Review: ‘Picture Show’ displays photos to be taken at face value

Katie Mitchell
Published: Thursday, February 12, 2004

“The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960-1982” attempts epic revelations in its placard commentaries on and interpretations of individual artists’ work. Forced commentaries aside, however, the photographs themselves demonstrate the form’s capability to capture humanity at its most inane moments.

Open now through May 9 at the Hammer Museum, the collection contains Charles Ray’s “Plank Piece I-II” and “Untitled,” 1953, which are silliness painted over with a thick coat of intellectualism. The three-photograph series depicts the artist pinned to a wall with a wooden plank at the back of his knees and his belly and face to the wall in the first photo; the artist again pinned to a wall with torso hanging down the plank in the second photo; the artist tied to a tree branch in a rope cocoon in the third photo.

The placard beside the trio of photographs forces an overly interpretive reading: “Ray’s use of his own body as a relatively abstract and generic presence ... Ray’s use of his own body as an element pinned to the wall corrupts (the) structural aesthetic with tragicomic consequences.”

For two other works construed beyond their silliness, take “Untitled (Tea Party)” and “Photo-Piece.” Bas Jan Ader’s “Untitled (Tea Party),” 1972, shows a man in a black suit and top hat in four different shots. Each frame remains constant in its verdant, hilly background and rabbit trap-like contraption of a large crate propped at an angle with a branch. The man sits beneath the trap, assuming different poses with his silver service at his Alice in Wonderland-esque tea party for one.

In “Photo-Piece,” 1971, the artists known as Gilbert and George show themselves in black business suits and thick-rimmed glasses, standing face to face on a hill, walking across a knoll and sitting on the grass. Each of the 25 black and white photographs touches another at skewed angles in a collage.

On both the Ader and Gilbert and George pieces, the placards impose ridiculously analytical commentary on pictures of a man serving himself tea under a trap and two men on a hill. The photographs themselves merit enjoyment without the explanation.

Even though the exhibit acts as a colossal non-sequitur, some pieces do employ clever tricks and photographic manipulations. Jan Dibbets’ “Comet Horizon 6 degrees – 72 degrees Land/Sky/Land” uniquely blends and manipulates photographic images: The piece arches from the floor to nearly the ceiling in a stream of melded shots turned on their sides.

“ANGEL,” by Bruce Conner, 1975, is a huge portrait of a blindingly white figure with arms extended, juxtaposed against a black background. The artist had placed himself between photo-sensitive paper and a light source to create the ethereal effect.

“The Last Picture Show” testifies to photography’s instantaneous and spontaneous ability to record humans in their inane, yet clever, glory. No enlightening commentaries are necessary, because sometimes, a photograph is just a photograph.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

–Kathleen Mitchell