ART CITIES:N.York-Before/On/After,William Wegman & California Conceptualism

When William Wegman and his then wife Gayle moved to California in the 70’s, they bought a Weimaraner puppy, they named Man Ray and who was destined to become his most important “found” object. Now William Wegman is best-known for his photographs featuring dogs, especially his own Weimaraners, in a variety of poses and costumes.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art Archive

Those photo works, however, are not the main focus of the exhibition “Before/On/After: William Wegman and California Conceptualism” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition revolve around his entire career in video, 174 short videos that Wegman made between 1970 and 1999 and that the artist recently gifted to the museum. A 90-minute selection of videos from this gift is shown, accompanied by photographs and drawings by Wegman as well as drawings, prints, and photographs by his contemporaries in Southern California such as: John Baldessari, Vija Celmins, Douglas Huebler, Ed Ruscha, and others. Wegman was born in Massachusetts in 1943 and completed his undergrad studies at the Massachusetts College of Art. There, he focused on abstract painting. A student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the 1960s, he met the filmmaker Ronald Nameth, with whom he would later show films at Warhol’s Electric Circus in New York. Wegman’s first photographs and films were a way of capturing the ephemeral works – mostly inflatable structures and kinetic sculptures – he was making. Wegman appreciated video, like photography, for its lo-fi reproducibility and anti-artistic qualities, and unlike film, where the negative must be developed and processed before viewing, video was like a sketchbook that allowed revision in real time. After graduation in 1967, Wegman spent three years experimenting with the first in a long line of “found” objects, particularly mesh and other fabrics. Furniture also made an appearance, as did inexpensive materials, such as shoes, pots and pans. It was one of these late 1960s works, the “screen pieces” fabric installations, that was shown at the seminal exhibition “Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form” at the Bern Kunsthalle in March 1969, alongside works by Richard Serra, Joseph Beuys and Richard Tuttle. It wasn’t until he moved to Southern California in 1970 that his video production took off. Although he only lived in Los Angeles for three years, Wegman found his method: short, staged vignettes using everyday items in which expectations are reversed, puns and homonyms are pursued to absurd conclusions. The artist’s key early collaborator for most of these short videos was his pet Weimaraner Man Ray, who enthusiastically participates in the goings on.  As Marc Selwyn, Wegman’s LA gallerist, says“Wegman started working in California as a conceptual artist and was associated with John Baldessari and Allen Ruppersberg, Bruce Nauman and Ed Ruscha, the whole group of them exchanging ideas and doing really radical things. Before this, photographers in California were people like Ansel Adams, who made beautifully crafted, well-composed photographs. And then comes a group of artists who’ve decided that what’s important is the idea, and the documentation of a performance. This was very typical of the time; there was a rebellion against traditional ideas about what an art object was”. In contrast to other early adopters of video, Wegman eschewed an aesthetic of boredom for humorous improvised scenarios in which he deflated the pretensions of painting and sculpture while also lampooning the pieties and self-seriousness of Conceptual Art, at a time when it was being codified and institutionalized. In “Spelling Lesson” (1973-74), he explains to Man Ray that while the dog had spelled out and park correctly, he had spelled “beach”, with two ‘e’s. In “Two Dogs” (1975–76), Man Ray and a companion track an unseen tennis ball.

Info: Metropolitan Museum of Art , The Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, Duration: 17/1-15/7/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sun 10:00-17:30m Fri-Sat 10:00-21:00, www.metmuseum.org