Ryan McGinley, Everybody Knows This is Largely Overrated, Sad Pubic Hair
Dubbed “the less creepy Terry Richardson,” Ryan McGinley expectedly drew an obnoxious, canned crowd last night at the opening party for his new show at Team Gallery “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.” The well-connected photographer is known for stripping down the fashionably unkempt down to their tattoos. This time, he strips them of his signature aesthetic as well. Peek a preview of plain, pretty snaps of naked skinny scene kids with good hair.
150 models of varied attractiveness loiter “intimately” in black and white photographs, demonstrating the photographer’s ability to make sexy head shots and be at once pedestrian and legendary. Gone are the outdoor reveries, the firecracker halos, the tree-branch orgies and whatnot. McGingley’s too famous and fancy-free to worry about the public’s demand for consistency that snuffs many other artists’ creativity. He can do something different by doing something worse and still have drooling fans galore.
Not that these are bad portraits. They are very good portraits. Alas, the stylistic sense of action that partially justified McGinley hype is purged. All that’s left is a testament to hype itself. But feel free to riffle through the portrait preview anyway. The one with the girl with the bangs and the bandages is a good one. Really.
Editor-in-Chief:
Agree all the way – very uninspiring work.
THANK YOU, his stuff seems way overrated.
Yes, the portrait of the girl in a bandage is terrific in many different ways: composition, pose, use of contrast, etc. Can you follow-up with an analysis as to how you think his other portraits mostly end up being less than than that work? Is he just another normally pedestrian person (of whatever vocation: art, business, sports, journalism, whatever) who has a moment of vision from time to time?
Why “sad pubic hair”? I don’t think pubic hair is ever sad. I can remember the 70s, so I really miss it. (On women, I mean.)
PS, The way that you cropped the portraits for this post are in many cases better than the composition that McGinley chose. Go figure.
The computer does the cropping. Which makes your comment hilarious.
haha. no shit.