Robert Weingarten

"Weingarten asks: Is it possible to produce a more biographical and metaphorical portrait that can be constructed without reference to the subject’s visage? To test the feasibility of his ideas, Weingarten created a self-portrait that responds in a fashion to Otto Dix’s definition of the multiple 'facets' of personality. He built a metaphorical portrait around the key objects and preoccupations of his personal and professional life… The self-portrait comprises a sampling of images that are threaded together in a malleable mosaic form, a kind of 'eruption of fantasy' in which he thoroughly recast the original photographic impulse"
Julian Cox, excerpted from The Portrait Unbound: Photographs by Robert Weingarten.

In The Portrait Unbound: Photographs by Robert Weingarten, Julian Cox writes, "Weingarten has been engaged in an effort to explore the world of images unseen or yet to be imagined. By keenly exploiting all the capabilities of digital technology, his goal is to orchestrate a dimensional shift in the way we think about the photographic image. His vigorous embrace of the digital paradigm has promoted ventures into new aesthetic terrain and a direct engagement with a mode of production that changes how and what we see in the culture around us."
In another passage, Cox writes, "Weingarten asks: Is it possible to produce a more biographical and metaphorical portrait that can be constructed without reference to the subject’s visage? To test the feasibility of his ideas, Weingarten created a self-portrait that responds in a fashion to Otto Dix’s definition of the multiple 'facets' of personality. He built a metaphorical portrait around the key objects and preoccupations of his personal and professional life… The self-portrait comprises a sampling of images that are threaded together in a malleable mosaic form, a kind of 'eruption of fantasy' in which he thoroughly recast the original photographic impulse."

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Robert Weingarten: 6:30 A.M. Photographs by Robert Weingarten. For an entire year--whenever he was at home--Robert Weingarten photographed the view from his bedroom window overlooking Santa Monica Bay each morning, just after dawn. Every shot was taken from the
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HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775715720
$49.95 | In stock

The Portrait Unbound: Photographs by Robert Weingarten Text by Julian Cox. Traditional portraiture proceeds from the assumption that we can learn about a person by looking at their face. But crucial biographical truths are rarely visible on the surface. Robert Weingarten (born
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HIGH MUSEUM OF ART
ISBN: 9781932543339
$35.00 | In stock

Robert Weingarten

The Portrait Unbound: Photographs by Robert Weingarten

Text by Julian Cox.
Published by High Museum of Art

Traditional portraiture proceeds from the assumption that we can learn about a person by looking at their face. But crucial biographical truths are rarely visible on the surface. Robert Weingarten (born 1941) addresses this with The Portrait Unbound, in which his "portraits" of 21 eminent Americans--among them playwrights, musicians, scientists, architects and actors--show not physical appearances but the subjects' memories and associations. Thus Stephen Sondheim is represented by musical staff paper and is superimposed on Seurat's "La Grande Jatte," and Colin Powell is figured in a somber composition based on the mausoleum-esque slabs of the Vietnam War Memorial. Other subjects include Hank Aaron, Edward Albee, Buzz Aldrin, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chuck Close, Frank Gehry, Jane Goodall, Billy Graham, Dennis Hopper, Quincy Jones, Carl Lewis, Sandra Day O'Connor, Alice Waters and James Watson. Includes a bonus DVD.

Robert Weingarten: 6:30 A.M.

Photographs by Robert Weingarten.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

For an entire year--whenever he was at home--Robert Weingarten photographed the view from his bedroom window overlooking Santa Monica Bay each morning, just after dawn. Every shot was taken from the same camera position, using the same lens, and focusing on the same frame of view, yet the reduced motif has a different look in every one of the atmospheric photographs reproduced here. The small sliver of land between Santa Monica Beach, Los Angeles International Airport, and the ocean undergoes amazing transformations under the influences of the changing seasons, weather, and visibility conditions. In a formal sense, Weingarten's magnificent, vividly colored images are reminiscent of abstract realism paintings. These systematic, focused observations of nature in the tradition of Claude Monet prompt viewers to stop and consider what wonders they may have passed by without really looking.