RICHARD AVEDON • Women

Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
November 1st - December 21st, 2013

 

 

Richard Avedon asks you to take a look at women.

 

All women.

 

From every possible vantage point.

 

And in every way they exist.

 

But most importantly, Richard Avedon asks that you do so in the way he communes with them as they fall through the guise of his camera’s lens and nest within the emulsion of his still frame film stock.

 

And this is not a superficial expedition.

 

It is not limited to eye candy.

 

It is not trying to be socially relevant, provocative or heavy-handed.

 

Instead the latest exhibition at the Gagosian Beverly Hills offers up Avedon portraits of women through decades and from every manner of life from Hollywood celebrities like Audrey Hepburn. Trophy wives like Bianca Jagger. Fashion models like Twiggy. Stateswomen. Fine Artists. Women of the American West, as is and without makeup. Writers. Poets and Singers.

 

- All presented with dignity and full of expression.

 

The curating of this exhibition is museum quality. It’s not a garage sale display, nor is it told through a dull chronological effort.

 

Rather - as you enter the first gallery room, you will be drawn in and immediately confronted with one singular idea, that Richard Avedon saw all women in the same way - as noble, and in that nobility, all worthy of celebration.

 

And that notion about about women, famous and unknown, come to careful gestation as you walk through a seemingly casual spread of Avedon’s contact sheets, finished chromes and printed stills.

 

 

 

 

Richard Avedon • Women was on display at the Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California
from November 1st through December 21st, 2013.

 

Photographs by Richard Avedon

© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

 

 

Review is © Ron Barbagallo 2013

All images are:
© The Richard Avedon Foundation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

 

The author would like to thank Alexandra Magnuson, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California for her help in assembling this work.

 

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RICHARD AVEDON • WOMEN

© 2013 Ron Barbagallo

Photographs by Richard Avedon, © The Richard Avedon Foundation