Let us now praise FAM

The Fenimore Art Museum has inspired and altered my appreciation of an artist by exhibiting a series of breath-taking large-scale prints of his work: Walker Evans: Carbon and Silver.

I'm telling you! Standing in front of the prints, many that I first saw years ago when reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, now nearly poster-size with intricate detail, was a revelation.

I was especially taken with two huge prints; one of a repair shop with a syncopation of tires and hub-caps at works across the facade, and the other a "combine" of two prints joined to create a panorama of a street-life scene. In both, Evans manages to make us acutely aware of the content of the image (poverty, place, plot) and at the same time treating the image as an intricately designed tableau of textures, shapes, dark & light, rhythms; entirely "modern," like a Rauschenberg.

I think this show helped my enjoy that balance in his work more than ever. Well done, FAM. And thanks!