When Commerciality Inspires Me–
William Eggleston's Untitled (Boy In Red Sweater) and
Ben Shahn & Inslee Hopper's Mr. Clatterbuck’ (Maquette For A Photo Book On The Homesteads Resettlement Community At Flint Hill, Shenandoah Valley)
By Jason Conrad Llaguno, 4/15/2018
hotography and Art are two realms of our culture that through my recent education and personal exploration into the subjects, I have discovered worlds of beauty, form, abstraction, quandary, and expression. With every corner I turn in my perception of the art world, it seems I am always offered further and yet increasingly stimulating ideas and perspectives on the society that surrounds it. However, it seems that with ever foot I take in the world of art, there persists an aspect that I
P
have long protested studying: commerciality. I do believe in the buying and selling of artistic pieces, but additions of a price tag on a label seems to intrude into my personal experience of artistic expressions and forces me to factor in a commercial value into the primary qualities of a work. This may be due to my confusingly adolescent vendetta against capitalism, my wish to intake a piece void of external opinion, or rather the monetary intimidation inflicted on me when a piece exceeds four zeros. Despite these facts, I must accept that as long as people like and support art, there will be no piece unscathed by the price tag.
In my recent trip to Sotheby’s auction preview of Photographs, I have finally exposed myself to some perceived commercial values of work produced by photographers I hardly knew and by some of my favorite people to ever release a shutter. I continue to appreciate the photographs prior to discovering some of their surprising “worth.” Through this I found many images that struck me and a certain few that I truly resonated with. When viewing a piece, I persist to find its beauty no matter its form or origin; However, I would find myself straining in front of images in my efforts to find its personal worth to myself. Works such as William Eggleston’s 1971 Untitled (Boy in Red Sweater) and Ben Shahn and Inslee A. Hopper Mr. Clatterbuck’ (Maquette For A Photo Book On The Homesteads Resettlement Community At Flint Hill, Shenandoah Valley) left me fervently reflective while the Untitled (Virginia) by Sally Mann gave me an image to appreciate but not yearn to explore. I found myself asking what my subjective measurement for each piece would be in a chart of personal value. Through this I was
able to find a motif in my appreciation of certain work, a feeling that may certainly cause an alternate, wealthy, Jason to wave his bidder number enthusiastically in the air.
I have recently stumbled upon the works of William Eggleston and his images have continued to enthrall me visually and on a strangely conceptual level. He was immediately boosted up on my list of favorite photographers because of his stunning use of color and ability to seemingly capture these snapshots of his life. This just only enhanced my experience with his Untitled (Boy in Red Sweater) depicting his son in a stark red knitted sweater in the midst of a fairly chromatic-lacking scenery. I was immediately drawn to his sweater and the contrast it held against the brownish-green grass and the grey skies. This was soon followed by the strange expression the boy holds on his face as if caught by surprise or in a state of pre-sneeze. His dated style and childish figure echoes a sense nostalgia which further drew me to
stare, appreciate, and contemplate. The size of the piece is not too gratuitous and its average dimensions allow me further enjoy the piece on a more intimate level. The strange mundanity of the photo forces me to ask “what is the story behind this image?” I use the tools Eggleston portrays to make inferences on the landscape that is seemingly confined to the frame and hypotheses on this boy’s mysterious life growing up in the 1970s.
​
Eggleston’s image whispered stories of humanity thus giving me different lives and lifestyles to discover and experience second-hand. This also holds true for Shahn and Hopper’s Mr. Clatterbuck’ (Maquette For A Photo Book On The Homesteads Resettlement Community At Flint Hill, Shenandoah Valley). One factor in a piece’s worth that greatly affects my personal measurements as well as its commercial success is a work’s history. The historical context that is attached to a photo can drastically change one’s opinion. History is very important to me, so exploring it through art such as Mr. Clatterbuck’ allows me to find a greater relevance in both the specific work and history. Commissioned by America’s Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Shahn documents the successful rehabilitation of the inhabitants of the Shenandoah Valley accompanied by personal narratives from Hopper projecting stories of the Homesteaders and its recuperating society. The way Shahn photographs objects and intimate portraits of the Homesteaders paints stories of hardship and hope, especially when in communion with the given text. I feel like my endeavors to bridge the gaps between myself and lives of the past will be substantially heightened because of the new understanding I may gain from these New Deal-era photographs.
