Martin Schoeller at Hasted Hunt
Written on November 29, 2007
A great portraitist at a renowned photo gallery.
“NEW WORK”
January 8 - February 23, 2008
HASTED HUNT is pleased to announce MARTIN SCHOELLER - “NEW WORK,” large format photographic portraits. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, January 10th from 6 to 8 PM.
With “NEW WORK,” Martin Schoeller has added to the series premiered in “CLOSE UP,” his Hasted Hunt debut in 2006 and book of the same title from Te Neues (2005). “NEW WORK” will include color and black and white work which has not been exhibited on the east coast before, large tightly cropped faces ranging in personalities from celebrities, athletes, musicians and politicians to members of his family and non-famous individuals.
The artist intends to keep adding to this body of work in the next several years. His distinctive style combines a strict methodology with an ability to get his subjects to actively collaborate with him fully energizing these portraits. New to the series are celebrities such as actors George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Robert DeNiro, Will Ferrell, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, as well as Henry Kissinger and Michael Jordan.
We will debut a specially commissioned group of members from the Amazonian Pirahã tribe, striking, mysterious faces of the rarely photographed Pirahã people, an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe that lives primarily on the banks of the Maici River in Brazil. Currently numbered at approximately 360, the culture is in grave danger of extinction. These photographs were specially commissioned by The New Yorker.
In 2006 Ken Johnson wrote for The New York Times:
There is something magically gripping about how these beings who exist in our collective imagination like pagan gods are so vividly, physically embodied, stripped of the protective veneer of publicity yet untainted but the salaciousness of the paparazzi shot. ‘You can’t help thinking that’s what Mickey Rourke (or Donald Rumsfeld or Cindy Sherman) really looks like’. Yet despite the remorselessly clinical scrutiny, they retain their superhuman auras, which may say as much about us as it does about them.
In the past two years, Schoeller’s work has been acquired and exhibited by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, and he has had exhibitions in Boston, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Milan and Berlin. He continues to work as a contract photographer for The New Yorker and plans to exhibit his series on female body builders in 2008.
Filed in: Art, Exhibitions & Events, Talent.
Anyone know if there are plans for Martin’s show to come to Britain?
i’ve seen schoeller’s images for years in magazines. i read about him recently over on a photo editor. everyone says he’s a great guy. i’m sure he is. i wish him the best. yet, there’s something that just irks me, when you take a body of work that was shot commercially, and then you have the appearance of some gallery owner saying, “hey, this would probably sell in our gallery too”. so the guy takes all those images, and then maybe shoots some more (for no pay of course, to give it some sort of “art legitimacy”, and there’s nothing better than villagers in remote countries to give it legitimacy). so then, he takes that body of work, shot in a style that everyone equates to the commercial market, and then slaps it up in an art gallery, and then gets some NYTimes guy to review it, along with many multi-syllable adjectives, and then calls it art.
the images are strong; yet, for some reason, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, to “port it over” to another type of venue, (maybe just because a gallery owner thought he could sell some prints), or maybe because the photographer thought that calling it art would help his resume?
i swear to god, i’m trying not to sound negative, even though this clearly is negative. i just think a commercial guy is a commercial guy; and a fine artist is a fine artist. or, if the commercial guy wants to walk away from the business for a few months, and do something entirely NEW, in a new style, then maybe that would be ok. but to just recycle commercial work in a gallery just makes me feel a bit icky.
i feel the same way when i see an annie liebovitz image, (shot for VF), hanging in an art gallery, with a mat around it, in a frame. it just does not feel right. IT WAS A JOB. LET IT BE A JOB.
to me, it’s about the Motivation. Once an image starts as a job, or even a style starts as a job, i just think it needs to stay a job. it needs to stay in the commercial realm. you can’t “port it over” to another type of market. (well, obviously, you can, but to me, you risk blowing your credibility).
just one opinion. i’m sure martin schoeller is a fine person, and i wish him the best. i just know, when i read this, i sorta downgraded him a bit, in my mental rolodex.
or, maybe the line is getting blurred so much, between ny magazines, and ny galleries, that there is no hard-and-fast distinction any longer. maybe it just about “promotion and sales” now, no matter where it comes from.
i admit, i am certainly old-school in this line of thinking. i admit it.
OK, graphically strong
IN YOUR FACE aesthetic ,
A sortof remorseless , ambitious intent/
FLESH isn’t much
Without empathy, intuition
INNER LIFE/
Whatever you want to call it:
Spirit, Intelligence , SOUL :
Photography will always hearken back to these values..
This is so aggressively sterile
and has a “flash in the pan ” span….
Here is a great article about a show FROM 2003 at the Tate:Cruel and Tender
http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue5/crueltender.htm
Here is a great quote from the article:”WE ARE LIVING THROUGH A PROTRACTED EPIDEMIC OF CONFUSION ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ARTWORKS AND DOCUMENTS. A BORDER IS BEING BLURRED”
Seems pretty relevant to me. Enjoy. HT to JM Colberg.
looks like an imitation of annie leibovitz doing an imitation of richard avedon.
One trick pony, flavor of the moment,flash in pan,one hit wonder,15 minutes of fame, call it what you will. It does address the face as topography. It’s a limited palette, by choice. I don’t think it’s earth shattering but it is a specific point of view.
The question would be, after this what else?
It BULGES of
What is AMISS
Regarding art is commerce, I think you can look back to Irving Penn’s work in the 40’s and 50’s shot for Vogue. His images were shot for the editorial market, but stands clearly on its own in the fine art realm as well. To say one cannot cross over to the other is a bit shallow…
@8, Ted:
Ted, So you’re comparing an Irving Penn still life, or B/W portrait, to these Schoeller images?
And in the Penn analogy, to me, somehow the concept of time passing seems involved. To be able to have the luxury of looking back forty years, and then pulling out that Penn image (that was originally shot as a job), seems more OK than putting that Schoeller stuff in a gallery, when it was in GQ or something, only eighteen months ago.
I admitted up front that it was my issue, and that I might be wrong. I just feel like, when it was an assigned job, with however little money involved, it was still a JOB, and somehow, that taints it, corrupts it even. Once it’s a job, it needs to stay a job. You’re either a commercial photographer, (who receives commission money), or you’re a fine artist, who uses his own money to finance his work.
I like that (supposed) Gregory Crewdson story. No idea if it’s even true. I just like it. Supposedly, he does his first commercial job, a job for Six Feet Under, and then after enduring the bullshit factor of their demands, swears off commercial work forever, and goes back to doing his own self financed work. Whether or not it’s true, I just love the story.
It’s about your Motivation. Where you come from with the work. To me, there’s a very clear line in the sand between the two. But hey, that’s just me.
I also remember seeing a Nadav Kander image in a gallery in Chelsea. It was from a job. Just really felt icky to me, hanging in a group show, next to other personal work. I know, I know — “It’s all about the image”, but to me, it’s not.