Wegman World

5 Vintage Videos by William Wegman

 William Wegman is perhaps best known for his iconic photographs of his dogs. But before he became interested in photography, he experimented with video art. 

"Describing the process behind his tapes, Wegman says, "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. In recent years, Wegman has become famous for his hilarious and touching photographs of other Weimeraners who are Man Ray’s successors." via Video Data Bank

Below is a selection of these vintage videos, and the full collection is available from Video Data Bank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Selection from William Wegman: Fay

A selection from William Wegman's 1999 book, Fay:

"I see a lot of photographs of dogs in hats and sunglasses. Cute pictures. People started sending them to me years ago, and now I have quite a few, perhaps a zillion. I am known by many as the guy who dresses up his dog. Guilty. But that was only a recent development with Fay, representing only a fraction of my work. In the selection of props for Man Ray I steered clear of these articles, rarely dressing him in human clothes. It never seemed right. Instead I transformed him into other animals, an elephant, a frog, an Airedale, using found props and compositional devices - a sock, swim fins, a Ping Pong ball cut in half, tinsel wrapped a certain way. Outside the studio I never went about dressing the dogs for my own amusement. It's not done as a joke in a spontaneous moment of whimsy. Not that dogs mind it, mind you. They will go along with just about anything you do as long as it keeps them in the game. Don't laugh at them, don't confuse them or hurt their feelings."

From WW: Old Polaroids

In the spirit of completion and curiosity, I recently began an extensive project of looking through hundreds of boxes of my 20 x 24 polaroids.

 

Typically, a day's work at the 20 x 24 studio would result in 30 - 50  prints, of which on average 2 or 3 might I thought were noteworthy and worth showing. Now that I am revisiting this work, I am surprised at how much of it I have overlooked, as well as how dreadful some of it was.

 

The polaroid camera was very unforgiving.  A bad picture is really bad. In the late 80's, we U-Hauled the camera and all the necessary lighting, equipment, generators and drying racks to Rangeley, Maine to work with the dogs on location.

 

 

 

It boggles my mind at how hard everyone worked and how tenacious we all were. The polaroid film liked to processed at 70 degrees, so if it was too cold out, the prints would look purple/cyan.  But on occasion the pictures were spectacular, and worth all the effort.  

 

 

I am often asked if I miss working with the big camera. No.

 

I like working with the digital Hasselblad with the huge files, and the fact that all the lighting, equipment, printers and computers are here in my studio. I don't have to deal with lugging this beast around the woods of Maine or trekking to Soho with the dogs every time I want to use it. I do miss working with John Reuter and other tech assistants I got to know and love at the 20 x 24 studio.    

 

And I miss seeing the curve in the lives of each dog under the scrutiny of one lens. The most hauntingly sweet and surprisingly poignant aspect of looking through these boxes of polaroids is seeing, because I am searching through the photos in reverse, my dogs Penny, Bobbin, Chip, Chundo, Batty, Crooky and Fay, all growing younger and younger.

 

 

 

 

 

I can see more unsparingly how some dogs like Batty and Man Ray showed the effects of age while others, notably Fay, Chip and Penny, who died before their time, remain forever young. 

 

 

 

And besides the dogs there is the occasional human; assistants, friends, and my children Atlas and Lola. Memory lane.   

 

WW on ARTIST SERIES

 

WW discusses his life in photography in this short film from The Art of Photography.

From WW: On painting with postcards

William Wegman, In Ramada Inn, 2016

I've been using postcards in may paintings since the 1990s. My selections have evolved over the years. When I began it was interesting to connect two disparate scenes, adding a third and a fourth. In some cases I used scores of cards to create a new and enveloping space.   

I preferred the cards  that had no borders so I could make them disappear. In these paintings the eye could drift from one card to the next seamlessly. Horizon lines became irregular and at times references to cubism emerged. Later it became interesting to capture the card  perspective and construct a more convincing whole. Interior scenes with picture windows (and pictures in frames) could be created.  Museum spaces were alluded to at times. As a challenge I made a conscious effort to use cards with borders and strong graphic divisions within them to construct another kind of space -- a kind of modernist reference to Kandinsky, Stuart Davis, Mondrian, Leger, and others.  

As always the painting starts easily and finished slow.  Like all painters I worry about the upper left hand corner and the lower right. My problems may be solved by finding just the right card and that invokes shuffling through my considerable and unorganized collection. I tend to stay away from really beautiful collectable cards. Out of respect.

For more on WW's postcard paintings, have a look at the new book William Wegman: Painting, which features essays from Bob Elliott, Martin Filler, Amy Hempel, Robert Krulwich, and Susan Orlean.

Fay's 12 Days of Christmas

 

Fay's 12 Days of Christmas is a 30 minute video piece I made in the early 90's for children (of all ages). It takes its form from the dog alphabet and numbers I created using my dog Fay Ray and three of her puppies Batty, Chundo, and Crooky.    

I used the simple trick of running the track backwards to make it appear as though the dogs fell all by themselves into these number configurations.  As I recall, I had the hardest time getting the devilish Crooky to lie flat for any length of time. If you look closely you can see her fidgeting.  

As the countdown proceeds to the big day we see the Fay family (in full dress prepare) in various ways. Fay makes fruitcake, other family members wrap presents, make cookies, cards, popcorn chains etc. Of course to accomplish these complicated tasks the dogs would need human hands. For that, my assistants Andrea, Jason, Lisa, and my sister Pam delivered them superbly and hilariously. For the arm/hand providers this is not an easy task, for they have to keep hidden from the camera while performing. It has always amazed me what a convincing illusion this is. I wish you could have seen it. It is even more amazing live than on tape. Oh well, perhaps another time. But that is not likely. There was only one Fay Ray.  

Or were there two?  

Artists Including Me

As an artist I have a lot of freedom. I can do whatever I want. No one can tell me what to do. It's all up to me.    

But sometimes I can't figure out  what to do. I have to look outside for inspiration. In my photo work, there are my dogs. They give me ideas and lead me in many directions. 

William Wegman, In the Bauhaus, 1999

Painting to me is a different world. The weight of history is immense and can be an awful burden. I majored in painting in college. But by the time I got to grad school, a hard edge, minimal style as was dominant in the art magazines. I turned to installation, performance and ultimately video and photo. 
 
But by the mid 80's, I missed painting and dreamt of returning to it. But I was lost. I found myself asking the question, "What is a suitable subject for painting?" 

Books, picture books, encyclopedias…all have been helpful when I go shopping for subjects to paint. As child my favorite encyclopedia was the Book of Knowledge (circa 1950).

William Wegman, What is Sound?, 1985

When I returned to painting I thought it would be smart strategy to skip everything I learned in art school which lead me out of painting and go back to my childhood sources for inspiration. In high school the artists who painted the "Breck Girl" were my idea of great.

William Wegman, Hope, 1985

I began to use the history of painting on itself. A work of mine that stands out for me in this regard is a painting of tents. Tents are made of canvas...paintings are made on canvas.  Midway through I noticed the painting resembled Cezanne's paintings of mountains. 

William Wegman, Tents, 1996

 

The path of Modernism was no longer straight and narrow, and this seemed like a fruitful and heady direction for me. All I ever needed was an excuse to paint. And now I had one.

In a few years I began to use postcards in this way more and more, First on paper, and later on wooden panels where they can be glued to the surface. Today they dominate my work and I have too many cards to stop.    

William Wegman, Reinstallation, 2013

Recently I have found inspiration in the work of other artists represented in postcards. One of the artists who I always turn to is Picasso. 

 

William Wegman, Ppiiccaassssoo, 2011

But even more useful to me currently is Kandinsky. Kandinsky inspired a lot of cartoonists. When a cartoonist wants to lampoon modern art  Kandinsky-like imagery  is solicited. In my postcard paintings Kandinsky has been there for me repeatedly. They are easy to capture and extend. I can lose myself in Kandinsky and by so doing find myself. 

 

"I, Kandinsky" in progress.

William Wegman: Artists Including Me is on view now at the San Jose Museum of Art.

Interiors

I was born in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. The house was old, and my bedroom was in a garret.  It was scary to find the bathroom at night, so I peed into a vent in my bedroom closet. (Unfortunately, the vent was right above the kitchen table. )

When I was seven we moved into a brand new house in East Longmeadow. My bedroom, which I shared with my sister, had the most fascinating wallpaper: Pirates! The print was very poorly registered, so the sails of the pirate ship floated off the masts and the pirate's mustache was next to his face rather than on it. I think this wall paper gave me many ideas when I returned to painting in the mid-1980's, after a long hiatus. (Peeing into the vent in the closet may connect to my photography...perhaps the early work.) 

 

William Wegman, Funney/Strange, 1982

 

From 1950 onward, my mother continuously transformed the house inside and out until she died in 2001. The outside of the house changed color at least 10 times.  For the longest time the house was painted sage green, my mother's favorite color.

 

William Wegman, Poe House, 2009

 

My mother was always concerned about good taste.  It was years later that I suspected that she didn't have it. I don't have it. I do have an odd interest in furniture and interiors.

 

William Wegman, Lamp Stand, 1997

In the '90s I began to produce children's books with photo illustrations.  Photography is rare in children's books and I thought that through the dogs as characters, photography would find a place.

 

 

from Chip Wants a Dog

 

In the sets, I got to revisit my mothers passion for furniture and decoration. In collecting furniture and props for the photos, I have an enormous and bulging collection of furniture of questionable value.   

WW + WALLPAPER

WW is the guest editor of the October 2015 issue of Wallpaper magazine. Here are a sneak peek of a few of the images from the shoot. Also, be sure to to check out this video Wallpaper produced on how WW works, and an interview about his visit to the studio of iconic furniture designer George Nakashima.

 

Some Notes on Musical Inspiration

photo Kimberly M. Wang / eardog.com

Lately, I’ve been listening to spectral composers, Gérard Grisey being the most notable (no pun intended). Tristan Murail is another, and while I’m at it, Philippe Manoury is worth a try. And by all means, try Kaija Saariaho, whose music the opera and theater director Peter Sellars calls " an obsessive, immersive and magical weather system bringing ecstasy, cleansing, and renewal."

I have this music on all the time in my studio while I paint. Hopefully, when you look at my paintings you will hear some of this. Here are some of my current favorites:

Gérard Grisey, Les Espaces Acoustiques, 1976, and Vortex Temporum, 1994

Tristan Murail, Winter Fragments, 2006

Philippe Manoury, Fragments pour un portrait, 1998

Kaija Saariaho, Works for Orchestra, 2012