Best known as a fashion photographer, following a five-year hiatus Richard Avendon decided to embark on a new project and make large scale group portraits.
This exhibition brings together 3 of the famous murals, each with a slightly different topic and approach, but with similar results. The murals are more than life size and overwhelm the viewer, which was undoubtly Avendon’s intention.
The Warhol and Factory Members mural is the most playful one of this selection, the subjects clearly enjoying themselves in what is a riotous display of camp and nudity.
The second mural is probably a lot more controversial. It shows the architects of the Vietnam war: senior diplomats and generals, on location in an improvised studio in Saigon. You can sense the tension and their unwillingness to perform in front of the camera.
The third mural is probably the most straightforward. It shows the Chicago Seven, a group of anti-Vietnam demonstrators who went on a now notorious trial in Chicago following protest during the 1968 Democratic Convention in that city. The sessions for this mural took place while the trial was ongoing, and the men are clearly comfortable by then with the publicity that their case was receiving.
The exhibtion is complemented by outtakes from the sessions, as well as a couple of examples of other, similar attempts by Avendon at group portraits from that period.
Richard Avedon: Murals is on show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue, New York City NY until 1 October 2023.
