Usually I don’t write about an exhibit if I can’t offer some reason to see it. But I object so strongly to both the idea and execution of the fourteen, 78-inch tall photographs by Sarah Charlesworth of people jumping or falling from tall buildings now at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) through January 4, 2015, that I can’t hold back. I’m trying to imagine why anyone would harvest these newspaper clippings, make them larger than life and exhibit them as art. The AIC actually commissioned this work from Charlesworth the year before her death in 2013 so that the entire body of work could be exhibited together for the first time since it was created in the 1980s. Is it any wonder that it never was before? The museum offers that Charlesworth’s work is seminal because “it married Conceptual Art to works of high drama… and helped define the Pictures Generation”. Which “concept” is being established here, that life is fleeting? It is beyond morbid. If Charlesworth has “married” anything, it is Voyeurism and the Horror of Being a Powerless Bystander. It seems to be the ultimate invasion of privacy to watch someone fall to his death, regardless of the reason (which is never addressed, leaving us even more in the dark). We are consigned to helplessly watching the helpless. There was only one way to be proactive under this circumstance, so I turned around and left. And my luck turned with me.
“Young Farmers, 1914” from the series “People of the 20th Century” by August Sander (courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Just outside the door to this exhibit I discovered a wall of photographs devoted to August Sander’s portraits, part of his opus and legacy, “People of the 20th Century”. It is as diametrically opposed to the nihilism just yards away as I can imagine. A German portrait photographer working in the early to mid-1900’s, Sander aspired to affirm people’s individualism and worth by photographing them and sorting them by vocation. Both inclusive and exhaustive, Sander photographed everyone who would pose for him, from farmers to artists. In the late 1930’s we even see him bridling under the Nazi’s effort to define one Aryan race by identifying certain individuals as “Victim of Persecution”, rather than by occupation. Sander’s work is original, creative and affirmative. It informs and enriches one’s world view. A duly revered photographer, August Sander saved my visit to the AIC from being ruined by a photographer I hadn’t heard of and will happily soon forget.
“The Painter Otto Dix and his Wife, 1928” from the series “People of the 20th Century” by August Sander (courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)
For more information about these exhibits, go to: http://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/photography
Feature Image: “Unidentified Man, Unidentified Location, 1980”, printed 2012, No. 9 of 14 from the series “Stills” by Sarah Charlesworth (courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)
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