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On Saturday, the first major retrospective of the photographs of Richard Avedon since his death in 2004 opens at SFMOMA. San Francisco is the only U.S. stop on the tour for this show, and Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004 focuses primarily on the artist as portrait photographer, featuring some of his best-known portraits including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Marilyn Monroe, Bjork and William S. Burroughs. We saw a preview of the show yesterday, and it's both a gorgeous collection of images as well as a moving document of the faces of the late 20th Century.
The show includes several of Avedon's famous fashion pictures from the 50s and 60s including one of Avedon in mid-leap with Twiggy (left), and Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955 (below). Also included are a group of photographs that Avedon took between of 1979 and 1984 of ordinary people in the American West -- an evocative set of images that combine the plain, documentary sensibilities of 19th-century photographers with Avedon's own polished, fashion-world aesthetic. The result is a powerful example of fine art portraiture of non-famous, non-beautiful people that stops short of the exploitative tone of some of Diane Arbus' work.
But that sense of glamorizing the plain and de-glamorizing the glamorous is at the heart of Avedon's body of work. As curator Sandra S. Phillips says, "Many of Avedon's sitters were not necessarily pleased with how Avedon portrayed them." Of the Dovima with elephants picture she says, "[It] does more than capture the glamour of a renowned model in elegant couture. Depicting the subject amid hay and sawdust, and between two elephants, the picture itself becomes a fantasia of desire, pleasure, and display."
By far, our favorite part the show is a full-wall installation of life-size, head-to-toe portraits of Andy Warhol's Factory, including a nude Joe Dallesandro, a clothed Joe Dallesandro, and a nude Candy Darling.
The member preview is going on today until 8:45 p.m., and the show opens to the public on Saturday.
Both images, Richard Avedon with Twiggy, Paris studio, April 1967 and Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, August 1955 © 2009 The Richard Avedon Foundation.
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The show is fantastic. Avedon captures something behind the faces. By removing the distractions from portraits he seems to get more.
Regarding the large Factory portrait it was as awesome as you say. I had seen ot before but it's really larger than life here and an amazing work.