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Photo Poche #49
Joel-Peter Witkin
Handsome and collectible, the books each contain reproductions in duotone and/or color, plus a critical introduction and a bibliography.
With his focus on the "disagreeable beauty" of the anomalous and the transgressive, Joel-Peter Witkin's images are edgy and disturbing. Influenced by artists from Giotto to the Surrealists, by daguerreotypes and the work of Bellocq, his portraits and complex tableaux incorporating corpses, hermaphrodites, masks, and mutilation provoke and challenge the viewer.
With his focus on the "disagreeable beauty" of the anomalous and the transgressive, Joel-Peter Witkin's images are edgy and disturbing. Influenced by artists from Giotto to the Surrealists, by daguerreotypes and the work of Bellocq, his portraits and complex tableaux incorporating corpses, hermaphrodites, masks, and mutilation provoke and challenge the viewer.
- GenresPhotographyArtNonfiction
144 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 30, 2021
In terms of extreme art, you might think of the post-human blasphemies in the illustrations of H.R Giger, the grotesquely crass statues of the Chapman brothers, the homoerotic and coprophilliac faux-stained glass of Gilbert & George, or maybe you just remember that one bloke who dropped a crucifix in a jar of his own piss in the 80s. Well, Joel-Peter Witkin tops everyone of them, because he's the only artist who stood back and decided, yes, let's photograph a beautifully arranged still life with a severed human head.
(Yes, this is someone's genuine, donated corpse, and I will be obscuring most of the art in this review)
Layout: 2/5
Wall of unillustrated text, followed by a section of large prints with detailed discussion of the works beside it.
The artist: 4/5
Witkin wasn't just about utilising the dead, although there's a lot of them in his black and white pieces. He also incorporated a range of living bodies into his works, from polio sufferers, amputees, the over-weight and pre-op transgender people, lovingly arranging the unconventionally beautiful into grand parodies of famous art works (Velaquez, Rivera, Picasso, Miro, etc) or recreations of ancient myths:
That fine line between idealising and exploiting is difficult to gage at times, but there's nothing else quite like Witkin, save maybe the plastinated taxidermy of Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds Exhibition, which has the 'excuse' of being science before art (I fully reccomend this show, by the way. Me and my not-so-wee-one were lucky enough to visit this wonderful if creepy delight, and my then teenager's only upset comment was pointing out the state of nicotine riddled lungs, as I still had a pack of twenty sin sticks in my jean's pocket in those days).
Content: 2/5
I believe I actually made a noise not dissimilar to 'squee' when I finally stumbled on a book about Witkin, having previously settled for whatever images popped up on blogs from my macabre youth, and to say it was a disappointment is an understatement. The selection of pictures is good, but featured nothing I hadn't seen before on the cess-pit of the internet. The details given on individual works are interesting, but not as a discussion of Witkin's style or craft, but because Janis gives us background on the models themselves, ranging from Witkin's acquaintences, wife, drag queens, burlesque artists, the woman who operated the E.T puppet and even people the artist just chanced upon in the street, giving a sense of subject to the object of the photographs.
Joel Peter-Witkin's wife and baby child, a work exploring the strange sense of initial meeting between two individuals and exhibit A in his son's later therapy bills.
Janis' words on the twisted genius of Witkin himself gives some interesting tidbits about his history (such as a distubing ghost sighting in his youth) and talks of his likely artistic influences, though there's nothing mentioned that anyone with even a passing intrigue with art history wouldn't have guessed. Where Janis' exploration of the artist really falls down is in their initial essay which, while clearly affectionate and in utter awe of the artist, is some of the most empty, repetitive, subjective toss I've ever had the misfortune of trying to navigate. They constantly switch between claiming Witkin is giving tender grandeur to those individuals often dismissed or maligned by wider, shitty society, while also making them feel like freaks in a side-show. Their words are practically spiritual Beat poetry, featuring such odd sentences as:
I read it all, but it was in extreme disinterest, sailing over rather than absorbing Janis' sycophantic gumpf, like I was enduring the inarticulate warblings of a Sybil and waiting impaitiently for them to shut up so I could hear the priest's translation of which of my progeny was likely to murder me and shag my wife; or to get onto the actual artworks in this case.
I learned a few things I hadn't known before, but if you like Witkin, or my review has made you intrigued about him, you're honestly better off searching for other books or even just the wikipedia page, as this is a damned shameful waste of a mesmerising artist:
(Yes, this is someone's genuine, donated corpse, and I will be obscuring most of the art in this review)
Layout: 2/5
Wall of unillustrated text, followed by a section of large prints with detailed discussion of the works beside it.
The artist: 4/5
Witkin wasn't just about utilising the dead, although there's a lot of them in his black and white pieces. He also incorporated a range of living bodies into his works, from polio sufferers, amputees, the over-weight and pre-op transgender people, lovingly arranging the unconventionally beautiful into grand parodies of famous art works (Velaquez, Rivera, Picasso, Miro, etc) or recreations of ancient myths:
That fine line between idealising and exploiting is difficult to gage at times, but there's nothing else quite like Witkin, save maybe the plastinated taxidermy of Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds Exhibition, which has the 'excuse' of being science before art (I fully reccomend this show, by the way. Me and my not-so-wee-one were lucky enough to visit this wonderful if creepy delight, and my then teenager's only upset comment was pointing out the state of nicotine riddled lungs, as I still had a pack of twenty sin sticks in my jean's pocket in those days).
Content: 2/5
I believe I actually made a noise not dissimilar to 'squee' when I finally stumbled on a book about Witkin, having previously settled for whatever images popped up on blogs from my macabre youth, and to say it was a disappointment is an understatement. The selection of pictures is good, but featured nothing I hadn't seen before on the cess-pit of the internet. The details given on individual works are interesting, but not as a discussion of Witkin's style or craft, but because Janis gives us background on the models themselves, ranging from Witkin's acquaintences, wife, drag queens, burlesque artists, the woman who operated the E.T puppet and even people the artist just chanced upon in the street, giving a sense of subject to the object of the photographs.
Joel Peter-Witkin's wife and baby child, a work exploring the strange sense of initial meeting between two individuals and exhibit A in his son's later therapy bills.
Janis' words on the twisted genius of Witkin himself gives some interesting tidbits about his history (such as a distubing ghost sighting in his youth) and talks of his likely artistic influences, though there's nothing mentioned that anyone with even a passing intrigue with art history wouldn't have guessed. Where Janis' exploration of the artist really falls down is in their initial essay which, while clearly affectionate and in utter awe of the artist, is some of the most empty, repetitive, subjective toss I've ever had the misfortune of trying to navigate. They constantly switch between claiming Witkin is giving tender grandeur to those individuals often dismissed or maligned by wider, shitty society, while also making them feel like freaks in a side-show. Their words are practically spiritual Beat poetry, featuring such odd sentences as:
'For Witkin, a cadaver's physiognomy is always a psychic geography'and goes on about Tarot cards, claiming Saturn is Witkin's patron God and constantly referring to the artist as an alchemist, which I suppose is nicer than calling him what he actually is: a necromancer or inventive corpse desecrator.
I read it all, but it was in extreme disinterest, sailing over rather than absorbing Janis' sycophantic gumpf, like I was enduring the inarticulate warblings of a Sybil and waiting impaitiently for them to shut up so I could hear the priest's translation of which of my progeny was likely to murder me and shag my wife; or to get onto the actual artworks in this case.
I learned a few things I hadn't known before, but if you like Witkin, or my review has made you intrigued about him, you're honestly better off searching for other books or even just the wikipedia page, as this is a damned shameful waste of a mesmerising artist:
February 4, 2018
Witkin's world is a strange place. It is a grotesque, disturbing, sometimes revolting, occasionally funny place... a dark Wonderland in which Alice had better not get lost.
Witkin b/w photography exploits and explores the greatest paintings of the Renaissance and the XIX century. It is much more than mere interpretation, though: what Witkin does is Creation, using the most famous paintings of old and modern masters as a stage on which the main roles are played by dwarves, transsexuals, elderly men and women, misshapen bodies or hybrid creatures whose inconceivable anatomy is the result of the most visionary mind and fully mastered technical means.
This horrible, magnificent crowd enters the masterpieces of painting in the most unexpected ways: this book, although short, provides several examples of Witkin's desecrating love for art. A naked effeminate boy lies on a dirty canapé like Canova's Pauline Bonaparte; a transsexual becomes Rembrandt's "Hélène Fourment"; some rotting stuffed monkeys are piled to form a "Laokoon". Not enough? A young dwarf and a goat are "Daphne and Apollo", another blonde dwarf with amputated legs is the Spanish enfanta in "Las Meninas" and "The Raft of Medusa" is a hellish cluster of bodies among wich we notice a fat elderly man wearing a bra and George Bush holding the breast of a naked brunette. The original background of each painting is rigorously reproduced. This collection also includes still natures of severed feet and arms reminding of Géricault's analyses of human anatomy, Dadaist portraits and nightmarish yet fascinating fantasies.
Witkin's models are chosen among people nobody else would ever portray out of a medical lab or a porn magazine photo session.
And yet, a nameless beauty shines through these decaying, misshapen, horrible bodies. Witkin's eyes see the mesmerising magnificence hidden inside them all. There is no trace of pity nor disgust nor morbid curiosity in these photographs: it is not a Barnum-like exhibition of horrors. We truly admire these baroque images and look with astonished surprise at the aesthetic greatness of their protagonists, whose physical ugliness or pathological misfortune seem to enhance an even stronger sense of life, skilfully conveyd by Witkin's camera.
The quality of his work is just excellent. These photographs belong to different series, from the first 80s to 2006, but the technical and expressive means are always the same. His b/w photography is clean, bright, with a masterful use of light and incredibly complex settings. Fruit baskets, stuffed or living animals, Renaissance backgrounds, a riddle of details to decipher; and the obsessive presence of transsexuals and dwarves: the symbols of an anomaly that, turning the last page of this book, we don't perceive anymore.
A photographer and an artist whose great merit is to show how beauty is a deeply elusive concept, shifting and unpredictable like the shapes human body can take.
Witkin b/w photography exploits and explores the greatest paintings of the Renaissance and the XIX century. It is much more than mere interpretation, though: what Witkin does is Creation, using the most famous paintings of old and modern masters as a stage on which the main roles are played by dwarves, transsexuals, elderly men and women, misshapen bodies or hybrid creatures whose inconceivable anatomy is the result of the most visionary mind and fully mastered technical means.
This horrible, magnificent crowd enters the masterpieces of painting in the most unexpected ways: this book, although short, provides several examples of Witkin's desecrating love for art. A naked effeminate boy lies on a dirty canapé like Canova's Pauline Bonaparte; a transsexual becomes Rembrandt's "Hélène Fourment"; some rotting stuffed monkeys are piled to form a "Laokoon". Not enough? A young dwarf and a goat are "Daphne and Apollo", another blonde dwarf with amputated legs is the Spanish enfanta in "Las Meninas" and "The Raft of Medusa" is a hellish cluster of bodies among wich we notice a fat elderly man wearing a bra and George Bush holding the breast of a naked brunette. The original background of each painting is rigorously reproduced. This collection also includes still natures of severed feet and arms reminding of Géricault's analyses of human anatomy, Dadaist portraits and nightmarish yet fascinating fantasies.
Witkin's models are chosen among people nobody else would ever portray out of a medical lab or a porn magazine photo session.
And yet, a nameless beauty shines through these decaying, misshapen, horrible bodies. Witkin's eyes see the mesmerising magnificence hidden inside them all. There is no trace of pity nor disgust nor morbid curiosity in these photographs: it is not a Barnum-like exhibition of horrors. We truly admire these baroque images and look with astonished surprise at the aesthetic greatness of their protagonists, whose physical ugliness or pathological misfortune seem to enhance an even stronger sense of life, skilfully conveyd by Witkin's camera.
The quality of his work is just excellent. These photographs belong to different series, from the first 80s to 2006, but the technical and expressive means are always the same. His b/w photography is clean, bright, with a masterful use of light and incredibly complex settings. Fruit baskets, stuffed or living animals, Renaissance backgrounds, a riddle of details to decipher; and the obsessive presence of transsexuals and dwarves: the symbols of an anomaly that, turning the last page of this book, we don't perceive anymore.
A photographer and an artist whose great merit is to show how beauty is a deeply elusive concept, shifting and unpredictable like the shapes human body can take.
November 4, 2011
Any discussion of Witkin's work is bound to mention his uses of _______. Let's see whether I can write anything worthwhile about him w/o mention of that. When I 1st encountered Witkin's fotography I probably tended to associate it w/ the likes of Charles Gatewood & BalTimOre fotographer Stephen John Phillips. Davide Faccioli, the author of the essay that begins this bk, brings up Diane Arbus. Arbus & Gatewood both concentrate on people outside the norm, as does Witkin. That's enuf to make me like him right there - since I consider myself to be outside the norm too.
Aesthetically, though, I see the less well-known Phillips as being closer to Witkin. What makes Witkin by far one of my favorite fotographers is not just his attn to outsiderness, it's also his minute attn to details of texture, arrangement & color. He's a still-life fotographer par excellence. His "Harvest" revisits Arcimboldo's wonderful "Spring" & "Summer" paintings. Witkin's work is rife w/ awesome reworkings of historical artworks: Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus", eg, cd be renamed "The Birth of HermAphrodite". Instead, Witkin calls it "Gods of Earth and Heaven". His "The Raft of George W. Bush" references Théodore Géricault's painting "The Raft of Medusa". This latter cd be sd to be a critique of the abandonment of the proletariat to die during a shipwreck - a theme later developed in Hans Werner Henze's oratorio Das Floss der Medusa Für Che Guevara. Both Phillips & Witkin use sepia tinting & simulated aging (distressing) to evoke times past.
Despite any sensationalism that might be associated w/ Witkin's work, I find it 1st & foremost evocative of LIFE & NATURE. Instead of a Nazi sanitization of the gene pool intended to narrow down possibilities to homogenized culture, Witkin presents life (& death) in a full glory of variety & richness. There's no nastiness here, IMO, life is shown as something that grows & mutates - not as a jungle that 'needs' paving over as a parking-lot - rather as a jungle from wch the marvelous erupts & is then reabsorbed into.
Aesthetically, though, I see the less well-known Phillips as being closer to Witkin. What makes Witkin by far one of my favorite fotographers is not just his attn to outsiderness, it's also his minute attn to details of texture, arrangement & color. He's a still-life fotographer par excellence. His "Harvest" revisits Arcimboldo's wonderful "Spring" & "Summer" paintings. Witkin's work is rife w/ awesome reworkings of historical artworks: Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus", eg, cd be renamed "The Birth of HermAphrodite". Instead, Witkin calls it "Gods of Earth and Heaven". His "The Raft of George W. Bush" references Théodore Géricault's painting "The Raft of Medusa". This latter cd be sd to be a critique of the abandonment of the proletariat to die during a shipwreck - a theme later developed in Hans Werner Henze's oratorio Das Floss der Medusa Für Che Guevara. Both Phillips & Witkin use sepia tinting & simulated aging (distressing) to evoke times past.
Despite any sensationalism that might be associated w/ Witkin's work, I find it 1st & foremost evocative of LIFE & NATURE. Instead of a Nazi sanitization of the gene pool intended to narrow down possibilities to homogenized culture, Witkin presents life (& death) in a full glory of variety & richness. There's no nastiness here, IMO, life is shown as something that grows & mutates - not as a jungle that 'needs' paving over as a parking-lot - rather as a jungle from wch the marvelous erupts & is then reabsorbed into.
May 2, 2008
EXCELLENT collection of witkin's photographs. not the biggest collection, but the reproductions are amazing. the book is exactly the size of a dvd case, and the reproductions are excellent clarity. the essay that opens the book is immature and underdeveloped, but sheds light on witkin for any newcomers.
February 7, 2009
My rating doesn't reflect the quality of the work, but the small format of the edition which cannot show the subtle baroque details of Witkin's beautiful black and white photographs. As utterly disturbing as photography can get, but go for the magnificent The Bone House, if you can spare the expense. It will leave you sleepless of nightmares and fright, if you haven't encountered Witkin yet.
March 28, 2024
Joel Peter Witkin es uno de los descubrimientos artísticos de mi vida, ya puedo decirlo sin tapujos. Este libro es un recorrido de toda su carrera (hasta el año 2000) con material increíble, algunas obras de las más conocidas y otras más obscuras. Pero lo que le da mucho más valor agregado a este pequeño tomo (ese es el único punto en contra; imagino estas fotos en tamaño grande y enloquezco) son los "pie de foto" extendidos donde se unen teorías casi poéticas de la crítica y ensayista Eugenia Parry junto con datos del mismo Witkin acerca de cómo se hicieron las fotos o historias de los retratados. Cadáveres, máscaras, freaks, malformaciones, naturaleza, alta moda, renegados, excluidos, objetos extravagantes...todos se dan cita en la obra de Joel y todos son tratados con el respeto que merecen. Si a eso sumamos referencias a obras pictóricas legendarias y formas de revelado atípicas y profundamente personales, estamos ante un autor FUNDAMENTAL.
5 estrellas.
5 estrellas.
January 22, 2018
Loved the pieces that inspired Alexander McQueen's line-specifically the crucifix mask and the large woman with the breathing apparatus. I would certainly own and hang "Woman Masturbating on the Moon" (see here: http://www.artnet.com/artists/joel-pe...)
The introduction of this book discusses where Witkin found many of his subjects, including in a hospital morgue filled with bodies in various states of decomposition and states (ie one had been in a car accident) and scouring the New York subway for former circus freaks, amputees, and pre-op transgender people. I found these pictures haunting but in a very familiar/human way and was not disturbed in the slightest. Witkin's manipulation of the negatives would be fascinating to see.
The introduction of this book discusses where Witkin found many of his subjects, including in a hospital morgue filled with bodies in various states of decomposition and states (ie one had been in a car accident) and scouring the New York subway for former circus freaks, amputees, and pre-op transgender people. I found these pictures haunting but in a very familiar/human way and was not disturbed in the slightest. Witkin's manipulation of the negatives would be fascinating to see.
March 18, 2008
Finally a chance to look at Witkin. His images are beautiful,with striking similarities to some of Aaron Siskind's later work with natural forms - there's a Siskind photo of a dried (oak?) leaf, almost human in form, extending left from the right side of the frame that shines with the contrasts, textures, and even the subjects Witkin works with. The collection of images is beautiful, and presents a broad range of styles in his shooting.
That said, the book is diminutive in scale, and the impact of the images is compromised by the size of the pages and the formatting.
Though I hate to judge a book by the size of its cover, the publishers should have thought a little harder about putting such dense photographs in a pocket-size volume.
That said, the book is diminutive in scale, and the impact of the images is compromised by the size of the pages and the formatting.
Though I hate to judge a book by the size of its cover, the publishers should have thought a little harder about putting such dense photographs in a pocket-size volume.
January 14, 2008
Tony just turned me on to the work of Joel-Peter Witkin, and the Lawrence Public LIbrary doesn't have any books of his work, so I requested some through inter-library loan.
WOW! Witkin's work is like some sort of bizarre dream. He uses parts of cadavers and (often naked) people with unusual bodies to make his strange, sometimes disturbing photographs.
This book is nice because each photo has an explanation for how he created the piece.
Not for the faint of heart!
WOW! Witkin's work is like some sort of bizarre dream. He uses parts of cadavers and (often naked) people with unusual bodies to make his strange, sometimes disturbing photographs.
This book is nice because each photo has an explanation for how he created the piece.
Not for the faint of heart!
November 3, 2015
Five stars for Witkin, not for Parry. Oy, is this the same Eugenia Parry who wrote the intro to the Adam Fuss book I read? I find her kind of insipid. But Witkin's photos are complex and frightening and humanizing and objectifying and all the rest in ways I find fascinating.
July 15, 2007
a really inexpensive introductory piece.
August 16, 2007
I wish I owned it.
March 18, 2010
Tiny format (apparently Witkin exhibited huge prints) but a tasty little book nonetheless.
June 2, 2017
terrifying, disturbing and great art
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews