William Wegman

William Wegman
New York
USA

http://www.wegmanworld.com

PLEASE NOTE: William Wegman's sketches are listed mainly in the synopsis' of the "Reels". As they have no defined titles, the titles of the sketches vary from source to source.

Born in 1943 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA. 1961-65, study of painting, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. 1965-67, University of Illinois, Urbana. 1970-82, large format Polaroids and videos with his Weimaraner "Man Ray". 1985-1995 with the successor, "Fay Ray". Since 1981, return to painting.

William Wegman studied painting at Massachusetts College of Art and the University of Illinois, Urbana. He began producing short, performance-oriented videotapes in the early 1970s, which are considered classics. Many featured his canine companion, a Weimaraner named Man Ray. These tapes are dead pan parodies of "high art" using sight gags, minimalist performance, and understated humor. Describing the process behind his tapes, Wegman states, "I present a situation and develop some kind of explanation around it. By the time the story is over you get to know why that particular prop or mannerism was displayed." Recorded as single takes in real time, Wegman used portable video's intimacy and low-tech immediacy to create idiosyncratic narrative comedy. Wegman was among a group of artists to produce work through WGBH's Television Lab. Wegman has taped and photographed Man Ray's successor, Fay Ray. (Video Data Bank, Chicago)

A sense of humour fluctuating between engaging affirmation and distancing irony runs through William Wegman’s photographs, videos, drawings, paintings and films. Independent of Minimalism and the hermetically reduced concepts of form which dominated the American art scene during his time, he staged the everyday, sometimes in paradoxical and sometimes in banal situations, with and without a dog. Uninfluenced by the aesthetics of real time and constructed boredom which tended to determine early artists’ videos, his works are unusual because of their entertaining dramatic structure, which almost resembles slapstick. The actual video phase encompassed seven volumes, made during a period of seven years (1970-77). His use of kitsch and of trivial motifs made him popular and easy to consume, but on the other hand, he became a kind of "Eulenspiegel" who reversed the boundaries between "high" and "low", dallying with the ambivalence of meaning in nonsense. (Video-Forum, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein 2001)

1999:

Reel 9 (appearance, realization)

1998:

Selected Works: Reel 8 (appearance, realization)

1997:

Mother Goose (realization)

1995:

Alphabet Soup (realization)
Fay's Twelve Days of Christmas (realization)

1994:

The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold (realization)
Henry Purcell's Curtain Tune from Timon of Athens (realization)

1989:

Sesame Street Fay Ray Segments (realization)

1988:

Blue Monday (realization)

1986:

Dog Baseball (realization)
The World of Photography (realization)

1983:

How To Draw (appearance, realization)

1979:

Accident (realization)

1978:

William Wegman: Selected Works 1970-78 (appearance, realization)
Man Ray, Man Ray (realization)

1977:

Selected Works: Reel 7 (Revised) (appearance, realization)
Alarm Bell (realization)

1976:

World History (realization)
Gray Hairs (realization)

1975:

Selected Works: Reel 5 (appearance, realization)
Selected Works: Reel 6 (appearance, realization)

1974:

Selected Works: Reel 4 (appearance, realization)
Dog/Box, Ladder, Play, Dance (realization)

1973:

Spelling Lesson (realization)
Selected Works: Reel 3 (appearance, realization)

1972:

Selected Works: Reel 2 (appearance, realization)
Selected Works: Reel 1 (appearance, realization)
Deodorant (appearance, realization)
Selected Body Works (appearance, realization)

1970:

Spit Sandwich (realization)

cinovid / oVid / Werkleitz Gesellschaft and the authors © 1996-2010