Before/On/After: Permutations I

William Wegman American

Not on view

Together with friends such as John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha, Wegman was an important figure in the witty and incisive variant of Conceptual Art practiced on the West Coast in the early 1970s--simultaneously fulfilling and lampooning the orthodoxies of "post-studio" art. Often Wegman's collaborator in videotapes and photo-works was his Weimaraner Man Ray, who the artist hilariously put through his paces in a series of deadpan learning experiments. In this seven-part piece, the viewer's own learning curve is tested against that of Man Ray: exploring every permutation of a "key" where geometric shapes correspond to positions before, on, or behind a wooden box.

Before/On/After: Permutations I, William Wegman (American, born 1943), Gelatin silver prints

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2016.598a

Before/On/After: Permutations I, William Wegman (American, born 1943), Gelatin silver prints
Before/On/After: Permutations I, William Wegman (American, born 1943), Gelatin silver prints
Before/On/After: Permutations I, William Wegman (American, born 1943), Gelatin silver prints
Before/On/After: Permutations I, William Wegman (American, born 1943), Gelatin silver prints
Before/On/After: Permutations I, William Wegman (American, born 1943), Gelatin silver prints
Before/On/After: Permutations I, William Wegman (American, born 1943), Gelatin silver prints
Before/On/After: Permutations I, William Wegman (American, born 1943), Gelatin silver prints

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