McDermott & McGough: A History of Photography [Hardcover]

David McDermott (Author), Peter McGough (Author), Mark Alice Durant (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0965728021 | ISBN-13: 978-0965728027 | Publication Date: April 1998 | Edition: First Edition

Casting themselves as latter-day dandies of an era gone by, the artist team of McDermott & McGough have mined the history of aesthetics as a means to illuminate the present condition of art and culture. With biting irony, and an unmistakably camp sensibility, McDermott & McGough have long employed a visual language that draws heavily from earlier movements; Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolism and Decadence, and Pictorialism, to name just a few. But their work is closely tied to the present day. This, the first retrospective monograph of their photographic work, underscores the tenacity of their mission to seek a future in the past. Included are the duo's portraits, nudes, still lifes, and architectural pictures utilizing such archaic processes as gum-bichromate, cyanotype, platinum palladium, and salt printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Contemporary artists McDermott & McGough are best known for their sumptuous "archaic" photographs or, perhaps, for their continued insistence on living in the past. The first assumption is unfortunate, the second untrue. Arena's book, reproducing 73 cyanotypes, palladium, and gum bichromate prints in the highest quality allows one to understand the photographs' popularity. The mixture of such delicate processes and the superficially nostalgic contentAhigh romantic tableaus, still lifes, and mimicry of famous artworksAcreate alluring pieces. But the paintings and graphic works in the exhibition catalog from Stichting Kunstboek add a depth of meaning to the photographs that Durant's fine essay cannot. We begin to understand that each work is more a manifesto than a souvenir. As for the second assumption, it is true that the pair dress in vintage garb, live in an apartment with antique fixtures, and produce their art using old-fashioned methods. But they are not trying to "live in the past" so much as they are trying to alter the present, raise questions about the nature of progress, and fight the evils they foresee in the future. Their purposeful contradictions become apparent in the duo's art in the second bookAmore than 150 full-color reproductions, roughly one-third photographs. Combining Gilbert & George's mastery of the couple as artist and Josef Beuys's manipulation of public/private iconography, McDermott & McGough are among the most noteworthy of young American artists. The Stichting Kunstboek publication is an affordable and important acquisition for any library with an interest in contemporary art; Arena's book, with better reproductions, belongs in large photography collections. [Yes, the name is spelled MacDermott in the second title, but not in the text or the other book.AEd.]AEric Bryant, "Library Journal.
-AEric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

This volume appears blanketed in pastness, with bits of real-life vividness (gadfly Ricky Clifton as a nineteenth-century gent posing with two skulls) occasionally peeking out. Through an informative essay by Mark Alice Durant, an assistant professor of media studies at Syracuse University, we learn that McDermott & McGough first undertook photography in 1987. They went on to make beautifully tinted gum-bichromate prints of Roman emperors busts, head shots of living goddesses (Jacqueline Schnabel as Sappho) and crotch shots of ancient statuary. Durant invokes the curious nineteenth-century tradition of spiritualism and freemasonry, and underlines photographys early association with the scientific and the occult to account for what he calls the odd feelings of depopulation in the duos photographs. On the whole, his case is successfully argued, and its a beautiful book . . . All M&M lovers will want it on their shelves. -- Brooks Adams, Bookforum, Summer 1998

Product Details

• Hardcover: 143 pages
• Publisher: Arena Editions; First Edition edition (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965728021
• ISBN-13: 978-0965728027
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,783,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)