TALKING FROM THE WALL: MARILYN PENN
http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2010/04/22/talking-from-the-wall/
Talking From The Wall
By Marilyn Penn (bio)
The exhibition on Henri Cartier-Bresson currently at MOMA is a vast retrospective of the photographer’s work as he traveled around the world documenting pivotal and marginal events with equal attention and artistry. As most people are aware by now, Cartier-Bresson formulated the concept of seizing the decisive moment in his viewfinder, as opposed to manipulating his images in the darkroom. Enormous world maps at the entrance to the galleries show the breadth of his enterprise and the boundless energy required to maintain enthusiasm for his profession. Among the myriad places that he visited were the Soviet Union, China and the United States and large wall texts headline what the curator (Peter Galassi) wants us to glean from looking at the photographs of these three countries. The following captions are distilled from their respective text blocks:
USSR: First western photographer to be admitted to the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin in 1953. When he returned to the USSR nearly two decades later (1972, 1973), his image of Soviet life developed a new dimension – grim, barren and bleak.â€
The Great Leap Forward – China: In 1958, Cartier-Bresson undertook an ambitious campaign to photograph The Great Leap Forward, Mao Tse Tung’s intensive program of forced industrialization. He worked steadily for four months in China and although he was closely monitored by the authorities, he returned with a very substantial body of work, rich in concrete detail.
New Worlds USA: His image of the United States incorporates a distinctly critical thread, alert to American vulgarity, greed and racism.â€
Here are some things that the curato, Peter Galassi, has left out of the wall texts. Cartier-Bresson was a fellow traveler who, like many other French and western communists, failed to repudiate Stalin despite the revelations of mass killings of 40 million people between 1929 – 1953. Galassi doesn’t talk about this either on the wall or in the catalog. Also unmentioned are the execution deaths of 550,000 Chinese people and the famine deaths of between 16 and 40 million people by the time the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1961. While the mass murders in China and the Soviet Union are ignored, the charges of American vulgarity, greed and racism are prominently displayed.
In perusing the exhibition, one finds the themes of vulgarity, greed and racism appearing in many of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs around the world. Jakarta 1949, Paris Opera 1953, Parke-Bernet Auction House N.Y. 1959 and Country Club Mexico 1963 all deal with similar issues of colonialism, class snobbery and the super-annuated rich. One is hard pressed to understand why the U.S. has been singled out as the purported focus of Cartier-Bresson’s disdain. Although the photographer might have been critical of this country, the photographs selected for viewing do not support the exclusivity of the curator’s contention and diminish Cartier-Bresson by this jaundiced, hate-America first attitude.
In truth, nothing can highlight the vulgarity (and banality) in America more than MOMA’s concurrent exhibition of the performance artist Marina Abramovic, just across the hall from Cartier-Bresson. This is an example of cliche’d and pointless endurance feats – people clothed and nude, live and video’d, standing, sitting, reclining, shrieking, masturbating and doing other sophomoric acts designed to epater le bourgeois. Ironically, les bourgeois are the only people impressed by this display of an emperor bereft of both clothes and artistic significance. This has been alloted half of the sixth floor and a prominent part of the second in what used to be America’s premier museum of modern art. It’s fortunate that Cartier-Bresson, a pioneer in the field of photo-journalism and a consummate artist, didn’t live to see the deplorable neighbor MOMA has dignified with space and billing equal to his.
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