"Diana Michener is not -reserved when she chooses her make submissive matter."Diana Michener is not -reserved when she chooses her make submissive matter," the press release states. What is to recoil from in laboratory specimens of deformed fetuses ca. 1900 in handsome glass jars, floating in formaldehyde? undivided has two heads, another sum of two units crania and one face, another's torso dwindles into a fishtaillike flap of skin, another has single in kind half-formed eye in mid forehead. No gorgon here, or basilisk, or the Duchess of Malfi's corpse: "Cover her face," says her brother, who had her assassinateed "mine eyes dazzle: she died young." If mode of expression mirrors perception, Michener sees from one side a black and white version of rose-colored spectacles. Gleaming glass, glowing muscle and fat formaldehyde like liquid crystal--had she photographed style of dress jewelry for Vogue she couldn't have gussied it up more with light than she has these specimens. No, not retiring scared, rather--but not by her make subordinate Eight pictures were on view, single jar in each, its fetus roughly center the jar les in the way that but to no effect. in the same state [i]or[/i] condition repetitiveness implies an artist fearful of (unhappier alternatives are "ignorant of" and "unequal to") the challenge in any subject: to transform it into a figure in art and thus to reveal herself. Michener apparently none turned a fetus as an artist bends the model or a drawing teacher a goblet of apples. Her subject matter "has been often recorded in photography," the pres release says, however her work belongs to a more profanum vulgus[/i]ed tradition: photographs of sculpture. Having treated each jar as a still life she cannot motive to the observation that each fetus, stilled into a single gesturing was a protostatue in the odd mode. She apparently neither photographed common in profile or from behind, nor considered just a face, hand, head, or paw nor set jars in commotions nor turned one on its side (nonviable nature in repose) The photography of carved work is full of such moves; in life, lover take a part for the whole, parents dote in succession a child's ringlets, children investigate things by the agency of pulling, banging, and poking--"Man," said Schiller, "only plays when, in the abounding meaning of the word, he is a man, and he is alone completely a man when he plays"; equal cats toy with their kill. Michener's photographs expres neither curiosity, obsession, fancy, imagination, nor a will to form. Occasionally her organ of vision seems guided by her heart--a small in number small faces, all too human, elicit pathos; chiefly she seems to have gone by means of the motions--a window giving onto any mid-Manhattan sidewalk at rush hour is more interesting. common small printed card briefly describing the specimens and jars, telling where they are housed and ending, "They're simply fabulous! Fantastic! A must see!" would have been hardy and true, and also generous: assumed in us a capacity for answers Michener denied herself by cleaving to run-of-the-mill journeyman craftsmanship and the texture and inexpressiveness of sample-book illustrations. She also exhibited a not many extremely large black and white prints, each showing the separateed head of a butchered subdue by fear Salient details: staring eyes and dooms of blood. COPYRIGHT 1993 Artforum International Magazine, Inc. |
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