Latest news with #EyesOpenintheDark
The Guardian
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Condoms, cows and contortions: Peter Hujar's astonishing vision
A new exhibition is the first to take on the full breadth of Peter Hujar's later photography, co-curated by the artist's friend and printer, Gary Schneider, and his biographer, John Douglas Miller. Hujar's principal concern was with forms of portraiture – of his friends and denizens of the downtown scene, whom he encountered on the street, shot in his apartment studio or sought out backstage. The show has received glowing reviews in both the Guardian and Observer. Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark is at Raven Row, London until 6 April. All photographs: The Peter Hujar Archive/DACS London/Pace Gallery, NY/Fraenkel Gallery, SF/Maureen Paley, London and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich Hujar was a central figure in the downtown scene of 1970s and early 1980s New York, but at his death in 1987 from Aids-related pneumonia his work was largely unknown to a broader art world. Now it is widely admired for its austere elegance and emotional charge. The exhibition also reveals the darkening tone of Hujar's photography in the early 1980s, as the Aids crisis devastated his community, and his work entered into dialogue with the younger artist David Wojnarowicz John Douglas Miller writes: 'This is such a Romantic image and one of only two early works in the Raven Row exhibition. Peter Hujar made a trip to Florida with the painter Joe Raffaele, to visit Paul Thek and his then lover, the set designer and painter Peter Harvey who introduced them to artists and writers in Key West including Tennessee Williams. Back in New York, Hujar and Thek would become lovers in the early 1960s, just as Thek began to gain serious attention from the art world' John Douglas Miller: 'Hujar was interested in the motif of the veil throughout his work, whether the veil was literal, as is the case here, or achieved through tonal work in the darkroom. This was taken backstage at Robert Wilson's The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin. It's a remarkably elegant image, suitably operatic given the context' John Douglas Miller: 'Richie was a performance artist and actor, often found performing outside the luxury stores on 5th Avenue or hanging out at Max Kansas City with Andy Warhol's crowd. This is the first image in the exhibition, and it shows Gallo backstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where he was performing in experimental theatre director Robert Wilson's opera, The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin. The text on the door reads 'Open Slowly'. Gallo looks as though he's going to do anything but' Writer Fernanda Eberstadt: '[Stephen] flounced into a branch of Chemical Bank wearing a gown made of dollar bills, with breasts formed by condoms filled with fake blood. Shrieking that someone had forged a million-dollar check in his name and he wanted the money back 'Now!', Stephen exploded his condom-breasts like a gender jihadi and began writing cheques with the blood. He was forgotten, because his art was so militantly ephemeral, and because most of the photographers who documented his performances also died of Aids and were forgotten' Eyes Open in the Dark concentrates on Hujar's later work, when his emergence from a debilitating depression in 1976 brought about a new expansiveness. John Douglas Miller writes: 'Hujar was often interested in contorted poses. I think it has to do with where the mind has to go in order to perform them – the sitter must fully inhabit their body and let go of their day-to-day defences' John Douglas Miller: 'Ethyl Eichelberger was, by all accounts, a remarkable performer in off-off Broadway productions. She had the opportunity and talent to be a successful conventional stage actor, but was determined to plough her own furrow, a wilfulness that Hujar always respected. They were extremely close and Ethyl was one of four people at Hujar's bedside when he died' John Douglas Miller: 'Hujar's animal portraits are rightly admired for the way he seems to be able to capture the specific nature of the animal he is photographing without anthropomorphising them, or at least by raising the question of what is at stake in our desire to do so. He maintains something of the uncanny in our encounters with animals. Sometimes his animal portraits feel tragic and deep, but here a lighter comic element is provided by the apparent relationship between the two cows and their questioning regard of the camera' John Douglas Miller: 'I love this image of a turkey. It's so wonderfully other, the strange prehistoric feel of it, the wonderful contrast of textures. The bird's seeming self-regard, and ancient, alien gaze. The neck is so sculptural, as though it were cast in metal, or beads of mercury. When we began hanging the show on the day of Trump's inauguration, I kept looking at this image and the associations were difficult to avoid: the destruction of nature, turkeys voting for Christmas, preening self-importance' Gary Schneider: 'Peter made many self-portraits. This one in his jock strap is particularly proud and defies the audience, even though he looks world-weary. Showing off his always-impressive physique. At this moment he was in his late 40s. There are two other self-portraits from the same session in the Raven Row exhibition. In each he examines himself in very different attitudes' Gary Schneider: 'John Flowers's character was known as Devil with a Blue Dress. There were two Palm Casino Revues: 1972 and 1974. These revues were a series of many short performances produced by Sheyla Baykal, a close friend of Peter's. A portrait of her is also in the exhibition and has not been exhibited previously' John Douglas Miller: 'This is another image that hasn't been shown before. It's extraordinarily intimate and the tonalities are quite beautiful. We tried hard to identify the sitter but without success so far. Hujar often photographed people he met on the street who he invited up to his loft and she may have been one of them, her name, for now, lost to time' John Douglas Miller: 'This is a ruined staircase in one of the abandoned piers on the west side of Manhattan. In the 1970s and 80s the piers became vagabond art spaces and cruising zones and Hujar often photographed them. This image is a particularly foreboding one, and as with so much of Hujar's work, it is about the possibility of encounter. There might be a trick up those steps, or there might be a knife. But at the same time the staircase and the darkness become something more abstract, resonant and existential'
The Guardian
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Between austerity and empathy': UK show celebrates late New York photographer Peter Hujar
The curators of an exhibition of one of New York's most important photographers, who captured gay life in the city during the 1970s, hope the show will shed new light on an artist whose work was deemed too 'difficult' in his lifetime. Eyes Open in the Dark, which opens at Raven Row in London on Thursday, is the largest UK exhibition of photographs by Peter Hujar, who has been acclaimed for the warmth and compassion of his images but was little known during his lifetime. Hujar died in 1987 of Aids-related pneumonia having published one book in his lifetime, Portraits in Life and Death, which received just four reviews. His sitters were some of the most culturally significant figures of 70s New York, including Susan Sontag and Fran Lebowitz. Hujar is about to be played on the big screen by Ben Whishaw in Ira Sachs' film Peter Hujar's Day, which premiered at Sundance on Monday and is based on a 37-page book of the same name written by his close friend Linda Rosenkrantz. It's an incredible turnaround for a photographer who, other than from a small, committed group of advocates including Nan Goldin, struggled for recognition in his lifetime and has only found it in the last decade. Hujar's biographer John Douglas Millar said there was a desire that at the Raven Row exhibition more of Hujar's later work was shown, which is completely different from the portraiture for which he has become known. For example, there is a particular focus on the photographer's work during one day in 1976. 'There's a single day on Easter Sunday when he made an extraordinary series of works,' Millar said. 'He shoots the faithful coming out of church uptown, then moves down to the west side piers where there was a cruising scene and an arts scene, and he ends the day by going to the top of the World Trade Center and takes an image of his world. He's moving across genres in a single day.' Millar said the series showed the range of interests that Hujar had, which spanned portraiture, architectural studies and erotica. Gary Schneider, a friend of Hujar and an artist, admitted Hujar could be unforgiving at times and was particularly short with gallerists, which could explain why his work is only now being sought out. Schneider said: 'He was considered a great photographer by a very small group of people around him. He did exhibit but he was very contentious – if someone put a foot wrong he would cancel them.' Raven Row's director, Alex Sainsbury, said: 'It's fair to say he was great at collaborating with the sitters but he wasn't good at working with anyone who ran a gallery or might promote his work.' Despite Hujar's spiky reputation he has been embraced by contemporary art fans, primarily because of the tenderness of his photographs, many of which were of downtown art figures who went on to die during the Aids crisis. 'There's an increased interest in empathy in art, people are looking for it and Peter's work has it,' Salisbury said. 'It has this knife-edge quality between austerity and empathy.' Millar said: 'What he's photographing is difficult for the mainstream to accept; he didn't fit in the 1970s. A lot of stuff he was shooting, especially his erotica, wouldn't have worked. He can get a much better reading now that it couldn't in the 1970s, it wasn't fashionable.' Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark runs from 30 January to 6 April.
