{"id":7205,"date":"2019-07-01T19:52:30","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T00:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/joel-peter-witkin-from-the-studio-at-catherine-edelman-gallery\/"},"modified":"2023-03-02T16:19:22","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T21:19:22","slug":"joel-peter-witkin-from-the-studio-at-catherine-edelman-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/reviews\/joel-peter-witkin-from-the-studio-at-catherine-edelman-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel-Peter Witkin: From the Studio at Catherine Edelman Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_46980\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-46980\" style=\"width: 639px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-46980 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/harvest-1984.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"639\" height=\"640\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 639px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 639\/640;\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-46980\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/harvest-1984.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"639\" height=\"640\"><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-46980\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joel-Peter Witkin, <em>Harvest<\/em>, 1984. Courtesy Catherine Edelman Gallery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"BodyA\">The fact that there are&nbsp;no fewer than three photographs featuring severed heads in <i>Joel-Peter Witkin: From the Studio&nbsp;<\/i>\u2013&nbsp;<i>The Kiss,&nbsp;<\/i>1982;&nbsp;<i>Harvest, <\/i>1984; and <i>Face of a Woman,&nbsp;<\/i>2004 \u2013 might point to the impact of one of the artist\u2019s earliest memories. Witkin recalls walking to church on a Sunday morning, holding his mother\u2019s hand, when they heard a collision. Three cars had crashed, and from the curb, he saw something roll toward him. It was the head of a young girl.<\/p>\n<p class=\"BodyA\">&nbsp;Witkin, of course, is well known for elaborately staged tableaux featuring dismembered body parts and societal outcasts that reference grand scenes from the art-historical canon. They\u2019ve been described over the years as macabre, perverse, and gruesome. The exhibition at <span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><a style=\"color: #3366ff;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.edelmangallery.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Catherine Edelman Gallery<\/a><\/span> through July 3 allows a somewhat more nuanced reading, with the artist\u2019s own words \u2013 in a number of journals displayed in a vitrine \u2013 alluding to the profound intimacy in his work. \u201cThe subject of the work is myself,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"BodyA\">While Witkin may not entirely avoid othering those he depicts, he is earnest about viewing himself as one of the outcasts. His <i>Self-Portrait<\/i>, 1984 \u2013&nbsp; in which a model of the crucified Christ, without the cross, is affixed to the masquerade mask Witkin wears \u2013 is included in the show. Like many of his photographs, it carries the weight of his avowed Catholicism. <i>Woman Once a Bird<\/i>, 1990 \u2013 an allusion to Man Ray\u2019s <i>Le Violon d\u2019Ingres<\/i>\u2013 evokes the wings of an eagle, mentioned repeatedly in the Bible as a symbol of God\u2019s protection and provision, here violently removed. <i>Counting Lessons in Purgatory, New Mexico<\/i>, 1982, meanwhile, depicts a deceased microcephalic infant seemingly suspended on a wire \u2013 presumably unbaptized, caught between heaven and hell.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_46981\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-46981\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-46981 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/the-raft-of-george-w.-bush-nm-2006.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"524\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 640px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 640\/524;\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-46981\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/the-raft-of-george-w.-bush-nm-2006.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"524\"><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-46981\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joel-Peter Witkin, <em>The Raft of George W. Bush, NM<\/em>, 2006. Courtesy Catherine Edelman Gallery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"BodyA\">&nbsp;\u201cThe work has, at its core, \u2018moral emotion.\u2019 The fear of death and the seeking of God,\u201d writes Witkin. The visceral reactions his work elicits point to his mastery of the \u201cgrotesque,\u201d that contradictory condition of the mind uniting horror and ludicrousness, reality and fantasy. <i>The Raft of George W. Bush, NM<\/i>, 2006, an allegory of the Bush administration as the great tragedy recorded in Gericault\u2019s <i>The Raft of Medusa<\/i>, offers a near-perfect expression of that skill. And as Carson McCullers put it, \u201cthe grotesque is paralleled with the sublime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"BodyA\"><span lang=\"en-US\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fact that there are&nbsp;no fewer than three photographs featuring severed heads in Joel-Peter Witkin: From the Studio&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;The Kiss,&nbsp;1982;&nbsp;Harvest, 1984; and Face of a Woman,&nbsp;2004 \u2013 might point to the impact of one of the artist\u2019s earliest memories. Witkin recalls walking to church on a Sunday morning, holding his mother\u2019s hand, when they heard a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"6395,6629,6760,7311,7366,6217,6382,6454,6452,21646,6391,16856","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"issues":[73],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15233,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7205\/revisions\/15233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7205"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=7205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}