Francesca Woodman - Zigzag, at Victoria Miro Gallery, 14 George Street, Mayfair, London.
I was very fortunate to see Francesca Woodman's work at the Guggenheim in New York 18 months ago. It was one of those discoveries that are thrilling and awe-inspiring and Woodman has been one of my favourite artists ever since. I was therefore delighted when I found out that there was an exhibition of her work in London and was determined not to miss it. The last day of the exhibition was 3 days after we got back to the UK after a 10-week stay in Greece but that did not stop us. We visited on the last day and it was a real joy seeing her photographs again.
The exhibition considered the zigzag and other geometrical forms as recurring visual themes in Woodman's work. Woodman's practice is often discussed in terms of its surreal and symbolic imagery, but her work was grounded in a sophisticated understanding of form. Her photography exemplified strong compositional motifs, and the repetitive, regular shape of the zigzag, with its strong lines and angles, was a form she used in images of disparate subjects.
Most of Woodman's gelatin silver prints feature this strong, idiosyncratic abstract lineage. As George Woodman, the artist's father pointed out, 'modernist abstract art devotes itself to the form of the square, the rectangle, the box, the intersection of streets, the whole right angle world of horizontal and vertical. Domination by a zigzag motif is very rare... It creates a world of flux without horizon, a rhythmic oscillation. Francesca made studies of zigzags: from representations of houses, noses, hands and babies' legs. A related investigation was the series Bridges and Tiaras. In these prints, the bridge, arching over the river, and the tiara, arching over the woman's head, are contrasted and linked by the logic of analogy. Francesca creates visual puns, jokes and poetry in this series'.
For a more detailed and in-depth analysis of the artist's work as well as more photographs of her work you can go here, here and here.
Untitled, MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire, 1980
Untitled, MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire, 1980
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-78
Untitled, Rome, Italy, 1977-78
Untitled, New York, 1979-80
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-78
Untitled, New York, 1979-80
Untitled, MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire, 1980
Untitled, MacDowell Colony, 1979-80
Untitled, New York, 1979-80
On Being An Angel, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
from the Angel Series, Rome, Italy, 1977-78
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
Untitled, Antella, Italy, 1977-78
From Space2, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
Space2, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-76
Untitled, New York, 1979-80
Self Portrait, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
Zig Zag, New York, 1980
Zig Zag Study, New York, 1980
In a letter to a friend Woodman described this work as follows: 'It will be ... a long string of images held together by a long compositional zigzag, thus the corner of a building in one frame fits into the elbow of a girl in the next frame into a book in the third frame, the images are both very personal mysterious ones and harsh images of outdoor city life. It is hard to get the adjoining images to fit the rigorous structural scaffold'.
Looking closer:
Source:
Gallery information.
Good that you were able to catch the exhibition. Her work merits a lot of thought, and fortuitously it fits in with my current pondering about grids.
ReplyDeleteSo many levels to her work Olga, so many layers and so much to think about. And yes, I did think of you and your current thinking as I was doing this post - perfect timing.
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