Page 37 - Studio International - September 1974

Jack and Richard Avedon 9 August 1967

Jacob Israel Avedon — businessman 59 December 1972

visage and an emblem. Why else does this grave interlocutor of great exigence. The still drama sage, Dr Schweitzer at least. Out of this tension,
work remove itself from his oeuvre, and remain that has taken place goes beyond mere and from literally hundreds of posed portraits,
singularly memorable? (Significantly, when description. And Stravinsky becomes, as Avedon drew the few photographs presented at
writers on Hals cite the painting, they rarely Avedon wills, a symbol of himself, remote from the Museum of Modern Art. (Presented, by the
find much to say beyond remarking the the actor who so often dominated the celluloid way, in a scheme devised by his friend, the
extraordinary compositional play of face and of countless photographers for countless painter Marvin Israel, who hung the huge
hands, and the air of serious awe Hals inspires. decades. enlargements unmounted and hanging free in a
Epitomes are hard to talk about.) Avedon's narrative of his relationship to his closely sequestered chamber.) The effect was
Avedon is studying Stravinsky, as Stravinsky father is another matter. His father, Jacob Israel immense. Even those who neglected to read the
is composing himself for Avedon's study. First, Avedon, was the one exception in Avedon's wall label, in which Jacob Israel Avedon's life
on the left, we read a composition containing the portrait career — someone he knew well. Or as an immigrant Jewish boy in New York who
lightest values of the three frames. The evenness rather, someone he might have known well. The made his way through college, succeeded and
and lightness stresses the hooded eyes, the fact is that Avedon, when he embarked on this failed in several businesses, retired to Florida
withdrawn quality of reverie. In the next image, six-year self-assignment, set out to discover a and divorced his wife, remarried and for the
the light is modelled very slightly; shadows on father he had scarcely known; a father whose last time went into business, this time shortly
temple and cheekbone emphasize the dawning life as a business man had set him apart, and before his death from cancer, and with his own
glint in Stravinsky's eye as he begins to emerge made him for so many years unknowable to the son Richard — even those who missed the vital
from reverie to confront Avedon's eye. Finally, artistic son. (To the end the gulf remained, as data were held and awed by these portraits of
Avedon deepens the values to an inflected the series' title Jacob Israel Avedon, Business age and death. It might have enriched the
chiaroscuro to emphasize the moment of total Man asserts.) The series of sittings with this experience to have heard Avedon talk about his
attention. He heightens the light behind the stranger-father was, as Avedon characterizes it, first visits to Florida, the awkward silences
head, giving the illusion that the head has moved `a competition between us to win the sitting.' between father and son, the little Monopoly
closer to the picture plane; and he deepens the While Avedon wanted to capture the older house with its furnishings of which they
shadows around the centrally important fact: Avedon's anxiety, impatience and greed for discussed and re-discussed the prices, and the
the eyes that give, now, total attention to an life, his father wanted him to portray a wise old ruse by which young Avedon reached an
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