IRENE CAESAR: REVIEW BY JOHN HABER
Male Nudes and Absent Women
John Haber
in New York City Irene Caesar, Rachel Hovnanian, and Uta Barth
Spring 2010
http://www.haberarts.com/ubarth.htm
Irene Caesar: John Haber Contributes to Minimalism
Say what you will, but Irene Caesar comes prepared. She arrived at my apartment one harsh winter afternoon with a heavy payload. No wonder she had had to cancel the week before, amid heavy snow. The haul turned out to include her camera, studio lighting, and a stack of fashion magazines thick enough to occupy hair and nail salons for months to come. As it turned out, they kept me busy, too.
Caesar was not the only woman photographer demanding that I pay strict attention. Where she put me through some awkward poses, Rachel Hovnanian casts her own miniature sitters. The first turns sexuality into a historical drama, while the second updates gender roles of the 1950s for the Internet era. However, one had better pay still more attention toUta Barth, as she slips just on and off camera. She takes questions of identity beyond the culture wars. Rather, she makes them a questioning of the medium, of seeing, and of space itself.
Critic victorious
I had already accepted a certain role by letting Irene Caesar in the door. I found myself in another in no time, as I leaned on the arm of a sofa to get a better look as she unpacked her camera and lighting. (I find an artist's equipment fascinating, magazines notwithstanding.) Perfect, she announced, and would I mind sitting there, one leg down and one up by the couch? Then some portraits in street clothes to put me at ease-head shots, as it turned out, so never mind what I was wearing. And now, um, time to take off my clothes.
Perhaps I had already accepted a role, just by agreeing to pose. I knew little about Caesar, but who would not want to help a photographer do her job? Part of her approach, however, is clearly to make concessions to a stranger look gradual and easy. My job was to nestle a magazine, hold out one of its pages, and, scissors in hand, snip neatly but swiftly around the fashion model's body. In a few minutes I had run through plenty of pages, with plenty more left over. You try it while balancing on a narrow, rounded arm, exposing your crotch, keeping your cat at bay, and looking away from your own action and toward the camera.
Obviously I survived to tell you about it, although I cannot swear my public image has. Caesar describes the series as contemporary art critics made into contemporary art. (Well,there is one sure way to get critical attention.) I am not so certain. My pose comes closer to something more remote. I look in fact very much like Caravaggio's Amor Victorius, a winged Cupid in Berlin with his own assortment of lecherous props.
It does not reveal much about me or seem chosen with me in mind, any more than I associate Arthur C. Danto with a bowl of Cheetos, as in his pose. I do not, as it happens, caress female outlines in magazines, not even the kind published for men. I am not convinced it says all that much either about issues in contemporary art, such as the male gaze. Rather, the artifice seems itself the point. Or could that alone say something disturbing about art now?
Caravaggio painted Cupid early in his career, probably in 1601, just before or after the breakthrough Roman chapels that startled the Baroque into existence. He had already adopted a greater intimacy with the viewer, but not always as yet a greater naturalness, warmth, and human drama. He was, in short, on his way to disturbing Mannerism. And artifice is often associated with Mannerism, as are a heightened sexuality, exaggerated poses, and a deliberate restaging of myth at a certain distance from its meaning. Once such myth involves a god holding out food, if not exactly Cheetos-whether as cornucopia or temptation. Caravaggio painted that, too, around 1593.
Critics often compare the present to Mannerism, which made a recent show of Bronzino drawings a fresh discovery for many. Besides embracing artifice, sex, and exaggeration, Postmodernism is reliving, reworking, and struggling against Modernism, just as Mannerism struggled with the Renaissance. It is also looking for a future without settling on a movement. Would I like this if I were not involved? I had seen Caesar's dour, white-haired woman as Delilah with the head of Samson, which frankly left me cold, although some may sense a dancer's exuberance, and I did not volunteer to pose as a critical commitment to her work. However, I shall surely relish it if both of us become notorious.
John Haber
in New York City Irene Caesar, Rachel Hovnanian, and Uta Barth
Spring 2010
http://www.haberarts.com/ubarth.htm
Irene Caesar: John Haber Contributes to Minimalism
Say what you will, but Irene Caesar comes prepared. She arrived at my apartment one harsh winter afternoon with a heavy payload. No wonder she had had to cancel the week before, amid heavy snow. The haul turned out to include her camera, studio lighting, and a stack of fashion magazines thick enough to occupy hair and nail salons for months to come. As it turned out, they kept me busy, too.
Caesar was not the only woman photographer demanding that I pay strict attention. Where she put me through some awkward poses, Rachel Hovnanian casts her own miniature sitters. The first turns sexuality into a historical drama, while the second updates gender roles of the 1950s for the Internet era. However, one had better pay still more attention toUta Barth, as she slips just on and off camera. She takes questions of identity beyond the culture wars. Rather, she makes them a questioning of the medium, of seeing, and of space itself.
Critic victorious
I had already accepted a certain role by letting Irene Caesar in the door. I found myself in another in no time, as I leaned on the arm of a sofa to get a better look as she unpacked her camera and lighting. (I find an artist's equipment fascinating, magazines notwithstanding.) Perfect, she announced, and would I mind sitting there, one leg down and one up by the couch? Then some portraits in street clothes to put me at ease-head shots, as it turned out, so never mind what I was wearing. And now, um, time to take off my clothes.
Perhaps I had already accepted a role, just by agreeing to pose. I knew little about Caesar, but who would not want to help a photographer do her job? Part of her approach, however, is clearly to make concessions to a stranger look gradual and easy. My job was to nestle a magazine, hold out one of its pages, and, scissors in hand, snip neatly but swiftly around the fashion model's body. In a few minutes I had run through plenty of pages, with plenty more left over. You try it while balancing on a narrow, rounded arm, exposing your crotch, keeping your cat at bay, and looking away from your own action and toward the camera.
Obviously I survived to tell you about it, although I cannot swear my public image has. Caesar describes the series as contemporary art critics made into contemporary art. (Well,there is one sure way to get critical attention.) I am not so certain. My pose comes closer to something more remote. I look in fact very much like Caravaggio's Amor Victorius, a winged Cupid in Berlin with his own assortment of lecherous props.
It does not reveal much about me or seem chosen with me in mind, any more than I associate Arthur C. Danto with a bowl of Cheetos, as in his pose. I do not, as it happens, caress female outlines in magazines, not even the kind published for men. I am not convinced it says all that much either about issues in contemporary art, such as the male gaze. Rather, the artifice seems itself the point. Or could that alone say something disturbing about art now?
Caravaggio painted Cupid early in his career, probably in 1601, just before or after the breakthrough Roman chapels that startled the Baroque into existence. He had already adopted a greater intimacy with the viewer, but not always as yet a greater naturalness, warmth, and human drama. He was, in short, on his way to disturbing Mannerism. And artifice is often associated with Mannerism, as are a heightened sexuality, exaggerated poses, and a deliberate restaging of myth at a certain distance from its meaning. Once such myth involves a god holding out food, if not exactly Cheetos-whether as cornucopia or temptation. Caravaggio painted that, too, around 1593.
Critics often compare the present to Mannerism, which made a recent show of Bronzino drawings a fresh discovery for many. Besides embracing artifice, sex, and exaggeration, Postmodernism is reliving, reworking, and struggling against Modernism, just as Mannerism struggled with the Renaissance. It is also looking for a future without settling on a movement. Would I like this if I were not involved? I had seen Caesar's dour, white-haired woman as Delilah with the head of Samson, which frankly left me cold, although some may sense a dancer's exuberance, and I did not volunteer to pose as a critical commitment to her work. However, I shall surely relish it if both of us become notorious.