Three Photographers at the Terrain Gallery
by Alma Vincent
The thrilling photography exhibition now at the Terrain Gallery in New
York City runs through the first week of February, 2000. The gallery is
part of the Aesthetic
Realism Foundation, the not-for-profit educational foundation at 141
Greene Street (off West Houston) in Manhattan's SoHo district.
Three photographers—Louis
Dienes, David Bernstein,
and Len Bernstein—show black-and-white
and color photographs, and write with gratitude of the value of their study
of Aesthetic Realism to each of them as photographers and in their lives.
The American poet and educator Eli
Siegel, founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, stated, "The world,
art and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites."
And in the announcement for this exhibition, his 1951 lecture Aesthetic
Realism As Beauty: Photography is quoted, in which he said:
The photograph is a big event in the history of the relation
of the perception of self to objects....Photography does dramatize light
and shade, softness and sharpness, foreground and background; does dramatize
where drama is: that is, in the surfaces, the depths, the relations of
things....Photography is the history of how exactitude changes into meaning.
Louis Dienes shows the dramatic contrast of dark and light in grasses growing
from a crack in the sidewalk, and in another photograph, in subtle tones
of gray, a couple walking on a beach; Len Bernstein has a meditative woman
reading in a doorway and an eager boxer dog at a window; David Bernstein
has color abstractions—a car's gas-cap, and, so different, lively celebrants
at the West Indian Day Parade. The artists comment on their intention and
what they have learned from Aesthetic Realism about the tremendous value
of seeing opposites in things, in themselves, and in the technique of photography:
personal and impersonal, dark and light, universe and object. Aesthetic
Realism is the study of how the everyday world we live in, including our
selves, is the material of art.
The exhibition includes a portfolio of photographs by Louis Dienes that
inspired his poem, Black and White, which begins:
The day black and white got a break
Was the day he and she and they
Thought of those things black and white could convey,
That is, those things could be turned into black and white
And be clear to minds. |
Every Saturday afternoon at 2:30 p.m., there are short talks from the historic
series presented free to the public for over 15 years, The Aesthetic
Realism of Eli Siegel Shows How Art Answers the Questions of Your Life!
For
further information you may contact the Aesthetic Realism Foundation at
(212) 777-4490; www.AestheticRealism.org.
Len Bernstein
"I was thrilled when I saw this dog who seemed to be the occupant of
the apartment, self-confidently at its windowsill, gazing at us with a
fine, appraising look. I saw in him a roughness and a solidity, like the
worn brick and wood of the outside of the building."
Louis Dienes
"The Auto Graveyard was a picture I came to on a winter day just cold
enough to keep the snow from melting...Looking at [it], Eli Siegel said:
'The brokenness of the cars and the purity of the snow are brought together
by the light. There is a relation, too, between the discarded autos and
the cemetery in the background. Brokenness and regularity, coldness and
warmth are one.' To see these opposites...reconciled, is to see the
world making sense or having meaning, and my gratitude to Mr. Siegel for
showing that it does is the same as my heartbeat." |
