From Nan Goldin to old masters, and return
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- Nan Goldin, Odalisque, 2011, Chromogenic print. Courtesy of Matthew Marks
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- Nan Goldin, Hair, 2011, Chromogenic print. Courtesy of Matthew Marks
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- Nan Goldin, Origin of the World, 2011, Chromogenic print. Courtesy of Matthew Marks
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- Nan Goldin, Gina at Bruce’s dinner party, NYC 1991, Cibachrome. Courtesy of Matthew Marks
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- Nan Goldin, The nap, Paris 2010, Chromogenic print. Courtesy of Matthew Marks
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- Nan Goldin, Sisters, 2010, Chromogenic print. Courtesy of Matthew Marks
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- Nan Goldin, Swan-like embrace, Paris, 2010 Chromogenic print. Courtesy of Matthew Marks
Her friends say that Nan Goldin, the spiritual mother of some of the most influential photographers of the last two decades, from Wolfang Tillmans, to Terry Richardson and Ryan McGinley, is fond of fine arts objects. She buys stuff here and there, probably following an idea of beauty which is opposite to the obscure and desolated interiors, typical of her photography.
Nevertheless this kind of cultural, academic or objective beauty embedded by fine arts, is sometimes a delicate presence in her images, always playing the same role. As the photographer considers herself a mirror (“I’ll be your mirror”, 1991), so fine arts, and old masters paintings too, serve as a second mirror, in the realm of the image.
Following this path, an iconic painted beauty like the Grand Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, becomes the models for a series of nudes. Or, the Bacchus painted by Caravaggio around 1595 for his patron, Cardinal Del Monte, ends up hanging on a desolated kitchen wall, over a basket of fruits and a brutally minimal plate of pasta beyond which the sight of a mere human being is fading away.
What is then Nan Goldin trying to tell us? Perhaps that the path which connects the past to the present can be walked in two directions. If you go from the painted to the real bodies, you will probably see the lost of the objective beauty against the power of reality. However, walking the opposite way, you will be able to grasp the reality that the painter was questioning.
November 12, 2019
