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Sunday, May 04, 2008
Show of Photos Documents Innovation
By Wesley Pulkka
For the Journal
The Albuquerque Museum of Art and History is exhibiting a stunning photography show titled “Bill Brandt: A Retrospective” through May 18. Brandt (1904-1983) was a result-oriented, no-holds-barred photographer who began his career in 1929 during the height of surrealism in Europe.
Though today he may be seen as a mostly documentary photographer, Brandt was an innovator who thought of photography as an open-ended medium with which he could create original images.
With one exception, the entire show represents vintage prints executed during Brandt's lifetime. His process included cropping with the enlarger, inking in details and dodging — a method used to change the exposure of particular areas by shading them with small, fanlike pieces of opaque material.
The dodging devices, often made from black cardboard, had small sticks glued to them for handles so they could be slowly waved through the enlarger's light beam to create differing tonal effects in the final print.
The late Douglas Kent Hall used similar techniques to “clean up” his early rock 'n' roll negatives that were shot live under poor lighting conditions.
Brandt also was known to swap day for night by printing daylight images so dark that they appeared to be nocturnal subjects. But his narrative pictures of Londoners in fallout shelters during the Blitz, city scenes and sensitive portraiture make this a beautiful exhibition worth however much time one wants to devote.
The show features portraits of artists, poets, musicians and just regular folks whom Brandt found interesting. One of my favorites is “Parlourmaids ready to serve dinner, 1939,” depicting the “still life” of an elaborate table setting and two uniformed young servants.
The maids in their crisp white uniforms and rigid postures become objects as inanimate as the bottles of wine and glasses on the table. For those familiar with Brandt's nudes, he did have a tendency to objectify his female subjects.
An example of Brandt's attitude toward females can be found in “East End Girl, Bethnal Green, 1937,” a shot of an adolescent who is lifting the hem of her skirt for the camera in mock seduction of the viewer.
Though she and her younger friends are all laughing at her antics, I doubt Brandt was smiling behind his candid camera.
Brandt's portrait of Peter Sellers with a bandaged forehead reading a newspaper is a successful blend of portraiture and landscape. The silhouetted trees in the background lend a stage-set feeling to the outdoor scene.
There are far too many beautiful photographs telling complex stories to mention here, but the depth and variety of these beautifully rendered prints reveal the some of the best work done by this artist.
The show includes comfortable chairs and a few books on Brandt. The museum bookstore also has a great boxed and hardbound book offering a cross section of Brandt's nudes. If you wear gloves, the bookstore encourages perusal.
This is a wonderful show that well deserves an audience. If Brandt's show were in an East Coast venue, it would be the perfect pastime for a long, rainy day. In Albuquerque you'll have to find another excuse to take the afternoon off and spend it at the museum.
The University of New Mexico Art Museum is featuring “For the Greater Good: New Deal Art in New Mexico, 1933-1943” and “Splash,” the 14th Annual Juried Graduate Student Exhibition, through May 25 and May 4, respectively.
The UNM Museum has a different look since John Mulvany recently took the helm as museum director. Both shows are well presented, though I miss the boldly painted walls of a recent acquisitions show I attended a couple of months ago.
The New Deal show has selections from New Mexico artists who benefited from President Franklin Roosevelt's relief program that treated artists as productive members of American society.
By far the most breathtaking are several murals by Raymond Jonson, who completed a long series depicting America's strength in science and industry.
Painted in brilliant hues, Jonson's works are as fresh as the day they were painted in 1934. One can see the influence of Art Deco, the Futurists, Constructivism as well as the seeds for Jonson's involvement with the Transcendentalist painters of the late 1930s.
Many of the same urges can be found in “Winter Mass, 1934,” a dry point and aquatint by Gene Kloss. and “Adobe Brick Maker, 1934,” a lithograph by Kenneth Adams.
With the exceptions of the aforementioned I found the show to be made up of secondary works by important artists. That inconsistency made it a less exciting show than it could have been.
Downstairs I was relieved to find “Splash,” the 14th annual juried graduate student exhibition juried by Suzanne Sbarge. Not that I couldn't get picky and find defects in the overall collection, but I was heartened by the large number of solid paintings and drawings in the show.
There is an abundance of clever works and a few surprises. One of my favorites is a ceramic sculpture titled “Kindling: Artifact of Process” by Craig Donalson that I was ready to dismiss as being too 1970s.
What appear to be four carefully stacked piles of wood are actually four carefully stacked piles of ceramic replicas of kindling sticks.
Donalson has transformed the most ancient kiln fuel into the ceramic product that kilns have delivered for centuries. It's a smart piece that has legs if the artist can conceptually keep them coming. This may be a hard act to follow.
Throw in a beautifully rendered insect by Stephen Wong, a handful of strong paintings, some interesting mixed-media works and two predictably boring videos, and you have a pretty darn good graduate show.
My advice to video artists remains the same. Please watch national and international television commercials and figure out how they transmit so much information in a minute or less.
I understand swimming in murky-water and gaseous-underwater releases in a few seconds. Don't ask me to watch for 15 minutes or longer.
WHEN: Through May 18. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Closed Mondays. Call 243-7255
WHERE: Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, 2000 Mountain NW, Old Town
HOW MUCH: Admission $3 for adult New Mexico residents, $4 for out-of-state adults, $2 for seniors over 65, $1 for children 4-12. Free from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sundays and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. first Wednesday of every month
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