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| Type 42(Anonymous), Kim Novak, 1960s-1970s, mixed media on paper, 8.3x 10.8,Courtesy Galerie Susanne Zander/ Delmes & Zander |
These nebulous, darkened black-and-white Polaroid pictures of movie
stars and vixens were taken by an anonymous artist known only as Type 42
— after the instant self-developing film he or she used — off small TV
screens in dark rooms. The images come from the 1960s but didn’t emerge
until 2012, when an artist stumbled on the whole cache (hallelujah!).
Most are inscribed with the name of the actress, maybe her measurements,
and occasionally a film title, and always lettered in a laboriously
deliberate hand — the i’s dotted not above, but to the right. In an essay accompanying the recent catalogue, Fame Is the Name of the Game
…, the artist Cindy Sherman calls the work “an exhaustive study of what
it is to be a woman.” She writes, “We could assume it was a man since
almost all the images are of women, but perhaps this was a woman trying
to understand her role models.” Above all, “these photos are the
evidence of someone who watched a lot of television, had a lot of
Polaroid film, and was obsessed.” She’s right: Whoever is seeing these
women is seeing them intensely. Anita Ekberg hoisting her chest; Kim
Novak in a bathtub; Jane Fonda, in a glittery bra, marked “34-22-34.”
Foggy desires and unseen urges attend all these pictures, glimpses of a
pre-VCR world when any erotic charge gotten from television had to be
held in memory. But this photographer needed those images to exist
forever now, close at hand, available for careful perusal. That
the film is Polaroid suggests that he or she saw them as something
furtive, to be done undercover, without taking film to be developed.
Like all goodart, these pictures are secrets hiding in the light.
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| Type 42(Anonymous), Claudine Auger , 1960s-1970s, mixed media on paper, 8.3x 10.8,Courtesy Galerie Susanne Zander/ Delmes & Zander |
Jerry Saltz writes in
New York Magazine about Type 42 recently shown at
Delmes & Zander
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