Art
Copy cat
Evan Anthony
We used to have an au pair the children called (at her own in stigation — perhaps she needed some identity) 'Harriet the hippie.' She laid claim to this title, I suppose, on the basis of spending most of her free time trying to crash the gates of heaven — the gates being the front entrance to Paul McCartney's home in St John's Wood — and occasionally burning joss sticks, until I lied and told her my doctor said it was bad for my weak lungs.
It wasn't that Harriet was in any sense a ' groupie '. (a term that hadn't been coined in those days). But, more relevantly, she was a photo-realist (and, alas, that term hadn't been coined in those days, either). Poor Harriet was a girl ahead of her time. She could draw pictures from photographs that were extraordinarily true copies, but, like bird-calling, hers seemed a remarkable skill with limited appeal. One of her best imitations was a drawing of McCartney.
Despite her success in eventually getting through to the boyish Beatle (did I really speak to Paul himself? "Just one moment, I'll call her to the phone ") Harriet's persistence came to nought. And there was I, unimaginative fool, saying such dumb things as." But you don't want to spend your time copying, Harriet. It's very good, but it's just a copy. You want to develop some originality." How was I to know that five or six years later I should be sitting in the lecture theatre at the American Embassy listening to a serious (I think they were being serious) panel discussion attempting to legitimise the ' new' photo-realist movement, examples of which are currently on view at the Serpentine Gallery.
If one of the movement's most prominent PR men, the New York critic-dealer-gallery-director, Ivan Karp, is to be believed, photo-realism has taken the US by storm, or at least by squall. Patrons are " queueing up" to buy the works of John de Andrea, Chuck Close, Richard Estes, Howard Kanovitz, and others. How facetious was Karp being as he recognised Estes in the audience and fondly chastised him for wasting his time vacationing abroad when he should be home diligently copy, ing? After all, at the rate of only six or seven pictures a year, the. queueing will never stop, will it?
Edward Lucie-Smith played compete and patiently sat through Karp's volubility, occasionally throwing out bon mots, at one point recalling the time he and fellow critic Marina Vaizey were. in some far-away spot looking at work that would eventually be dubbed 'photo-realism ' and Marina shuddered in disapproval while .Lucie-Smith with tolerant amusement realised that there was, you know, after all, something to it. Then Karp, ever ready with reminiscences of his own, ex
plained how through the years he has come across this stuff and instinctively knew that he should hold on to it because one day . . . Poor Harriet, unlucky wench, landing in the wrong home, working for the wrong man!
As for the exhibition at the Serpentine — well, see it. The Serpentine is a very pleasant, large gallery, in the park. You feel more inclined to like something shown there because the environment is so attractive. And the pictures are amusing, with trompe d'oeil effects that sometimes trompe. You have doubtless heard of the sculpture — the lady with the supermarket cart, and if that makes you wonder why all the fuss when we've had Madame Tussaud's all these years, your small sons may get a giggle out of de Andrea's Dorothy, a young lady with pubic hair showing. You don't see that at Madame Tussaud's. Kanovitz's Journal and Close's mug shot, Richard, are two of the cannier paintings. The copies of boring photographs are no less boring by virtue of pigmentation.
One of the foundation stones of the photo-realists (according to Karp) is the thesis that no social comment is being made: the pictures are purely objective and thereby ' neutral.' That is a disputable and precious point; what seems indisputable is that there is much social comment to be made about an art world capable of launching a campaign that is so knowing, so commercial and so pretentious. Thank God we have thus far been spared being told that from today photography is dead..
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