SEPTEMBER 16, 2015
William Wegman
Dogs on furniture
An exclusive series of photographs by
William Wegman for PIASA
Exhibition designed by Chahan Minassian
VIEWING
September 11-16, 2016
PIASA
118 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
75008 Paris - France
Piasa Editions
William Wegman - Dogs on furniture
September 2015
PRESS & COMMUNICATION
Cécile Demtchenko Woringer
T +33 1 53 34 12 95 - M +33 6 22 16 85 96
c.demtchenko@piasa.fr
Press release
On 16 September 2015, PIASA will stage a sale devoted to the American
artist William Wegman. Among the fifty photographs selected, PIASA
will also offer for sale on September 16 a series of unique, unpublished
photographs inspired by the furniture of George Nakashima.
Since the 1970s, William Wegman has been creating work that blends humour,
irony and wit, often taking as his central subjects and muses, his Weimaraners.
Wegman was born in Massachusetts in 1943 and studied painting at the
Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the University of Illinois ChampaignUrbana. He taught at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Los Angeles
in 1970.
“Sometimes it’s the dog who makes the picture.” William Wegman
In 1971, Wegman adopted his first dog, a Weimaraner who he named “Man Ray”
in honor of the legendary photographer. Wegman was hypnotized by the dog’s
imposing, intelligent presence and Man Ray soon because his main collaborator,
the subject of Wegman’s seminal video and photgraphs of the 70s.
Along with his fellow Los Angeles artists John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha and Bruce
Nauman, Wegman created work that was funny, even perverse, upending the
Minimal and Conceptual work established on the East Coast and helping to
invent along the way what became known as West Coast Conceptual art.
In 1979, Wegman moved to New York. Man Ray died in 1982 and in 1985 Wegman
adopted a new dog, Fay Ray, who gave birth to pups who in turn gave birth to
pups. This large canine family became a multi-talented new cast of characters
for Wegman.
Through the years, Wegman has often found inspiration in juxtaposing his dogs
with furniture. Some of the most famous examples were made with the Polaroid
20 x 24 camera with which Wegman worked from 1979-2008. Included in the
PIASA auction are such highlights from this body of work as Kit realized in 1991
or the acrobatic Classical of 1994.
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« What struck me about working with my dogs and the Nakashima furniture is
how alike they are. » William Wegman
«I have always enjoyed seeing my dogs on furniture: the couch, the bed, an easy chair
and yes up on the table but only in the studio. I have made it a habit of looking for
things to accommodate their poses. Usually stuff I find on the street or in dumpsters.
Sometimes it comes as a surprise which objects will work. After years and years of lifting
and placing them on so many different pedestals I can still be surprised. Sometimes it’s
the dog who makes the picture. My current models, Topper and Flo, can’t be draped
the way the exceptional Battina could. But no past Weimaraner of mine could pose as
heroically and proudly as Topper. Not even the peerless Man Ray. And no one, not even
Fay Ray, can embed her poses with the deep, possessed look of Flo. » he states.
About the opportunity to work with George Nakashima’s furniture, William
Wegman says:
« Dog and furniture blend together and at times become one and the same. I saw an
even deeper connection when I visited Mira Nakashima at the Nakashima studio in New
Hope, Pennsylvania, a beautiful and natural setting surrounded and immersed in the
soul of the tree. Mira said that her father believed that he was giving a second life to the
tree that he used in making his piece. In some way my dogs give that tree a third life. »
With their elegant bearing and piercing gaze, Weimaraners are immediately
playful and appealing. As captured by Wegman they also become poignant
metaphors for human behavior.
William Wegman has been the subject of numerous retrospectives in the world’s
leading museums, notably the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Frankfurt Kunstverein; and the Pompidou
Centre in Paris. In addition to being included in most major museums collections,
Wegman’s photographs and videos have also appeared on Saturday Night Live
and Sesame Street, at the Sundance Film Festival, the Metropolitan Opera, in ad
campaigns for numerous fashion houses, in the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue
and the Times Square jumbotron and on the cover of The New Yorker. Wegman
lives with his dogs and family in New York and Maine.
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© Kimberly M. Wang 2014
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William WEGMAN (born in 1943)
Addressed, 2015
Pigment print
Edition 1/1
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
on a label on the back
53,33 x 40 in
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William WEGMAN (born in 1943)
Stop Action, 2015
Pigment print
Edition 1/1
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
on a label on the back
53.33 x 40 in
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William WEGMAN (born in 1943)
Looking Over, 2015
Diptych, two pigment prints
Edition 1/1
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
on a label on the back
53.33 x 40 in
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William WEGMAN (born in 1943)
One On, 2015
Pigment print
Edition 1/1
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
on a label on the back
53.33 x 40 in
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Design Department
Cédric Morisset
François Epin
Cindy Chanthavong
Johanna Colombatti
Photographs department
Fannie Bourgeois
Artistic Director:
Agnès de Gouvion Saint-Cyr
www.piasa.fr
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