ARTHOUSTON 26
Beyond Ephemeral A
C o n v e r s a t i o n
V E T E R A N A M E R I C A N P H O T O G R A P H E R George Krause is returning to Houston with an exhibition of his Nudes.
The impressive career of George Krause is one that most artists only dream of. His photographs have been shown in more than 100 solo exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Krause has won two Guggenheims, been honored as the Texas Artist of the Year, and was the first photographer to receive the Prix de Rome. His work has been collected by some of the most prestigious institutions of fine art in the world, including the MoMA the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the George Eastman House in Rochester, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. He was also responsible for creating the photography program at the University of Houston, where he taught for 23 years. Like many distinguished artists, Krause’s career has not flourished without controversy. Careers built from a fascination with the artistic possibilities of nude exploration rarely are. The depiction of nudity remains a controversial subject across media, but it is especially prevalent with photography—due in large part to its inherent realism— and can be a source of contention between artists and the public. Krause is fully aware of the audience’s potential discomfort. He admits that the taboo subject of nudes is still difficult for most people to engage with. But while Krause is not afraid of controversy, he has never tried to shock or offend.
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“That’s too easy,” Krause says. “What I try to do is pull the rug out from people, throw them off balance so that they perhaps look at the images a little longer or a bit more intensely.” The pure communication and complicity between Krause and his models is evident in the authenticity that is revealed in the final print. Like an offering, the subjects unveil their uninhibited natures, appearing or vanishing out from the Sfumato wooden light box Krause constructed to capture them, as Leonardo da Vinci, Sfumato’s most wellknow practitioner, described, “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane.” . “Krause explores intensely personal themes rooted in basic human concerns: sensuality, mortality, and mystery,” says Anne Wilkes Tucker, the distinguished retired curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “His work is perpetually relevant because his issues are basic and vital to the human condition. Few viewers leave his exhibitions unmoved—be it by indignation, horror, pathos, or wonder.” The human body is beautiful, and the art we are seeing from Krause and other contemporary muses of the nude is created to explore the beauty of the human form. I think that exploration relates to people’s existence, how we all deal with sensuality, sexuality, eroticism, and what it means to be frail and vulnerable. Krause’s extraordinary and humble attempt with his Sfumato Nudes shows concurrently how transcendent and fragile we actually are.