William Wegman is a playful character, busy in his studio making up cleverly incongruous and comical situations that are instantly activated through collisions between reality and fiction. His photographic and videographic stagings are small scenarios shot live, raw actions without commentary, often involving (for instance) the unexpected encounter within the frame of a dog and a puddle of milk, a finger and iron wire, or a curtain and a striking idea.[1]

For Wegman, the watershed in his career occurred in 1970, an event that he describes in Eurêka[2]. With comic intent, while reproducing the form of the diamond of his ring through small circles drawn on his fingers, he attends a buffet where, as he serves a slice of sausage, he is struck by a second mirror effect: the circles are “also” the same shape as the sliced pepper grains found throughout the deli meat.[3] In the photo derived from this event (Cotto, 1970, Craig F. Starr Gallery), we see the founding elements of his approach: the use of a trivial, worthless material; rudimentary coverage; the humorous scenario created through an “accidental” encounter with an object; the use of several layers of meaning; and a strongly marked taste for the distanciation effect, created through the false analogy.

Born in 1943 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, William Wegman obtained a B.F.A. in Painting at the Massachusetts College of Art in 1965. In 1966, he integrated inflatable sculptures into his performances, which took place at the Electric Circus, a mythical club from the East Village (New York) rented by Andy Warhol[4]: at this time, Wegman appreciated associating his sculptures with interactive environments featuring sound, light, and projections. After obtaining his M.F.A (in painting) from the University of Illinois in 1967, he abandoned the discipline for some time, in favour of photography and video experimentation.[5] From 1968 to 1970, he taught at the University of Wisconsin. Wegman was part of the hive of activity on campus[6] and
… I felt I was an isolated figure in an enormously uncontrollable but exciting environment. I never thought about this or said this, but that's maybe why I turned to video, because it provided me with a sanctuary of being able to work inside a closed room without anyone else around.[...]it had the potential of reaching an enormous audience.[7]

Consequently, his territory was no stranger to the realm of Conceptual Art – at least in its intellectual dimension – which he made use of in his ironic explorations of the margins.
He spent a lot of time in the exhilarating and ever-expanding world situated between his ears, filled with little stories and the tiny gags of daily life[8]: “It's always when you're all alone that you have the best conversations.”[9] But the process is nonetheless very serious: Wegman isn't laughing; he is “impassive”. The various distortions that his voiceover provokes with respect to the image is a key element in his work: the actions are subjected to this monotonous, passive voice that meticulously spouts soliloquies sometimes worthy of Samuel Beckett[10], playing on all kinds of overdubbing, comparisons, jarring and displacement effects.

In the autumn of 1970, Wegman moved to southern California where he taught for a year at the California State College of Long-Beach. He rubbed shoulders with Ed Ruscha[11] in particular, and met John Baldessari and Bruce Nauman, fervent users of banal objects and local observations. At the time, Wegman's approach was similar to theirs, since the former performed his sparse actions in front of the camera in the closed space of his studio, and the latter could certainly be said to demonstrate a deadpan attitude. Furthermore, their modes of operation are similar: often frustrated by both productions and their effects, their tapes document performance processes and conceptual frameworks.

It was also at that Wegman adopted his first dog – Man Ray – the obedient and faithful protagonist of his master's eccentricities.[12] Man Ray even became Wegman's alter ego, and the transfer of identity constitutes the central proponent of comic tension: he drinks from a glass of milk like his master, feelings are applied to him, and he is caught up in parodies of human actions. After the death of Man Ray in 1981, Wegman continued his collaboration with an entire family of Weimaraners spanning four generations[13], starting with Fay Ray, who he adopted in 1986 and with whom he used the 20 x 24 Polaroid format in particular.[14] From 1989 onwards, Wegman produced a series of educational films for Sesame Street, a children's television show, staging the troupe of dogs in human costumes, busily making bread, presenting a hairdressing salon, or miming a painting session (see for instance Alphabet Soup, Fay's Twelve Days Christmas or Mother Goose). In 1995, Wegman made the film entitled The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold, based on the same procedure of canine staging. The Weimaraners, the undisputed starts of Wegman's work, also find themselves in children's books (Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood in 1993) and in fashion photographs, namely for a campaign produced for Max Mara in 2001, Max Mara Dog 109.

William Wegman lives in New York and Maine, where he continues to make videos, photographic works, drawings and paintings.

Wegman's work has also been the subject of a number of retrospectives: Wegman's World, in 1981 at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) before touring to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Holly Solomon Gallery (New York), among others; and also William Wegman: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs, Videotapes 1970-1990, organised by the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne in 1990, which travelled to the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Kunstverein in Frankfurt and the London Institute of Contemporary Art. The Addison Gallery of American Art finally accorded him another solo exhibition in 2006 – entitled Funney/Strange: a retrospective of Wegman's work – with a catalogue published by Yale University Press. His works have also been shown within the framework of many collective exhibitions, including the famous Live in your head: When Attitudes Become Forms by Harald Szeeman (1969); but also at biennales and international festivals (the Documenta de Cassel, the Biennale of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Kunsthalle in Vienna, Venice Biennale, and so on). In 2012, a selection of videos by Wegman featured in the Vidéo Vintage 1963-1983 exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. In addition, his photographs have been published in several books, including Man's Best Friend (1982) and William Wegman: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs, Videotapes (1990-91). A compilation of works produced between 1970 and 1990 was nonetheless published as a double DVD by Artpix in 2006.

Manon Schwich

Translated by Anna Knight

[1] References to the works entitled Drinking Milk, Crooked Finger - Crooked Stick and Untitled, black and white videos made between 1970 and 1978, which can be found in the compilation published on DVD by Artpix – William Wegman, Video Works 1970-1999 – 2006.
[2] Manifesto, written in 1970.
[3] See the photographic print that came out of this anecdote, Cotto, 1970.
[4] Another installation of his inflatable structures took place in 1968 as part of the performance entitled Famous Powder Dance. Again, this was held at the Electric Circus. In 1967, he also created a 24h performance with John Cage in Illinois, in which he entirely filled a hall with one of his inflatable sculptures. See Joan Simon, artwork cited below.
[5] He states that he found a camera for the firsthe University of Illinois. Another chance encounter, which he tells David Letterman about in Late Night, on the show first broadcast on 11 February 1982 on WNBC 4, New York.
[6] The campus was the theatre of a strong mobilisation against the war in Vietnam.
[7] William Wegman, cited by Joan Simon (dir.), Eureka 1970-1978 in William Wegman: Funney / Strange, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 39.
[8] See Joan Simon (dir.), Eureka 1970-1978 in William Wegman: Funney / Strange, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 39.
[9] Quote from William Wegman, in Maud Lavin, “Notes on William Wegman”, Artforum, Mars 1975, p. 44.
[10] Comparison taken from The New Yorker, quoted in the biography of the artist published on Electronic Art Intermix. URL: http://eai.org.
[11] Who incidentally became his first collector.
[12] It is interesting to note that Wegman also considers Man Ray to be a found object, entering the filmic space by chance, in an extension of the Surrealist imaginary borrowed through the choice of the name Man Ray. See the David Letterman show cited in note 5.
[13] After Fay Ray came the Fay Ray's offspring, Battina Crooky and Chundo; then the third generation, consisting of Chip, Bobbin and Candy; and then the fourth, Penny, Bobbin's puppy. See the artist's website for more information on the filiation of Wegman's four-legged family. URL: http://www.williamwegman.com/about.html
[14] See for instance Rolleramer, Polaroid 20 x 24, colour, 1987.