We’ve featured one of Jennifer Zwick’s photographs before (The Reader), but this one is too good to pass: The Explorers (2005), which celebrates the innate curiosity of every child to explore the world around, and in this case, beneath them.
Meg
Is it just me or is this just a really bad version of a Gregory Crewdson photo?
http://www.kultureflash.net/archive/123/images/art_header.jpg
crob02
Jennifer Zwick obviously has seen the work of Gregory Crewdson before.
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/tuchman/tuchman12-9-3.asp
Zwick is to Disneyland as Crewdson is to Mulholland Dr.
Roger
In her defense, no one artist has cornered the market on cross-sectional “below the floor” narratives.
Zwick’s image is a exploratory, youthful fantasy – the below-the-floor world is an inherent part of its narrative.
Neither artist is the first to wonder what is beneath us, or in our walls.
There is room for both photos in the world, for sure.
Meg
Rodger I agree with you. No one person can corner almost any field in art. But, some people do do it better than others.
Roger
you were probably thinking roger-dodger – I get that a lot.
I hear you, but I don’t think one photo is “better” than the other. They are simply describing completely different things.
Chris P
I love it!
@meg: Your comment makes me think that you maybe haven’t made art before. When I was in school people were constantly making amazing, original, pieces. Months later they’d find out that somebody, somewhere, probably more famous, made something similar.
It also misses the point of making art in the first place: to explore and express ideas. If you compare what’s going on in the photos, they’re very very different. In Zwicks photo the girls are consciously going forth and exploring the unknown! That dude in Crewdsons photo has no idea of the nether regions beneath. Kinda looks like he just wants to get a clot of hair out or something.
Meg
Chris. In fact I do make art and am rather well versed in contemporary art. My main complaint is not the idea behind her photograph but the actualization of it. It’s shoddy work compared with Crewdson’s. If you put a sheet below the partition in the photograph Zwick’s set looks absolutely amateur compared to a Crewdson. Ill give her some cred given the fact that Crewdson teaches at Yale, shows with Gagosian and has the digital restorers from Lord of the rings working for him.
By saying one is better than the other I agree that this can not really be appropriate words to describe the two pieces. The two are just in different leagues.
Chris P
Meg. What you’re saying is that its unfair to compare the two, but if one was (and you are), then one is better — oh and by the way one has like a multi-million dollar budget, and you’ve got to cover half of the other with a sheet. Got it.
sloepoke
Yes, there is room for both, but this woman is like the Anne Geddes of art photography, mostly rip offs, and not in a pomo sort of good way. She needs to see Sherry Levine’s work and realize that she is just copying. perhaps she just wants to sell these things and make Bed and bath Ads, that’s fine, but just so everyone knows, she falls into a context, and let’s just call it art education.
Chris P
Sorry sloepoke, your args make no sense. You’re comparing her to a designer baby clothing company and an artist who intentionally imitates others and calls it art. She miles from both of those things.
Because two artists create something similar in no way means that one is an imitation of the other. If you’d take a stroll down art history-lane you’d realize that. Your assumptions are that she is copying when you have no idea if she’s copying or not, other than your superior intellect of course.
Have you bothered to read her artist statement? (Go on, run off and read it so you can respond with a witty come back).
Whether you like something or not has no bearing on its validity or worth — it’s simply your opinion, backed up only by off-hand and nonsensical references to other artists that you dislike. If you have a problem with Anne Geddes and Sherry Levine so much, write them a letter and let them know.
I happen to like this photo a lot, as well as a lot of her other work. The difference, of course, is that I understand that it’s my *opinion* that it’s good, and our opinions are nothing more than that. I don’t like the work because I like similar pieces by other artists — I like the photo in itself.
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