A Weimaraner balances on a child's bicycle at the edge of a painted sea, a patterned towel slung over one shoulder, gazing off down the empty beach with the calm dignity of a holidaymaker who has done this many times before. William Wegman made this unique Polaroid in 1991, and it distills the deadpan tenderness that has made his dogs among the most beloved figures in contemporary art, absurd and graceful at once, never the butt of the joke but always its knowing partner.
Wegman began photographing his Weimaraners in the 1970s, first Man Ray and then Fay Ray and her descendants, and in the 1980s gained access to the extraordinary 20-by-24-inch Polaroid camera, one of only a handful ever built and now effectively extinct since the film ceased production. Each exposure is singular, a one-of-a-kind object that cannot be reprinted, rendering fur, fabric, and that unmistakable amber eye in saturated, immediate color. The painted beach behind, the toy bicycle, the jaunty towel, all play it perfectly straight, and the dog's unbothered poise is what makes us laugh and then, oddly, feel something. That scarcity and that wit together give these works their particular preciousness.
Beneath the comedy lies real art-historical play, on portraiture, on costume, on our endless urge to see ourselves in animals, the same intelligence that carried him from the 1970s avant-garde to a generation raised on his Sesame Street films. Wegman's work is held in the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, and the Centre Pompidou. This unique color Polaroid is Wegman at his most charming and most collectible.
A Weimaraner balances on a child's bicycle at the edge of a painted sea, a patterned towel slung over one shoulder, gazing off down the empty beach with the calm dignity of a holidaymaker who has done this many times before. William Wegman made this unique Polaroid in 1991, and it distills the deadpan tenderness that has made his dogs among the most beloved figures in contemporary art, absurd and graceful at once, never the butt of the joke but always its knowing partner.
Wegman began photographing his Weimaraners in the 1970s, first Man Ray and then Fay Ray and her descendants, and in the 1980s gained access to the extraordinary 20-by-24-inch Polaroid camera, one of only a handful ever built and now effectively extinct since the film ceased production. Each exposure is singular, a one-of-a-kind object that cannot be reprinted, rendering fur, fabric, and that unmistakable amber eye in saturated, immediate color. The painted beach behind, the toy bicycle, the jaunty towel, all play it perfectly straight, and the dog's unbothered poise is what makes us laugh and then, oddly, feel something. That scarcity and that wit together give these works their particular preciousness.
Beneath the comedy lies real art-historical play, on portraiture, on costume, on our endless urge to see ourselves in animals, the same intelligence that carried him from the 1970s avant-garde to a generation raised on his Sesame Street films. Wegman's work is held in the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, and the Centre Pompidou. This unique color Polaroid is Wegman at his most charming and most collectible.