Robert Storrs Ideas on the Value of a Work of Art
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April 1, 1979
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TWO shows now at UConn in Storrs are of characters then opposed equally to cause speculation about their relative effects on the students. One concerns Robert Motherwell's use of black in his work of the last 30 years (William Benton Museum); the other is "Photo‐Realism: Some Points Of View" (Jorgensen Auditorium). The juxtaposition alone is a subject area worth discussing but there is space but to annotation that it implies non merely stylistic change merely a cultural split worthy of sociological investigation. Under discussion hither (the Motherwell will be covered in a future review) is Photo‐realism, embodied in the work of 14 artists chosen to demonstrate the various ways in which the technique can exist used (through April ten).
Born 140 years agone, photography appeared in French republic at a time when the majority of artists were concerned with satisfying the public's ambition for replication. Its inventor, Daguerre, had non long before been engrossed in staging dioramas, in which nature was rendered super‐real by ways of painting techniques and lighting effects.
Sharing the burden of representation with art, photography was at get-go regarded as its extension and, by many, every bit its superior replacement. But things inverse with the advent of impressionism: photography continued to prosper as a rival, only it also became a kind of cohort, normally unacknowledged, to artists of‐both the academy and the avant‐garde. In the 1960's, yet, it was dragged out of the esthetic closet by Pop artists and given a military camp status. Photo‐realism was built-in shortly after and, though in that location's reason to suppose many of its exponents were serious, the movement owed much of its success to an audience that had been programmed for irony by Popular. A nail with spectators who relished the idea of anti‐art, photo‐realism attracted too their obverse — those e'er famished for "art every bit it used to exist."
Photo‐realist shows keep to cruise around the U.s.a. and Europe, but the fashion is no longer a contender for the mainstream, whatever that may exist. Instead, it seems to exist alongside, as benign every bit an oxbow, deprived even of mass‐media attention.
In the concurrently, photography itself has been ensconced as loftier, collectable fine art. Consequently, painting almost photography begins to seem no less respectable (and in many cases no more than irksome) than the kind of fine art which grazes upon other fine art, a trend actively supported by museums and academies. Not that this is whatever excuse for a style where manufacture is as well often substituted for idea, feeling and commitment and with an air of self‐congratulation to kick. However, the Jorgensen show, which was assembled by Steve Gerling, proposes that homo individuality tin find a fashion of expressing itself, no affair how dour the subject field it chooses.
Don Nice'south "Bobcat Totem" is a vertical work shaped overall similar a house, and it comprises works on canvas and on paper. Framed under glass in the tiptop triangular section are the images of a bird and a frog; on the canvass below is a view of a blue lake surrounded by purple and light-green moun tains; and beneath that the a bobcat painted with shut attention to the color variations in its pelt. Along the bottom, again under glass, are: a partly unwrapped chocolate bar; a child's brawl with toll‐tag attached; a goldfish; and a dark-green plastic water pistol. Executed in soft acrylic tones that are applied like watercolor, the work is pretty but lacks confidence.
Plain a message virtually the surround is intended just its drift is unclear, peculiarly since toys and the chocolate bar hardly cut it equally symbols of pollution. Nor is the imagery obviously inspired by photographs, a feature shared by the work of William Nichols, who shows a canvas that focusses on a small-scale, white business firm surrounded by vegetation. Painted dryly in muted greens, yellows and pinks, the motion picture is impressionistic in style.
At the other extreme is one of Robert Bechtle's blow‐ups of a young woman standing, beverage in hand, in a brown lawn. Similar all his other visions of the good life in sunbelted bourgeoisie, the picture is slickly executed and it has an immediate and disturbing impact. This artist's work is a potent statement for the apply of the camera, for without its promiscuous eye such saturated boiler would be incommunicable.
Unlike in manner but again photographic is David Parrish's shot of store shelves packed with Azuma‐like junk. It, too, has a ghastly kind of integrity, existence a advisedly orchestrated symphony of cheapness that comes across as an abstraction of glitter and brazen crimson‐and, yellow. Related to this but more gentle, is. Don Eddy's limerick of silvery bowls and cups stacked on glass shelves.
Artists such equally Ben Schonzeit and Mary Neumuth seemed mainly interested in photography as a means of suspending thought and concentrating on virtuoso effects — a dramatically lit rack of giant screwdrivers, and a swath of gravel respectively.
The works in which art has made the deepest incursions are two nudes by Hilo Chen. They await sprayed but are reported to take painted with a brush. One is a study of over‐life‐size artillery raising a T‐shirt to expose abundant breasts; the other concerns a windblown immature woman on a beach. The artist translates bogus light into hot gilt and red tones, daylight into grays and low-cal umbers (a suggestion of Kuniyoshi here). What makes these pictures remarkable is the way the Mr. Chen manages to maintain a sense of naive, voyeuristic passion. ■
Painting by Ching Jang Yao, from "Photo‐Realism: Some Points Of View."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/01/archives/connecticut-weekly-art-realism-magnified-at-storrs.html
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