William Wegman exhibit opens August 22 at Asheville Art Museum

Beginning August 22, the Asheville Art Museum will feature an exhibition of internationally acclaimed artist and dog lover William Wegman, Cubism and Other-isms. The exhibit will highlight work from over 25 years of Wegman’s life, including early black and white photographs and later digital renderings.

Described as a “pioneer video-maker, wry conceptualist, performer, photographer, painter, found-object finder, draftsman and writer,” by curator Joan Simon, Wegman is most famous for his series of portraits featuring his pet/assistant Weimaraners posed with various costumes and objects. The photographer and his ever-present hounds have been featured across popular culture, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the iconic children’s television show Sesame Street.

Cubism and Other–isms centers around Wegman’s explorations into historical artistic precedents and incorporation of Cubist principles—which Wegman has called “the epitome of modern art”—to reveal the essential beauty in his subjects. Since the mid-90s, Wegman has experimented with the use of platforms, cubes, and elevated perspectives in what Simon calls an “an art-about-art reference echoing both the pedestal of traditional sculpture and the Euclidean geometry of Minimalism.”

In addition to the photographic work on display, Asheville Art Museum will hold screenings in its New Media Gallery of William Wegman: Video Works 1970-1999, a compilation of the artist’s groundbreaking forays into analog videography.

An official opening reception for the exhibit will be held August 23 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the museum. Cubism and Other-isms will be on view until January 24, 2016. Price of admittance is eight dollars for adults, seven dollars for students and seniors, and free for children five and under or members of the Asheville Art Museum.

No word yet on whether dogs will be allowed into the exhibition.

For more information on Cubism and Other-isms, Wegman’s life and work, or a schedule of events, visit ashevilleart.org or see the official press release below.

Official Press Release:

Asheville Art Museum Presents the Work of William Wegman

Cubism and Other-isms is on view August 22, 2015 – January 24, 2016

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 23, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.

ASHEVILLE—The Asheville Art Museum thrilled to present Cubism and Other-isms, an exhibition of the work of renowned artist William Wegman on view August 22, 2015 – January 24, 2016.

In her essay for the artist’s 2006 retrospective exhibition catalogue, Joan Simon describes William Wegman as a “pioneer video-maker, wry conceptualist, performer, photographer, painter, found-object finder, draftsman and writer. Wegman is typical of his generation in his multimedia reach but unusual in his audiences. He is not only held in critical esteem within the international art world but also beloved by the general public…. He is the ‘man with the dogs,’ whose handsome troupe of Weimaraners collaborates with him in theatrical tableaux and the telling of tales.”

William Wegman was born in in Holyoke, MA in 1943. He attended the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and received his Masters of Fine Arts degree from University of Illinois in 1967. Wegman taught briefly in Wisconsin before venturing out to California in 1970 and finally settling in New York in 1972. In 1970 Wegman acquired his first Weimaraner, naming him Man Ray. He soon began including Man Ray in his videos and photographs. Wegman claimed that it was Man Ray who insisted on becoming part of the process, leading to one of the most significant collaborations between artist and model in the history of art. The artist continued to work with Man Ray until the dog’s death in 1981. In 1986 Wegman began a whole new collaboration when his new dog Fay Ray arrived in his life. Upon the arrival of Fay Ray, Wegman began using a Polaroid again and started photographing his Weimaraner family. Wegman’s dog family has been seen in many of his works ranging from early video shorts to books to mainstream videos.

For many years Wegman has been working on a project he calls Cubism and Other–isms, where, with his trademark wry humor, he mines art historical precedents to create images of startling beauty. In a 1981 interview, Wegman states, “In my own work I have visited many art movements, but none more often than Cubism — the epitome of modern art.” In the early 1990s while making videos and films with his dogs standing in as human characters, Wegman began placing his subjects on elevated platforms in order to shoot them at eye level. The props in his photographs have taken many forms, but none so consistently as the cube. The cube is also one of the most available on-set items in the studios of commercial photographers, used for displaying products in tableaux or isolation to highlight their form or shape. For Joan Simon, this use of the cube also suggests “an art-about-art reference echoing both the pedestal of traditional sculpture and the Euclidean geometry of Minimalism.”

The exhibition William Wegman: Cubism and Other-isms surveys more than 25 years of Wegman’s artistic production, including early black-and-white photographs, large-format Polaroids and more recent digital imagery. In conjunction with this exhibition, the Museum is screening William Wegman: Video Works 1970-1999 in the New Media Gallery.

William Wegman’s photographs, video works, paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. Recent exhibitions include William Wegman: Hello Nature, a major survey organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art of over 100 nature-related works by the artist in various media (2012), which traveled to Artipelag, Värmdö, Stockholm, Sweden (2013); and A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio, a group exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, (2014). Wegman presented the annual 2014 Robert Rosenblum lecture at the Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York. He is represented by Senior & Shopmaker Gallery in New York.

Programs held in conjunction with the exhibition include:

Opening Reception
AUGUST 23 — Sunday 3 to 5 p.m.

Lunchtime Art Break
SEPTEMBER 18 — Friday 12 to 1 p.m.
with curatorial staff

Weekend Film Screenings
OCTOBER 10 + 11
Saturday + Sunday at 2 p.m.
The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold

Lecture with William Wegman
NOVEMBER 19
Thursday 6 to 7:30 p.m.