Power plays

By GREG COOK | May 21, 2010

The exhibit offers nine vintage photos plus 18 contact sheets that show the more than 200 shots he took to get the six that appeared in that February’s Harper’s Bazaar. Many of the prints seem washed out —the rich, burnished tones of his reproductions are missing. But in the contact sheets, you can track his thinking as he applies the mythmaking familiar from his fashion work.

The Kennedys might smile or squirm or mug, but Avedon picks shots in which they look stately. Three-year-old Caroline stands next to her father; his hand is on her shoulder, and she seems to be squinting into the future. Jackie and Caroline cradle six-week-old John Jr. Jackie poses in an evening gown. Jackie sits behind JFK, with her arm around him, the model couple.

Avedon works hard to fashion a calm, collected, regal portrait of the Kennedys. How could one resist seeing them as glamorous, young, fresh, and sexy after Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, Harry and Bess Truman, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt? But the shoot makes clear a curious phenomenon of our democracy — and perhaps a lesson for Ix K’abal Xook. Our rulers don’t have to commission artists to project their glory — our artists volunteer to do it for free.

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Topics: Museum And Gallery , Entertainment, Arts, Entertainment, and Media, Kennedys, More

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ARTICLES BY GREG COOK

A REALLY BIG SHOW! | May 21, 2013
This showcase of tomorrow's-art-stars-today is both invigorating and overwhelming, with work by 194 students.

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN | May 13, 2013
What does it mean to be a man? That's the question at the heart of this smart, sumptuous exhibit — one of the best shows in the region this year.

MERRY PRANKSTERS | May 07, 2013
Parked out front of Brown University's gray modernist Granoff Center on a recent sunny morning were one of those 15-foot-tall inflatable rats that unions install in front of businesses they're protesting and a limousine sloppily painted to resemble a yellow and black school bus.

ALTERED IMAGES | April 30, 2013
Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.

IN THE CITY | April 23, 2013
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Providence art scene is how the city itself has been such a rich subject. A decade ago, the city became a galvanizing topic as artists fought to protect the old mills that served as their homes and studios from demolition — with mixed success. But lately, the community's industrial architecture itself has attracted artists' attention.