know you’re in Lynch territory because there is
a sound-scape installation which feels like it might at any minute evolve into Falling, the theme song from Twin Peaks,
Lynch’s TV serial which people of my generation were so hooked on back in the
80s. For anyone interested in filmaking
and acting as I was, David Lynch was a kind of demi-god. Blue Velvet, the Elephant Man and Eraserhead
(the last of which I must admit was just too much for me at the time) were all held in high
esteem by my circle of friends. So the
familiar dark but intoxicatng themes were instantly recognisable and even welcoming.
Lynch’s
photographs are of factories that are no longer in use from various locations
around the world: London, New York, New Jersey, Germany and Poland. They are very dark – I mean literally dark -
as you might imagine being by David Lynch. Like an early scene from Blue Velvet
where the camera emerges from beneath the dirt in the lawn, these photographs
seem to prod and pry right into the dirt that is piling up in the carcasses of
these ‘haunting cathedrals of a bygone industrial era slowly being taken over
by nature4’.
The
industrial revolution changed the course of the human story profoundly and was
a seismic catalyst for much that occurred in the following decades and century.5 These photographs seem to be recording and
exploring the death of that age. Nature
has indeed begun to take over but humanity will not, cannot, should not even return to
what it was prior to that moment in history and Lynch for me seems to be
dealing with something of the horrors, perhaps in the ghosts we are leaving
behind in buildings that have yet to be transformed into trendy housing and
office space. We have moved on to pastures new as ever with the digital revolution but the creeping, infallible nature is never far behind and will in the end win.
1.The Photographer’s Gallery publicity leaflet that accompanies theexhibition.
2. The Photographer’s Gallery publicity leaflet that accompanies the
exhibition.
4. The Photographer’s Gallery publicity leaflet that accompanies the
exhibition.
No comments:
Post a Comment