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"Wols photographs."
ArtForum, Summer, 1999 by Carol Armstrong
Another emblematic photograph shows a tiny doll and an open oyster on muddy cobblestones, shot at an overhead tilt. This is a rendezvous between Moholy-Nagy and nature morte. It also articulates the inverted arc of Wols's photographic career, from the Paris-by-Night derive to the shut-in's world of small, close things. In a larger way too, Wols's photographic trajectory resists its destiny in painterly abstraction. For Wols's untriumphant story goes this way: Some three years after these photographs were taken, his photographic equipment was confiscated by German authorities, and then later, not altogether by choice, he turned to painting, because the materials were cheaper and more portable. And thus Informel was born, out of a cessation of photography.
Carol Armstrong is professor of art history at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
