Exposed DC

for the love of DC photography

The Places We Find Photography – Andrew Wyeth’s Paintings at NGA

By

Andrew Wyeth, Wind from the Sea, 1947
Andrew Wyeth, Wind from the Sea, 1947

Looking Out, Looking In at the National Gallery of Art is a small, humble show featuring mid-century artist Andrew Wyeth’s paintings of windows and farmhouses – a show that quickly became one of my all-time favorite exhibits. You will not see his most famous painting, Christina’s World, or images of his muse Helga; instead, the NGA has followed the thread from their painting, Wind from the Sea, which is regularly on view. This is an emotional journey through light, movement, and contemplation—not only in the process of his paintings but the process of where your mind wanders while looking at art. These works felt familiar but I could not unravel the why at first—this is the first I’ve seen most of these works. I looked back and forth between the paintings and their labels—the dates struck me. The 1940s through 70s were not frequented with many ethereal, subject-driven paintings.

However, photography was.

[Read more…]

American Cool at the National Portrait Gallery

By

James Dean, Roy Schatt, Silver Gelatin Print, 1954.
James Dean, Roy Schatt, Silver Gelatin Print, 1954.

The National Portrait Gallery’s American Cool, on view until September 7, is a cultural study through portraits of iconic figures from a variety of fields of art, culture, and political activism. American Cool embodies the zeitgeist in a gallery of silver gelatin.

What does it mean to be cool? Cool is rebellious self-expression, magnetism, and edginess. In the early 1940s, legendary jazz saxophonist Lester Young carried this central African American concept into a modern language. Cool became the thoroughfare to laid-back lifestyle bringing a poised state of mind, a spirited mode of performance, and a certain sophisticated fortitude. A cool person controlled the historical moment with an original signature style. Cool has been personified in jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and Billie Holiday, in actors such as Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn, and Johnny Depp, and in singers such as Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Debbie Harry, and Jay-Z.

[Read more…]

Garry Winogrand at the National Gallery of Art

By

Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, 1964
Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, 1964

The National Gallery of Art is currently hosting, through June 8, the first retrospective in 25 years of American photographer Garry Winogrand. Upon his death in 1984, Winogrand still had 4,100 film rolls yet to be developed, leaving a great deal of his body of work unseen, and as a result many of the silver gelatin prints in this expansive exhibition are printed posthumously.

Winogrand’s photographs follow the moments of everyday American life, exhibiting a booming nation of prosperity and “coolness,” while hints of destruction linger in the foreground. He traveled the country capturing both city and suburban lives, combining hope and aspiration with anxiety and instability in mid-century America. There are visions of idealized elegant social happenings like in Metropolitan Opera, that shift to the gritty change in culture, in Los Angeles, 1964, a decade later. His images map a change in American culture between World War II and the insecurities citizens felt during the Vietnam War. Frequently Winogrand’s images emerge as faintly unconscious attempts to impersonate the glamour and sophistication of commercial photography, particularly the photographs he made during the mid-twentieth century.

[Read more…]

Chris Anthony’s Venice at Randall Scott Projects

By

 

- Chris Anthony, Venice no.18
– Chris Anthony, Venice no.18, 2009

Chris Anthony’s Venice, showing at Randall Scott Projects through February 22, is an exploration into photography as an ambiguous narrative—the beauty of the images isn’t what they seem. He’s trying to create a story through a type of stage production, where the viewer is given the actor and a selection of props. Anthony writes, “Relationships are made within the scene and a ‘play’ develops in which the viewer becomes the playwright.”

In Venice, Anthony substitutes the traditional, draped theatrical stage and synthesized scenery for the chilling ocean and vast sky. His players perform on the shoreline, highlighting his “underlying theme [of] a society that has developed in and on water”. This is the Venice of Italy and the beach in California; the series was shot in both.

[Read more…]

The Hirshhorn’s “Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950”

By

Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room, 1978. Glenstone.
Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room, 1978. Glenstone.

Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 at the Hirshhorn spans from World War II to the present, covering the destructive theme through artistic interpretation. The enormous exhibit can be broken down into media types: installation, new media, painting, and photography. The first time I visited, I focused on the video art to see how new media plays a role in how we understand destruction. During my last visit, I looked at how the photographs act as virtual realities of devastation. Aside from a few pieces — Arnold Odermatt’s series of car crashes and Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Window Blown Out” from 1976 — the images are enormous. It felt as if I could walk into each chaotic environment I was looking at. But the photographs also call to question its function as a medium.

[Read more…]