For me, Art competes with Life.
Just a few minutes ago, while sitting here, thinking, I overheard my son tell my wife how his friend B.’s sister, C., was trying to starve her turtle because she wanted to get a new pet. On the sly, B. was feeding the turtle. B. admitted that he too wanted a new pet and had decided to stop feeding his fish. They were still alive, though, and he wondered if C. was feeding them. He was pretty sure that she was.
I suppose this is why my expectations for the art experience are pretty high. I look at a lot of work and it is always curious to me when and why a work thrills me and how some continue to do so?
I saw these photographs by Larry Sultan in San Francisco over fifteen years ago. I think about them often.
Golf Swing
,br /> Mom posing by green wall and Dad watching TV
I didn’t know Larry Sultan took photos. These are scary.
David,
I think you may be thinking about Donald Sultan.
D.,
As I understand it, this post was stimulated by a discussion in the comments of Richard’s last post on “hyper-reality.” Your post stands on its own, but I’m wondering about the connection…
Love the story, still working out the relevance of that, too… viva cryptic!
These seemingly banal snapshots both tell strong stories, and both appear to involve a man ignoring a woman for sports. The TV plays a very different role in the two. Is the TV part of the appeal for you?
Oh yeah, you’re right. Got my Sultans mixed up :)
On Richard’s post, D. mentioned ‘hyper-real’. Someone else talked about Baudrillard – Simulacra and Simulations. The first picture in D.’s post today shows a guy pretending that his living room is a golf-course. Does this fit the idea of simulacra?
Both pictures show people trapped in their living rooms, disconnected from what is happening on TV. The guy, swinging his golf club, does not listen to the female announcer on TV; likewise, the nattily dressed and painted woman in the second picture does not pay attention to the football game on TV, but instead is dreaming, perhaps, of a social event.
I just looked at Sultan’s pictures on
http://www.billcharles.com/sultan/sultan_12.htm.
Many of them struck me as very funny. They portrait such so grotesque happenings.
Are the plants Real or Not? Does it matter? I conclude: Yes. Then, No. And then, of course: Maybe. For me, Art can capture Everything.
More: their Tans, his hair and her shirt, the carpet (grass!), the outlet and the antenna (connected), watched and being watched (TV), how even the ballplayer leans away, etc.
Hockney.
they also remind me of ERic Fischl’s depictions of the underbelly of suburbia.
http://www.ericfischl.com/olderpaintings.htm
oops, I was thinking of the one titled “scarsdale” in particular – the bride smoking the cigarette. Maybe not, but has that similar icky feeling of watching “American Beauty”
I just noticed that the posting does not include the titles for LS’s work.
Golf Swing
Mom posing by green wall and Dad watching TV
Sorry, the titles are in place now.
their tans! that green rug! and yes, hockney.
I don’t get much from these photos unless I spend some time trying to decipher what Sultan might be trying to tell us via signs like those D. points out. Or perhaps the point is that these are meaningless, though I don’t find that very satisfying. At any rate, Sultan was also involved in a 1977 exhibit called “Evidence” which culled supposedly documentary photos to demonstrate how much was NOT communicated by such photos. A short but amusing selection is here.
Steve,
Certainly the issues surrounding the Documentary are relevant to LS. What I think is unique to this work is how he weaves those elements with the inescapable influence of Family. Mom will pose for her son (“Let me change my belt”) but Dad will stubbornly sit (“Hershiser pitching!”) and not be bothered to move. Unless of course his son inquires about his Golf Game.
I find this work drenched with Meaning: His, Theirs, Mine and Ours. And the weave is so rich and complicated that in the end, everytime, I am left only with Life.
LS has recently returned to The Valley and replaced the Family with Pornography.
Simulacra and Simulation.
How interesting about the pornography. Does it still have any kind of Sultan stamp on it?
Steve,
“…Sultan stamp…”
Subjects share an Enhanced Banality?
http://www.isabellabrancolini.it/larry_sultan_the_valley_3.html