William Eggleston-After All These Years:
What I can not get over is how much these pictures still effect me, after nearly ten years of Photography classes and several years participating in real world economics these pictures still not only hold my attention, but leave me speechless after seeing something I missed for years. They are not theoretical, they do not pose answers, they ask more than they tell and leave the viewer to piece the puzzle together. Even their production and exhibition is not pretentious, mostly small prints 11x14, yet if you could take his careers worth of images and line them up start to finish there is not a color in the spectrum you wont find, a time of day not used, or a season missed. William Eggleston had a childlike gift, he saw in pure color.
"Babies See Pure Color, but Adults Peer Through a Prism of Language"
I can only guess that Eggleston has some measure of high functioning Autism or Synesthesia like that of the current record holder for the longest recitial of PI know as "the brain man."
Close inspection of Eggleston's images will lead to clues as to his inward perspective, though he is notorious for speaking in a combination of pure non-sense and methaphor, about the interpretation of his work. Just now while putting this article together a pairing jumped out at me. By Placing the old man with the gun pointed down on a quilt, next to the image of the woman with the Pixel quilt behind her the interpretation becomes pretty obvious. Follow that with a young Winston Eggleston rifling through a gun magazine sets the stage for events that could follow, the cultural input that can lead a wide eyed child to becoming an old gun toting womanizer. This is what is fascinating about Eggleston, he could synthesize Art, Culture, and Mythology(often Southern.) Just think of the bicycle in terms of Pop Art, a photographers Pop Art, it's larger than life, yet unlike most Pop Artists, Eggleston can move between genres to explore completely different sets of ideas, he floats about the art world gazing through the lens of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Street Photography and straight forward "Object" based art though his objects are not only significant for their color palette but for the cultural value instilled in them. He photographed things that seamlessly blend into our cultural mythology that makes up the framework we use in creating ourselves. He could also blend in new modern objects that wouldn't have real cultural cache' for decades to come such as Eames Lamps, Vintage Colored Tile, and 70's Motif Furniture. These are items that fledgling design students, hip Moms an Dad's, and young entrepreneurs now collect attempting to show their old school roots by digging through the past as a way to not only find something that is no longer mass-produced but also to show their appreciation for "modern" design and color. It's one thing to see value in these things now, some 30 years later, it's quite another to have defined it while part of your contemporary surroundings.
His art is his own, it doesn't make excuses for itself, and it doesn't need your approval or understanding. It's something of a mystery that he managed to gain the spotlight that he did, the objects of his art are easy to see as beautiful today, but it seems likely that they would have been hard to find value in when the images were created. One can only guess that if he does see in pure color, perhaps the same beacons he seems to respond to visually could also have been the messangers that helpped him find all the right people at all the right times. His influence can be seen in the likes of David Byrne's "True Stories," of which he created a photographic documentary while on set and his work has been expanded by virtually every significant Photographer and Southern Photographer to follow him; Birney Imes, Sarah Martin, Alec Soth, William Christenberry, Christian Patterson and Hackberry South Board of Trustees Member Mike Smith (not to be confused with Nashvillian Micheal W. Smith)
Marcel Duchamp said something to the nature of "future artists will be able to point and the object they point at will become art." --someone site me here plz : )
To that standard, I can only imagine he was speaking of Bill Eggleston.
William Eggleston lives in bars, in Memphis, TN - Cheers!
For more please visit: http://www.egglestontrust.com/
Fellow Southern Icon: Cat Power - Lived In Bars (Featuring William Eggleston)Close inspection of Eggleston's images will lead to clues as to his inward perspective, though he is notorious for speaking in a combination of pure non-sense and methaphor, about the interpretation of his work. Just now while putting this article together a pairing jumped out at me. By Placing the old man with the gun pointed down on a quilt, next to the image of the woman with the Pixel quilt behind her the interpretation becomes pretty obvious. Follow that with a young Winston Eggleston rifling through a gun magazine sets the stage for events that could follow, the cultural input that can lead a wide eyed child to becoming an old gun toting womanizer. This is what is fascinating about Eggleston, he could synthesize Art, Culture, and Mythology(often Southern.) Just think of the bicycle in terms of Pop Art, a photographers Pop Art, it's larger than life, yet unlike most Pop Artists, Eggleston can move between genres to explore completely different sets of ideas, he floats about the art world gazing through the lens of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Street Photography and straight forward "Object" based art though his objects are not only significant for their color palette but for the cultural value instilled in them. He photographed things that seamlessly blend into our cultural mythology that makes up the framework we use in creating ourselves. He could also blend in new modern objects that wouldn't have real cultural cache' for decades to come such as Eames Lamps, Vintage Colored Tile, and 70's Motif Furniture. These are items that fledgling design students, hip Moms an Dad's, and young entrepreneurs now collect attempting to show their old school roots by digging through the past as a way to not only find something that is no longer mass-produced but also to show their appreciation for "modern" design and color. It's one thing to see value in these things now, some 30 years later, it's quite another to have defined it while part of your contemporary surroundings.
His art is his own, it doesn't make excuses for itself, and it doesn't need your approval or understanding. It's something of a mystery that he managed to gain the spotlight that he did, the objects of his art are easy to see as beautiful today, but it seems likely that they would have been hard to find value in when the images were created. One can only guess that if he does see in pure color, perhaps the same beacons he seems to respond to visually could also have been the messangers that helpped him find all the right people at all the right times. His influence can be seen in the likes of David Byrne's "True Stories," of which he created a photographic documentary while on set and his work has been expanded by virtually every significant Photographer and Southern Photographer to follow him; Birney Imes, Sarah Martin, Alec Soth, William Christenberry, Christian Patterson and Hackberry South Board of Trustees Member Mike Smith (not to be confused with Nashvillian Micheal W. Smith)
Marcel Duchamp said something to the nature of "future artists will be able to point and the object they point at will become art." --someone site me here plz : )
To that standard, I can only imagine he was speaking of Bill Eggleston.
William Eggleston lives in bars, in Memphis, TN - Cheers!
For more please visit: http://www.egglestontrust.com/
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