A Day with the Wegman Dogs

The Rockwell Museum in Corning. The architectural style
is the colorfully named "Richardsonian Romanesque."

Geoff Wittig and I went to the Rockwell on Thursday to see the William Wegman show. The Rockwell Museum, located in Corning, New York, in the former Corning City Hall dating from 1893, is based on the collection of paintings and other works amassed by department store owner Robert Rockwell, who collected from 1959 to 1974, concentrating on figurative paintings of the American West. (The definition of "figurative art" is not entirely intuitive. The terms are usefully parsed in the first three paragraphs here.) As Geoff put it, Rockwell "had a good eye," and he was able to buy many of his holdings when the artists he collected were much more accessible (i.e., cheaper) than they are today. He acquired many significant works, most famously Albert Bierstadt's "Mount Whitney." (Check this article out if you've ever thought framing one of your photographs was a pain in the butt. It's about the epic reframing of "Mount Whitney." Really, check it out. [And here's a video, thanks to Jim in the comments. —Ed.])

I lapped up a whole bunch of Scribner's Illustrated Classics when I was in grade school and middle school, and got very engaged with N.C. Wyeth, so I particularly like visiting the Museum's Wyeths. N.C.'s colors are slightly garish, as the paintings were made to pop off the page when reduced in size to fit in the books. Regarding Bierstadt, I've known his work since high school. It always struck me as a bit funny that, confronted with the glory, majesty and drama that is the American Western landscape, he felt compelled to exaggerate. His paintings represent reality with a 20% dose of fantasy.

William Wegman is OK
I've been aware of William Wegman all my adult life—I heard him speak when I was in art school. He's got a great gig, and whaddaya know, is still workin' it. I see his schtick as something like the exercise of a trademark. The interest present in his photographs is mainly in his creativity in continually conceptualizing new and different settings for photographs of his worried-looking Weimaraner dogs. Seeing so many dazzling large prints together, it finally occurred to me that what the prints might be best suited for is display singly in personal collections, because his "trademark" is so distinct that any visitor with a cursory familiarity with modern photography would recognize any of the photos as a Wegman right away. Hang one of these in your foyer, or the gallery leading to your lavish NYC apartment, and it's instantly recognizable, flattering your visitor with his or her own knowledge. You'd make any art-sensitive visitor happier.

Seen together, though, they strike me as, "Wiemaraners iterated," perhaps with an end-tag of, "...but why?" He is indeed creative (still) in finding new settings and surroundings for the dogs, but then, in the best of them, you start wondering whether the dog or dogs themselves are actually...necessary. And I'm a dog person. In his much earlier work—with Man Ray, his original dog, who might be described as a patient ham—there was a lot of humor, some of it referential to art history and artistic tropes; more recently, the pictures are elegant, clean, and mainly about color. My favorite was a rather atypical B&W shot of a dog draped in a transparent polka-dog raincoat; the dog is barely visible at first but the mind fills in its form as soon as you detect its face. Or, rather, you construct his face after you see his eyes, and then his body from his face. I can't find a reproduction of that one online. I tend to like pictures like that, with subjects obscured or overtly in need of the mind to do part of the seeing.

I enjoyed the show, but can't say I loved it; the bon mot that came to mind to sum up W.W. is an old Mitch Hedberg joke: you either love him, or you hate him...or, you think he's OK.

I'll tell you one picture I'd love to take, though—a documentary shot of William Wegman out walking his dog(s). Because, after all, they're, well, dogs. And you know what? If I had a beautiful modernist house, I would honestly covet a Wegman to hang in the entryway. Seriously. It would be friendly, quirky, beautiful, and cool, and would probably appeal to just about everybody who walked through the front door.

Cat person
Geoff is a cat person. One of the great things about seeing Geoff, apart from the opportunity to spend some time in the company of someone much smarter than I am, is hearing about painting, which has elbowed photography aside as his top artistic interest. He still does some landscape photography. (How he finds time to do everything he does is close to unfathomable; he's very busy with his practice as a small-town doctor and with medical administrative work, and he does photography and painting, and he's the family cook.) He schooled me about the turn-of-the-20th-century movement known as Tonalism, which he considers central to his taste. He had a lot of things to say about many of the artists and gave me a miniature window into a world I don't know very much about. Enough to whet my appetite to know more.

One interesting thing he told me about is a saying among contemporary figurative painters: "Paint two days a week and you stay the same, three days and you get better." Interesting: it highlights the fact that painting is a manual skill after all. A craft you need to practice in order to stay sharp. I was reminded of pool, which I don't practice enough. There are thresholds there, too, where you either stay the same or get better. Although I hit balls every day, I don't do enough to stay "in stroke" as pool players put it. As with golfers, the good players practice a lot.

Even photographers have to stay in shape that way. Bill Jay once invited Josef Koudelka to his country cabin, and was surprised to find Koudelka out snapping pictures around the place before breakfast, taking pictures of woodpiles and trees and a pond and so forth. When Bill commented that he didn't think the subject matter was typical for Josef, Josef said he was keeping in practice, staying sharp. He probably got that habit from his older friend and fellow Magnum photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who famously shot two rolls before breakfast every morning to "keep his hand in." For a month or two, two years ago, I tried to get a decent photograph every day, and my sense of that kind of "sharpness"—of being in shape, in stroke, in flow—went way up. I'd love to be able to photograph like that. There's really nothing stopping me except energy...and self-belief, and time, and the cost of gas, and...oh, never mind!

We also got to see some Edward Curtis photogravures. Geoff was on a schedule, so we had to make a shortened circuit of all the paintings to have time for lunch. But that only means there is more to cover next time.

I hope to visit Geoff in his own environs someday. I would love to see some of his photographic prints and his paintings, and he reportedly has a large photobook collection (for an unknown value of "large"), and he tells me the walls 'n' halls of his medical practice are a mini-gallery of his landscape photographs. Should make for a fun day trip. If we get 'round to it, I'll keep you posted.

[Ed note: More illustrations to come.]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Tom Burke: "I’d never heard of Tonalism before, but the reference (on the linked Amazon page) to it 'dethroning the Hudson River school' had me interested. A few years ago I saw an exhibition in London of Thomas Cole’s pictures, including all five of the 'Course of Empire' pictures, and I thought they were stunning. (I’ve also seen the John Martin 'Great Day of His Wrath' trilogy, and I think the comparison between that and the Cole five-picture work is interesting.)

"But onto single-subject pictures; in this case Wegman’s Weimaraners. I’ve found something similar in other artists and photographers. Jane Bown was lauded as a great portrait photographer—she did portraits two or three times a month for The Observer newspaper—and seen individually they were great. But I once looked through a collection of maybe 100 of them, and I came away with the feeling that they were essentially the same portrait, just with different subjects. Similarly, albeit on an altogether different level, Frans Hals’ portraits: all individually utterly brilliant, but not really meant to be seen in an exhibition of 50 or more. I was ready to look at pictures of something very different well before the end of the exhibition."

John Camp: "Your analysis of Wegman made me think of Hendrick Kerstens and the photos he takes of his daughter, in the faux old-masters style. As you say, it's a schtick, and often quite amusing as well as quite striking. I particularly like the one with the toilet paper rolls."

Comments

[Ed Hawco]

The term is actually “Richardsonian Romanesque,” which is even more colorful.

[Fixed! Thanks. --Mike]

[Herman Krieger]

Where is William Wegman?

[Sal Santamaura]

Mike, you once replied to my comment about seeking a particular shift lens by pointing out that "they're not needed" with digital imaging. OK, but, given the ease with which one can correct converging verticals during post processing today, why is the Rockwell Museum in Corning leaning backwards? :-)

[Not my photo Sal! --Mike]

[Anton Wilhelm Stolzing]

Koudelka and HCB may have had a point. NOT TAKING PHOTOS does not hone your skills. Therefore, even if you have a block and are not inspired at all, it might be useful to take some photos every day. You do not have to show them to anybody.

[Jim]

The reframing video in the link is no available. This one is:
https://youtu.be/DZ2yIjy-HHw?si=IluFUrzFQL2TYHn9

[Moose]

"More illustrations to come."

My hope for almost every post. I imagine many here are like me - visually oriented:

"This is an essential aspect of a work of art: you can’t empty it of its contents and patly move on. . . . A work of art tends to speak of things that are at once too large and too intimate to be summed up, and they speak of them by not speaking at all."
- All the Beauty in the World, Patrick Bringly

[William Lewis]

I've been doing photo a day project with my Leica with my 50mm Sonnar type lenses since January 1. So far (knock on wood) I haven't missed a day this year though I did need one safety shot and more than a few of my dailies have been stinkers. But the practice has been useful and occasionally produced some very good shots - https://rangefinderforum.com/attachments/l1001232-jpg.4842329/

[Bruce Moseley]

Not central to this but i was fascinated – and you might be too – to learn that Albert Bierstadt had a summer studio in the Central New York village of Waterville (a few hours east of Penn Yan).

[Dave Fultz]

"One interesting thing he told me about is a saying among contemporary figurative painters: "Paint two days a week and you stay the same, three days and you get better." "

This is old martial arts knowledge interestingly enough. One day a week you'll remember things; 2 days, you'll maintain your skills; 3 days, you'll start to grow; 4-days plus and you're a young fire-breathing blackbelt who has to do this. :)

Dave

[Jim Meeks]

I once saw a Wegman exhibit, and I still love the one of Ed Ruscha and Fay Ray.

And speaking of Tonalism, look for the work of Albert Pinkham Ryder. Amazing paintings, quirky guy.