JTF (just the facts): A total of 37 black and white photographs, alternately framed in black/white and matted, and hung against grey and yellow walls in the two room gallery space. All of the works are vintage gelatin silver prints, taken between 1959 and 1976. Image sizes are roughly 9×13. (Installation shots below, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery.)
Comments/Context: While the business logic behind a companion selling show is perfectly obvious (put on an exhibit of available work to coincide with a major museum retrospective so that collectors who are inspired by the museum experience have a convenient place to satisfy their new craving), making that show into something more than just a forgettable grab bag of prints is trickier than it sounds. Since it is nearly always difficult to compete with the larger museum exhibit in terms of comprehensiveness or extreme rarity, the solution is often to generate a mix of greatest hits and lesser known gems, hoping to appeal to a broad range of potentially interested parties.
While this show of Garry Winogrand vintage prints generally follows this unwritten rule, what makes it more effective than most companion selling shows is that it has been organized with a narrower, easier to understand framework than the larger touring retrospective. Against the backdrop of the loose chronological and geographical arc of the big show, the gallery version is a tightly controlled sampler driven by topical subject matter groups (which often became books). The show is broken into six sections (of six pictures each), arguably hitting the notable high points in Winogrand’s career: Street, Central Park, Women, Animals, Public Relations, and Texas.
If we as viewers could consistently walk away understanding these six themes in Winogrand’s work, however oversimplified they might be, we’d be pretty well educated (at least at a high level), and the bite sized sampler of each motif paired with the rigorous gridded structure is surprisingly effective in getting across what’s artistically and culturally important in his photography in a minimum number of images. The reduced scope of this show also helps to highlight the iconic images that have been included here (the family with baby chimps, the extended elephant trunk, the hard hat rally, the Easter Sunday streaker, the white boa/exposed breast at the Centennial Ball etc.); they stand out much more prominently against an intimate backdrop of a handful of pictures rather than having to compete with the broader sweep of hundreds of photographs at the museum.
Had this show been seen at a different time, outside the long shadow of the monumental retrospective, we might have been more impressed with the straightforward clarity of its vision and the quality of its offerings. Instead, it will likely be remembered as a supplemental and perhaps obvious afterthought, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t one of the better executed, sneakily good adjunct shows we’ve seen in the past few years.
Collector’s POV: The works in the this show are priced between $4800 and $65000, with some already sold. Winogrand’s prints and portfolios are routinely available in the secondary markets, with single image prices ranging from roughly $1000 to nearly $60000 and multi-image groups/portfolios often ranging into six figures.
