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"The Best Art In The World"
Richard Avedon, Lew Alcindor, 61st Street and Amsterdam Avenue, New York City, May 2, 1963, Photograph(s) by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation, images courtesy of Gagosian Gallery and the Richard Avedon Foundation
By DONALD KUSPIT, May 2023
Celebrating what would have been Richard Avedon’s hundredth birthday—he was born in New York in 1923—the New York branch of the Gagosian Gallery has staged an exhibition of 100 masterworks by Avedon. A brilliant tour de force, showing the range and complexity of Avedon’s photographs, each and every one epitomizing his engagement with other human beings, and each and every one black and white, light and dark being the fundamentals of photography. But what makes them special, taken as a whole, is that they reveal the profound class divide in American society, dominated by false selves, with a few unwittingly true selves thrown into the mix, spicing it up with their “difference.” Avedon’s obituary in the New York Times (2004) emphasized his celebrity photographs—“his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America’s image of style, beauty and culture for the last half century”—at the expense of his photographs of less stylish, beautiful, cultured people—the plebians who didn’t try hard enough to worship what the philosopher and psychologist William James called the “bitch goddess of success.” I will argue that, however unwittingly, Avedon suggests that his stylish beautiful people are false selves, and however unexpectedly, his style-less plain-looking ordinary people are true selves. I am using the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s distinction between the true self and the false self with a peculiar twist, for I will argue that in American society one becomes a true self by making a spectacle of oneself, which is to unwittingly falsify one, and to suggest that those who don’t make a spectacle of themselves—act out, to an exhibitionistic extreme—are true to themselves, however unwittingly.
Discussing portraiture in his book Landscape Portrait Self-Life the art historian Max J. Friedländer suggests that it is only when the portraitist unconsciously identifies with the portrayed that the portrait “works.” The large number of portraits of the beautiful people—the cultural elite, the stylish “influencers,” to use the au courant word--in the exhibition in comparison to the small number of portraits of plain, uncultured people—banally present rather than glamorous presences, not to say pretentious celebrities Inviting us to mindlessly worship them, their narcissism holding us captive at the expense of our self-respect—Avedon seems to identify with rich and famous celebrities, satisfying his wish to become one himself.
Richard Avedon, Audrey Hepburn, New York, January 20, 1967, Photograph(s) by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation, images courtesy of Gagosian Gallery and the Richard Avedon Foundation
There are two kinds of photographs in the exhibition: those of expressive, self-dramatizing, active, sometimes hyper-active individuals, often glamorous celebrities performing for the camera, and those of self-contained individuals, unmoving, anonymous, down to earth, the photograph a sort of proof of their existence, with a certain resemblance to an identity photograph in a passport or on a driver’s license. In the former Avedon actively engages the individual, celebrates their celebrity, uses the camera to glorify their presence; in the latter Avedon acknowledges their existence without much aesthetic ado. In the celebrity photographs there is no way of knowing if the individuals are truly themselves, for they are performing for the camera, with a sort of stagey spontaneity. They are false selves because they need an audience—the approval of society, or, as the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott writes, they are complying to external reality, that is, society. He argues that “compliance is a sick basis for life,” suggesting that Avedon’s celebrities are mentally sick, however unwittingly. One wonders if the fact that Avedon’s younger sister, supposedly his “first muse,” was “diagnosed with schizophrenia,” piqued his interest in the mental state of the people he photographed. In contrast, true selves are capable of spontaneity; I would argue that it is a sign of autonomy, which brings with it the capacity for spontaneity, “evidence of aliveness,” as Winnicott writes. In the latter photographs ordinary individuals are true to themselves because they know how to be alone with themselves. They don’t need the camera to be themselves. They have an autonomy that the extraordinary beautiful people lack; they desperately need the camera, the Cyclopean eye of society, to confirm and approve their existence. They need an audience to mirror themselves, the way Narcissus needed to see his reflection mirrored in water to “realize” himself. Similarly, the beautiful people need to see their reflection in the mirror of the photograph to “know” themselves, to believe they are real not make-believe mirages, as the actresses that Avedon photographs are when they appear in films. However much the photographs of ordinary people are also illusions, they stand out of their photographs, for they are not performing for Avedon, not expecting to be magnified by them, and perhaps because Avedon is not catering to them, inviting them to perform for him, play a role as though he was a stage director.
Richard Avedon, Ronald Fischer, beekeeper, Davis, California, May 9, 1981 by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation, images courtesy of Gagosian Gallery and the Richard Avedon Foundation
Avedon meticulously documented the date he made the photograph, the place where it was made, and in the case of fashion models and actresses the expensive clothing they were wearing. Here is a list of some of the “extraordinary” beautiful people—the creative cognoscenti--Avedon photographed. Marilyn Monroe, actress, appears multiple times in a photograph taken in New York on May 6, 1957. A thin, young Truman Capote poses with his arms stretched out like a ballet dancer in Theatre Arts, January 21, 1949. Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955. Marian Anderson, singer, in the role of Urica in “An Ballo in Maxhera,” New York, June 30, 1955. China Machado, suit by Ben Zuckerman, hair by Kenneth, New York, November 6, 1958. Audrey Hepburn, dress by Yves St. Laurent, earrings by Harry Winston, hair by Alexandre, Paris, July 1962. Elizabeth Taylor, cock feathers by Anello of Emme, New York, July 1, 1964. Donyale Luna, dress and sandals by Paco Rabanne, New York, December 6, 1966. Twiggy, dress by Roberto Rojas, New York, April 1967. Tina Turner, performer, dress by Azzaro, New York, June 13, 1973. The actresses, performers, models are in effect clothes dummies, a means to the end of selling expensive merchandise, which is the “serious” subject of the photographs. These are celebrations of capitalism and, however unwittingly, imply that things—expensive products—are more important than people. It is women who do the buying, which is why all but one of these photographs are of women, objects of desire who make objects desirable. These are commercial photographs which offer little insight into the people photographed. They are not individuals but trophies of capitalism, like the outfits that ornaments them.
And here is a list of some of the “ordinary” people—“plain folk” plainly dressed--Avedon photographed, perhaps out of curiosity, even empathy, perhaps because they also had the right to be remembered, the photograph giving them a kind of immortality, an afterlife. Lew Alcindor [basketball player], 61st Street and Amsterdam Avenue, New York City, May 2, 1963. Santa Monica Beach #4, September 30, 1963. Benson James, drifter, Route 66, Gallup, New Mexico, June 30, 1979. Sandra Bennett, twelve years old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, August 23, 1980. Red Owens, oil field worker, Velma, Oklahoma, June 12, 1980. Ronald Fischer, beekeeper, Davis, California, May 9, 1981. Fischer’s naked torso is “dressed” in bees, perhaps an (unwitting?) comment on the fashionable dresses of Avedon’s models and actresses. We see Lew Alcindor Jr. in a city playground before he became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, “the greatest basketball player of all-time” playing on every basketball court in the country. To me the portrait of the fresh-faced, young Sandra Bennett, beginning to come into her own as a woman, and the virile male swimmer holding high his naked infant on one hand on the Santa Monica Beach are the most meaningful of these photographs, for they suggest the triumph of life over capitalism, if one compares them with the photographs of the many celebrities—many oddly lifeless, sterile compared to their fashionable outfits—in the photographs of the rich and famous.
Finally, here are the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, headed by Julian Bond, Atlanta, Georgia, March 23, 1963 and Bob Dylan, singer, New York, February 10, 1965. Both are young men at the beginning of their careers. They are not posing for Avedon, but casually encountered by him. He meets them on the road; they pass one another, go their separate ways. Bond glances at Avedon, probably without realizing who he is. They are not finished products, like his models and performers, presenting themselves for admiration. They are not yet the famous public figures they became. They don’t need a camera to confirm their existence. They are not celebrity insiders nor “plain folk”--innocent outsiders, whom the bandwagon of the beautiful people, not to say the rich and famous, has left behind, but who have the authenticity and autonomy that they don’t have, who have self-possession and so don’t have to be possessed by admiring others to have a self. I am suggesting that Avedon is, probably unwittingly, a social critic, not simply an ambitious social observer, identifying with the beautiful people, and also, probably unintentionally, a student of human physiognomy, almost worthy of Le Brun, as his study of Ezra Pound’s face, June 30, 1958, suggests.
I think that Avedon became a high artist despite himself—despite his desire to become as rich and famous, as fashionable as his capitalist models. I suggest that he identified with them and was envious of them, as a servant usually is of his master, but that he empathized with the ordinary people he encountered when he left New York, the fashion center of the world along with Paris, and roamed around the United States, leaving the center, perhaps curious to see the wide world—the “heartland”--beyond it. I suggest that the refined fashion portraits—the New York photographs-- distill the essence of capitalism. They are commercial photographs, classy advertisements for expensive products, the woman pictured as well as their clothing and accouterments. Photographing fashionably beautiful women, Avedon is shamelessly worshipping the bitch goddess of success. In sharp contrast, the “plain folk” portraits—the heartland photographs, as they could be called--are existential photographs, for they show human beings in the raw, unpretentiously themselves, and with nothing to sell, certainly not the clothing they wear every day. They are subjectively alive human beings, rather than fashionable objects, sterile without their fertilizing clothes. Liberated from the studio, and his capitalist models, Avedon came into his own as a humanist. WM
Donald Kuspit is one of America’s most distinguished art critics. In 1983 he received the prestigious Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism, given by the College Art Association. In 1993 he received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Davidson College, in 1996 from the San Francisco Art Institute, and in 2007 from the New York Academy of Art. In 1997 the National Association of the Schools of Art and Design presented him with a Citation for Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2000 he delivered the Getty Lectures at the University of Southern California. In 2005 he was the Robertson Fellow at the University of Glasgow. In 2008 he received the Tenth Annual Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Newington-Cropsey Foundation. In 2013 he received the First Annual Award for Excellence in Art Criticism from the Gabarron Foundation. He has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim Foundation, and Asian Cultural Council, among other organizations.
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