Jeff Wall
On the motives of "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison. Prologue
Source: newsweek.com

When other artists of our time, which Newsweek called outstanding, still go to school or even on foot under the table, Jeff Wall has already created his first significant work. All the more amazing it seems that the product of Wall still do not lose their relevance and looks incredibly modern.

If unprepared viewer will see "The Destruction of the room" - the large photograph placed in a light box, which in 1979 started his career in Wall, he can hardly guess that this work for over thirty years. The image of the room that unknown forces have led to a state of chaos, is a totally modern combination dokumentalizma, Hollywood entertainment and style of old masters. Jeff Wall is perhaps one of those who contributed most significantly to the development of a new genre of photography. His images are much closer to classical art and the avant-garde of the sixties, than to the works of Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams.

Despite international recognition, shestidesyatichetyrehletny artist still lives and works in his native Vancouver. Wall remembers how in the seventies, leading artists, inspired by the ideas of "anti-art" by Marcel Duchamp turned into "Iconoclasts," refusing to create traditional paintings. This, according to the Wall, even more spurred his desire to "breathe new life into the picture ... to move forward, using the best achievements of classical art, which can not expire».

Among the works of the Wall is open shots with topical and political sense: it is pseudo-street scene depicting a racist gesture of one of the passers-by to the other, or mystic frame, made in the Soviet troops occupied Afghanistan, where the dead soldiers rise from their graves.

Jeff Wall also known documentary photographs of street life in Vancouver, and yet it just creates a bizarre images: a naked seventy giantess, growth in the two-story, somehow found herself in a public library, a black man, alone in a lighted 1300 bulbs basement (work entitled "The Invisible Man" and refers to the novel by Ralph Ellison on racial issues).

a long time Walla were actually illustrations of the theoretical texts about the nature of society and the nature of representation. Only recently, Wall spoke about freedom of interpretation of his works: "If viewers will always see in the pictures is the same as I do, it will deprive them of meaning. The greater the variety of readings, the better ».

During three decades of his career, Jeff Wall continues to speculate on what does and what the picture - and that after the anti-art, it would seem, has witnessed her death.

Prepared by Mary Estrova, AI

Source: newsweek.com , artinvestment.ru

from the list of the Top-10 most important artists of our time according to Newsweek.com we already talked about:

1. Demiane Hurst ;

2. Christiane Markle .