Anodyne
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
 

Henry Wessel, Santa Barbara, 1977

Wessel's current retrospective at SF MOMA reviewed today by the Times. I admire Wessel for his acute sensitivity to the endlessness of Western light, and for his amazement before nature, which I take in his case to mean even things which were imposed upon it (signs; electrical wires; telephone booths), then visibly changed by that contact. I like the unspecifiable arrangement of birds above, but I love how the observer's pose suggests his mental abstraction from himself in the face of the event. Not "joy before the object" -- Wessel's too American for that, too reserved -- but something close.
- posted by cjb @ 7:07 PM


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