Surrealism Lives!

In college, I was a bit obsessed with surrealism for a while (especially Magritte and to a lesser extent Man Ray), going so far as to photocopy favorite Magritte paintings from art books in the college library to adorn my cinderblock walls. (One of those photocopied paintings, a plate of meat with its own eye, I labeled "Dining Services.") I have sought out Magritte exhibits or works from time to time since then out of nostalgia, but the moment has largely passed for me. Life is surreal enough. Although there is still some stealthy subversive streak in me: I keep a copy of The Inferno on my office bookshelf in among my legal reference books.

Nonetheless, our crowd gathered to attend the William Wegman exhibit -- styled a retrospective, even though the artist is still alive -- at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on the very last day of its run. It was not very crowded. Although Wegman is perhaps best known as a photographer of dogs (the name of one of his favorite dogs, Man Ray, gives you a sense of his tastes and aspirations), he has ventured into videos, paintings, and drawings.

Many of his paintings connect several unrelated postcards or photographs plastered on the canvas, to surreal effect. His drawings tend to be simple line drawings that become a bit surreal in light of their captions.

I really like his "X-Ray of Peach in Dish" from 1973; it may be possible to find it in the Drawings gallery on his website.
As you may have gathered, Wegman specializes in making somewhat surreal jokes. One of the funnier ones: He took a somewhat retro card entitled "A Confirmation Prayer for A Sweet Girl" (showing a girl kneeling before a bishop and some clerical types), and transmogrified it into "A Flight Confirmation Prayer for A Sweet Girl" (adding the extra word and a pictue of a plane in the background; the figures are now on the plane's stairs).

Some were sillier than others. In the video I remember best, he was dressed up in clerical garb and reading from the book of John[ny] (more precisely, the doggerel "Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?") and then drawing moral lessons or advice therefrom -- sad to say, this was every bit as illuminating as the sermon today at FAPC.

He often takes multiple large pictures along the length of a single object (usually a dog) and frames them separately next to each other -- e.g., his work "Deposition" (dog lying on its back, but extended longer than its body because of the framing).

The highlight of the exhibition, for me, was item #010, "Untitled", which consists of several very attractive framed black & white photographs of multiple dog legs. The cell phone audio guide invited us to propose a name for this picture. I nominate "Forest".

After this cultural enlightenment, we gathered for a picnic in Prospect Park.