Irving Penn, Platinum Prints

[doughowk]

A somewhat critical review of Penn's show at Washington National Gallery. The reviewer preferred Penn's silver gelatin prints to his later use of pt/pl.

 

[Joe Lipka]

I don't know if it's critical or not. I do believe the reviewer has set a new USA record for obscure references with turgid, obscure artistic references. Or maybe she has not seen a platinum print before...

 

[juan]

Man, talk about overwritten. She must be paid by the word.

 

[Lee Shively]

Boy, do I feel informed and inferior! :rolleyes:

 

[Ed Sukach]

This:

"... building the spontaneous aesthetic of pioneers like Martin Munkacsi into a kind of distilled baroque tour de force that often conveyed a sense of movement, however starkly arrested."

... HAS to set some sort of new record.

My reaction - snappy rejoinder - to this: Grade IV (highest) blank look, while commenting, "Huh? Say whut?"

Hmm ... "A distilled baroque tour de force"...? Possibly some sort of Napoleon-Brandy-type liqueur???

 

[Jorge]

I would like to know what the $·%&/%$ is a Saarinen Tulip chair?

 

[PaulH]

Take look here for the Saarinen Tulip Chair

http://www.surrounding.com/Products/Modern_Classics/Saarinen_Tulip_Chair.asp

 

[lee]

I, for one, saw an Irvin Penn platinum print last Sat at the Amon Carter Museum and thought the portrait was as nice an image as could be made. It was a 16x20 and she dont know beans.

lee\c

 

[MenacingTourist]

I just bought this book two days ago. Really wish I could have seen the prints in person. Anyway, I enjoyed it and am pleased to have it in the "library".

 

[mark]

So it took her two pages to write nothing? I am not familiar with Penn's Pt/Pd work nor this ehibit but this writer makes no point whatsoever about it.. She has snippets of many points but never follows them through. I read it twice pulled out the dictionary a couple of times and each time asked myself what her point was. I still don't get the connection between the images and the Tulip chair that looks nothing like a Tulip.

 

[Ole]

It seems the reviwer is an accomplished name-dropper - with absolutely no clue who those people were and what they did.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I recognize most of the names, and I read and write academic criticism for a living, and I enjoy some of it, but that was just sophomoric.

"In the late 1940's and 50's, with Richard Avedon playing Pollock to his de Kooning - or perhaps the other way around [...]"--Please.

 

[John Koehrer]

She?.....Robert A. Smith
Blah, blah etc. etc.

 

[Gerald Koch]

Roberta Smith is evidently competing for the Bulwer-Lytton prize.

 

[Jorge]

What I found funny is that the chair certainly has a fancy name, I was expecting a beautifully wooden carved or built chair, and then I chacked the link provided and found out it was a plastic chair that many here in Mexico have as lawn furniture......go figure!

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Yes, the Saarinen chair was mass produced and imitated in many forms, and I always think of them as the 1970s chairs my grandfather had in his office, but they really did define an era.

 

[gandolfi]

as you might know Penn was married to Lisa Fonsagrives, and she was from Sweden..
'as a result he gave the Swedish state about 150 images some years ago..

many (about 100) was exhibited here in Denmark, and I had the good fortune to see them..
I have never seen such beautiful work (Sally Mann excluded)- especially his large Platinum prints..

I think I could find a small space for one of theese Platinum prints here in my home...(If I looked hard enough)

 

[noseoil]

Isn't a critic one who is gifted with verbal diarrhea, mental masturbation, vaccinated with a phonograph needle and fluent in the skills of communication? tim