Museum Visit Contemporary Art

The artwork that I chose was “In Front Of A Nightclub “ by Jeff Wall. The photograph immediately caught my interest due to it size and the variety that the picture presented . The picture depicts a scene outside of a nightclub. There are a few people congregated by the entrance while the others are walking outside. I initially thought of the photograph as a scene of a normal sidewalk with and entrance to a certain place. To me the artist seemed to be conveying the grittiness and contrast of everyday life. There is a stark contrast in expression between the woman that is smiling and the woman who is staring off into the distance. The photograph a full year to create. The artist Jeff Wall had an exact replica of a nightclub recreated from the discoloration of the sidewalk to the moss growing on between the cracks. He then took around 300-400 snapshots of the spots on different days and found people he would like to have standing out in front. After creating the set he hired extras to play their parts. The photograph was then digitally manipulated and mounted upon a back-lit photo transparency. “While modern photography in the first half of the twentieth century may have been guided largely by the “decisive moment,” after the 1960s, much of the photographic work circulating in the fine art realm could be characterized as highly premeditated, systematic, and staged: in other words, this work embodies an ethos of “think first, shoot later.” (MCA Exhibit Description) I think that Jeff Wall’s Nightclub captures the idea of “think first shoot later” perfectly. To the ordinary eye it is a picture that depicts a scene outside of a nightclub. The effect of the lighting/backdrop he uses also lend to the capture of the moment feel. However after a few moments of examining the artwork the scene seems to be too perfect.
“One other thing. Interweaving layers of reality and falsehood are a post-modern obsession but by no means something that the post-modern ’70s