RALPH EUGENE MEATYARD American Mystic
Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Ralph Eugene Meatyard: American Mystic from March 9 – May 6,
2017, featuring some 30 works by this enigmatic and legendary photographer.
The exhibition coincides with the publication a major new monograph on the artist by the esteemed art historian Alexander Nemerov.
Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Ralph Eugene Meatyard: American Mystic from March 9 – May 6, 2017, featuring some 30 works by this enigmatic and legendary photographer. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to view both iconic and lesser-known photographs by Meatyard alongside the artist’s notebooks and annotated volumes from his personal library. The exhibition coincides with the publication a major new monograph on the artist by the esteemed art historian Alexander Nemerov.
American Mystic includes a number of photographs in which Meatyard cast family members and friends in central roles, often masked and enacting symbolic dramas, such as Romance (N.) from Ambrose Bierce #3, 1962. Among the highlights of the exhibition are selections from Meatyard’s memorable series The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, which features his wife, Madelyn, in a grotesque mask, accompanied by a friend or relative in a similarly disfiguring translucent mask. Meatyard also experimented with multiple exposures, motion blur, distortion, and other methods of abstraction, as in the blurred landscapes of his “Motion-Sound” images.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard Untitled, ca. 1968-69
© The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco