Doug Hall at Feigen Contemporary - New York

Art in America, July, 2003 by Michael Amy

In "Opera Houses," Doug Hall's recent exhibition of large, richly saturated color photographs (all 2002), the artist presented a series of Italian opera house interiors for our contemplation. Hall has an abiding interest in Italy as a place where history remains tangible. As in his earlier series of pictures of Roman and Neapolitan archives and libraries, these interiors are photographed when devoid of all human presence. By placing himself at one end of each building's principal axis, he obtains symmetrical configurations of the utmost beauty. This straightforward and somewhat simplistic approach becomes only occasionally tedious, for the selected sites are visually ravishing.

Teatro dell'Opera, Roma depicts this space as seen from the stage--a view that is traditionally reserved for the actors. We see a fragment of a ceiling painting at the top center, with five stories of balconies rushing down toward the left and right margins of the horizontal composition. Chandeliers are ablaze, marking the exact points where the arches connect with the columns lining each level. Their white light punctuates the architecture that is rhythmically enlivened by reds, light browns and beiges.

In Teatro Municipale, Piacenza 2, the opera house's oval ceiling is filled with paintings of putti floating on brilliant blue backgrounds that are framed by gilded stucco decoration. The ceiling fills almost half of this vertical image and seems to soar past us towards a distant horizon like a vast spaceship, its light source placed in the center like an all-seeing eye.

The horizontal Teatro Communale, Ferrara 3 differs from the above-mentioned works in that we are now looking from the balcony towards the stage, and this rectangular space lacks the swooping curves found in most of the other photographs. The lowered yellow curtain, joined by the brightly illuminated, obliquely receding balconies, zooms the eye forward to the stage. This scene is full of color and movement. Hall's photographs preserve and pay tribute to the elite culture of the past.