WHAT: “Francesca Woodman”
WHEN: Through February 20, Friday-Tuesday 11 a.m. - 5:45 p.m., Thursday 11 a.m. – 8:45 p.m.
WHERE: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco
WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: While we may never know what could have become of Francesca Woodman’s career had she lived — she committed suicide at age 22 in 1981 — we can look back at her brief and prolific bodies of work as an example of both innate talent and sheer obsession. The photographic prodigy was the product of an artistic household, whose parents Betty and George Woodman fostered her interests from an early age. She continued to develop them at RISD, studying photography both in the Providence studios and abroad in Italy. At the completion of her college years she pushed the boundaries of conventional photographic styles, building architectural forms with her images, like in “Temple” (1980) a collaged series of diazotypes (a photographic technique used to produce architectural blueprints) using the prints to create fragmented architectural forms, alluding to a Grecian façade. After graduating in 1978 she moved to New York where she attempted to enter into the fashion photography world, to little avail, as her own style and vision was inseparable from her commercial work.
Woodman’s legacy and influence on portraiture is undeniable, often making dark and introspective — almost narcissistic — works for which she is the primary subject, caught floating through domestic spaces with inquisitive and meditative quality. Her works were youthfully explorative and on the verge of artistic maturity, though the issues she struggled with were not unusual for her age group, generation, and social class. While not completely unique, especially when reconsidered today amongst the rise of a compulsively documentary Internet culture, the reason Woodman’s work endures is because her approach was captivating, trend setting, and raw.
To see selections from "Francesca Woodman" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, click on the slide show.
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