Katie Jenkins is Migration’s summer intern. She will be a senior this fall at James Madison University and will receive a BA majoring in Public Relations with minors in art history and film. To give you a much needed refreshing voice on this blog, Laura and I asked Katie to review some shows currently up in Charlottesville. Many thanks to Katie, for these thoughtful reviews.
The exhibit at Second Street Gallery, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, features photography by Joel-Peter Witkin.
Based on the exhibit name, a reference to poet William Blake, I knew that I could expect to see dramatic and disturbing images. But as a photography amateur, I was more intrigued by the part of Witkin’s Marriage that included the blending of two other mediums that I am much more familiar with: painting and film. Witkin transformed the themes and sets of centuries old paintings into complex and captivating photographs.
Witkin’s still life photography was the best at portraying common themes in paintings of
another period. Perhaps it is because a recent professor of mine spent a lot of time focusing on Dutch still life paintings, and a precise definition of "vanitas" is still fresh in my mind, that I found those images to be some of the most inspired. Witkin kept these images simple in contrast to the way that many still life painters would portray a table overflowing with food. One photograph included only a few fruits, a single roll, a plate of fish, and someone’s lost limb. The decay of these items undoubtedly represents the transience of time that was the focus of Dutch still life paintings.
Out of the paintings that Witkin adapted, my favorite is Las Meninas (Diego Velasquez, 1656). Like in his other photographs, Witkin deconstructed the elements of this iconic Spanish painting, and recreated his own version of it (Las Meninas, 1987). He keeps some of the familiar elements of the image, like the reflection of the King and Queen, and Velasquez standing in front of the canvas. However, the maids of honor that the painting is named after are absent, letting the Infanta Margarita be the main focus. As he does in many of his photographs, Witkin has replaced the main figure with an amputee. The new Margarita is perched on a wire contraption with wheels that replicates the shape of the dress she is wearing in the original. Many of the models in Witkin’s scenes are limbless, lending them a higher shock value, but also contrasting them with the idealized portraits that have been common since the Greek Classical era.
I was really impressed with the way Witkin uses set design and other creative elements that generally are associated with film, or even theatre. While some photography seems to be more about capturing a specific moment, person or object, Wiktin carefully directs his set and actors. The gaze of his Infanta Margarita, which matches her counterpart, is an example of his direction in his thoughtful adaptations.
Other highlights of the exhibit include photographs that create or enhance mythological and Romantic themes from some recognizable paintings, including a few by Georges Seurat and Theodore Gericault. (The latter includes a pretty hilarious parody of current U.S. politicians, which I am sure is a favorite for many).
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