LESLIE KRIMS - Paci Contemporary

LESLIE KRIMS
Nude America

LESLIE KRIMS
Nude America
15 Dicembre 2007 - 30 Gennaio 2008
Via Carlo Cattaneo, 20/B
25121 Brescia Italy
Tel/Fax +39 030 2906352
info@paciarte.com
www.paciarte.com
In copertina:
Les Krims Performing Aerosol Fiction, Buffalo, New York, 1969, vintage, cm 25x20
In memoria di Pino Gastaldelli e Gigi Montini
In memory of Pino Gastaldelli and Gigi Montini

IDEAZIONE / CONCEPT
Giampaolo Paci
Galleria PaciArte contemporanea
TEsTI A CurA DI / TExT by
Leslie Krims
Ilenia Zane
COOrDINAmENTO E COmuNICAZIONE
COOrDINATION AND COmmuNICATION
Monica Banfi
TrADuZIONI / TrANslATION
Maria Teresa Paletta
Barons ILC Snc
LESLIE KRIMS
Nude America
Galleria PaciArte contemporanea | Brescia, Italy
15 dicembre 2007 - 30 gennaio 2008
ORGANIZZAZIONE E REALIZZAZIONE
Via Carlo Cattaneo, 20/B
25121 Brescia Italy
Tel/Fax +39 030 2906352
info@paciarte.com
www.paciarte.com
ASSOCIAZIONE
NAZIONALE
GALLERIE
D’ARTE
MODERNA E
CONTEMPORANEA
rEAlIZZAZIONE grAfICA
grAPhIC rEAlIZATION
Stefano Berruti
sTAmPA
PrINT
ringraziamenti
SPeCiaL thankS
enrico Proietti, new York
Baraonda, new York
Per Lei, new York
Bella Blu, new York
Ciao Bella, new York

LeSLie krimS
Nude America
Ho iniziato ad usare la macchina fotografica fin da bambino, facevo
alcuni scatti a mia madre con una macchina poco costosa, la Ansco.
Prendevo i negativi e, in un posto vicino a dove abitavo, cercavo di
stampare. Facevo sempre fotografie piccole. Mia madre per incoraggiarmi
mi comprò un piccolo set di oli tra cui c’erano tele, carte e
penne.
Già all’età di 12 anni feci una copia del ritratto di Vincent van Gogh’s
di Augustine Roudin ma iniziai ad elaborare immagini solo dopo essermi
diplomato nel ‘65 quando presi la mia prima macchina fotografica,
la mia prima 35mm (una Nikon). Dopo essermi diplomato alla
scuola di scienze, la Stuyvesant High School di New York, intrapresi
lo studio dell’architettura; entrai nel 1960 alla Cooper Union for the
Advancement di scienze e arte, e durante il primo anno studiai arte
e architettura mentre i successivi tre frequentai nuovi corsi (pittura,
scultura, storia dell’arte, design, stampa) facendo sempre avanti e indietro
dal mio piccolo appartamento di Brooklyn dove vivevo con mia
madre. Conseguito il diploma alla Cooper Union iniziai a lavorare per
alcuni mesi presso una rivista d’arte a Manhattan. Nel Dicembre del
1965, entrato al Pratt Institute, presi una Nikon e cominciai a seguire
il corso di fotografia. Allora esibivo le mie fotografie alle mostre per
studenti e fu proprio in quegli anni che rimasi colpito dalla fotografia
di forte impatto, tanto da rimanerne influenzato.
Non ho viaggiato molto. Nell’estate del ’75 rimasi a Tokyo per un
mese, poi circa 30 anni fa visitai per una settimana Arles a sud della
Francia, feci tappa a Vigo in Spagna e mi recai due volte a Parigi.
Quando ero ragazzo mio padre viveva in California, poi andò a Las Vegas
dove visse per 19 anni e durante gli anni ’50, io lasciavo New York
per trascorrere le estati con mio padre prima in California e poi a Las
Vegas. Questi viaggi mi aiutarono a vedere le diverse possibilità che la
vita offre, la varietà di prospettive esistenti in America e soprattutto
capii che Manhattan non era al centro dell’universo.
Molte delle immagini che ho realizzato sono immagini allegoriche
ma non da tutti comprese e ritenute affascinanti. Quella tendenza
progressista di cui parla William Hogarth, delle otto angolature del
mondo, può per esempio ricondursi al mio lavoro come in A marxist
View..., immagine che offre un’ampia veduta innanzitutto per la varietà
dei soggetti presenti.
Benché io non sia mai stato un fotografo attivista, la maggior parte
del mio lavoro è comunque antagonista ai critici e ai fotografi della
sinistra radicale americana perché ironizza sulle loro idee e sulle
loro metodologie. Dal ‘65 la fotografia
americana era per la maggior parte incentrata
sulla ricerca documentaristica
e sociale mentre i fotografi decantavano
le idee di Mao e Marx, escludendo quelle
di Thomas Jefferson o Abraham Lincoln.
Io, già allora, ero un moderato, democratico.
Tuttavia, fin dagli inizi degli anni
’30, l’attivismo fotografico politicizzato
era usato per promuovere progetti sociali
ma di concezione radicale. Purtroppo,
allora, era questo l’unico modo di vedere
la fotografia e anche negli anni ’60 i
metodi non mutarono, anzi, i fotogra-
LeSLie krimS
Nude America
As a kid, I made snapshots with my mother’s inexpensive Ansco camera.
I’d take the negatives to a small, sour smelling camera shop a few blocks
away to be developed and made into prints. Making any sort of picture
appealed to me. To encourage this, my mother bought a small set of oils
for me. There were also brushes, turpentine, canvas board, paper, charcoal
sticks and pencils. At age 12, I made a copy of one of Vincent van Gogh’s
portraits of Augustine Roulin. It wasn’t until graduate school, in 1965, that
I bought my first 35mm camera (a Nikon), and began to use photography
to make pictures.
After graduating from a science high school in New York called Stuyvesant
High School, I intended to study architecture. In 1960, I entered the Cooper
Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Art and architecture
students took similar courses the first year. I switched my major to art. In
the following three years I studied painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing,
calligraphy, art history, and design, while commuting back and forth
to the small apartment in Brooklyn, where I lived with my mother. After
receiving my degree from Cooper Union, I worked for a few months doing
paste-up and layout for an art magazine in Manhattan. In December of
1965, intending to major in printmaking, I entered Pratt Institute. However,
in my first semester at Pratt, in addition to painting and making prints, I
took a photography course and bought a Nikon. I showed photographs for
my graduate exhibition. Throughout those years all many areas of art made
a strong impression and influenced the photographs I began to make.
I haven’t traveled much. I did spend a month in Tokyo, during the summer
of 1975. Spent a week in Arles, in the South of France, about 30 years ago.
I’ve been to Vigo, in Spain; and visited Paris twice. When I was a teenager
my father lived in California, then moved to Las Vegas, where he lived for
19 years. In the 1950’s, I’d leave New York to spend summers with my father
in California, or Las Vegas. These trips helped me gain perspective.
I began more clearly to see and appreciate the great variety of life and opinion
America offered. Manhattan was not the center of the universe.
Some of the pictures I’ve made are allegories-fractured fairy tales is another
way to describe them. Most are best understood as images meant to
fascinate. William Hogarth’s “A Rake’s Progress,” shows us a world in eight
engravings; “A Marxist View…” for example, attempts to offer a complex
entertainment in one picture.
My work often antagonized activist leftist critics and photographers. It satirized
their politics, ideas, and approach to making pictures. But I’m not an
“activist photographer” (at least as I understand what that means). American
photography, circa 1965, was most often documentary, “socially concerned.”
The ideas of Mao and Marx were
more important to photographers than those
of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln.
I’m a moderate Republican, and was once
a registered Democrat. Beginning in the
1930’s, this kind of politicized activist photography
was used, directly and indirectly,
to promote various huge social engineering
projects, and was often virulently anti-capitalist.
Other approaches were not considered
PHOTOGRAPHY. Through the 1960’s,
photography hadn’t changed much. Photographers
did not go to art school. Painters
did not consider photography to be art. Into
A sinistra: Detail #1, (from "A Rake's Revisionist Regress; …Buffalo Fashion: Christmas Presents for Nuns; an Assortment of Effective Remedies; Nancy N. Memorial Sticks
Scattered; She Had Any Number of Lines; and a Colored Picture (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Polaroid.
A destra: Detail #2, (from “A Rake’s Revisionist Regress; …Buffalo Fashion: Christmas Presents for Nuns; an Assortment of Effective Remedies; Nancy N. Memorial Sticks
Scattered; She Had Any Number of Lines; and a Colored Picture (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Polaroid.

fi non si iscrivevano nemmeno
alle scuole d’arte e la fotografia
stessa non era considerata arte.
Ancora negli anni ’70 pittori, curatori
e galleristi non valutavano
l’immagine fotografica come artistica.
Il fotografo era considerato
“old paper” – (termine utilizzato
nel mercato antico) e solamente
pochi musei potevano vantare
anche una collezione di fotografia.
La verità è che i miei lavori
e quelli di altri dovevano essere
ancora codificati sotto nuove direzioni.
Il nostro approccio destabilizzava tanto i tradizionalisti quanto
gli attivisti: questo accade spesso nel mondo dell’arte perchè non è
mai stato semplice proporre un gusto o una maniera diversa dalla norma.
Quello che ho fatto è stato ironizzare sugli aspetti più radicali di
una cultura. Ho messo in chiave assolutamente sarcastica comportamenti
e tendenze estremiste. Non sorprende se le mie immagini sono
più accettate in Europa che negli USA ma a volte non capite in quanto
critica culturale. Quello che creo è pura satira. satira che colpisce un
gruppo radicale e forviato.
La stampa digitale è stata la maggiore invenzione tecnologica da
quando Gorge Eastman ha inventato il rullino. Amo il controllo che
si può avere creando con Photoshop. In verità, non amavo il lavoro
in camera oscura e così mi sono creato una personale e stravagante
maniera. Il lavoro dei “set” anche se costoso da produrre è molto interessante.
Negli ultimi 10 anni c’è stata una sorprendente evoluzione
tecnica delle stampe digitali che ha permesso di rendere possibile
grandi riproduzioni lavorando da soli. (Tale Rivoluzione tecnica trova
un nesso e un senso solo nella rivoluzione del pensiero nel passaggio
al capitalismo.)
Lavorare con il nudo non è niente di nuovo e soprattutto non lo era per
me fotografare mia madre. Iniziai a fare i primi scatti a casa ed era
naturale che io prendessi mia madre come modella e la trattassi come
tale ma furono questi soggetti a causarmi il duro attacco del movimento
Femminista degli anni ’60, come fu con Andrea Dworkin. Penso
fosse stato il forte legame con mia madre ad aver generato l’assurda
collera di queste donne verso il mio lavoro e la mia fotografia fu attaccata
violentemente al punto che io diventai il loro bersaglio.
La “left’s politically correct” che definisce quelle idee più radicali, sfortunatamente,
venne abbracciata dalla maggior parte delle accademie
ufficiali di fotografia causando il controllo degli attivisti sulle arti e
sulla cultura accademica (assurdo percorso che portò ad accademie
petulanti, dispotiche, maligne e vendicative, in un paese privo di totalitarismi
e soprattutto dopo la Rivoluzione degli anni ’60).
Le mie fotografie, in particolare le immagini più recenti dove utilizzo
testo/immagine, rappresentano la mia maniera di ironizzare sulla politica
più radicale. È l’unione di testi ed immagine che più mi permette
di decostruire quei messaggi ipocriti ed irritanti di certe posizioni che
utilizzano metodi molto chiari. Io mi diverto a fare questo.
leslie Krims
the 1970’s, many curators and gallery owners did not consider photography
to be art. Photography was categorized as “old paper”- a term used in the
antiques trade. Only a handful of museums in the United States had collections
of photography not merely incidental to their main collections. My
work, and that of a few others, helped establish a new direction. What we
did displaced traditionalist, activist photography. These things often happen
in the world of art. It is hard to account for taste or fashion. One always pays
a dear price for poking fun at the left in American culture. In a country never
ravaged by totalitarians, leftist activists still control the arts and humanities
in academe, which they infiltrated after the revolution they attempted
in the late 1960’s failed. Those academics are perennially snide, petulant,
dyspeptic, cutthroat, and vindictive. They use ad hominen attack, treating
their critics as enemies in a war, seeking their annihilation.
My pictures have always been better received in Europe than the U.S., though
they are sometimes misunderstood in Europe as criticizing America. A
more accurate assessment is that some satirize the work of a misguided,
elitist group of American intellectuals and artists.
Digital printing is the most liberating technological development since Gorge
Eastman’s invention of roll film. I love the control one has in creating a
in Photoshop. To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of working in the darkroom,
though I embraced it enthusiastically in my own idiosyncratic manner. The
offset works I published from time to time were also interesting to me, but
very expensive to produce. In the last ten years digital printing and printers
have been perfected. In a one-room apartment it is now possible to make
giant, high resolution, archival, beautiful prints without disturbing the neighbors,
which once required a four color press as large and noisy as a bus.
It seemed clear to me that Marx’s revolutionary notion of workers owning
the means of production had come to pass. But it was capitalism, not socialism,
which made the revolution possible, making photo-quality printers a
commodity. Of course, refrigeration was and is much more important than
digital printing to normal people, and saves more lives.
Working with nudes is nothing new; photographing one’s mother nude was.
In the mid-1960s, the feminist and sexual liberation movements were beginning.
As a naïve young man who had lived at home until my second year
of graduate school, making my way through those interesting times was
not easy. I literally began at home. Photographing my mother as my first
model insured a respectful relationship to my models. This has never varied.
Radical feminist activists, such as Andrea Dworkin, hated men, and often
had no children. The strong bond between a simple hard working woman
and her son bewildered and angered these embittered women. My work
was often attacked. I became a scapegoat
for that movement. The left’s politically correct
stronghold in the academic photography
community in the States was, and is, The
society for Photographic Education.
My most recent pictures attempt to show
that “texts” can hammer most any picture’s
meaning into a politically useful shape.
If I do this adroitly, standard disingenuous,
hypocritical, absurd, and irritating leftist
messages are deconstructed, their methods
made transparent. It’s fun to do.
leslie Krims
In alto a sinistra: A Rake’s Revisionist Regress; …Buffalo Fashion: Christmas Presents for Nuns; an Assortment of Effective Remedies; Nancy N. Memorial Sticks Scattered;
She Had Any Number of Lines; and a Colored Picture (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), 1980, vintage, cm 28x36.
A destra: Detail #3, (from “A Rake’s Revisionist Regress; …Buffalo Fashion: Christmas Presents for Nuns; an Assortment of Effective Remedies; Nancy N. Memorial Sticks
Scattered; She Had Any Number of Lines; and a Colored Picture (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Polaroid.

01 02 03 04
05
06 07 08 09 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19
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24
25 26 27
23
28 29

01. The static Electric Effect of minnie mouse On mickey mouse balloons, Rochester, New York, 1968, vintage, cm 25x20
02. Two liberal feminists flexing behind a gay man, Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York, 1968, vintage, cm 25x20
03. fall, Fargo Avenue, Buffalo, New York, 1969, vintage, cm 25x20
04. Nude with Cobwebs, Fargo Avenue, Buffalo, New York, 1969, Vintage, cm 25x20
05. heavy feminist with Wedding Cake, Buffalo, New York, 1970, vintage, cm 25x20
06. human being as a Piece of sculpture fiction, 1970, vintage, cm 25x20
07. homage to the Crosstar filter Photograph, Buffalo, New York, 1970, vintage, cm 25x20
08. my mother sticking-Out her false Teeth, Brooklyn, New York, 1970, vintage, cm 25x20
09. Nude with levitatine Cardboard lightning bolt, Buffalo, New York, 1973, vintage, cm 25x20
10. Two feminist Artists riding the Ascending Comet of bad Postmodern Art, Buffalo, New York, 1976, vintage, cm 25x20
11. A New miracle for Veronica: healing Krims’ Eye (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), 1979, Buffalo, New York, vintage, cm 40x50
12. A Test of Exposure, Development, and a Punk Prank (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), 1979, vintage, cm 40x50
13. A Trick for man ray (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Buffalo, New York, 1979, vintage, cm 40x50
14. …Buffalo Fashion: Watch Your P’s and Jews; True; a Breadline; and an Oxymoron (Big Moron) (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), 1979, vintage,
cm 40x50
15. Dumping leaves Nothing (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Buffalo, New York, 1979, vintage, cm 40x50
16. Kike Camera (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Buffalo, New York, 1979, vintage, cm 40x50
17. The stains on both sides of my mattress labeled; and a Testimonial….side #2: N-Z (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980) Buffalo, New York,
1979,vintage,cm 40x50
18. Ten, Dark, sweet, Ponds (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Buffalo, New York, 1979, vintage, cm 40x50
19. A Jewish Vase; and a Chinese Torture (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), 1980, vintage, cm 40x50
20. g. I. freud (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), 1980, vintage, cm 40x50
21. A Touching Picture of mother and son; a man’s best friend Is his model; and look at the little Jew with the Camera On her shoe (from,
Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Buffalo New York, 1980, vintage, cm 40x50
22. les Krims Teaches Them to Do It Abe reles style: Ice Picks for Kid Twist; black Dicks- a New Twist; and Picture Designed to Piss-Off Danny (from,
Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Buffalo, New York, 1980, vintage, cm 40x50
23. The Wandering Jew…and his Jewmobile (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Buffalo, New York, 1980, vintage, cm 40x50
24. ménage à Trout; and a Thought for Kid Twist (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), Ontario, Canada, 1980, vintage, cm 40x50
25. A rake’s revisionist regress; …buffalo fashion: Christmas Presents for Nuns; an Assortment of Effective remedies; Nancy N. memorial sticks
scattered; she had Any Number of lines; and a Colored Picture (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980), 1980, vintage, cm 40x50
26. A rake’s revisionist regress; …buffalo fashion: Christmas Presents for Nuns; an Assortment of Effective remedies; Nancy N. memorial sticks
Scattered; She Had Any Number of Lines; and a Colored Picture (color version without figure), (from, Idiosyncratic Pictures, 1980) 1980, contact
print, cm 28x36
27. A Marxist View; Bark Art (for Art Park); Madame Curious; a Chinese Entertainment, Irving’s Pens; Something to look at Spotting Upside Down;
hollis’ hersheys; and four Women Posing, Buffalo, New York, 1985, vintage, cm 50x60
28. stilted, 1993, vintage, (from the ongoing series, “The Decline of the Left”), ink jet print, cm 25x20, ed.25
29. E fireman Contemplates a Curious Picture of Two of his friends Posing beside an American flang They Placed in front of a burning house After
Discovering the Incinerated Kittens…at the moment I Photographer, fire, Camera’s Display, Dissolution of the Original scene, Taste the smoke,
smell burned flesh, and grab my balls hip hop style, November 2004, ink jet print, 25x20cm, ed. 25

Spregiudicato.
Al di fuori da ogni regola.
Dissacratore: creativo profondamente liberale.
Unprejudiced.
Above all rules.
Desecrating: creative deeply liberal.
In quarta di copertina:
Mom’s Snaps, Brooklyn, New York, 1970, vintage, cm 25x20

galleria PaciArte contemporanea
brescia - Italy
www.paciarte.com € 10,00