Insidious Lassitude

Often referred to as ‘the greatest photographer currently working in North America’, Ryan McGinley has a show of new work opening in NYC this evening. I say ‘often’, but I think I only read that once. Or perhaps it wasn’t even once. Perhaps it was only something a bit like that; perhaps it was ‘Ryan McGinley: an alright photographer’, and I transmogrified it in my brain to ‘this cat is a genius’.

I do like him though. Not least because he often makes ‘pretty’ images. ‘Fireworks Hysteric’ (up there ^) is a good example of that. It has a very pleasing surface; with that white dotty texture it’s reminiscent of a Peter Doig painting. It reminds me too of Masaccio’s ‘Expulsion from the Garden of Eden’. That came straight to mind when I saw ‘Fireworks . . .’, though now I’ve looked up a copy of that picture and posted them side-by-side, they’re less similar than they were in my mind’s eye. Still, my mind felt pretty strongly about linking them, so I’m going to go along with it on this one. There is definitely an evocation of Masaccio’s painting in ‘Fireworks . . .’, and I suppose the latter could be read as a modern-day expulsion from Eden; there are overtones of Apocalypse, and a similar juxtaposition of beauty and anguish, though – like the world today – McGinley’s image is more ambiguous and complex.

Apparently 4000 rolls of film were used to make the 150000 photographs that the ‘I Know Where the Summer Goes’ exhibition was edited from. There are 50 images in the series, so – the maths is easy – that’s about one photograph used for every 3000 taken. That’s not much of a strike rate from Team McGinley! With a law of averages like that, then maybe I could be the ‘greatest photographer currently working in North America’ if I shot that much film. And I moved to North America.

It’s always interesting to learn how artists work, and the behind-the-scenes that go into the final art. But, as ever, it’s of no consequence to the final success of the work, and that interest should always only be an aside to the work itself. There is a tendency to valorize process or biographical anecdote when critiquing art. Maybe it has something to do with the commodification of art and the need for hard facts to hang a price tag on, rather than the personal or phenomenological value of something – which of course doesn’t correlate easily to a financial scale.

‘I Know Where the Summer Goes’ opens tonight at Team Gallery, NYC, and runs until 3rd May. Here’s the website from which I culled the anecdotal aside about the 150000 photos: Team Gallery

Also have a shufty at McGinley’s own website for more photos. There’s more fireworks portraits, an image-making technique he also deployed during a photoshoot for Oscars ‘Newcomers’ nominees like Sienna Miller and some people I’ve never heard of. They’re Americans probably… Ryan McGinley