(link)
The hornball photographer was baked into its spread. And Lonidier brings the receipts. Every new pictorial technology comes implicit with promise for men to manifest their dreams, spray their desire into a real, but photography was a gun of mass proportions. Advertising had made capturing women seem photography's very purpose. The sad comedy of this show, the hard sale to men, a tool for their desire, it was never more explicit. Look at the contact prints, Luncheon on the Grass became a documentary, became the norm, became a DIY kit packaged and sold for the everyman.
(There's enough ideas here for four shows, maybe four careers at this point. Artists today are so afraid of explicit meaning, we've given in to so much "anonymous material" but Lonidier is proof that explicitness doesn't close meaning. The walls pinned with straightforward questions are surely redundant to the anonymous material of art's white walls glowing the same question, but the hamfisted redundancy is far more interesting, alienating, fun even, than the "mystery" of any noodly object on the floor. There's stakes and they're real. )
