Visual Relics (1978-1979)

  Ruth Thorne-Thomsen
Untitled
1979
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Marilyn Sanders
Palisades Park
1978
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Chris Steele-Perkins
Community Disco, West Belfast
1978
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Bernard Faucon
Untitled
1979
fresson print
Princeton University Art Museum

Don A. DuBroff
St Nicolas Ukrainian Cathedral, Chicago
1979
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

David Graham
Marge Gapp's Studio, Philadelphia Pa.
1979
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

William Christenberry
Door of Cotton Warehouse, Selma, Alabama
1979
dye transfer print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

William Christenberry
Untitled
1979
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

William Christenberry
Untitled
1979
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

William Christenberry
Untitled
1979
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Lawrence J. Merrill
Minneapolis
1979
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Lawrence J. Merrill
Minneapolis
1979
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Laurie Simmons
New Kitchen, Aerial View
1979
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Terry Evans
Sky over Shawnee County, Kansas
1979
inkjet print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Joel Sternfeld
Approximately 17 of 41 Whales
which Beached (and subsequently died), Florence, Oregon
1979
dye transfer print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Richard Misrach
Sounion, Greece (Star Trails)
1979
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

from Paideia

When I am gone and exist only in my poems,

my line shall celebrate my days,

insisting that my acts were brave as any man's,

that my thoughts were complex as another's,

my loves as desperate, as intense.

Adroit, self-confident, and sly,

my poems are my children.

They know how to lie.

– George Bradley (1996)

Visual Relics (1977-1978)

Lucas Samaras
Figure
1978
Polaroid, with added ink
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Laurie Simmons
Woman, Red Couch, Newspaper
1978
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Gordon Matta-Clark
Caribbean Orange
1978
C-print
Milwaukee Art Museum

David Husom
Brown County Fairgrounds, New Ulm, Minnesota
1978
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Jo Alison Feiler
#13
1978
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

William Eggleston
Sinks no. 7 & 8
1978
dye transfer print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

James Welling
A40
1977
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Henry Wessel
Untitled
(series, New California Views)
1977
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Arthur Tress
Electrocution Fantasy
1977
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Howard Bond
Hohensalzburg
1978
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Howard Bond
Palace Courtyard, Freistadt
1978
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Paul Caponigro
Castle Rigg Stone Circle, Cumbria
1978
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Robert Mapplethorpe
Baby's Breath
1978
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Sherman
1978
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Susan Meiselas
First Day of Popular Insurrection, Nicaragua
1978
C-print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Tony Ray-Jones
Glyndebourne, East Sussex
1978
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Electrocuting an Elephant

Her handlers, dressed in vests and flannel pants,

    Step forward in the weak winter light

Leading a behemoth among elephants,

Topsy, to another exhibition site;

    Caparisoned with leather bridle,

Six impassive tons of carnival delight

Shambles on among spectators who sidle

    Nervously off, for the brute has killed

At least three men, most recently an idle

Hanger-on at shows, who, given to distilled

    Diversions, fed her a live cigar.

Since become a beast of burden, Topsy thrilled

The crowds in her palmy days, and soon will star

    Once more, in an electrocution,

Which incident, though it someday seem bizarre,

Is now a new idea in execution.

Topsy has been fed an unaccustomed treat,

    A few carrots laced with cyanide,

And copper plates have been fastened to her feet,

Wired to cables running off on either side;

    She stamps two times in irritation,

Then waits, for elephants, having a thick hide,

Know how to be patient. The situation

    Seems dreamlike, till someone throws a switch,

And the huge body shakes for the duration

Of five or six unending seconds, in which

    Smoke rises and Topsy's trunk contracts

And twelve thousand mammoth pounds finally pitch

To earth, as the current breaks and all relax.

    It is a scene shot with shades of grey – 

The smoke, the animal, the reported facts –

On a seasonably grey and gloomy day.

Would you care to see any of that again?

    See it as many times as you please,

For an electrician, Thomas Edison,

Has had a bright idea we call the movies,

    And called on for monitory spark,

Has preserved it all in framed transparencies

That are clear as day, for all the day is dark.

    You might be amused on second glance

To note the background – it's an amusement park! –

A site on Coney Island where elephants

    Are being used in the construction,

And where Topsy, through a keeper's negligence,

Got loose, causing some property destruction,

    And so is shown to posterity,

A study in images and conduction,

Sunday, January 4th, 1903.

– George Bradley (1986)

Visual Relics (1977)

Linda McCartney
Grace Slick
1977
photolithographic print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Irving Penn
Frozen Food (with String Beans), New York
1977
dye imbibition print
Art Institute of Chicago

Leland Rice
Fred Spratt Studio
1977
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gary Sutton
Blue
1977
C-print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Victor Landweber
Ishi Bar, San Francisco Airport
1977
C-print
Princeton University Art Museum

Leonard Freed
Crowd of Basques before copy of Picasso's Guernica
1977
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Larry Fink
Boy standing on his Head
1977
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Paul Caponigro
Stonehenge with Puddles
1977
gelatin silver print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Sol LeWitt
Untitled
1977
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Sandy Porter
Townscape, Courtyard, Queensgate
1977
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Arthur Taussig
Wall
1977
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Stephen Shore
Untitled
(series, The Gardens at Giverny, France)
1977
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Stephen Shore
Untitled
(series, The Gardens at Giverny, France)
1977
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Richard Schmidt
A Day at the Beach
1977
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Bill Petrowiak
Untitled
1977
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

John Lueders-Booth
Caratunk, Maine
1977
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

His eye was caught by the iridescent back of a beetle that had been standing on the windowsill but was now advancing steadily into his room. Two reddish purple stripes ran the length of its brilliant oval shell of green and gold. Now it waved its antennae cautiously as it began to inch its way forward on its tiny hacksaw legs, which reminded Kiyoaki of minuscule jeweler's blades. In the midst of time's dissolving whirlpool, how absurd that this tiny dot of richly concentrated brilliance should endure in a secure world of its own. As he watched, he gradually became fascinated. Little by little the beetle kept edging its glittering body closer to him as if its pointless progress were a lesson that when traversing a world of unceasing flux, the only thing of importance was to radiate beauty. Suppose he were to assess his protective armor of sentiment in such terms. Was it aesthetically as naturally striking as that of this beetle? And was it tough enough to be as good a shield as the beetle's?

At that moment, he almost persuaded himself that all its surroundings – leafy trees, blue sky, clouds, tiled roofs – were there purely to serve this beetle which in itself was the very hub, the very nucleus of the universe.

– Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow, translated by Michael Gallagher (Knopf, 1972)

Visual Relics (1975-1977)

Leon Levinstein
New York
ca. 1975
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Leon Levinstein
New Orleans
ca. 1975
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Joanne Leonard
Blake Street, Berkeley
ca. 1975
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Arnold Newman
Francis Bacon, London
1975
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Charles Harbutt
Aboard Le Mistral, France
1975
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Robert Mapplethorpe
Freya Stark
1975
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Rod Mann
Towel on Tuesday
1976
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Stephen Shore
Greene County Court House, Eutaw, Alabama
ca. 1976
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Lucas Samaras
Photo-Transformation
1976
dye diffusion print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Joan Myers
The Hollow
1976
gum kallitype print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Lawrence McFarland
Church on Hill, Marysville, Kansas
1976
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gregory Macgregor
Mexican Flash Flood
1976
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Benno Friedman
Untitled
1976
hand-colored gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

René Burri
San Cristóbal Stable and House
planned by Luis Barragán, Mexico City
1976
C-print
Tate Gallery

William Clift
Warren County Courthouse, Warrenton, Missouri
1976
gelatin silver print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Patricia Duncan
DuBose Prairie Fire
1977
C-print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Although Kanesuké Noguchi wore the mask of a beautiful young woman, his voice had nothing that would recall a woman's charm. It was a voice that made one think of the rasping together of rusty, discolored metal. Furthermore, his recitation was broken by interruptions, and his style of chanting seemed to be tearing the beauty of the words to shreds. But despite all this, the mood inspired was like the outpouring of a dark and ineffably elegant mist, like the sight of a moonbeam shining into a corner of a ruined palace to fall upon a mother-of-pearl furnishing. Because the light passed through a worn and ravaged bamboo blind, the elegance of the shattered fragments shone all the more.

Gradually, then, his harsh voice became far from irritating. Rather, one had the feeling that only through this harsh voice could one for the first time become aware of the briny sadness of Matsukazé and the melancholy love that afflicts those in the realm of the dead.

Honda at some point began to find it hard to tell whether the images that shifted to and fro before him were reality or illusion. On the gleaming cypress surface of the stage, like the mirroring sea at the shoreline, was reflected the glittering embroidery of the white robes and scarlet underskirts of two beautiful women.

– Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses, translated by Michael Gallagher (Knopf, 1973)