JULY 12-OCT 19, 2009

MOCA fished out a large amount of work from recent acquisitions to their permanent collection (mainly in the last 5 years) and brought it out for our lucky eyes!  Many of the pieces have been in previous MOCA exhibits, however some have never shown at MOCA before.  The show is a survey of work from all over the world and is worth a see if you enjoy conceptual or feminist art, or photography.

There are some great William Wegman prints from the 1970's.  "Vignette" (1971) is a set of 2 photos, one of which features a woman and Wegman's famous dog Man Ray vignetted by a darkroom printing technique and its partner print is the actual vignetted image, flipped, with the edges dodged out.  The cool effect is surely what everyone today attains through photoshop.  The prints are a sprinkle of photo magic and a witty play on composition manipulation.  

William Wegman - Vignette - 1971

I found the the highlight of the show was in fact, at the end of the exhibit.  Two long walls are filled with prints from Robert Frank's book of photography, "The Americans."  He received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and traveled across the US in the 1950's and shot somewhat up of 650 rolls of film documenting America.  The book of these photos, "The Americans," was first published in France in 1958, and then in America in 1959.  His travels revealed a beneath the surface look at the country.  With a very casual shooting style, he captured shots in Americana locales like diners, parks, and gas stations that suggest feelings of desolation, apprehension, and alienation.  Frank was initially optimistic of American life, but as he traveled deeper into the country, became a skeptic of the dreamy US idealism.  He identified the obsession with money in the country as the source of dissatisfaction, and you could see this in his photography.  Jack Kerouac contributed the introduction to the book after they met in 1957.

Robert Frank - Ranch market / Hollywood - 1955

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