Artist | Larry Clark (*1943)
https://www.artist-info.com/artist/Larry-Clark
Biography
Biography
born in 1943 in Tulsa (Oklahoma)
About the work (english / deutsch)
About the work (english / deutsch)
Tulsa and Teenage Lust
With Tulsa and Teenage Lust, Larry Clark ripped the lid off Pandora's Box: never again would sex and drugs reach such heights of permissive laissezfaire in everyday life.
The other moving thing about these new photos is the shyness of the photographer. There was probably always an element of shyness, which would explain why he was able to do all the things that any other person would instinctively have refused. Shyness is exemplary here, as though the youngest of his subjects - the fifteen-year-olds in this case-wanted to cast off their shyness in front of Larry's camera.
Looking at the individual photographs (no easy task given the deliberate mass of serial portrayals) it is not only the myths of drugs and sex, readily available yet at the same time taboo, but also the "distant" myths of suicide and Warhol's maxim that anybody can be a 15-minute star.
To put Larry Clark in the homoerotic corner is to misconstrue his work. The autobiographical element, based on his family life, his inability to grow up, has honed his eye to the most vital phase of life - the phase of puberty. The words pubescent, adolescent, puerile, are often used pejoratively. While that may be justifiable in some ways, it is all too easy to forget that precisely that period, because of its emotional confusion, tends to be repressed. To become an adult and feel that way is to detach oneself from puberty. Whether it also means one has actually come to terms with it is another question altogether.
Larry Clark’s constant exploration of his youth as a primarily sexual experience, and the way he repeatedly becomes involved as part of a community, documents an authentic experience of ritual, trust, angst, time, death and sexuality in a maximum of existential concentration. In this respect, today's form of presenting his new photos is not only one of distance, due to a generation gap and the behavioural change of young people, but also a form of diffuse and definite participation created a) by including entirely unrelated sequences involving different youths within a single block and b) by setting himself limits which seem like the staking out of territorial boundaries. This, too, is both exemplary and symptomatic today: the clearly defined borders permit a form of communication that can be conveyed as an emotional and correspondingly irrational complex. Both far and near.
German text by Jean-Christophe Ammann / Translation by Ishbel Flett
(Extract - Full printed version available in the Museum)
MMK - Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
Tulsa und Teenage Lust
Larry Clark hat mit Tulsa und Teenage Lust die Büchse der Pandora geöffnet: Niemals wieder sollten Sex & Drugs in der permissiven Unbekümmertheit eines alltäglichen "Laissez faire - laissez aller" ihre Kulmination finden.
Das Bewegende in diesen neuen Bildern ist aber auch die Scheu des Fotografen. Wahrscheinlich hat sie immer existiert, und nur deshalb konnte er all dies tun, was jedem anderen instinktiv verweigert worden wäre. Die Scheu tritt hier exemplarisch in Erscheinung, als wollten die jüngsten, hier die Fünfzehnjährigen, sie bei Larry abbauen.
Schaut man sich die Bilder einzeln an - was in der bewußten Fülle der seriellen Darstellung gar nicht so einfach ist -, so sind es nicht die jederzeit realisierbaren und gleichzeitig tabuisierten Mythen von Drogen und Sexualität, sondern die "fernen", Mythen des Suizids und der Warholschen Devise, daß jeder in 15 Minuten weltberühmt werden kann. Wer Larry Clark auf die homoerotische Schiene schiebt, täuscht sich. Das autobiographische Element, familiärbedingt, nie erwachsen werden zu können, hat seinen Blick für die vitalste Phase in unserem Leben geschärft, jene der Pubertät. Bezeichnet man heute jemanden als pubertär, ist dies ein Schimpfwort. Recht so, jedoch vergißt man allzu leicht, daß man gerade diese Periode, ihrer emotionalen Konfusionen wegen, massiv verdrängt. Wer erwachsen ist und so empfindet, hat sich von der Pubertät getrennt. Ob er die Pubertät verarbeitet hat, ist eine ganz andere Frage.
Larry Clarks kontinuierliche Auseinandersetzung mit seiner Jugend als sexuelle Primärerfahrung, die Art und Weise, wie er sich selbst immer wieder als Teil einer Gemeinschaft interpoliert, hält eine ursprüngliche Erfahrung von Ritual, Vertrauen, Angst, Zeit, Tod und Sexualität in einem Maximum an existentieller Verdichtung fest.
Insofern ist die heutige Präsentationsform seiner neuen Fotos nicht nur Distanzaufnahme, bedingt durch Generationsunterschied und Verhaltensänderung junger Menschen, sondern auch eine Form der diffusen und bestimmten Teilnahme a) durch das Einbringen ganz verschiedener Sequenzen mit verschiedenen Jugendlichen innerhalb eines Blocks, b) durch die Grenzen, die er sich selbst setzt, die wie die Abgrenzung eines Territoriums erscheinen. Auch dies dürfte heute exemplarisch und symptomatisch zugleich sein: Die klar definierte Abgrenzung ermöglicht jene Kommunikationsform, die als emotionaler und entsprechend irrationaler Komplex ganzheitlich vermittelbar ist. Fern und nah zugleich.
Text von Jean-Christophe Ammann
(Auszug - Der vollständige Text ist als Informationsblatt beim Museum erhältlich)
MMK - Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
Bibliography
Bibliography
Tulsa, New York, 1971
Teenage Lust, Millerton, New York, 1982 (1987)
Thomas Dugan, Photography between Covers, Rochester, New York, 1979
Larry Clark, interview by Guy Trebay The Village Voice, New York, No. 42, October 15. - 21., 1980
3 New Yorker Photographen, Basel 1982
Larry Clark 1992, Thea Westreich / New York, Gisela Capitain / Cologne, 1992
Films
Films
Kids, 1995
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Exhibition History
SUMMARY based on artist-info records. More details and Visualizing Art Networks on demand. Venue types: Gallery / Museum / Non-Profit / Collector |
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Exhibitions in artist-info | 92 (S 24/ G 68) |
Did show together with - Top 5 of 1547 artists (no. of shows) - all shows - Top 100
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Exhibitions by type | 92: 44 / 26 / 21 / 1 | |||||||||||
Venues by type | 62: 23 / 21 / 17 / 1 | |||||||||||
Curators | 55 | |||||||||||
artist-info records | Jan 1981 - Dec 2024 | |||||||||||
Countries - Top 5 of 13 United States (41) Germany (11) France (7) United Kingdom (6) Switzerland (4) |
Cities - Top 5 of 35 New York (34) London (6) Paris (6) Frankfurt am Main (4) Köln (3) |
Venues (no. of shows )
Top 5 of 62
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Curators (no. of shows)
Top 5 of 55
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People, Places, Things – Part II |
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Stephen Bulger Gallery | G | Nov 2024 - Dec 2024 | Toronto | (159) | +0 | |
Image Profile - Aspects of the Documentary in MMK’s Photography Collection |
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Tower - MMK | G | Mar 2018 - Jul 2018 | Frankfurt am Main | (8) | +0 | |
The Thrill of the Chase - The Wagstaff Collection of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum |
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Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art | G | Sep 2016 - Dec 2016 | Hartford | (65) | +0 | |
Martineau, Paul (Curator) | +0 | |||||
Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner |
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Whitney Museum of American Art | G | Nov 2015 - Mar 2016 | New York | (365) | +0 | |
Sussman, Elisabeth (Curator) | +0 | |||||
Gilman, Sondra (Curator) | +0 | |||||
Macel, Christine (Curator) | +0 | |||||
Sherman, Elisabeth (Curator) | +0 | |||||
La Grande Madre |
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Fondazione Nicola Trussardi | G | Aug 2015 - Nov 2015 | Milano | (21) | +0 | |
Gioni, Massimiliano (Curator) | +0 | |||||
America Is Hard to See |
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Whitney Museum of American Art - America Is Hard to See | S | May 2015 - Sep 2015 | New York | (1) | +0 | |
De Salvo, Donna (Curator) | +0 | |||||
Foster, Carter E. (Curator) | +0 | |||||
Miller, Dana (Curator) | +0 | |||||
Rothkopf, Scott (Curator) | +0 | |||||
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