“Character Study” @ DeCordova

”The Mime, 1984” platinum palladium print by Al Fisher

In Al Fisher’s beautiful black & white studies of Boston street performers, he “strove to go beyond the mask to reveal the person at the core underneath”, and in the process captured a delicate balance of both persona and person.  “Character Study”, running through March 2014 at the deCordova Museum (Lincoln, MA), features a tiny selection of portraits (and two truly strange videos) from its permanent collection, probing “expanded notions of identity formation and authenticity, constructed personas and hidden truths”, according to exhibit curator Mary Tinti.  As advertised, it provides a “small but significant window into current deCordova collecting practices.” In fact, highlighting several of the museum’s most recent acquisitions seems to be the primary motivation for the exhibit.  And there are some wonderful photographs.

“The Pearl Necklace, 2012” by Caleb Cole

In his ongoing series, “Other People’s Clothes”, photographer Caleb Cole combs thrift stores, dons outfits and constructs the colorful scenes that he imagines the original wearer might inhabit.  A sort of Cindy Sherman of the environmental portrait, he points out his narratives are not self-portraits.

“This Is A Picture of Me, 2006”, by Millee Tibbs

In her contrasting and very deliberate exploration of self, Millee Tibbs presents a series of pairings that “evoke the impossibility of going back to childhood and questions the desire to do so” by creating the incongruous and sometimes disturbing effect of matching her adult body with the playful poses and photographic style of her childhood self.

“Piet Mondrian, 1942” silver gelatin print by Arnold Newman

The feature of this show is twelve silver gelatin prints by the father of environmental portraiture, Arnold Newman.  Acquired in 2011 and spanning at least five decades, they are portraits of fellow artists in the context of their creations, all carefully staged.  Split into two groupings on the main wall, Newman’s work surrounds Rachel Perry Welty’s outsized, vividly colored and faceless self-portrait, which is billed as a “provocative, contemporary counterpoint to Newman’s portraits.”  The deCordova attempts to draw parallels that failed to convince me: “both offer images of artists that communicate aspects of the subject’s creative impulses” and “offer complex facets of artistic character, both innate and constructed.”  Blah, blah, blah.  That these two artists contrast one another in every aspect, from scale to content, and that they actually succeed in comfortably sharing wall space that way, should be good enough.

“Lost In My Life (Price Tags), 2009” by Rachel Perry Welty

I love Welty’s clever interpretation of our consumerism, as well as several of the other artists and portraits in this quirky show but, as a whole, it doesn’t hang together well.  Pretty much every piece in the exhibit is a put-on, a contrived act, each with a strong narrative.  With so many loud artistic voices, the cacophony left me feeling estranged.  In all photography, nothing should be easier for a person to relate to than a human portrait.  Not in this show.  These are actors all, with their own stories to tell and hardly any space left for the viewer.