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

“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