More so than usual, there is a whole lot of art going on these days in New York. It is coming from all corners, have you noticed? It all began a few weeks ago, when I really started to be aware of buzz around the Whitney biennial. Now it keeps coming, with Pulse, Art Show and Armory all opening as well.
Generally, I try to avoid reading too much about a show before going, but with the Biennial I feel I need to do some research. Partly because I worry about not being able to process the volume of information without adequate background information, and partly because it seems to be such a momentous occasion that reading other experiences would be fulfilling. And I just have not had enough time as of late to devote myself to proper preparation, so I will not be going to the Biennial yet.
Instead, while everyone makes their way up to the Whitney last week, I went over to the International Center of Photography, a favorite of mine. Along with my fellow Grand Tour-er A, we started on the lower level, to see Twilight Visions: Surrealism Photography and Paris, a collection of 1930s and 1940s photographs, video and memorabilia from Paris. Displaying images with varying levels of abstraction, the show is a great opportunity to see classic works by Brassai, Ilse Bing, and Man Ray alongside others showing the Paris café and cabaret culture of the time. Like many, I am a sucker for Parisian photographs from this era. Call me a teenager staring at a heartthrob, but I will never tire of seeing images of Paris. I know, how cliché.
Upstairs, the main exhibit area is devoted to works by Miroslav Tichy, a Czech artist who, in the 1960s and 70s, made his own cameras out of cardboard and other scraps. I did read the short New York magazine blurb before going, and the photographs turned out to be not quite what I expected when they described images of women. Curators describe the artist as spending his days in his small Czech hometown photographing street life, on a regular basis, and that the locals considered him “harmless” although a bit of an eccentric (though he was wielding cardboard cameras, some of which are on display). They also mention his work only began to get awareness after an exhibit in the last decade.
We could not help but feel that the images of women, often blurry and many times seemingly taken without the subject’s awareness, were slightly creepy – although voyeurism may have been part of the point. Perhaps this was also our reaction as women living in 21st century New York, immediately skeptical of strangers, especially men, in public places. Some of the images were charmingingly sweet though, capturing a woman fixing her shoe strap in the street or other glimpses of daily street life.
But overall the show’s curators did bring up an interesting point by explaining Tichy’s work in the context of the continual progression and evolution of photography. By the 1960s, photography was already quite developed yet Tichy chose to use the medium in his own way to record his impressions, or rather what the curators refer to as the recording of “nothingness.” Which makes me wonder how now, in an age when everyone has a camera, can one make his or herself remembered as a photographer? Thoughts welcome, of course.
More information on the ICP (which also has a fantastic bookstore and a school) here.
Happy travels!
