March 08, 2006
Wegman at Brooklyn Museum: more than just dogs
The Brooklyn Museum this week opens a new show of the varied works of William Wegman, the artist best known for his silly portraits of Weimaraners dressed up and often posed like humans.
Funny thing is, this isn't just a dog show.
Some of his most interesting work is in his sketches or paintings that enmesh random, kitschy postcards into sprawling yet oddly cohesive landscapes.
One of Wegman's quotations posted in the walls of the show explains his thought process:When I was a boy my room had pirate wallpaper and the registration of the printing was off so that the pirate's face wasn't in the pirate's head outline. I can still recall the hours I spent studying the problem of the pirates climbing the sky and not the ladder. My paintings are a lot like that -- everything is familiar but not quite in the right place. The exhibition, which will travel to the Smithsonian in Washington, the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass. after it closes in Brooklyn on May 28, also includes a number of short videos made by Wegman.
 As for the dogs, there are indeed plenty in the show. He started taking the oversized Polaroids in 1979, seeing them work into pop culture through forums such as greeting cards to Nokia cell phones. Wegman jokes about the dogs in a 1997 black and white picture of what is obviously two little girls. "2 dogs dressed up to look like children. They were given identical sets of clothing and were instructed to dress any way they wanted to. The two dogs were unrelated in any way shape or form to the children they were asked to portray."
The title of the show, "Funney/Strange," comes from a 1982 Wegman sketch that "plays with the distinction between funny 'haha' and 'funny peculiar,' according to the text museum goers will find at the beginning of the exhibit.
Any echo of the 1984 Saturday Night Live "Funny Strange" skit with Chris Elliott, Chris Farley, Kevin Nealon and Janeane Garofalo is apparently coincidental. In the skit, customers mistakenly walk into the "Funny Strange" store rather than the "Funny Haha" shop down the street.
"I don't know that one," Wegman said when asked about the SNL skit during the media preview today.
"William Wegman: Funney/Strange" opens Friday at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, located at 200 Eastern Parkway, map.
Images provided by Brooklyn Museum. "The Tilted Chair," Wegman, 2003, oil and postcards on wooden panels. Columbus Museum of Art. And "Connected," Wegman, 1994, Polaroid, collection of the artist.
Related: New York Times video conversation with Wegman
March 8, 2006 12:03 PM in Museums, Out of Manhattan
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