I went on Tuesday 5th of
February with Carol and Stephen - to the opening of An Experience of
Amusing Chemistry: Photogrpahs 1990-1890 by David McDermott and
Peter McGough in IMMA The two Americans who are now in their mid fifties - had
emerged in the early 1980s as part of the East Village scene in New York. In an
age of mannerism, pastiche and neo-this-and-neo-that - they went even further
into the regurgitation of the past by living their life as though they were in
the early 1890s. I suppose in this they were strangely more honest than their
peers. They wore (somewhat tatty and thread-bare) vintage suits from the 1890s,
photographed themselves in their Spartan studio in arch poses that recalled the
eccentricity of early photographers and their subjects - and also signed their
paintings with dates that came decades before they were even born.
As
you know, I had meet David McDermott many times in Dublin – but then who
hadn’t. He was a very nice man – very funny, very camp, very gay, very
outgoing, very eccentric and unusually honest for the art world. But as artists
we couldn’t have been further apart. He had no phone, electricity or modern
gadgets in his home – which I visited once. But at the opening I saw Peter
McGough had a digital camera circa 2007 - which he quickly hid in his pocket!
Their
show was of vintage style photographs of themselves and their friends taken
with old plate cameras and developed using arcane print techniques like
Salt-Prints, Cyanotypes, Palladium Prints and Gum Bichromates. The poses
recalled early homoerotic erotica, nineteenth century Dandies, and Christian
iconography. Basically, lounging young men in summer linens, looking mournful
and interesting.
Like
with their previous show in IMMA in 1998 they went all out to impress with
their professionalism and perfectionism. Instead of the usual wine there was
Moet Champagne, there was a very expensive catalogue (at €58 it was too much
for a fickle fan like me) as well as two forms of giveaway texts. In order to
get the lighting as close to daylight as possible (it was a dark cold February
night) they hired a lighting company to shine spotlights in the windows of the
galleries from outside. Inside they displayed their photographs in black and
gold frames hung high and low and in banks as was fashionable in the early 1900s.
In the centre of the rooms they had the large old plate cameras - which they
had used - and the walls of the first room was hand painted to look like
Victorian wallpaper. I respected this attention to detail and professionalism -
and found their early rather amateurish photographs from the 1980s (oops should
that be the 1880s) charming and funny. However, I found the later photographs
more mannered and banal.
Ultimately,
I could not see the point of any of it. I too found myself becoming nostalgic –
but for the good old days of the religious painters or even the
Abstract-Expressionists – when art really did aspire to something greater than
the recording of the trivial and theatrical lives of artists – but then who was
I to talk! However compared to the art students they inspired in the noughties
- McDermott & McGough were practically old masters.