login    password    artist  buyer  gallery  
Not a member? Register
absolutearts.com logo HOME REGISTER BUY ART SEARCH ART TRENDS COLLECT ART ART NEWS
 
 
Indepth Arts News:

"Continuous Replay: The Photographs of Arnie Zane"
2000-10-25 until 2000-12-24
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley, CA, USA United States of America

Best known as a cofounder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Arnie Zane actually began his exploration of the human form through photography rather than dance. Continuous Replay, on view in the museum's Theater Gallery, examines Zane's photographic oeuvre both before and after he rose to fame as a choreographer with Bill T. Jones. The show provides fascinating insights into the intersections of these two very different modes of expression and how each informed the other within Zane's vision.

Zane met Jones in 1971 and the two became partners in both life and art until Zane's death from AIDS in 1988. The earliest photographs in the exhibition date from 1971, though in appearance they could have been Pictorialist images made at the turn of the twentieth century. Printed in sepia tones, they are posed, highly theatrical depictions of Zane's circle of friends. Even so, they reflect a great deal of interest in the movement and postures of the human body expressing itself.

Zane's real strength was in the genre of portraiture. (Even his first dance solo, in 1973, was titled First Portrait.) By the mid-1970s, Zane began exploring nontraditional subjects in his portraits, for example, creating tightly cropped, frontally posed images of an aging eccentric. Zane also began to work on a series of nude torsos of Jones, other dancers, neighborhood toughs, and various acquaintances. He hoped to convey through gestures and attitudes the interior lives of his subjects.

As Zane blossomed as a choreographer, he also experimented with time and space in his photography. He made serialized images, projected them as slide pieces, and created video works. He found that through repeating images he could construct a rhythm and build momentum in a way akin to dance. The dance company itself began incorporating projections into some of its pieces.

The exhibition and accompanying catalog revisit Zane's work and find in it a sustained investigation of the body, the production of identity, and the rhetoric of difference. It is confrontational in the manner of the dance company's noted works, and always aware of the expressive value of gesture and the relationship between sight and knowledge.

Mark Petr
Former Assistant Curator

IMAGE:
Arnie Zane: Frank
c. 1975 (detail);
four images


Related Links:


YOUR FIRST STOP FOR ART ONLINE!
HELP MEDIA KIT SERVICES CONTACT


Discover over 150,000 works of contemporary art. Search by medium, subject matter, price and theme... research over 200,000 works by over 22,000 masters in the indepth art history section. Browse through new Art Blogs. Use our advanced artwork search interface.

Call for Artists, Premiere Portfolio sign-up for your Free Portfolio or create an Artist Portfolio today and sell your art at the marketplace for contemporary Art! Start a Gallery Site to exclusively showcase your gallery. Keep track of contemporary art with your free MYabsolutearts account.

 


Copyright 1995-2013. World Wide Arts Resources Corporation. All rights reserved