ART REVIEW : NEWMAN PHOTOS PACKED WITH POWER

Arnold Newman, one of the great artists of our time, has, through the medium of photography, created portraits of iconic authority of some of the most significant figures in public life in the second half of the 20th Century.

“Arnold Newman: Five Decades,” which opened last week at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, surveys the artist’s development and his concept of the “environmental” or “symbolic” portrait.

His achievements are extraordinary, and there are many, many images of great beauty and power in the show, statements as memorable and poetically haunting as those of any other artist in any medium.

Newman’s portrait of composer Igor Stravinsky (1946), possibly the most widely recognized image Newman has made, is definitive. Only the composer’s head, his eyes gazing into the camera, his head resting on his arm, appear in the lower left-hand corner of the photo, which is dominated by the large abstract form of the lid of the piano at which the composer sits.

The exhibition includes a suite of Stravinsky portraits, ending with an image of his tombstone in Venice.

Newman’s portraits of Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian leaning on an easel (1942), of American realist painter Edward Hopper seated in a field (1960), of German-French surrealist artist Max Arnst (1942), of Pablo Picasso (1954) and many other artists are syntheses of the personalities and their aesthetic visions mediated through the photographer.

Newman has created equally authoritative portraits of politicians, scientists, writers and others.

Newman’s talents are so extraordinary and the syntheses he creates so tight (and right) that a dozen years ago Beaumont Newhall, who had been curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, observed, “In a strange sense many of Newman’s most effective portraits seem to me almost self-portraits, as if the sitter himself had conceived the image.”

Director/curator Arthur Ollman, who organized the exhibition, reviewed with Newman 10,000 images from which they selected 165, most of which have already been seen in the photographer’s numerous previous exhibitions and reproduced several times in catalogues and books. It is good to see, in addition, a generous representation of Newman’s abstractions and recent works.

Newman’s portraits at their strongest engage viewers both intellectually and emotionally with the personalities of his subjects. Marilyn Monroe (1962) can break your heart. Alfried Krupp (1963) can terrify you; the German industrialist as Satan, is, as Ollman refers to it, an instance of “assassination” through photography. Portraits of writer Truman Capote (1977), English artist Sir Cecil Beaton (1978) and Diana Vreeland (1974) are outrageously campy.

When the subjects are unfamiliar and the symbolic environments arcane, the photographs may retain their formal interest but fail to convey any sense of the persons. A portrait of French composer-conductor Pierre Boulez (1969) partially viewed through abstract forms is meaningless. He could be a painter, architect or stage designer. The visual clues are insufficient or inappropriate. Sometimes they are overly contrived, as in a portrait of the late American painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1968) in profile against a blank canvas on an easel with a curly horned skull overhead and the landscape of New Mexico in the distance. Newman has in this portrait inadvertently parodied both himself and O’Keeffe.

Generally, the collage portraits are failures. The one of Andy Warhol (1973-1974) conveys nothing about his role in Pop Art, only his weirdness. Italo Scanga (1985) uses the artist’s forms without understanding. Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) (1985-1986) is supposed to be humorous but looks ghoulish. Finally, many of the portraits, especially of artists in their studios, are cliches.

Newman has been poorly served by the museum. The installation is very crowded. Why must this be so, exhibition after exhibition? It shows disrespect for the artist and abuses the public. It is, however, a handsome, conservative installation, without eccentric colors and gimmicks.

It is a matter of very serious concern that the exhibition lacks a scholarly catalogue. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich will publish a book to accompany the exhibition, but it will not be available until October, long after the exhibition has closed in San Diego (Aug. 17) and gone on tour nationally. Even then it will include only 114 reproductions of photographs from the 165 in the exhibition, and none in color. The museum, which had been negotiating earlier with a different publisher, presented the project to the San Diego-based firm only six months ago and HBJ then initiated a crash program, according to editor John Boynton.

The catalogue introduction, distributed to the press in mimeograph form three days after the exhibition opened to the public, needs help. It neither effectively summarizes nor adds anything new to what has already been written about the artist. References to photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s legendary ear hair, writer Henry Miller’s literary sexuality and photographer Max Yavno’s black hole of a mouth are more than unfortunate. They’re inadvertently very funny! An artist of Arnold Newman’s stature deserves better than this.