Better
Things: An Annotated Visual Essay of Photographs
Interpreting the Collection of the Memorial
Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
by Douglas
Holleley
Clarellen, Rochester NY, 2004
120 pp., 165 illus. Paper, $19.95
ISBN 0-9707138-2-7.
Available from the Memorial Art Gallery
of the University of Rochester, 500 University
Avenue, Rochester NY 14607. For ordering
information, call (585) 473-7720, ex.
3057
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa, USA
ballast@netins.net
Many years ago, as an undergraduate art
student, I attended a baffling evening
in which the speaker showed pairs of images
that seemed to have little or nothing
to do with one another in terms of time
period, medium, subject matter, and so
on. I found this completely confusing
at first. But then my "thinking eye" kicked
in, and I soon realized that I myself,
independent of the lecturer's narrative,
was continually "finding" connections
between the juxtaposed images. Essentially,
that is what this book attempts: Using
cropped details from photographs of artworks
in the Memorial Gallery of the University
of Rochester, it confronts us with incompatible
pairs. None of the images is identified,
and a few are close to being abstract.
If the anonymity becomes too tantalizing,
one can always choose to "cheat" by turning
to the lengthy "key" at the end of the
book, where every work is reproduced,
wholly and in full-color, complete with
its catalog data. The author-photographer-designer,
an Australian-born artist who is known
for his earlier excellent book on Digital
Book Design and Publishing (2001),
believes, as he says in the elegant texts
that announce each section, that we need
not always experience art as a kind of
docent-guided tour, being led sequentially
from one single work to another. His method
(by which his stated purpose is, like
the Russian Formalists, to see both art
and life "afresh") is based on what he
designates as an "interactive reading"
of art. He assumes by this that works
of art (and why not other things as well?)
need not always be esteemed as discrete
and indivisible wholes. We might instead
approach them as "fields of choice and
potential" in which canonical boundaries
fade, enabling "characters and events
[to speak] directly to each other across
geographical borders and even time itself."
This book is a great pleasure to read
as well as to view, because Holleley is
as exacting a writer as he is a photographer
and book designer. Consistent with its
point of view, this is an appeal to museums
to look at reservoirs of antique art in
a new light and to encourage a similar
attitude in their habitués.
Related to that, I recall a poignant line
that ends the author's introduction: "How
we read them [works of art] is up to us.
But read them we must."
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review, Vol. 20, No. 1,
Autumn 2004.)
