oh dear...(and Tom yes, I love Roberta in this mood)
From today's Wall Street Journal:
March 15, 2005
PHOTOGRAPHY
Epiphanies in Sepia and Umber
By MATTHEW GUREWITSCH
March 15, 2005; Page D8
New York
Some images impossible to decode have the density of hieroglyphs. Once glimpsed, can they can haunt you forever. Three years ago, a newspaper report on a photography show in Venice acquainted me with one such. An adolescent of East Indian appearance, up to her waist in milky water, knelt in devotion before a man-size bird I have since learned to call an Antigone crane. The girl was seen in profile, the bird nearly head on, its mighty wings raised in a triumphant V. Aglow against a featureless black background, the two evoked a timeless communion between humankind and the animal kingdom never to be captured outside the realm of metaphor.
The source? "Ashes and Snow," an exhibition of work by the Canadian-born Gregory Colbert, then 42, who had spent the previous 10 years out of sight, represented by no gallery, showing no work, giving no interviews. (Was anyone asking?) Instead, funded by a well-heeled network of private patrons, he had been circling the globe in pursuit of interspecies encounters.
ASHES AND SNOW
Pier 54
New York
Through June 6
Santa Monica Pier
Dec. 4 through Feb. 28, 2006
His astonishing pictures -- sepia and umber in tone, luxuriously produced at a scale of approximately 6 by 9 feet by an exacting encaustic process (involving beeswax, pigments and the application of heat) -- documented the whole caravan of beauteous creatures who had passed before his magic lens: Burmese monks reading their sutras attended by Asian elephants, a dancer in Egypt's Valley of the Queens winged by a Royal eagle, San bushmen of Africa snuggled up to cheetahs and meerkats. In one incredible sequence, Mr. Colbert himself appeared underwater, a buff yogi in harem pants and pony tail, free-diving (or, as he prefers to say, "dancing") with 55-ton sperm whales. Adding to the wonder, all the stills were single frames, captured in real time, free of the digital trickery we have come to take for granted. At the far end of the gallery, an hourlong film dissolved such magic moments into a slow-flowing Amazon of dreams.
In its original form, "Ashes and Snow" was housed at the Arsenale, the sprawling 13th-century shipyard (125,000 square feet!), familiar nowadays as a Biennale showcase for visual arts and architecture. The largest solo exhibition ever mounted in Venice, it attracted over 100,000 visitors. But that was a mere prelude. Today Mr. Colbert (who pronounces his name, à la française, "coal-BEAR"), is poised to colonize the planet. "This project does have its element of craziness," he says cheerfully.
The wonder of 'Ashes and Snow' is the photography. And the stunning photography it is. To capture the shots, Gregory Colbert traveled the globe to find humans interacting with wild beasts.
A considerably expanded edition of the show opened March 5 at the Nomadic Museum, a cathedral in one nave erected by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban on Pier 54, over the Hudson River at West 13th Street. As the name suggests, the building is designed to travel, and when the New York run ends on June 6, it will. Next stop: Santa Monica Pier, Los Angeles (Dec. 4-Feb. 28). The following summer, it's on to the Vatican, with further ports of call to be announced. New photography will be added as Mr. Colbert produces new chapters in what he regards as his life's work. The species count today stands at approximately 30.
You may have noticed posters at construction sites, strategic print media placements, banners by the West Side Highway, but the promotional drum roll to date is as nothing to that of "The Gates." Still, by the time I arrived on opening day, 40 minutes after they cut the ribbon, the pier was bustling with the all-inclusive cross section of humanity you'll find any weekend at any zoo: the idle rich here, a grizzled biker wrapped in chains there, and over yonder young couples from the barrio with kids in strollers. (For the record, I spotted Bianca Jagger. Show me the demographic that doesn't adore wildlife.) Just wait until word of mouth has done its work.
At upward of 4,000 visitors, total attendance for the first Saturday and Sunday exceeded the expectations of the Bianimale Foundation, the entity formed to orchestrate the "Ashes and Snow" juggernaut, by a wide margin. "There's a good elephant vibe today," Mr. Colbert said out front, on his way to the bookshop, where the catalog (a collectors' item hand-sewn and bound in Italy, cover of handmade paper from Nepal that is sealed, if you please, with natural beeswax) was selling briskly at $130 a pop. This week brings the publication of the artist's epistolary novel "Snow and Ashes," redolent of Coelho and Calvino.
For architectural curiosity alone, the Nomadic Museum is a sight to see. The stark, contemplative vault Mr. Ban has designed -- 67 feet wide, 672 feet long, rising to a gable of 56 feet -- is built of 148 steel cargo containers, most of them rented locally, with trusses and columns of recycled paper (which get packed into 37 of the containers for later storage and transportation). "Post-industrial" and "sustainable" are the buzzwords here, in harmony with Mr. Colbert's ecological vision. Except for the apse at pier's end, where "Ashes and Snow: The Movie" shows continuously (as in Venice), there is no climate-control system. The day I was there, lingering winter and the damp of the river gave the place the chill of stone.
For all its apparent sobriety, this is an ecstatic space; as for the installation, it is Zen deluxe. Over a floor covered in crushed white stone, a 12-foot wooden walkway leads straight up the center of the pier. The art hangs at eye level on either side, suspended in midair on wires that are scarcely visible, casting rectangles of shadow within rectangles of spotlight. It's like a Rothko chapel writ large.
Forget the novel, the overpriced catalog, the architectural curiosity that is the Nomadic Museum.
Already, certain critics are dismissing Mr. Colbert: no poet, they insist, but an arty ego-tripper, showboating in The Last Great Places. His movie with its rhapsodic voiceover lays itself wide open to such complaint, and the quasi-ecclesiastical presentation will inevitably run some sensibilities the wrong way. In the end, what justifies "Ashes and Snow" is the still photography, one epiphany after another. A boy, his head clean shaven, points a feather with an archer's taut precision. Another, eyes closed, cocks his ear to a seashell, monitoring the heartbeat of the world. A woman cradles a sphere as if entrusted with the cosmos. Two children nestle together in the spreading roots of a mangrove, flanked by elephant guardians of the dharma. A naked waif and a wild cat perch on separate branches of a blasted tree. A cheetah lounges like the Sphinx on a termite mound that looms like Kilimanjaro. Mr. Colbert tumbles through an unseen sea, a joyous Captain Ahab, palms to the fluke of the whale. The world is still a wondrous place.
"If you put Bach in a glass box, and paraded schoolkids in front of him, they would never know what his music was," Mr. Colbert says. "We spend all this money on preserving the great works of art of the past, and that's good. But in the next 25 years, the human race will have to decide whether or not to preserve the bestiary of Nature's living masterpieces. 'Ashes and Snow' is not meant to tell people to do some things or not to do other things. It's meant to inspire. I hope it's not a requiem."
Mr. Gurewitsch writes for the Journal on the visual and performing arts.
Thread needs closing.
|
From today's Wall Street Journal:
March 15, 2005
PHOTOGRAPHY
Epiphanies in Sepia and Umber
By MATTHEW GUREWITSCH
March 15, 2005; Page D8
New York
Some images impossible to decode have the density of hieroglyphs. Once glimpsed, can they can haunt you forever. Three years ago, a newspaper report on a photography show in Venice acquainted me with one such. An adolescent of East Indian appearance, up to her waist in milky water, knelt in devotion before a man-size bird I have since learned to call an Antigone crane. The girl was seen in profile, the bird nearly head on, its mighty wings raised in a triumphant V. Aglow against a featureless black background, the two evoked a timeless communion between humankind and the animal kingdom never to be captured outside the realm of metaphor.
The source? "Ashes and Snow," an exhibition of work by the Canadian-born Gregory Colbert, then 42, who had spent the previous 10 years out of sight, represented by no gallery, showing no work, giving no interviews. (Was anyone asking?) Instead, funded by a well-heeled network of private patrons, he had been circling the globe in pursuit of interspecies encounters.
ASHES AND SNOW
Pier 54
New York
Through June 6
Santa Monica Pier
Dec. 4 through Feb. 28, 2006
His astonishing pictures -- sepia and umber in tone, luxuriously produced at a scale of approximately 6 by 9 feet by an exacting encaustic process (involving beeswax, pigments and the application of heat) -- documented the whole caravan of beauteous creatures who had passed before his magic lens: Burmese monks reading their sutras attended by Asian elephants, a dancer in Egypt's Valley of the Queens winged by a Royal eagle, San bushmen of Africa snuggled up to cheetahs and meerkats. In one incredible sequence, Mr. Colbert himself appeared underwater, a buff yogi in harem pants and pony tail, free-diving (or, as he prefers to say, "dancing") with 55-ton sperm whales. Adding to the wonder, all the stills were single frames, captured in real time, free of the digital trickery we have come to take for granted. At the far end of the gallery, an hourlong film dissolved such magic moments into a slow-flowing Amazon of dreams.
In its original form, "Ashes and Snow" was housed at the Arsenale, the sprawling 13th-century shipyard (125,000 square feet!), familiar nowadays as a Biennale showcase for visual arts and architecture. The largest solo exhibition ever mounted in Venice, it attracted over 100,000 visitors. But that was a mere prelude. Today Mr. Colbert (who pronounces his name, à la française, "coal-BEAR"), is poised to colonize the planet. "This project does have its element of craziness," he says cheerfully.
The wonder of 'Ashes and Snow' is the photography. And the stunning photography it is. To capture the shots, Gregory Colbert traveled the globe to find humans interacting with wild beasts.
A considerably expanded edition of the show opened March 5 at the Nomadic Museum, a cathedral in one nave erected by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban on Pier 54, over the Hudson River at West 13th Street. As the name suggests, the building is designed to travel, and when the New York run ends on June 6, it will. Next stop: Santa Monica Pier, Los Angeles (Dec. 4-Feb. 28). The following summer, it's on to the Vatican, with further ports of call to be announced. New photography will be added as Mr. Colbert produces new chapters in what he regards as his life's work. The species count today stands at approximately 30.
You may have noticed posters at construction sites, strategic print media placements, banners by the West Side Highway, but the promotional drum roll to date is as nothing to that of "The Gates." Still, by the time I arrived on opening day, 40 minutes after they cut the ribbon, the pier was bustling with the all-inclusive cross section of humanity you'll find any weekend at any zoo: the idle rich here, a grizzled biker wrapped in chains there, and over yonder young couples from the barrio with kids in strollers. (For the record, I spotted Bianca Jagger. Show me the demographic that doesn't adore wildlife.) Just wait until word of mouth has done its work.
At upward of 4,000 visitors, total attendance for the first Saturday and Sunday exceeded the expectations of the Bianimale Foundation, the entity formed to orchestrate the "Ashes and Snow" juggernaut, by a wide margin. "There's a good elephant vibe today," Mr. Colbert said out front, on his way to the bookshop, where the catalog (a collectors' item hand-sewn and bound in Italy, cover of handmade paper from Nepal that is sealed, if you please, with natural beeswax) was selling briskly at $130 a pop. This week brings the publication of the artist's epistolary novel "Snow and Ashes," redolent of Coelho and Calvino.
For architectural curiosity alone, the Nomadic Museum is a sight to see. The stark, contemplative vault Mr. Ban has designed -- 67 feet wide, 672 feet long, rising to a gable of 56 feet -- is built of 148 steel cargo containers, most of them rented locally, with trusses and columns of recycled paper (which get packed into 37 of the containers for later storage and transportation). "Post-industrial" and "sustainable" are the buzzwords here, in harmony with Mr. Colbert's ecological vision. Except for the apse at pier's end, where "Ashes and Snow: The Movie" shows continuously (as in Venice), there is no climate-control system. The day I was there, lingering winter and the damp of the river gave the place the chill of stone.
For all its apparent sobriety, this is an ecstatic space; as for the installation, it is Zen deluxe. Over a floor covered in crushed white stone, a 12-foot wooden walkway leads straight up the center of the pier. The art hangs at eye level on either side, suspended in midair on wires that are scarcely visible, casting rectangles of shadow within rectangles of spotlight. It's like a Rothko chapel writ large.
Forget the novel, the overpriced catalog, the architectural curiosity that is the Nomadic Museum.
Already, certain critics are dismissing Mr. Colbert: no poet, they insist, but an arty ego-tripper, showboating in The Last Great Places. His movie with its rhapsodic voiceover lays itself wide open to such complaint, and the quasi-ecclesiastical presentation will inevitably run some sensibilities the wrong way. In the end, what justifies "Ashes and Snow" is the still photography, one epiphany after another. A boy, his head clean shaven, points a feather with an archer's taut precision. Another, eyes closed, cocks his ear to a seashell, monitoring the heartbeat of the world. A woman cradles a sphere as if entrusted with the cosmos. Two children nestle together in the spreading roots of a mangrove, flanked by elephant guardians of the dharma. A naked waif and a wild cat perch on separate branches of a blasted tree. A cheetah lounges like the Sphinx on a termite mound that looms like Kilimanjaro. Mr. Colbert tumbles through an unseen sea, a joyous Captain Ahab, palms to the fluke of the whale. The world is still a wondrous place.
"If you put Bach in a glass box, and paraded schoolkids in front of him, they would never know what his music was," Mr. Colbert says. "We spend all this money on preserving the great works of art of the past, and that's good. But in the next 25 years, the human race will have to decide whether or not to preserve the bestiary of Nature's living masterpieces. 'Ashes and Snow' is not meant to tell people to do some things or not to do other things. It's meant to inspire. I hope it's not a requiem."
Mr. Gurewitsch writes for the Journal on the visual and performing arts.
- selma 3-16-2005 4:00 am
Thread needs closing.
- alex 5-17-2007 3:36 pm [add a comment]