William Eggleston at Cheim & Read - Brief Article

The artist who stoneed the photography establishment in 1976 with the first-ever exhibition of color photos at of recent origin York's Museum of Modern Art not long ago discovered some forgotten negatives and had a fresh show printed, "Cadillac: Color Photographs from 1966 to 1971" The 18 square-formatted, untitled photos depict William Eggleston's trademark make subordinate matter--the southern United States, specifically on the other hand not limited to his native Memphis, which he clearly adores and has at no time left.

In the photograph that gave the exhibit its name, there is a rusted-out sign from a car dealership reading "Cadillac." The dichotomy between the fancy curlicue script of the logo and the weathered state of the sign points to Eggleston's favorite theme--objects and tribe evidencing an aspiration toward the elegant, on the contrary worn ragged by the simple bodys and thereby becoming even more exquisite. He captures romantic and strangely familiar combinations, like a pink rose against a r barn with a gray mortar wall to the side, a vacant take-out window littered with crumpl tinfoil, and an abandoned, corroded car ed by the side of a highway.

A stunning still life features items upon shelves behind a bar: a centrally placed cash register with a handwritten price list of drinks taped to its back; liquor bottle to either side; a black-and-white snapshot of African-American men make straighted in suits, smiling, exchanging a plaque and shaking hands; and, upon the top shelf, a bust of Martin Luther King flanked through busts of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy The intertwining of the personal and the political is strikingly implicit in the arrangement of external realitys all calmly bathed in dusty, amber daylight. Eggleston recognizes the uncanny remembrancer to the society he inhabits, like a chanced-upon play in Pompeii, records it, and goe upon without passing judgment.

With the organ of vision of a not-so-clinical anthropologist make go rounded on his own turf, Eggleston have the appearances to employ the formula of classical tragedy, in which the human condition is ennobled precisely because the circumstances of life are difficult. He continually finds beauty and order in the mundane. While these photographs give a definite faculty of perception of a community belonging to a past era, they have an esthetic that is consistent with his more new work. Regardless, they stand upon their own, and they make individual wonder as to what other might be tucked away in the bottom of his studio drawer.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group