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| What's that noise ? Oh its a moody soundtrack. |
The Photography Gallery has three concurrent exhibitions each showing work by American cultural greats - David Lynch, William Burroughs and Andy Warhol. The exhibitions are on different floors and are independently curated but each attempt in some way to expand our understanding of the artists work through an exploration of their use of the medium of photography.
Lynch’s pictures are of disused factories across Europe and the US. All are good and some are well framed. But none seem to be more than a picture of the inside or outside of a factory. This is no Becher typology of architecture, nor do we feel the artistry of Weston or Bill Brandt. These are pictures of the inside and outside of factories. It would be very unfair to say they are mundane, and in a scholastic context they would get top marks, but is this great documentary or great art ? The sound track playing in the gallery space evokes the synthetic charmlessness of a video game - it is more modish than moody.
Burroughs' work offers some insight into his troubled mind. The repeated shots the same table top mis en scene are creepy; his collages are obsessive; and the shots of a semen stained bed are achingly autobiographical (did Tracey Emin see these ?). But on the whole, with fragments of snapshots venerated by framing and vernacular pictures made special only by context this show fails to evoke the great mans greatness. It is a little like admiring Christiano Ranaldo’s football boots - sure they are important but they are just a means to an end. Photography is that for Burroughs too. His eminence lies elsewhere.
Photography is pivotal to Warhol’s work - his appropriation of popular photography has created images that are as iconic as they are sadly now cliched. This show attempts to catalogue how else Warhol has used the medium in his output. There are some interesting sketches that echo the aforementioned screen print work - repeated pictures of Bianca Jagger literally stitched together (with thread) into a familiar grid (I will not use the phrase ‘stitch together in Photoshop’ in quite the same way again). But mostly the show features pictures Warhol took as he went about his day - parades, people in the park, architecture. As with Burroughs this work is illuminated by the glow of Warhol’s greatness - but is not great in its own right.
The gallery’s ambition is worthy but the result feels like a serving of Monster Munch at Le Manoir - sure the savoury snack is food but even endorsed by Raymond Blanc it its still more prosaic than the grub one might expect in such a venerated environment. Similarly in this great gallery one expects great photography.
In different ways Lynch, Warhol and Burroughs are amateur photographers. For each picture taking is a side line and is secondary to their main artistic practice. The curation leaves the images bobbing above the sea of context of their makers artistic practice and without anchor they drift aimlessly from hither to thither. The show is worth seeing from an academic perspective but for great art you will need to seek these American’s work elsewhere.
Burroughs' work offers some insight into his troubled mind. The repeated shots the same table top mis en scene are creepy; his collages are obsessive; and the shots of a semen stained bed are achingly autobiographical (did Tracey Emin see these ?). But on the whole, with fragments of snapshots venerated by framing and vernacular pictures made special only by context this show fails to evoke the great mans greatness. It is a little like admiring Christiano Ranaldo’s football boots - sure they are important but they are just a means to an end. Photography is that for Burroughs too. His eminence lies elsewhere.
Photography is pivotal to Warhol’s work - his appropriation of popular photography has created images that are as iconic as they are sadly now cliched. This show attempts to catalogue how else Warhol has used the medium in his output. There are some interesting sketches that echo the aforementioned screen print work - repeated pictures of Bianca Jagger literally stitched together (with thread) into a familiar grid (I will not use the phrase ‘stitch together in Photoshop’ in quite the same way again). But mostly the show features pictures Warhol took as he went about his day - parades, people in the park, architecture. As with Burroughs this work is illuminated by the glow of Warhol’s greatness - but is not great in its own right.
The gallery’s ambition is worthy but the result feels like a serving of Monster Munch at Le Manoir - sure the savoury snack is food but even endorsed by Raymond Blanc it its still more prosaic than the grub one might expect in such a venerated environment. Similarly in this great gallery one expects great photography.
In different ways Lynch, Warhol and Burroughs are amateur photographers. For each picture taking is a side line and is secondary to their main artistic practice. The curation leaves the images bobbing above the sea of context of their makers artistic practice and without anchor they drift aimlessly from hither to thither. The show is worth seeing from an academic perspective but for great art you will need to seek these American’s work elsewhere.
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