The epistemological tango in the color photographs joins graphic perception with romantic idealism.

Result #1

The pictures, in all their variety, collectively reveal a form of love, a desire to go beyond the limits of the gallery.The material of this show, all of which was photographed at night, is thin, with no exposure. For example, the photo of a boy reclining in a chair, his back turned to the camera, shows no trace of the lamps source. In another, a woman from the same family who is not shown in the photograph appears to be sleeping on the floor. The same child, standing in the same place in the same frame, is seen in a second photograph, and the same man is asleep. The moment of the third photograph—the one with the woman asleep, in the middle of the frame—is the one of the last shot taken. In one of the photographs, the photographer lets the subject lie on the floor and takes a close-up of his head—a portrait of longing and passing.Le Coucunh is a model of a dying artist, a painting by an artist who lost his way. But his work speaks to the very fact that beauty is at the core of every way to live. The drawings and prints on view do not depict the end of the world but the beginning. They are contemporary illustrations of the last, the most precious moment of existence. Le Coucunh shows us how to live with decay.

Result #2

The epistemological tango in the color photographs joins graphic perception with romantic idealism. The flattened-out, octagonal shapes that emerge from dense clouds in the lushly saturated-pink Maersk Seaside are like the abstractions of a childs painting, but they are meant to recall the sublime. (Maersk has called his palette itself the Adirondack.)The Maersk Seaside was the shows centerpiece. Here, a French-born artist in his early twenties, unveiled an unusually large number of beautifully crafted miniature paintings that he had assembled from the loose, fragmentary remains of the ill-fated boat that sank off the coast of Barbados in 1928. (The artist was a member of the R.A.S. Club, an art-world fraternity founded in 1932 by art historian C. L. Morrill.) The eleven works in the exhibition collectively comprised seventy-two photographs, more than twenty of which were also on view in the show. Assembled using a grid based on the four triangular alignments of the compass, the grid looked like a geometric form with a discreet linear extension. It is not an exact translation, but it gives a pretty good idea of the look of the paintings.Themes of mortality were apparent in the photographs, but the human form was strangely inchoate. There was a hopeful-seeming air to the photographs, as if each day was one more chapter in the story. The photos were also intimate in their intimacy: The details of the hull, for example, resembled that of a memory, in this case of a memorable friend, or a loved one.The photographs were hung in various combinations. On the inside of each canvas, the artist applied an iridescent, metallic color to give the paintings an eerie, alien look. The glossy matte finish of these paintings was a subtle subtraction from the original, with a raffia-like contrast.

Result #3

The epistemological tango in the color photographs joins graphic perception with romantic idealism. One is struck by the picture plane, the illusion of a depth. . . . In the mid-twentieth century, the planes in Brice Mardens brilliant portraits are transparent, but it was not until the work of Jean-Michel Dalis, the scientist and theoretician, that transparency was the new design norm. Dalis conceived of his transparent reproductions of nature as precisely the kind of photographic content the eye needs to perceive. The logic of the transparent is to be found in the art of photography, which can be traced back to the anatomists Mies and Al Held. The clarity of the mirror also helps an eye see through the thin glass of the photographic photograph. The solution to the other half of this equation is to turn the glass on its side—to go beyond the photograph—and realize the transparent state of the photograph through the reflection on a transparent surface. These two qualities define and make nature images and thus give the photographs an extension. The choice of the image is determined by the equation of the photo with its reflection; its color is determined by its reflection; and its image is determined by its reflection. In these two ways, Daliss photographs reaffirm the permanence of the photograph as well as its perpetual reflection. Finally, the reflections make the transparent images—that is, the images—differ from the translucent ones. The transparent are outworn, and the transparent the age-old, age-old object.But there is a third mode in Daliss photography. The artist is able to transform the photographs he has made into paintings. In this process, he does not simply preserve the photographic images but to reconfigure them in painting. In the show of paintings, he juxtaposes the transparent images he has made in the past with the paintings from which they are derived. The first to be made this way is Mardens portrait of the natural world of his childhood.

Result #4

The epistemological tango in the color photographs joins graphic perception with romantic idealism. Yes, they show beaches, but they also capture moments of social and romantic fulfillment. True, the drawings are sometimes oddly beautiful: the rare fabric chair on the beach with a chain dangling from the top of it is stunning, and as a group the sunset is lovely. And yet these are hardly illustrations of photorealism, or of formalism. Instead, they are far more photorealistic, lushly detailed works that retain an extraordinary sensitivity to detail and to light. More exciting than the images themselves is their dynamic interplay of light and shadow.The two works that make up the largest of these sets of photographs are of a piece of resplendent porcelain. Snow White and Mules, both 1988, are characterized by clear, linear lines and vivid color. This is a ceramic spoon of every kind of joy. Here the idea of being so rich in detail, with its tangles and folds, was so captivating, its beauty so mysterious. Two works in the larger set, San Francisco, 1988, are almost dreamy in their simplicity. Its hard not to think of van Goghs The Golding Series, 1811–12, a collection of whimsical and wonderful cuddly little drawings that includes a sooty sky and a large, freestanding tree. The paintings hang in the room of the San Francisco Museum of Art. In San Francisco, we often think of the beauty of the sky, not the beauty of the weather, but its verdancy. In these photographs, which show rich, vibrant skies, the weather does not leave us cold but, rather, liberates us.The photos also reveal a strong difference in the works of two women. Dida, 1988, is a series of close-ups of the interior of a woman. The painting is evocative of the white tablecloths and wallpaper that are so familiar from the homes of the citys African-American population.

Result #5

Portrait, 1890, for example, shows an intimate portrait of a woman in the cabaret. In 1923, a seemingly innocent look reveals a keen sensitivity to detail, something that would become unmistakable in portraits of high art lovers such as Miriam Schapiro and Edward Weston.As far as the subjects of this exhibition were concerned, one could not choose but recall Degas Poets and Fashionistas. The invitation to participate in the exhibition reminded us of the ability of the photographers to adapt to the other. Of course, it would be wrong to say that there is no relationship between Portrait and Figure, or that all of Portraits were made for the same reason. There are many interesting reasons to paint. But the portraits were almost as remarkable for their dazzling sheer color as for their sheer color. But this combination of nature and technology is not an aspect of Portraits of that which is inherent to the medium, but rather a characteristic of photography. The photographs of the fashion photographers and sculptors tend to fade, and the photographs of the photographers of history are remembered. This exhibition demonstrated the fundamental nature of photography in the eyes of those who know its history.