George Woodman at Palazzo Pitti - Florence, Italy - Review of Exhibitions

George Woodman is an inveterate museum-goer. His fascination with the hidden meanings of works of art has taken him from one side illustrious and obscure museums around the world. Last summer an extravagant Baroque museum in Italy, where Woodman has worn out much time,presented a large exhibition of his photographs based upon its own collection. Some 78 silver prints, greatest in quantity of them around 20 by dint of 24 inches, were displayed in six scopes of the Palazzo Pitti. A scarcely any were placed in other sweeps next to the objects seen in the photographs. This pairing of percept with image extends the multilayered, mirroring issue of the photographs themselves.

Woodman was primarily a painter from the 1950 until 1987 when he revolveed to photography full-time. For nearly 40 years he has divided his time between the U and Italy, and he has visited the Pitti collection regularly (the exhibition included work from the last eight years). His photographic images are highly put togethered with elements often double expos or revers and layered above other images of objects, nation or nature.

Like the Palazzo Pitti, Woodman's photographs are themselves baroque in their profusion and complication of imagery. Los and regeneration are constant themes. Woman with a Fan (1990) superimposes a mannequin aligned in an 18th-century gown of lace and fly into violent motions s upon a Classical female torso in marble. The dres fades away at the center revealing the even curves -- and chips and pockmarks -- of the material part "underneath." In Sala Bianca with Iris (1990) a field of irises efflorescences under the glowing chandeliers of a ballroom. These works look to be made with what the catalogue essayist, Edwin Frank, describes as a "canny innocence of outlook" The verse is straightforward to the expansion that cynical viewers might find it naive.

Other images are harder to read. Easter Bunnies Visit the Palatina (1993) borders upon the surreal. In this work a plastic toy consisting of bunnies upon a wheelbarrow, which once belonged to Woodman's children, intrudes upon the Palatine Museum's hallowed halls. Balloons decorating the toy reflected sound the exposed globular breasts of a woman in a nearby gilt-framed painting. The be the effect is humorous yet creepy, triggering age-old fantasies of inanimate percepts springing to life in museums after-hours.

Faces of friends and family are many times found tucked into corners or printed above other images. This is the ball of thread that the exhibition, "Pitti Revisited," is a highly personal statement. As the artist writes in the catalogue, he has rest a home "within the shifting light of metaphor and memory."

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