from the archives

Excerpt from OSMOS Issue 11

FRANCES UCKERMANN

By: Christian Rattemeyer

Every discovery carries the shock of the never-before-seen, and when you are young, each encounter with The New acquires a special significance, a secret bond between you and an expanding world. In July 1989, I had just turned seventeen when I visited Dem Herkules zu Füssen at the Fridericianum Kassel, an exhibition of students and recent graduates of the Kassel Art Academy. Among the works were a few black-and-white photographs of New York artists, taken by Frances Uckermann, who also contributed the group portrait of the exhibiting artists to the catalogue. A few images were reproduced a year or two later in the Swiss art magazine Artis, and then they disappeared from circulation. Uckermann has since become an accomplished art director, working predominantly for German magazines such as ZEIT and STERN, and as new projects beckoned, the “student work” photographs no longer warranted Uckermann’s reconsideration. But in my imagination, these pictures have always remained larger than life, idealized glimpses of what it meant to be a New York artist. They are imbued with the glamour, power, and mystery of what the center of the art world looked like from the distance of Germany. They radiate the coolness of the 1980s, the pathos, grit, and romantic machismo of downtown; the stark black-and-white feels appropriate.

These photographs shaped my image not only of the “New York artist” but more specifically of Robert Longo, Haim Steinbach, and Allan McCollum for decades, long before I ever got to meet any of them personally. Seeing the images again, after almost three decades, I realize how iconic they are, how well they communicate the essence of each artist and his (or her) project: Robert Longo’s hand in the metal skull, in focus while the artist behind is blurred, remains a striking image of unmitigated force. Haim Steinbach, concealed under a Yoda mask used in some of his sculptures, remains as mysterious as his work.

I didn’t realize how few images were actually ever published. In addition to Steinbach and Longo, Artis also printed the portraits of Joseph Nechvatal and Les Levine. Six others—of Brice Marden, Ashley Bickerton, Christo, Ingo Guenther, Leon Golub, and another with Golub and Nancy Spero (who were married)—are published here for the first time. Some images are more conventional: the artist in the studio, surrounded by the objects of their art. Others give an unexpected pleasure to seeing an artist we thought we knew well in a different light, or at a different moment in their career. And some—like the images of Longo, Steinbach, Levine, McCollum, and Guenther— create indelible portrayals of the artists, micro-narratives of an art world that appeared—and remains—powerful, yet—looking back through Uckermann’s lens—clearly appears to have been a bit too male.