Just come back from having a quick peek at the Diane Arbus exhibition at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh on what has turned out to be a grey, blustery March afternoon.
Other than knowing she was a famous photographer, and having seen a few of her pictures on Wikipedia, my knowledge of the great lady’s work was (and is) limited. Plus, I don’t much like going to galleries – institutionalised art, people standing around, you getting in their way, they in yours, people with headphones on looking distracted, a slightly stuffy atmosphere… a sense of curated jewels of the past.
But the Dean Gallery is a bit of a cracker. Beautifully appointed, wonderful shades of blue paint in the reception area, a great sense of a stately home…and all open to the great unwashed - including my good self, in a metaphorical sense of course.
And the exhibition – quite surprising. It’s free for a start – and why, I wonder? Loads of pictures on show, each one superbly commented on, must have cost someone a fortune to put together so well. Taxpayers of the world rejoice, I suppose….Contrast this with the Seurat exhibition at the Frankfurt Schirn we saw recently, which was poor in comparison and charged around 8 Euros to get in. Hm.
Well, if you’re into Arbus’ kinda stuff – black and white square shots of all sorts of oddities and misfits - dwarfs, people in mental asylums, giants, people with masks on, people tattooed all over – then get yourself to the Dean.
I decided that I’m not. Mankind can only take so much reality as Mr. Eliot said….. And seeing a couple on the way out – her with 1960s beehive, him with tattooes covering his whole neck. – I decided to scuttle away, away from the clicking of a camera lens at society’s edges, an eye into closed world, and back to the safer scenery of my own virtual world.
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Just a quick thought on your comments on Diane Arbus.... If you were to view these images from the perspective of the sixties would you view them in the same way? Or would the filter of photography as it was practised then inform your perception. Might you have seen her work as an exploration by an outsider into the souls of other tortured outsiders?
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Hi Brendan, thanks for the comment...interesting. not sure that i can access the eye of a sixties viewer, and for sure i would see them so differently. the filter effect....sure it would have informed my view, but probably in a more "arts-reverential" manner, more respect, more awe, less sense of confidence cum liberation that we have now....maybe one difference would be in the gap between "viewed" and "viewer", with the 1960s providing for sure the greater gap and therefore the greater shock if you know what I mean. thanks again for thoughts, appreciated!
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