A somewhat critical review (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/arts/design/17smit.html?pagewanted=1) of Penn's show at Washington National Gallery. The reviewer preferred Penn's silver gelatin prints to his later use of pt/pl.

I don't know if it's critical or not. I do believe the reviewer has set a new USA record for obscure references with turgid, obscure artistic references. Or maybe she has not seen a platinum print before...

Man, talk about overwritten. She must be paid by the word.

Boy, do I feel informed and inferior! :rolleyes:

This:

"... building the spontaneous aesthetic of pioneers like Martin Munkacsi into a kind of distilled baroque tour de force that often conveyed a sense of movement, however starkly arrested."

... HAS to set some sort of new record.

My reaction - snappy rejoinder - to this: Grade IV (highest) blank look, while commenting, "Huh? Say whut?"

Hmm ... "A distilled baroque tour de force"...? Possibly some sort of Napoleon-Brandy-type liqueur???

I would like to know what the $·%&/%$ is a Saarinen Tulip chair?

Take look here for the Saarinen Tulip Chair

http://www.surrounding.com/Products/Modern_Classics/Saarinen_Tulip_Chair.asp

I, for one, saw an Irvin Penn platinum print last Sat at the Amon Carter Museum and thought the portrait was as nice an image as could be made. It was a 16x20 and she dont know beans.

lee\c

I just bought this book two days ago. Really wish I could have seen the prints in person. Anyway, I enjoyed it and am pleased to have it in the "library".

So it took her two pages to write nothing? I am not familiar with Penn's Pt/Pd work nor this ehibit but this writer makes no point whatsoever about it.. She has snippets of many points but never follows them through. I read it twice pulled out the dictionary a couple of times and each time asked myself what her point was. I still don't get the connection between the images and the Tulip chair that looks nothing like a Tulip.

It seems the reviwer is an accomplished name-dropper - with absolutely no clue who those people were and what they did.

I recognize most of the names, and I read and write academic criticism for a living, and I enjoy some of it, but that was just sophomoric.

"In the late 1940's and 50's, with Richard Avedon playing Pollock to his de Kooning - or perhaps the other way around [...]"--Please.

She?.....Robert A. Smith
Blah, blah etc. etc.

Roberta Smith is evidently competing for the Bulwer-Lytton prize.

What I found funny is that the chair certainly has a fancy name, I was expecting a beautifully wooden carved or built chair, and then I chacked the link provided and found out it was a plastic chair that many here in Mexico have as lawn furniture......go figure!

Yes, the Saarinen chair was mass produced and imitated in many forms, and I always think of them as the 1970s chairs my grandfather had in his office, but they really did define an era.

as you might know Penn was married to Lisa Fonsagrives, and she was from Sweden..
'as a result he gave the Swedish state about 150 images some years ago..

many (about 100) was exhibited here in Denmark, and I had the good fortune to see them..
I have never seen such beautiful work (Sally Mann excluded)- especially his large Platinum prints..

I think I could find a small space for one of theese Platinum prints here in my home...(If I looked hard enough)

Isn't a critic one who is gifted with verbal diarrhea, mental masturbation, vaccinated with a phonograph needle and fluent in the skills of communication? tim