Irving Penn: Radical Beauty
For several decades and 150 Vogue magazine covers, Irving Penn worked within these confines to produce images iconic for their beauty and graphical power. Compositions uncluttered by props, and frugal with color (usually black and white) left the simplest and most arresting elements for the eye to focus on.
Penn employed the same thoughtful, deliberate techniques in the work he pursued on his own, the aesthetic he explored was vastly different; in fact, there wasn't just one. The inexhaustible range of human physiognomy and toilette interested him, 25 examples of which, spanning more than 60 years, are on display at Fraenkel Gallery in "Radical Beauty."
He always used the same nondescript backdrop, forcing us to consider these people for how they looked - what their eyes, posture, attire and makeup conveyed, and nothing else. What strikes one upon seeing them all together is how nonjudgmental the representations are; Penn was not a fetishist of human imperfection.
The best art is said to "open our eyes" to human experience, variety, and potential. Penn does this with a combination of subversion and reverence that make this collection fascinating, both a celebration of beauty and a revelation of the blinkered narrowness of our ideas about it.
Irving Penn's Radical Beauty exhibit will be displayed until August 20, 2011 Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco
