Quick! In what year was the above photograph taken? A) 1848, B) 1889, C) 1935, or D) 2001 Answer at the end of the post.
Tyler Green over at Modern Art Notes absolutely nailed it. The Sally Mann show at the Corcoran, What Remains, may very well be the best museum show of the year in Washington, D.C. Although, I can't wait to see the Dan Flavin exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. It'll be a tough choice between the two I'm sure. Anyway, let's get to the art...
What a fantastic show! I absolutely loved it. Death, decay, emptiness, loneliness, rebirth. Those are the words that come to mind. I assumed this show would be troubling and I was right. Before I could even get my bearings straight, Mann slapped me in the face with an image of her long-dead, beloved dog - or I should say, the skin of her dog hanging on a hook. OK, I said to myself. Let's prepare for this! What followed was more than 150 images, all black and white and beautiful, yet conceptually challenging.
As you should know by now, I don't want to be an art critic in the contemporary sense (or any other sense... remember, I chose the term critical observation). By that I mean providing elaborate descriptions of the show that highlight my elite literary and art history degrees. The paragraph above this one suffices for a description of the show. If you need more, see the links above, or see what the Washington Post had to say here. I'm going to focus on how the art looked. And boy, did these works look old. Mann achieved this deliberate antiquarian look through the wet-collodion process, and she chose images of decomposing bodies, bones and isolated landscapes, a combination that easily results in, well, oldness. Each image was eerie and disturbing, yet solemn and dignified.
In this body of work, Mann is clearly interested in death and what that really means other than in a strictly physical sense. I'm quite impressed that she chose this manner of representation. Pretend for a moment that you don't know anything about Sally Mann or her previous work, but you are somewhat familiar with contemporary art in general. You're a tourist in the nation's Capitol and someone just told you about the Corcoran and their free Thursday nights. The cheap guy you are (heck, you have 3 kids), you decide to take advantage of the free entertainment. Other than the uneasy stomach provoked by the images of badly decomposing bodies, you clearly recognize that this show is about death. However, you're a bit surprised that the artist chose to use such an aged and delicate means of expression. Why didn't Mann really shock us by using large, full-color, Gursky-esque photography? She could have gotten a dead body, set-up a large format camera to take extreme detail shots, and seriously grossed us out. No, wait! She could have executed a time-lapsed video recording of a decaying body. Pair that with some strange music or convoluted text reading and pow! you have a Hirshhorn exhibition. Undoubtedly good ol' Blake Gopnik would praise it!! Let's take this farther and make some really fantastic art. Why not just take a dead body, sit it in the corner of a gallery, and let it rot? Between the smell and the sight of the decaying flesh, the viewer would surely think about death and what remains.
I apologize for the rant. I'm not exactly sure where that came from. Yes I am. Sally Mann is a true artist. She stepped back in time, tried her hand at a 150-year-old technique, and produced some of the most outstanding and thought provoking images I've ever seen. I can't describe it in a manner that does it justice, so if you are in Washington, D.C., go see it. If you aren't here, I've heard that the airlines are cutting rates for the summer, so you have no excuse.
While I viewed this show, for some reason I began thinking about the art of Amy Cutler and Marcel Dzama (pictured below, in order).
I like photography and I like drawing. However, in thinking about Sally Mann in comparison to Amy Cutler and Marcel Dzama, I see very divergent paths. I see Mann as the more cutting-edge artist. I see photography and drawing as being in similar states right now. The typical person is accustomed to color photography as provided by local one-hour processing, and he/she is accustomed to color drawing through comic books and animation. These are a part of our everyday lives. From a visual perspective, there is little that can shock or intrigue us in color photography or drawing. That's why Mann is brilliant. She took this antique process, captured some meaningful images about death and loss, and displayed it in a contemporary art setting. This is something that none of us are accustomed to, at least not me as I was born in the late 70's and haven't seen much black and white anything! This style of image was new to me and pulled me in. If a gallery attendant had told me that the images were really well-maintained, 150-year-old prints, I would have believed them. This is brilliant! What isn't brilliant is this recent hot trend associated with cartoon-y, illustrative drawing. Cutler and Dzama have seen a remarkable increase in their popularity recently. I don't understand why. They've merely drawn cute pictures of unusual situations. I can think of many examples of unusual situations portayed in the comic books I read as a child. Is it the absence of text that makes these so popular? Is it the bright colors and cutesy figures? Is it that these images are accessible? Seriously, someone please comment and enlighten me!!
Yikes! This post became long and very stream-of-consciousness. My point is... I am happy to see something new in photography that isn't new, you know? I'm tired of seeing the Cutler's and Dzama's of the art world, although as an artist I'm happy for their success (I wish I had their success). I just don't like their art. I appreciate the professionalism of Sally Mann and the seriousness of her work. I look forward to learning more about her past work and I'm anxious to see what she has in store for us down the road.
I look forward to seeing this show again.
(If you haven't already figured it out, and I really hope you have, the image at the top of the post was made in 2001.)
Hi!
It's interesting to read your thoughts about this show since they are so very much different from mine. I would agree with your general description of the show. Yes, they looked old, but in a way that was artifically aged - like furniture made to look antique. It is interesting to see a current artist working in an old medium and doing something different with it. A photographer working 150 years ago wouldn't have produced such sloppy work. Or at least what might have appeared to them as sloppy. Mann is certainly experimenting with the medium, but medium itself doesn't make art to me. Something else needs to be there. I didn't see the solemn and dignified aspects of the photos, and I would certainly be interested in hearing what you thought about the actual content of the photos. Why is it worth looking at?
Posted by: Laura | Friday, July 02, 2004 at 09:50 AM