Francesca Woodman at the Guggenheim
March 16–June 13, 2012
http://www.berk-edu.com/RESEARCH/francescaWoodman/index.html#22
Francesca Woodman will be the first major American exhibition of this artist’s work in more than two decades, and the first comprehensive survey of her brief but extraordinary career to be seen in the United States. The retrospective will include more than 100 vintage photographs, many of which have never been exhibited, and includes several of the large-scale blueprints she created at the end of career, as well as the intimate black-and-white photographs for which she is best known. Now nearly thirty years since her death, the moment is ripe for a historical reconsideration of her work and its reception.
Born in 1958, Woodman’s oeuvre represents a remarkably rich and singular exploration of the human body in space, and of the genre of self-portraiture in particular. Her deep and personal interest in serial imagery, Surrealism, Conceptualist practice, and photography’s relationship to both literature and performance are also the hallmarks of the heady moment in American photography during which she came of age. This retrospective offers an occasion to examine more closely the maturation and expression of a highly subjective and coherent artistic vision. It also presents an important and timely opportunity to reassess a critical juncture in American photographic history.
--- She seemed to know what she wanted to create at the beginning of her brief career. At 15, she already had her style -- self-portraits in black & white photographic images using her own naked or half-dressed body staged props and posed inside of old ragged houses. She used medium format cameras with long exposure. The result was provocative, imaginative, innocent, sensual, fictitious, improvisational, biblical, symbolic, intense, effeminate, expressive, ethereal, and most of all, eccentric.
She was born on April 3, 1958, in Denver, Colorado, and raised in a family of artists. In her youth, her family often spent in European cities. After she graduated from RISD in 1978, she went to NYC and became a fashion photographer. But soon, she returned to her fine art photographic works. On January 19, 1981, a few months after she finished a series of work, she committed suicide in NYC.
So her entire works were created between she was 15 to 22. She was unknown until her first major retrospective exhibition held at Hunter College gallery in 1986.
When I entered her exhibition at the Guggenheim yesterday, I thought her works were similar to those of talented art students' thesis works. Like those emerging young artists at the beginning of their career full of promise, they were mostly interrupted with many reasons before fully blooming as mature artists. I wondered if her works were dramatized more than necessary because of her tragic end at the tender age of 22.
Or because of the reason that she used her nude for image-making (rare in the '70s) captured attention.
But I soon changed my mind. Some of the images were so interesting not because of the naked body's provocative use but because of the unique sensitivity in posing, props, lighting, and compositions.
Some of the images were well-composed, almost look like the 17th-century Dutch paintings like Vermeers' who used a camera obscura. Some of them looked more contemporary abstract paintings. Looked spontaneous, casual, and improvisational but seemed to have careful eyes on composition. It was too bad that the artist didn't print those images into at least 30 x 30' in size. Most of them were way too small.
And of course, it is too bad that she didn't live enough to mature as an artist. But how would her artworks have become if she had survived into her 50s? If her works relied on her youthful body and mind, how she could have changed her direction over the 30 years? Would she have used her own aging body over the years? Or she could have been like Sally Mann, who subjected her children for her art? Or she ended up as nobody who was an art prodigy once, sparked her talent only when she was young?
After that, I felt like I knew someone like her in my art college days. A girl like her was so talented, fearless, and independent despite her young age. When the rest of us were following teachers' guidance submissively, she was absent from school and doing her work alone. She seemed ahead of life, and I admired her talent and independent mind. At the same time, I was envied and intimidated by her that I was so behind in maturity both as an artist and a woman. Yes, Francesca Woodman's works remembered me those a bit painful, sweet old days almost 30 years ago.
*Please visit https://www.artsy.net/artist/francesca-woodman
for over 70 of Woodman's works, bio, exclusive articles, and up-to-date Woodman exhibition listings.
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