No Such Thing As Photography?

I went to the latest installment of MOMA's ongoing annual series of new photography show.   I looked very hard to try to find some sort of rectangular printed objects made with a camera and hung on a wall.   I found a few.   But, clearly, whatever it is that people have called photography is not being exhibited at MOMA.   As one of the curators of the exhibit, Quentin Bajac, said in an interview:

 “I hope that the visitor will get the feeling that there’s no such thing as photography,” he said, “that there’s not one definition of photography.”

OK, then, if that is the case, then:

Photography   1840-2015  R.I.P.

Or more from the MOMA website:

"Ocean of Images presents bodies of work that critically redefine photography as a field of experimentation and intellectual inquiry, where digital and analog, virtual and real dimensions cross over. These artists explore contemporary photo-based culture, specifically focusing on connectivity, the circulation of images, information networks, and communication models."

Instead of photography, it would seem, there are materials that comment about images and how we use them.   I suppose that is a natural reaction at a time when everyone on the planet with a smartphone is taking photographs at an astonishing rate.   And a lot of them end up on the internet.  But in trying to be ahead of the curve on the latest artistic developments, they end up ignoring all that is not trendy.  And much of what is shown is very superficial.  One photographer simply made prints of architectural photographs of the Imperial Villa at Katsura that her father, a famous Japanese photographer, had taken, and then arranged them on stands set in a room, which somehow commented on the architecture.  In her words:

"I wanted to disassemble the structure of the photographic body, to experiment with both the functionality of the physical aspect and the insubstantiality of the image."

Another item consists of printouts from web pages that used a photo that the photographer managed to insert into a Wikipedia page on mood disorders.   So photographs get spread around the internet? What an artistic revelation!   I am emphasizing the worst, of course.
 
Ultimately, for me this is the kind of exhibit which would really be better off as a book or article; the ideas of the curators could easily be expressed in words.   Or, in the (apocryphal) words of Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, "If you want to send a message, send a telegram!".    It's also worth noting that the annual New Photography show will now happen every other year.  (If there is no such thing as photography, then there is no reason to have an annual new photography show?)  And that the ICP  put on a very similarly themed show a few years ago, equally uninteresting from a visual point of view.

Subsequently I saw a show at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU of Japanese photography of the 1960's. I was struck by how the concerns of the 1960's Japanese photographers were very similar to those of the photographers in the MOMA show, albeit without Photoshop and the internet.   Questioning the nature of the medium and its ability to represent "reality"; conceptualizing photography, etc., with many ideas arising from the conflicts in Japan and the social protest movements in the 1960's.  Have we moved beyond that?  It would seem not.

There was also a show of photography at the Guggenheim entitled "Photopoetics; An Anthology".   While not as internet/media oriented as the MOMA show, it was still mostly work that needed a explanatory note in order to help you make sense of what it was about.
Conceptualism of some sort ruled.  I didn't like any of it.   For art museums working hard to be in the forefront of contemporary culture, contemporary photography is a small subset of image-related artistic practices.  Curators seem to no longer recognize any value in the purely pictorial qualities of a photograph.

I did see a wonderful show at the Jewish Museum of Soviet photography from the 1920's and 1930's.   Most of the photographs were taken to celebrate the Soviet Union and the "new man" of the socialist world; i.e. they were propaganda.   The best photographers took that to mean the the photographs should look "new" too, that they should look at things from unexpected perspectives, and be stimulating visually.  One of the interesting aspects of the show was when photographs that looked very "new" were juxtaposed with photographs of similar subjects where the photographer made no effort to do anything interesting.  For example, there were two photographs of worker's street parades juxtaposed.   One was simply a straightforward shot; the other was extravagantly tilted and disjunctly composed to suggest the forward motion of the parade.  Alas, we know how the avant-garde fared in 1930's Stalinist times, and eventually anything or anyone that deviated from the bland and orthodox was suppressed.   (Nowadays, if you are doing the equivalent agitprop, there seems to be no impulse to make it look interesting; the message suffices.   Stalin would be happy.)

Alexander Rodchenko:

“In order to educate man to a new longing, everyday familiar objects must be shown to him with totally unexpected perspectives and in unexpected situations. New objects should be depicted from different sides in order to provide a complete impression of the object,”


For example:

All of this served to recall why I became interested in photography in the first place, when looking at a classic Cartier-Bresson photograph of a chance moment on the street made you look at the world around you in a different way.

Some classic Cartier-Bresson photographs:

I know that when I walk around in cities, my eyes are influenced by the many images I have seen in great photographs.   Or I think about how Robert Frank's images of America in the 1950's are indelibly seared into my brain as representations of what 1950's America must have been like.  Or how Lee Friedlander's images of complex cityscapes make me see the visual patterns of our cities.  Or how Berenice Abbott's beautifully composed images of the 1930's cityscapes create a sense of life in New York the 1930's.

(We recently saw Todd Hayne's film "Carol", set in 1950's New York.   It is a visually sumptuous recreation of the period, featuring the extraordinary cinematography of Ed Lachman.   I was intrigued to read that Haynes requested Lachman to try to create the color palette of the photographs of the late Saul Leiter, who was a pioneer in color photography.   I love Leiter's color photographs of New York in the 50's and 60's.   I can't resist a few examples I found on the web.) (Though the film was shot in Cincinnati, and not New York, and lost some authenticity as a result.)

 (This is Paris, but it looks like a shot from "Carol".)

In his introduction to the newest, expanded edition of William Eggleston's extraordinary photo book "The Democratic Forest", Mark Holborn describes Eggleston's photographs as being "suspended between the descriptive view and the abstraction".   I can't think of a better description of what I find appealing about photography.

I also saw a small exhibition of photography from Iran in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.   Apparently one of the Shahs was given a camera at an early age, and was obsessed with taking pictures and having pictures taken.   What I saw was fascinating glimpses of the people of the royal courts, street life (often posed), and some of the amazing ruins from the ancient past in their truly neglected state.  

While I don't really have any answers for those who suggest that art photography as we have known it has no value in today's image saturated world, I also know that I have very little interest in going to a museum and gallery to receive information that could best be conveyed in words.   I also wonder exactly what goes through the minds of the multitudes of people who visit these exhibits about contemporary image making; I have no clue.

Riverside Park South

I frequently walk with our dog Maggie in Riverside Park in the upper 90's, appreciating its beautiful curving landscape shapes and old trees.   The beauty is for the eyes only, though, because the Henry Hudson Parkway runs right through the western edge of the park, and the closer you get to the water, the louder the sound is from the highway.  In fact, it is quite unpleasant when you are close to the highway, which has constant heavy traffic (not to mention the fumes).
The park has an interesting history.  It was created from rocky wasteland in the late 19th century by the designers of Central Park.   At that time, the railroad tracks of the New York Central were right next to the water.  In the 1930's, New York's automobile-crazed czar of public works, Robert Moses, rebuilt the entire park (a WPA infrastructure project).   Moses covered the railroad tracks so effectively that most people don't know that they are still there, but, in turn, he added one of his trademark scenic parkways.   At that time, the park ended in the south at 72 St. where the New York Central rail yards began.   By the 70's and 80's, the railroad had ceased to use the yards, and the property became ripe for development.  The rights were purchased by a certain well-known arrogant real estate developer (whose name will not sully these pages), who promptly proposed to build the world's tallest building there.  Luckily, said developer ran out of money, and West Siders protested the whole scheme.   Many years later, a compromise was reached, and apartment buildings were built, with the developers required to create a new park, Riverside Park South, in the land next to the river.  The buildings turned out to be horrible, but, against all odds, the park turned out very well.  (It was mostly finished around 2005, with other phases still to come, in theory.)  
I had never seen the park (it is really out of the way), so on a chilly but sunny November afternoon, I went for a walk.  The design is quintessential early 21st century landscape design; it resembles the famous High Line in many ways.   There are various decaying structures which reference the area's past uses as a train yard.  There are plantings that mimic a wild, natural state.  There are recreational facilities, and a beautiful new pier which goes way out into the water.  There are sculptures, cafes, and a variety differently shaped pathways.  You can even walk down to the "beach".  The only drawback to the whole thing is the elevated highway which looms above it and behind it (though it does help to hide the ugly glass condos).  The highway is supposed to be buried at some point, who knows when.   But in the meantime, the elevated structure of the highway has its own beauty, to my eyes.

Looking up at the viaducts from the northern end of the park:

Details of the viaducts:

Red and green:

OK, I really like these viaducts:

The view of the park from under the viaducts:

Under the viaduct:

 Rotting piers:

View of the George Washington Bridge from the end of the new pier:

A sculpture under the viaducts:

Plantings and an old freight loading platform:

The same platform, with New Jersey in the background:

Detail of above:

Another sculpture, next to the water:

Vegetation next to the water:

There is even an old locomotive:

More remnants of piers:

Sculptures, elevated highway, more condos to come;

Fall colors!

Walking back from the river, you see this beautiful old ConEd building:

A visit to Riverside Park South is highly recommended!

Dance, Tom, Dance!

A few years ago someone at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London had the brilliant idea of creating a whole modern dance show based on the music of Thomas Adès.   Courtesy of the enterprising White Light Festival, that same show was presented in New York this November at City Center.   All the music was performed live, with Adès performing on piano and conducting the Orchestra of St. Lukes.  As a concert alone this would have been a memorable event; done with choreography it was even more special.  In fact, you could go to see the dance with the music, and go again just to hear the music.

Which is what I did (though I did have eyes for the dance both times).  (Vera went to the first show.)

The absolute highlight of the program was Vancouver-based Crystal Pite's "Polaris", set to the orchestral score of the same name.   This piece featured 66 dancers dressed in black; they filled up the entire stage. Pite worked at times like a sculptor, creating moving masses of undulating bodies. Huge groups of bodies gathered in clumps, dispersed into chaos, and then suddenly stopped in a striking new formation.  Sometimes they looked liked rows of  dominos falling.  The lighting design was equally amazing; sometimes all you saw was 66 pairs of illuminated hands.    The whole thing felt a little like some kind of science fiction/ post-apocalyptic scenario.   The music is somewhat atypical for Adès; clear lines in the brass predominated, and the music had an almost heroic, epic feel to it.  There were brass instruments scattered around the hall, as well.    At first hearing it seemed bombastic, like a film score for a Hollywood epic; much less so on the second hearing.   In both performances the audience response was tremendously enthusiastic;  they should really try to mount this elsewhere, it's a real crowd pleaser in the best sense.  A truly memorable experience.

Some pictures from the web, though none of them can convey the feeling of seeing so many dancers move on stage.

The Piano Quintet is a fascinating piece.  It's written in sonata form, with a repeat of the exposition no less.   It is also fiendishly complex rhythmically; one section I noticed in the score had the piano playing in septuplets filling  ⅗  bars while the strings are playing quintuplets in 4/4 bars. (Sorry for the details, non-musicians!)   Not the kind of rhythm you might write if you were composing a piece for dancers to count!  It also constantly evokes the sounds and textures of classical piano quintets, but in very different contexts.   Christopher Whitley's choreography, set on three dancers, seemed rather subservient to the music, which in fact was not a bad thing, as it clearly outlined the large scale structures of the piece.   Balanchine, of course, was famous for saying that the purpose of the choreography in some of his pieces was to simply illustrate the music, but it takes a choreographer who is also a virtuoso musician to sometimes make this work.  But I did feel that the choreography added to the experience of the music.

Karol Armitage's piece "Life Story" was set to a song for soprano and piano, using a Tennessee Williams text about two first night together post-coital lovers getting to know each other.  Essentially, the two dancers on stage were competing with a live singer and a text;  I found it hard to focus on the dancers; instead both my eyes and ears were drawn to the singer.

The first piece on the program was choreographed by Wayne McGregor to the Violin Concerto.   This is one of Adès's most typically complex scores;  McGregor's choreography does not intend to explore the musical details of the score, but instead creates a kind of emotional counterpoint to the music.   I found the movement interesting, but not particularly illuminating, though I can imagine a dance oriented person would have been more excited.   The music is dense and intricate; my ears demanded all the attention.


Alastair Macaulay, the musically sensitive dance critic for the NY Times,  thought that the choreography for the program as a whole was not worthy of the complexity and sophistication of Adès's music.   While I agree with him in some ways, I do think that it is an almost impossible task to create a choreography which would perfectly mirror the complexity of the music.  Macaulay, I think,  is thinking of the Balanchine-Stravinsky masterpieces, the likes of which we may never see again.    The thing that surprised me as a whole, though, is actually how well Adès's music actually works with dance, especially given that none of it was conceived for dance.


Speaking of complexity, the next night we went to hear the music of Mr. Complexity himself, Elliot Carter.   The Juilliard Quartet was playing his first string quartet.  Performances of Carter's music have become quite rare now after his death three years ago, now that the novelty of the 103 year prodigy creating new pieces has worn off.   The first string quartet, composed in 1951, is when Carter became Carter, the composer of complexity.  The performance was a knockout, played with great intensity and commitment.  Carter's innovation during this period was to have each player play with very independent lines and rhythms; we don't hear ensemble playing, but rather four different parts that often clash with each other.   Hearing the quartet live really brought out the independence of each player's part; I was totally involved for every minute of the quartet's 45 minute length.  Hearing the Carter right after a sustained exposure to Adès was revelatory.    While both write music of complexity, Adès enjoys references to all kinds of musical styles, while Carter seems to write very deliberately without the even slightest reference to any traditional melodic or rhythmic sonorities.

The program also began with Schubert's "Quartetsatz"  (not Haydn!) and concluded with a sensuous and very expressive rendition of Debussy's string quartet, which normally is played with a more mellow, "impressionist' kind of character.

Lulu

We went to hear the opera "Lulu" at the Met in the new production by the artist William Kentridge.   This is one of my favorite operas.  In graduate school I took a seminar on it, and spent many months totally absorbed in the manifold mysteries of the score.  It has been a long time since I heard it, though.   It was stunning.   Hearing Berg's music performed live by an orchestra of the caliber of the Met orchestra was a revelation, especially knowing all the melodies so well.    The opera really works with leitmotifs; every character and idea has a tune.   It is also what Adès calls a "symphony opera".  The music is extremely fast and dense at times, and at other times it is very Mahlerian.  Anthony Ross in the New Yorker quotes Adorno as saying that Berg's music is like Schoenberg's and Mahler's played at the same time.   The singers were excellent, and the Lulu, Marlis Petersen, was truly extraordinary, singing what must be one of the most difficult roles in the repertory.  Though I really hope that some day I have the chance to hear Barbara Hannigan in the role (she has done it in Brussels already).
Of course, the big news in the case of a new production is the new production.   I have to say that I really didn't like the production, though it has received almost unanimous praise from the critics.   My chief problem was the sensory overload; the sets have constantly changing video projections and animations that often detract from and dwarf the action on stage.  There is also a mime figure who is constantly moving around on stage.  I had no idea what purpose she served.  People are putting paper masks on their heads, and then taking them off when they have to sing. Very distracting!  Interestingly, Kentridge himself discussed this problem in an interview, admitting:

"All opera is about excess in its very nature, and, it's true of this production in particular, when you're in the opera house you've got an overload"

Well, that is one solution; if you have a musical score and libretto which is overloaded, then create a mise en scene that is overloaded too.  It's the kitchen sink approach (everything but). This image gives you an idea of what it looked like.  Imagine that projected images in the background are shifting all the time, and note the mime in the lower right hand corner who is also gyrating constantly while seated at a piano.  And you really want to be focusing on the characters and what they are singing.

Admittedly, the projections are stunning; but it was all too much for me.   I also had issues with the painting of Lulu, which is being created in the first scene, and is thereafter mentioned in the libretto when it shows up in later scenes; it is intended to show the image of the original Lulu in contrast to the constant degradation her character suffers during the course of the opera.   There was no visible painting, and when it is referenced in the libretto, a very small brown paper is used to represent it.   (I am beginning to sound like a crotchety old reviewer!).   One final complaint.  At the devastating end of the opera, when everyone is lying dead on stage and the music has incredible intensity, we suddenly get a large title projected on stage "Der Tanz is aus"  i.e. "The dance is over".   Well, duh!   Why does Kentridge need to inject his text into that extraordinary moment when the music is so intense and profound?
End of rant, but I could go on with many other examples of things that bothered me.  Fortunately, I was able to focus on the singers and the music (the acting was very good as well, and I give Kentridge credit for that) and the projections stayed away from my conscious perception.

More images:

One final note.  This opera was written 80 years ago, and is, I think, still more shocking than anything being written today.   Murder, greed, depravity, lust, etc.; it's all there.  The character of Lulu is in many ways unfathomable, an endlessly complex enigma that allows no solutions.   And in the end (spoiler!) everyone is murdered.   And Berg's music is fully expressive of all these qualities, from the decadent and sensual saxophone melodies to the grand Mahlerian orchestral climaxes, it's all there in the music. Wow!

Greater New York at MOMA PS 1

MOMA PS1 in Queens was having what might be called their version of a biennial, a show focusing on art from New York City.   I went with low expectations, expecting the usual mishmash of bad video, installations, agitprop, etc.   (Though I am ever hopeful, which is why I go in the first place.)  Instead I was pleasantly surprised with a lot a very interesting art ranging through a wide variety of media, aesthetics, and ages (some of the artists were even dead!).   The focus was on art created between the 1970's and now.  There were even some black and white photographs and paintings. The bad video, installations, and agitprop were all still there, of course, but along side all kinds of interesting work, mostly from people I had never heard of.  Maybe some of the  quality of the work had to do with the curators focus on work concerning New York.   Though when I read this description of the various mini-catalogs as:

"engaging a range of subjects including disco, performance anxiety, real estate, and newly unearthed historical documents. "

I had my doubts, though those are certainly New York things.    A little more description:

"....Greater New York departs from the show’s traditional focus on youth, instead examining points of connection and tension between our desire for the new and nostalgia for that which it displaces."

But in any case, some of the more photogenic highlights included an installation from a group called Kiosk consisting of a large number of unique objects, installed in translucent plastic cubes.  And there are colorful neon lights as well.  Having grown up in a house filled with eccentric objects, this installation appealed to me. Each item is numbered, and a description can be summoned through a cell phone call.

Who wouldn't want a red grater:

These sculptures were made out some sort of fiberglass/resin material incorporating all kinds of heterogeneous other materials, even cockroaches (very New York):

There were several miniature city-related pieces, this one in an aquarium-like installation;

A city of monuments:

And even a modest painting of garbage cans:

And works made out of distressed fragments of shopping bags:

A satellite dish like wall installation, which also functioned as a sound gathering acoustic object:

Closeup of above:

As it was yet another warm and sunny November day, when I was done I decided to walk back to Manhattan via the Queensboro Bridge.  That area of Queens where PS1 is located, Long Island City, is a peculiar mixture of old, small townhouses, industrial warehouses, and new giant high-rise residential buildings, along with the complex structures involving intersections of the various elevated trains and the ending of the bridge.

The pathway on the bridge is stimulating, but the experience is marred by the extreme noise and fumes from the vehicle traffic on one side and the high chain link fence on the other.  But I always love to look at the structures of bridges,  especially closeup, and the color schemes are sometimes surprising.

A truck and the elevated:

Barbed wire circle and high-rise construction:

On the bridge:

The camera turns what is a very organized and logically constructed structure into chaos:

 What is this?

Red pipes and duct tape!