New photography at MoMA, old photography at the Met, and everything in between at ICP

Saw a few shows. Have a few things to say.

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New Photography 2009 at the MoMA

The New Photography 2009 exhibition at the MoMA claims to be “a thematic presentation of significant recent work in photography that examines and expands the conventional definitions of the medium.” As not all the work was analog, I’m assuming the show’s curators were open to including digital images and processes. Given that, I’m surprised by how questions and challenges raised by the digital were explored so minimally (if at all) in a show that aimed to examine the conventions of photography—because what else, if not the digital, is doing that? Well, apparently lots of collage.

The show frustrated me to a thankfully quick end (it’s a small group of six artists with one body of work each) simply because the work reminded me of high school art projects that either I did myself or that I saw many of my peers produce in abundance. Collage, digital collage, sculptural collage, photocopying, photograms—what were exercises in developing the visual thinking of prep school youth supposedly now expands the conventions of photography? Not any conventions I’m familiar with (or still see as the convention).

The only photographs that interested me were Sara VanDerBeek’s, but only because of how interesting the sculptural compositions were (using different photographs of varying iconic recognition to create, in their physical and conceptual relationships, portraits of Detroit). That they were photographs of the compositions—or the way she photographed them (presentational studio still lifes)—didn’t add anything to the pieces nor did they challenge how I see photography. I would’ve rather just seen the compositions themselves instead of these representations.

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Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans at the Met

I don’t have much to say about Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans at the Met except that the show seemed to focus so much on Frank’s sequencing and storytelling by juxtaposition skills, which I feel is best exhibited in, well, book form. I’m not sure that the exhibition accomplishes anything that the book doesn’t—except maybe spread the images out a little bit to give them room and air to breathe.

It’s the Met though, and it’s intended to be a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, so I guess they weren’t necessarily trying to accomplish anything new or challenging. And the exhibit does expose the book and the photographs to the modern Met audience (i.e., the masses who go to the Met to go to the Met, not to think about art) that may not know the work or have the attention span to sit down and peruse the book. So that’s cool.

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Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial at ICP

I’m also nearly speechless about Dress Codes, the Third Triennial at ICP, though not for a lack of things to say but more so a lack of words to express how I felt about it. I enjoyed it. Thoroughly. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed by how extensive (if not exhaustive) the show is with driving the point home. Maybe I’m crippled by my fear that I can’t look at the work objectively as art when I love the subject matter (fashion and personal image) so much. Or maybe it’s just that my experience at the show is colored by my having taken a class with curator Chris Phillips last spring, who then previewed a lot of the exhibited work for us in class. I was able to experience the work first in a classroom setting, so I don’t know if what I experienced at the show is from seeing the show up or from (subconscious) recollection of our discussion.

Trying to close the gap between fashion images and fine art photography is a contemporary challenge, and I think the exhibition takes a commendable stab at it: Dress Codes looks at how art represents, explores, and comments on how people dress—its reflection of personal identity and of the global implications. And it does so with a great variety of media, visual styles, and ideas, no less. From the consumerist and the commercial (Kota Ezawa’s IKEA-inspired images) to the personal (David Rosetzky’s video portrait of Cate Blanchett) to the ethno-racial (Mickalene Thomas’s 70s film-inspired portraits of confident black women) and beyond, there are many social and cultural perspectives that add richness to the show. I think the curators did a great job of amassing and presenting work that exhibits the great social observation out there amongst artists, regarding fashion, beauty, and style (personal or otherwise).

Response to ICP: Dress Codes

“Dress Codes,” marks the end of ICP’s Year of Fashion, the theme that surrounds its Third Triennial. The goal of the exhibitions included, was to shine a light on fashion photography by representing it through a cultural as well as a social perspective. This exhibition in particular showcased the notion of how we dress ourselves, how we look at dress in society: critically, historically and personally, and how we grapple with the idea. Thirty-four artists, from eighteen different countries were chosen to be apart of this show, where the work consists of photography, video as well as mixed media. Each artist approached dress in a different way and was given a personalized unique exhibition wall to visually express themselves.

“Dress Codes” curators, Kristen Lubben, Christopher Phillips, Carol Squiers and Vince Aletti, in their introductory statement, addressed a number of questions that they focused the exhibition on which included:

“How can individuality and cultural identity be expressed in an increasingly homogenized world? How do we construct the selves that we show to others? How can clothing, style and beauty be employed to define community, instill a sense of power, or fabricate fantasies? What do we now make of the aesthetics of unbridled luxury and excess that reigned during the past decade? And, perhaps most importantly what does the current blurring of the boundaries between art, fashion, and commerce foreshadow?”

“How can clothing, style and beauty be employed to define community, instill a sense of power, or fabricate fantasies?”, was the question most appropriately answered through the work of Jeremy Kost, Mickalene Thomas and Valérie Belin consecutively, while together encompassing the theme as a whole.

Jeremy Kost shoots in the most fashionable of mediums – the endangered Polaroid. Born in Texas and moved to New York City six years ago, Kost used his camera as his tool to interact with night people, taking party pictures at Premiers, Openings, Bars and Clubs. His piece in the exhibition is a grid of approximately 10 x 6 Polaroids framed together of partygoers including celebrities such as Richie Rich and Miss Piggy, Drag Queens, and others such as the woman dressed as Snow White. The piece as a whole screams fashion by the ‘head to toe’ looks these people are adorned in; from hair to makeup, jewelry and clothing. Amanda Lepore, American transsexual icon known for her modeling, partying and fas

hion, is the subject of one of the Polaroids in this piece. She is clad in a red bustier decorated in numerous diamond shaped mirrors throughout the bosom area, enhancing her tremendous cleavage, along with a blue and white diamond ring, shaped as a bird, that extended over her entire right hand. In addition, her perfectly coiffed bleached blond hair with ringlets hugging each shoulder, her fake eyelashes as well as lacquered red lips that match her exquisite lengthily fake nails embody the term, making a statement. She, along with the other people in Kost’s piece, personify this same term. These people are connected by the common parties they attend – they together use clothing, style and beauty to define themselves as a community of fashionable New York party people. The physical grid of Polaroids touching one another emphasizes this bond and the community that is created.

Mickalene Thomas is a New York based mixed media artist who primarily works with paint. The body of work featured in “Dress Codes,” is comprised of three photographs from her Odalisque series. This is the first time she has exhibited her photos in such a notable environment. Thomas doesn’t consider herself a photographer. She normally uses photography as pieces in collages or as images to paint from. In terms of the creation of these photographs, she began by building installations or sets and then placed the African American models inside them. She adamantly claims that the credit is not all hers for she considers the collaboration and relationship developed between herself and the models she used to be a big part of the success of the photographs. In Portrait of Qusuquzah, 2008, Thomas references Henri Matisse’s Odalisque series with the poses of the models as well as with the patterns of the fabric. By using an African American model as subject rather than a Caucasian as in Matisse’s paintings, she plays with the reversal of roles, whereby she empowers the Black servants in the background of the Odalisques. Her models are also not waif, but rather normal full body models who exude empowerment stripped down through Qusuquzah’s pose as well as her comfort in showing her naked skin. There is a feeling of, I’m black and I’m beautiful. The dress and the environment have a lot to do with this. They not only reference Art History, but also female heroines from the 1970’s such as Foxy Brown.

Valérie Belin is a photographer from France who is currently based in Paris. She has created numerous bodies of work where she tries, through her photographs, to represent the essence of simple objects extending from still life Venetian mirrors to celebrity icon Michael Jackson. For this exhibition, she used her expertise in lighting to make models look like mannequins. The five images of male and female models, nude from the shoulders up, are brushed with powder to have uniform skin tones and are placed in front of a black background. The only features that somewhat pop are the varying colors of the model’s eyes ranging from blue to green to brown. These models are excessively thin and ‘beautiful’. They embody the notion of perfection through their symmetrical youthful features and surreal airbrushed skin. They are dressed down to nude, while dressed up to represent this fantasy of flawlessness that the culture and society of today aspires to and obsesses about.

Jeremy Kost, Mickalene Thomas and Valérie Belin, together showed how clothing, style and beauty can define community, instill power and fabricate fantasies, through Kost’s representation of the community that makes statements in the New York City nightlife with their style and beauty, Thomas’s African American models taking the empowering role of Matisse’s Caucasian Odalisques clad in their patterned environments and Belin stripping models down to their nude core to illustrate unrealistic beauty that is seen as a fantasy of today’s culture to achieve perfection.