Before/On/After: Permutations I

William Wegman

1972 · Gelatin silver prints · Photographs

Together with friends such as John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha, Wegman was an important figure in the witty and incisive variant of Conceptual Art practiced on the West Coast in the early 1970s--simultaneously fulfilling and lampooning the orthodoxies of "post-studio" art. Often Wegman's collaborator in videotapes and photo-works was his Weimaraner Man Ray, who the artist hilariously put through his paces in a series of deadpan learning experiments. In this seven-part piece, the viewer's own learning curve is tested against that of Man Ray: exploring every permutation of a "key" where geometric shapes correspond to positions before, on, or behind a wooden box.

Artist

William Wegman

Date

1972

Medium

Gelatin silver prints

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2016