Advanced Photography Students are required to visit a museum or gallery to get an experience of art in the real world. The two shows I am recommending are the Edward Weston show at the Crocker Art Museum and the Marion Post Wolcott show at Viewpoint Gallery. Check websites for information on time and dates of exhibits. Viewpoint Gallery is free, and you can get into the Crocker for free between 11 and 1 on Sunday (the rest of the time there is an admission charge).
Requirements for your gallery review are:
Typed, single space, 12pt. Roman
Attach a flyer or receipt as proof of entry.
In your writeup include:
-Impressions of exhibit
-Anecdotes from the experience
-Details of specific pieces including titles and descriptions of some of the work
-Make connections to history
-Evaluate the work and make a judgement about the show.Edward Weston at the Crocker Art Museum
This assignment is worth 10% of your grade. You have Thanksgiving break and Winter Break coming up. Schedule ahead. I want your review to be interesting to read and informative. It is proof to you and to me that you learned from the experience.
I've written you a sample piece to help you see what I'm asking you to do.
Edward Weston at the Crocker Art Museum
I have long said that if it werent for Ansel Adams, Edward Weston would be the most famous California photographer. Going to the Weston show would be an opportunity for me to critique that statement more carefully. I have seen several comprehensive exhibits of Adams photographs, but only individual works of Westons in various collections.
The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art gallery west of the Mississippi. The gallery would be filled with work by Edward Weston in the west wing, his son Brett Westons photographs in the library gallery, and student take-offs in the basement gallery. I talked my husband Bob into going with me, and although he didnt really want to, he knew that it was an opportunity that couldnt be missed. Seeing original work, made by the photographer or artist himself, is vastly different than reproductive copies in work. It is nearly impossible to make a reproduction look like an original, for a book is a book, a photograph is a thing that you can hold in your hands, or in a museum, that you can see up close the way the photographer printed it in the darkroom, and from across the room where its power, if it is good, will pull you in.
Upon arriving, we found a parking place and I jumped out of the car. It may sound crazy, but I was really excited about seeing the work, and I was especially fixated on getting to see an original copy of the Pepper on the invitation. A man and a woman were standing nearby, and the man asked, Whats going on at the Crocker? The Weston Show, I replied. He said, I dont get too excited about black and white photography. I like the colors of paint. I said, Im a photographer, and I cant wait! I raised my hands in triumph and swiftly head to the museum, Bob at my side. Later, in the gallery, I saw the man and the woman looking at the work. I wondered if he had second thoughts about his statement, or if my enthusiasm infected him..
There were over a hundred people in the gallery, and it was dead silent. It was dark. The photographs were dark. Only some were well lit. You had to be very close to see the photographs, and people were standing 2 feet in front of the framed pieces in groups up to three. There were many older men in suits, even though this was a Saturday. My judgment about this is still that photography from the time of William Henry Fox Talbot has been a gentlemans art form, a love of the rich and privileged class, for it is expensive to make, it is the labored work of great craftsmanship, it is subtle, filled with references to literature, history and art, the knowledge of the educated. Its beauty is an effort of seeing and understanding.
The work was organized so that one could see Westons dedication to the genres of landscape, still life and portrait, a master of all. The early work was Pictorialist, tied to Steiglitz and the photographers of the 291 Gallery in New York City. Photographers in the early part of the 20th century were struggling for acceptance as artists, not just camera operators who pressed a button and recorded the reality that faced the camera lens. On this journey, some decided to make photographs that looked more like paintings, and if you think of Turners work you will get an idea of what these photographs might have looked like in black and white.
As Weston matured, he and other California photographers collaborated on ideas that became unique to their time and place in the world. The warm and fuzzy romantic landscapes of the twenties evolved and became sharp and clear, the now famous f64 Group formed, naming themselves after a very small aperture that would control depth of field, rendering everything in the frame sharp. Abstract expressionism opened a new way of seeing, allowing the formal elements of the work to dominate the subject importance, so that shape, line and lighting were studied microscopically.
Somewhere along the line, after much work and contemplation, Westons infamous Pepper was born. It has an ancestry that can be studied. It was one of many. The process of making a masterpiece is worth studying and worth remembering. He looked at peppers carefully to study the essence of its form. He shopped at the market for peppers. He set them up in the light of the window of his studio and studied the value on the surface of the skin. He looked at the peppers under the dark cloth of his 8x10 inch camera. A negative was made, processed, printed, and studied. In his Daybook, he wrote careful reflections of what he was seeing in that photograph and that experience and what he wanted to be captured in that picture. He didnt give up. He rephotographed. He used different background, different personalities of peppers. He ate the peppers. Out of these hundred of hours of work, a single photograph emerged as a masterpiece.
As I looked at the pepper photograph, I was surprised by details I hadnt seen before, and I would guess Ive spent at least 5 hours of my life enjoying looking at this picture. There is an eye in it. There are two fingers. It seems like a human form unfolding and folding up at the same time. The light on the surface radiates. The background has a scratched metallic surface that reminded me of a time exposure of the night sky, stars streaking across infinity of time. The contrast of the pepper and its background give an impression of eternity and earth. I have seen many students look at this picture and not have a clue what they are looking at but know that it is a fascinating and beautiful image.
Just one more thing. There is a saying that Westons peppers look like nudes and his nudes look like peppers. To understand the meaning of this, you have to see this show.
I have never liked Westons nudes. Im not sure why, but your guess is probably right.
As we left the gallery, I told my husband that, and he agreed. Could there have been the pepper without the nudes? I asked him. Well, thats exactly why you need to learn to draw the figure in art, he reminded me. The connection will hit you right in the face, if you are standing in a place in the gallery that allows you to see both. Download pepper
