By Suzanne Révy
I found myself drawn to the lush studies of earthy botanicals by Tanya Marcuse when I came across them on social media. When I learned late last spring she was offering a one day workshop through the Center for Photography at Woodstock, I rather impulsively signed up. We had a productive day exploring a pastoral property in upstate New York, and inspired, I purchased her book, Fruitless, Fallen, Woven (Radius 2019). More recently, I discovered that a former professor of mine, Ann Mandelbaum, published a book called Matter (Hatje Cantz, 2023). Both books sat side-by-side on a table for several weeks, and as I perused them I discovered some interesting parallels between the work and the structure of each book.

Fruitless Fallen Woven by Tanya Marcuse published as three books encased in a box by Radius, 2019. (Photo by Suzanne Révy)

A spread in Fruitless the first of three books of Fruitless, Fallen, Woven by Tanya Marcuse, published by Radius Books, 2019. (Photo by Suzanne Révy)

A spread in Fruitless the first of three books of Fruitless, Fallen, Woven by Tanya Marcuse, published by Radius Books, 2019. (Photo by Suzanne Révy)
Marcuse’s Fruitless, Fallen, Woven is, in fact, three books encased in a box. The first book contains black and white pictures of apple trees photographed as the seasons unfold. We encounter several specimens two times over the seasons, and one heart shaped tree and another dancing one are brimming with gestural joy. Employing a long mid-tonal range of the original platinum prints, and the careful use of high overcast light, Marcuse creates a rhythm that emphasizes the steady presence of trees. In the final few pages, she looks to the ground where apples have fallen, and begin to decay into the soil. Francine Prose writes an essay in a separate accompanying booklet where she points out the contradictions in nature. The trees become naked to survive winter, and the fallen apples literally help to reenergize the trees through the process of decomposition.

A spread in Fallen the second of three books of Fruitless, Fallen, Woven by Tanya Marcuse, published by Radius Books, 2019. (Photo by Suzanne Révy)

A spread in Fallen the second of three books of Fruitless, Fallen, Woven by Tanya Marcuse, published by Radius Books, 2019. (Photo by Suzanne Révy)
The second and third books are in color, and she continues to explore the ground in both Fallen and Woven. In the second book, Fallen, Marcuse turns her attention to the decaying apples and leaves as they return to the land under the early frosts of winter in staged tableaus in the landscape. And as the spring arrives, the decaying fruit nourishes young flowers. The sequence is punctuated with double page spreads which are enlargements of pictures on previous pages, allowing readers to study the components of each tempestuous composition. Her colors become progressively monochromatic near the end of the book, like redolent harbingers of death and rebirth found in Dutch still-life painting.

A vertical spread in Woven, the third of three books of Fruitless, Fallen, Woven by Tanya Marcuse, published by Radius Books, 2019. (Photo by Suzanne Révy)

A full bleed spread in Woven, the third of three books of Fruitless, Fallen, Woven by Tanya Marcuse, published by Radius Books, 2019. (Photo by Suzanne Révy)
The third and final book, Woven, features constructed tableau of gathered materials from nature. Marcuse sets up a frame, and fills it with dirt, apples, flowers, twigs and occasionally snake or bird carcasses. We learn that the frame is five by fifteen feet, and she makes exhibition prints of that at five by ten feet in size. Smaller prints are reproduced, then tipped onto the pages and folded, so the design and experience is more complex than the first two books. It is a joy to discover hidden gems as each print is unfolded. These finely rendered images are an immersive visual experience which reminded me of the revelations in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The evolution from Marcuse’s black and white landscapes to explorations on the ground to large-scale, constructed tableaux is illuminating, gently guiding readers toward a holistic sense of mortality.
In Matter, Ann Mandelbaum reveals a similar fascination with the physical and material world, but her pictures seem to spring from the sub-conscious. The book is organized into four chapters, starting and ending with work that was made in a traditional wet darkroom. A series of photograms opens the book featuring insects and geometric patterns that then lead to close-up studies of lips, fingers and toes. These moody abstractions rendered in rich blacks and soft greys are formal in construction, yet carry a psychological charge. Mandelbaum seems to be reaching for something deep within.
The second chapter features additional studies of the human form, many in a temperate color palette of soft pink. The tenor of the pictures shifts slightly from the earlier pictures, but are no less searching. The third chapter opens with more linear works and several studies of objects such as the inside of a box camera, a covered bicycle seat or sculptures of torn ledger paper. The fourth and final chapter features masterful works generated in the wet darkroom, including several abstracted polarized portraits, dreamy visions of children and a particularly murky print of cherries on someone’s ear. These surreal and transcendent compositions are by turns seductive and disquieting.
We have the late French artist Marcel Duchamp to thank for expanding the definition of art when he mounted a urinal onto a podium, signed it and declared it thus. And we have Edward Weston to thank for making an extraordinarily beautiful picture of a toilet. Similarly, Mandelbaum explores toilet bowls throughout the book, endowing them with a human-like, open-mouthed expression in a recurring motif that has humor and pathos throughout. This repeating form brings a sense of rhythm to the sequence. Matter reveals the artist’s trajectory of deep internal searching over thirty years, and it is a mesmerizing journey into a psyche that she has invited us to witness. Both Mandelbaum and Marcuse reveal a fascination with still-life as a means to mine physical and psychological ideas and both offer insights into imaginative and meandering creative practices.
Fruitless, Fallen, Woven
By Tanya Marcuse
Essay by Francine Prose
Radius Books, 2019
https://www.radiusbooks.org/all-books/p/tanya-marcuse-fruitless-fallen-woven
Matter
by Ann Mandelbaum
Essays by Ulrich Pohlman and Héloïse Conésa
Hatje Cantz, 2022
https://www.hatjecantz.com/products/60275-ann-mandelbaum?_pos=1&_sid=478cc9bab&_ss=r

Matter by Ann Mandelbaum published by Hatje Cantz, 2023 (top) Fruitless Fallen Woven by Tanya Marcuse published by Radius Books, 2019 (bottom)