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Indepth Arts News:
"William Wegman : Man with the Dogs"
2009-09-04 until 2009-10-02
Fortune Cookie Project
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SG Singapore
Pioneer video artist, painter and photographer William Wegman comes to town in September at Fortune Cookie Projects. Renowned the world over as the 'Man with the dogs,' Wegman has used his celebrated troupe of Weimaraners to capture the attention of curators, collectors and critics as well as the general public. Always taken seriously by the cognoscenti, but never taking himself seriously, Wegman, over the past 40 years, has created a body of work that appeals to both the most conceptually-minded viewer as well as someone who just likes a good joke. The subject of countless museum and gallery exhibitions around the world, Wegman has also produced work for the general viewer, as seen on America's Saturday Night Live and Sesame Street. Using the simplest of media, Wegman's work reaches out to an audience ranging from the littlest toddler to the oldest contemporary art specialist.
William Wegman was born December 2, 1943 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He received a BFA in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1965 and an MFA from the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana in 1967. From 1968 to 1970 he taught at the University of Wisconsin in Wasau, Waukesha and in Madison. In the fall of 1970 he moved to Southern California to begin a one year teaching position at California State College, Long Beach. At these various universities, Wegman's interest in areas beyond painting began to develop, ultimately leading him to photography and to video. It was in Long Beach that he got his dog, Man Ray, with whom he began a long and fruitful collaboration. Man Ray, known in the art world and beyond for his endearing deadpan presence, became a central figure in Wegman's photographs and videotapes. In 1972, Wegman and Man Ray moved to New York and continued a collaboration that was to last for twelve years.
In 1986 a new dog, Fay Ray, came into Wegman's life and soon thereafter another prolific collaboration began, marked by Wegman's extensive use of the Polaroid 20 x 24 camera. With the birth of Fay's litter in 1989, Wegman's cast grew to include Fay's offspring: Battina, Crooky and Chundo. Since then four new dogs have joined the family; Battina's son Chip in 1995, Chip's son Bobbin in1999, Candy in 2000 and Candy and Bobbin's daughter Penny in 2004.
Out of Wegman's involvement with this cast of characters grew a series of books inspired by their various acting abilities. The first of these books, "Cinderella", starred the ingenue Battina as Cinderella, Fay as her evil stepmother and Chundo as the ever valiant Prince Charming. Since then, Wegman has published a number of children's books based not only on classic tales but also on stories of his own invention. These books include "Little Red Riding Hood", "Mother Goose", "Farm Days", "My Town", "ABC", "Circle/Triangle/Square", "Surprise Party", and "Chip Wants A Dog" (all Hyperion). Wegman has also published a number of books for adults such as "Fay", the story of his life with Fay Ray, "Puppies", a tale of all the litters to date (both Hyperion) and, in the fall of 2002, "William Wegman 20 x 24" (Abrams), a photographic survey of almost thirty years of Wegman's work with the 20 x 24" Polaroid camera.
Wegman has created film and video works for Saturday Night Live and Nickelodeon and his video segments for Sesame Street have appeared regularly since 1989. His videos include "Alphabet Soup," "Fay's Twelve Days of Christmas" and "Mother Goose." In 1995, Wegman's film "The Hardly Boys", starring his favorite actors, Fay, Battina, Crooky and Chundo, was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. After a twenty year hiatus, Wegman returned to the format of his video work from the 70's producing two new reels of video works in 1998 and 1999.
Wegman's photographs, videotapes, paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. A retrospective of his work originated by the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne travelled to museums throughout Europe and the United States including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Exhibitions of his early photographic work and his drawings were mounted by the FRAC Limousin in Limoges, France, each accompanied by comprehensive catalogues of this work. Recent gallery exhibitions include new photographic and video work with Pace MacGill in New York and Marc Selwyn in Los Angeles as well as exhibitions of new paintings and works on paper with Texas Gallery in Houston, Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York and Galeria Cardi & Co. in Milan. The retrospective exhibition "Funney/Strange," which opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2006 (with a catalogue published by Yale University), made its final stop at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus in the fall of 2007.
William Wegman lives in New York and in Maine where he continues to make videos, to take photographs and to make drawings and paintings.
The Organisers
Fortune Cookie Projects, an international art advisory and curatorial firm with offices in Singapore and New York, has long been active in organising exhibitions of major artists throughout Asia. Mary Dinaburg and Howard Rutkowski, the principals of Fortune Cookie Projects, each have over thirty years experience in the international contemporary art market.
Projects featuring prominent artists such as Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, Jorg Immendorff, A.R. Penck, Per Kirkeby and Markus Lupertz have been realized in Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Hong Kong. Most recently Fortune Cookie Projects curated the first major retrospective of paintings by Julian Schnabel, which traveled throughout China and Korea.
Fortune Cookie Projects has also been instrumental in curating exhibitions and securing platforms for Asian artists at institutional and commercial venues in the United States and in Europe.
Recent projects in Singapore include Showcase Singapore, a boutique contemporary art fair which debuted in September 2008, Julian Schnabel - Recent Work, March-April 2009 and Ian Woo, Flux Technicolour, May-June 2009.
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