Contemporary Artist Paper: William Wegman by Divya Basavapatna
When people hear the name William Wegman, the first thing that pops into their minds is, “isn’t that the man with the dogs?” Even William Wegman himself knows this but there’s more to him than meets the eye. To all dog lovers and maybe even people who are interested in the weird and wacky, William Wegman is probably one of the most interesting people out there. He was born on December 2nd, 1943 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. An American Photographer, originally an aspiring painter, Wegman received his bachelors in Fine Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art and later, received his masters at the University of Illinois.
As mentioned before, William Wegman is most famous for his unique photographs of his own Weimaraner dogs. He is also known for his subversive and light-hearted humor that is shown through out all of his photographs, video, film, and graphic art. He started his career by making funny, short videos. “Muscles” and “Stomach Song” are two of his funny shorts created in the 1970’s. It wasn’t until he released a video titled “Spelling Lesson”(1973) which featured his first and most famous Weimaraner dog, Man Ray (named after the surrealist artist/photographer). Man Ray was the most photographed out of all his dogs and rose to popularity because of his “endearing deadpan presence”. He became the center of Wegman’s videos and photographs until his death in 1981. In 1986, Wegman got his second dog, Fay Ray, and started shoot Polaroid photos of her.
William Wegman has an extensive cast of Weimaraner dogs and uses their acting abilities to make inspired children’s books. His way of showing his dogs in photographs is very different from normal photos. In these images, Wegman dressed his dogs up in various costumes to not only make them seem cute, but also creepy, intense and weird. He wants his photo’s to have a mythological feel to them. His video’s, which have been featured on Saturday Night Live, Nickelodeon and reoccurring episodes of Sesame Street, have his dogs set up in weird but entertaining clothing. Rub-a-Dub Dub and Alphabet Soup are just some of the creative short video’s he has made with his dogs.
In 1995, Wegman released his video titled, The Hardly Boys, which was featured in the Sundance Film Festival. After a twenty year hiatus, Wegman went back to working on his videos, similar to the one’s he created in the 70’s. He produced two new series of video works in 1998 and 1999, also releasing a box collection of all his work from the 70’s to the late 90’s. A lot of his works have been featured in galleries across the world. “Wegmans World”, which opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (1981) was among one of the galleries, which featured his work. His worked touched Europe where one of his galleries titled, “William Wegman: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs, Videotapes” opened in Kunstmuseum, Lucerne in 1990. Wegman’s exhibitions have been featured in Sweden, Japan, Korea and Spain. His most recent show titled “Funny/Strange” opened in 2006 in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. As the years past, Wegman started going back to painting while still focusing on his photographic skills. William Wegman currently resides both in New York and Maine along with his trusty Weimaraners and continues to make videos, takes photographs and does drawings and paintings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_IFN4lh59Y&feature=related
Rub-a-Dub Dub – another fun short segment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LCmVg5ExyM&feature=channel
Alphabet soup – Short Segment
Paper by Divya Basavapatna
