1990s Art

This hand-blown square vase by Ioan Nemtoi could easily be the centerpiece of any collection of glass art. Nemtoi's incorporation of gestural composition techniques derived from Abstract Expressionism into his glass work yields a dazzling array of colors when this vase is illuminated from the inside. Hand-blown glass 13.25 x 7.4375 x 7.25 inches Signed 'Nemtoi' along the base Ioan Nemtoi was born in 1964 on a farm in Trusesti near Dorohoi, in North-Eastern Romania, as the eldest son of a large family. When Nemtoi was in the fifth grade, one of his teachers noticed his artistic talent and sent him to art school. Later he went on to the art branch...

The Long Memory is an 18-color screenprint on paper by the artist Betye Saar The Long Memory 1998 Signed and numbered, recto 18-color screenprint on paper (Edition of 100) 14.5 x...

Signed, titled and numbered by the artist from an edition of 100. Male nude etching by Trevor Southey. Trevor Southey was born in Rhodesia, Africa (now Zimbabwe) in 1940. His Afri...

Wajih Nahlé (1932-2017), born in Beirut, Lebanon,was a Lebanese Arab abstract painter and calligrapher. He studied painting in the workshop of the Lebane...

"Guardians" Contemporary Oil Monkey Eyes Post-Cubist Abstract Whimsical Animal Hunt Slonem (American, b. 1951) "Guardians" 24 x 19 inches Oil on Canvas Signed, dated 1995, titled, and numbered "JEM0668" to verso. A Certificate of Authenticity from Hunt Slonem Studio attached. Unframed Provenance: From a New York City Collection. BIO Hunt Slonem was born in Kittery, Maine in 1951. His fascination with exotica imprinted during his childhood in Hawaii and experience as a foreign exchange student in Managua, Nicaragua. Slonem received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Tulane University of Louisiana and studied painting at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Since 1977, Slonem soloed in over one hundred fifty exhibitions at prestigious galleries. His work is exhibited globally, including in Madras, Quito, Venice, Gustavia, San Juan, Guatemala City, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Oslo, Cologne, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Over fifty museums internationally include his work in their collections, among them The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. His work has been shown in thirty-one different museums. Corporate collections include American Telephone and Telegraph, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citibank, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs Co., IBM Corporation, Marriot Corporation, Paine Webber, Inc., Port Authority, and Readers Digest Inc. He won the 1991 National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Painting, and McDowell Fellowships in 1986, 1984 and 1983. Since 1973, Slonem has lived and worked in New York City in his legendary loft with his seventy pet birds. The birds are his models. So enmeshed and unique are his aviary, studio, lifestyle and painting, that Slonem has been featured on television a dozen times and in numerous articles. In his 1993 essay, the late Henry Geldzahler describes, "The visual field of Hunt Slonem's paintings is a continuum accented by ovals of varying shape and colors that it turns out are birds." The birds evolved from Slonem's early paintings of saints as well as inspiration from the pioneers of bird imagery in painting, including Fabritsius, Heade and Audubon. Audubon shot one hundred birds...

Paper Size: 35.5 x 27.5 inches ( 90.17 x 69.85 cm ) Image Size: 21.25 x 21.25 inches ( 53.975 x 53.975 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A: Mint Shipping and Handling: We ship Worldwide. ...

Lithograph in colors on vélin Exhibition Fine Art Cartridge paper. Paper Size: 12.75 x 9.75 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the folio, Hockney's ...

Lucian Freud Susanna 1996 Etching on Somerset Textured White paper 20 x 19 5/8 inches; 51 x 50 cm Edition of 40 Initialed and numbered in graphite (lower recto) Frame available upon request Published by Matthew Marks Gallery...

An abstract expressionist painting by Duayne Hatchett . Oil on canvas, circa 1990. Signed verso. Framed. Image size, 60"H x 56"L. Duayne Hatchett was a visual artist whose work included prints, paintings, sculpture, and found objects. He was born on May 12, 1925 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He enlisted in the Air Force where he trained to become a fighter pilot. After leaving the militrary he studied design at the University of Oklahoma. His highly technical military training combined a mathematical intelligence with a love for physics and a daring embrace of new experience, all of which would soon be the tools for his evolution through art. Two major influences interacted on his early development at OU. Emelio Omero, a colleague and close friend of Diego Rivera, introduced him to the revolutionary art ideas of Mexico City, while teaching him a wide range of printing techniques that would culminate in a Masters Degree in Painting in 1952. During this time he met Bruce Goff, a renowned Wright disciple, who was teaching architecture at OU and befriended Hatchett, introducing him to the most avant-garde architecture of that time. He spent his summers while at OU designing for a small sign shop, which introduced him to new materials used for building neon, plastic, and metal signs. The use of new materials and a keen sense for design would soon become invaluable building blocks for future sculpture. During this time he met and married Mary Ellen Jeffries. They would spend their lives together and raise three children, David (me), my brother Dana, and my sister Jeffri. As children, they were immersed in art from childhood and benefited greatly from this loving art and domestic environment. Hatchett was always interested in the techniques of construction, often watching different tradesmen working, understanding how materials are put together to create the manmade environment that surrounded him. While teaching printmaking at Oklahoma City University from 1951 through ‘54, he began to build sculpture employing some of the materials and techniques that he saw workers using. He was beginning to draw the attention of architects and he became interested in their work-trade processes, moving from blue prints to construction. He accepted an invitation from Alexander Hogue...

Rare 1990s Basquiat exhibition catalogue published on the occasion of: ‘Basquiat The Transcendental Voyage, at L'Espal;’ Le Mans, France, 1999. Ba...

Outback Dreams - 29 Palms, CA - 2010 50x130cm. Archival C-Print, based on the 3 original Polaroids. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory # 1933. Not mounted. THE G...

Elizabeth Catlett - THERE IS A WOMAN IN EVERY COLOR Rare vintage fine art lithograph poster reproduced after Catlett's original 1975 woodcut print entitled THERE IS A WOMAN IN EVERY...

Branko Bahunek, Croatian (1935 - ) - Woman with Bureau. Year: 1991, Medium: Oil on Canvas, Size: 21 in. x 17 in. (53.34 cm x 43.18 cm), Frame Size: 25 x 21.5 inches

GARDEN ROMANCE by the artist James Denmark is an original hand drawn, limited edition lithograph(not a photo reproduction or digital print) printed on archival Somerset paper using t...

Tadashi Kawamata Untitled for the Relocation Project, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1997 Screenprint on wove paper Pencil signed, dated '97 and numbered 169/180. 34 1/2 × 24 3/4 inches...

Hand signed, dated and numbered by the artist. Sheet size: 30.125 x 29.875 in. Edition of 60. Published by Gemini, G.E.L., Los Angeles. Artwork is in excellent condition. Certifica...

Official poster designed and created for the tennis tournament held at Roland Garros French Open every year. The poster is a limited edition of 2000. First edition, unsigned and not ...

This is a photograph by Bill Costa offered by CLAMP in New York City.

Paul Rowland- He is the one, that everybody knows about, Paul Rowland. A genius in the modeling industry, president of Ford Models New York, owner of Women Model Management & Supreme Management and photographer. Paul Rowland has more, than 20 years experiences in the industry. Paul Rowland was born in Arkansas in the USA. He left his home town and moved to New York City with the dream to become a painter. Not long after this he founded Women Management and Supreme Models. Paul Rowland founded Women Management in 1989. In his more than 15 years of professional experience, he has made transformation from model to founder of his own agency, and is credited for establishing a unique roster of talent known for personality and accessibility previously unseen in the business. He participated in the exhibition at Art Basel in 2008 In Fashion Photo features an exclusive collection of more than 250 contemporary works of photographic art by more than 35 of the world‟s leading icons in fashion photography. Representing more than 15 countries in five continents, some of the most globally esteemed names from the fashion photo world exhibited their work, including Slim Aarons, Miles Aldridge, Olivia Beasley, Michael Dweck, Arthur Elgort, Charles Frèger, Erwan Frotin, Alice Hawkins, Steve Hiett...

Desert Junkyard II (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10 analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist based on the Polaroid Artist inventory #319.02 Mounted on Aluminum Dese...

Tropics Motor Motel I (Memories of Green) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition 1/10, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on a Polaroid, Artist inven...

"Geostructure IX" is an intensely colorful painting of the primary shapes of the circle, square, and triangle. Though the shapes are repetitive their mixed juxtapositions and the creative use of color moves the eye around the canvas with constant interest. This painting is an extraordinary example of Franklin Jonas...

"I Don’t Live Here Anymore" by Ugo Rondinone is a thought-provoking poster or artwork that reflects the themes of identity, presence, and existential dislocation—common concepts in R...

I’d Rather Have a Live Woman than a Frozen Leopard by Julian Schnabel, American (1951) Date: 1990 Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 16/60 Size: 35.5 x 28.5 in. (9...

A small, winding trail invites the viewer into this beautiful verdant landscape by California artist Ken Lucas (American, 20th Century). Signed "Ken Lucas" o...

Rare Limited Edition Serigraph of John Lennon's handwritten lyrics for the song "I'm Losing You" first released on "Double Fantasy" in 1980. It was written when Lennon was in Bermu...

Male Nude (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition 7/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2...

Artist: Peter Max (1937) Title: Profile Series II Year: 1998 Edition: 83/300, plus proofs Medium: Lithograph on Coventry Smooth paper Size: 8.5 x 7 inches Condition: Excellent Inscri...

Frank Stella Ceiling: Princess of Wales Theatre, 1996 Limited Edition Silkscreened Porcelain Plate in presentation box 12 inches diameter Edition 262/2000 Rarely found stateside - es...

Alexsander Danel (Estonian, 1940-2001) Brutalist Panther Sculpture, 1996 Signed 'Danel' and 'Austin Sculpture' to back leg 13.5 x 16.5 inches Alexsander Danel was born in Estonia and graduated from both the Moscow Industrial Arts School and the Moscow Fine Arts Academy. He earned many awards and distinctions in the Soviet Union, including "Best Work of the Year" in 1973 for his monumental work commemorating the history of the Russian Wars, installed in Kirov. Alexsander Danel emigrated to the U.S. in 1976, after spending a year in Rome where he sculpted set designs for Fellini's "Cassanova" and the Napoli Theater production of "Aida". After settling in New York, he completed commissions for Rockefeller Plaza and Radio City Music Hall. In 1992, he held his first one person show exhibiting computer generated...

Tracey Emin I NEED ART LIKE I NEED GOD (Hand signed and dated by Tracey Emin), 1997 Rare offset lithograph on card (hand signed and dated in 2016) Boldly signed and dated 2016 by Tra...

Artist: Robert Rauschenberg Title: Architecture Year: 1994 Medium: Lithograph with vegetable dye water transfer on Arches Infinity paper Edition: 50; signed, dated and numbered in pe...

Double sided page produced as part of a special art insert from a well respected art publication

Kenneth Noland Untitled Target, 2001 Acrylic paint on offset lithograph paper Signed, dated, and dedicated along lower edge: For Howard and Susan with Love Kenneth Noland 6.10.01 Fra...

14" x 18" sight size. 24.5 x 28 mat size. Ryan Weideman NYC taxi cab driver street photography (the good old fashioned days of yellow cabs pre Uber and Lyft). Ryan Weideman graduated with an MFA from the California College of Arts & Crafts, In 1980 he moved to New York to pursue street photography. Influenced by the other photographers of the period including Lee Friedlander and Mark Cohen...

Giner Bueno (1935-2000) Reparando Las Redes Painter from Alicante, son of the painter Luis Giner Valls. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts of Valencia and finished his stu...

Paper Size: 19.75 x 15.75 inches ( 50.165 x 40.005 cm ) Image Size: 14.75 x 9.75 inches ( 37.465 x 24.765 cm ) Framed: No Red Vest by Paul Klee is a vibrant and expressive work that ...

Still Life with White and Yellow Floral Arrangement Original Oil on Canvas Vibrant still life with thick impasto by Didi Fernandez (Filipino, 20th Century). A floral arrangement has...

Peter Halley Core, 1991 Limited Edition Silkscreen with lithography on Coventry Rag paper. Pencil signed and numbered 13/50 on the front Publisher: Edition Schellmann & Pace Editions...

Woodcut on vélin Tosa Hanga à la main paper. Paper Size: 16 x 12 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Description of a Masque, 1998. Publis...

Red, Blue, and Gray Robert Goodnough, American (1917–2010) Date: 1974 Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 200 Image Size: 38.5 x 23.5 inches Size: 40 x 25 in. (101....

Artist: Raya Sorkine Title: Amoureux de Venise Year: 1999 Medium: Lithograph on Arches Archival Paper 29.5'' x 24'' Edition: Signed in pencil and marked 191/299 IMAGE SIZE; 24.5"...

This is a high-quality reproduction of Jackson Pollock's iconic *Number 32*, printed on premium 250g paper with elegant deckled edges for a refined finish. The artwork captures Pollo...

Artist: Alexandra Nechita Title: Soft Velvet Cat Year: 1998 Lithograph on Arches Archival Paper    Size; 35½'' x 23½'' inches Edition: Signed in pencil, dated and marked 65/199 Embo...

(Catlett, Elizabeth)illus. FOR MY PEOPLE by Margaret Walker. Linited Editions Club, NY, 1992. Edition of 400 signed by Walker and Catlett, and numbered 204 on the Justification page....

Elizabeth Catlett - CHILDREN WITH FLOWERS 1995, limited edition lithograph printed in twelve colors using traditional hand lithography techniques on archival Arches paper, 100% acid ...

Gelatin silver print, printed 2005; Printed and signed 'Don Worth' in pencil lower right, dry stamped 'Don Worth...Archival Print by Don Worth' in the lower margin, annotated in penc...

Giner Bueno (1935-2000) Painter from Alicante, son of the painter Luis Giner Valls. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts of Valencia and finished his studies in Paris, where...

Poplars on a Hill by Vincent van Gogh was originally painted in 1888. This work is from van Gogh's Arles period, a time when he was deeply inspired by the landscape of southern Franc...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Autumn - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. LIFE’S A DREAM (The Personal World of Stefanie Schneider) by Mark Gisbourne Projection is a form of apparition that is characteristic of our human nature, for what we imagine almost invariably transcends the reality of what we live. And, an apparition, as the word suggests, is quite literally ‘an appearing’, for what we appear to imagine is largely shaped by the imagination of its appearance. If this sounds tautological then so be it. But the work of Stefanie Schneider is almost invariably about chance and apparition. And, it is through the means of photography, the most apparitional of image-based media, that her pictorial narratives or photo-novels are generated. Indeed, traditional photography (as distinct from new digital technology) is literally an ‘awaiting’ for an appearance to take place, in line with the imagined image as executed in the camera and later developed in the dark room. The fact that Schneider uses out-of-date Polaroid film stock to take her pictures only intensifies the sense of their apparitional contents when they are realised. The stability comes only at such time when the images are re-shot and developed in the studio, and thereby fixed or arrested temporarily in space and time. The unpredictable and at times unstable film she adopts for her works also creates a sense of chance within the outcome that can be imagined or potentially envisaged by the artist Schneider. But this chance manifestation is a loosely controlled, or, better called existential sense of chance, which becomes pre-disposed by the immediate circumstances of her life and the project she is undertaking at the time. Hence the choices she makes are largely open-ended choices, driven by a personal nature and disposition allowing for a second appearing of things whose eventual outcome remains undefined. And, it is the alliance of the chance-directed material apparition of Polaroid film, in turn explicitly allied to the experiences of her personal life circumstances, that provokes the potential to create Stefanie Schneider’s open-ended narratives. Therefore they are stories based on a degenerate set of conditions that are both material and human, with an inherent pessimism and a feeling for the sense of sublime ridicule being seemingly exposed. This in turn echoes and doubles the meaning of the verb ‘to expose’. To expose being embedded in the technical photographic process, just as much as it is in the narrative contents of Schneider’s photo-novel exposés. The former being the unstable point of departure, and the latter being the uncertain ends or meanings that are generated through the photographs doubled exposure. The large number of speculative theories of apparition, literally read as that which appears, and/or creative visions in filmmaking and photography are self-evident, and need not detain us here. But from the earliest inception of photography artists have been concerned with manipulated and/or chance effects, be they directed towards deceiving the viewer, or the alchemical investigations pursued by someone like Sigmar Polke. None of these are the real concern of the artist-photographer Stefanie Schneider, however, but rather she is more interested with what the chance-directed appearances in her photographs portend. For Schneider’s works are concerned with the opaque and porous contents of human relations and events, the material means are largely the mechanism to achieving and exposing the ‘ridiculous sublime’ that has come increasingly to dominate the contemporary affect(s) of our world. The uncertain conditions of today’s struggles as people attempt to relate to each other - and to themselves - are made manifest throughout her work. And, that she does this against the backdrop of the so-called ‘American Dream’, of a purportedly advanced culture that is Modern America, makes them all the more incisive and critical as acts of photographic exposure. From her earliest works of the late nineties one might be inclined to see her photographs as if they were a concerted attempt at an investigative or analytic serialisation, or, better still, a psychoanalytic dissection of the different and particular genres of American subculture. But this is to miss the point for the series though they have dates and subsequent publications remain in a certain sense unfinished. Schneider’s work has little or nothing to do with reportage as such, but with recording human culture in a state of fragmentation and slippage. And, if a photographer like Diane Arbus dealt specifically with the anomalous and peculiar that made up American suburban life, the work of Schneider touches upon the alienation of the commonplace. That is to say how the banal stereotypes of Western Americana have been emptied out, and claims as to any inherent meaning they formerly possessed has become strangely displaced. Her photographs constantly fathom the familiar, often closely connected to traditional American film genre, and make it completely unfamiliar. Of course Freud would have called this simply the unheimlich or uncanny. But here again Schneider almost never plays the role of the psychologist, or, for that matter, seeks to impart any specific meanings to the photographic contents of her images. The works possess an edited behavioural narrative (she has made choices), but there is never a sense of there being a clearly defined story. Indeed, the uncertainty of my reading here presented, acts as a caveat to the very condition that Schneider’s photographs provoke. Invariably the settings of her pictorial narratives are the South West of the United States, most often the desert and its periphery in Southern California. The desert is a not easily identifiable space, with the suburban boundaries where habitation meets the desert even more so. There are certain sub-themes common to Schneider’s work, not least that of journeying, on the road, a feeling of wandering and itinerancy, or simply aimlessness. Alongside this subsidiary structural characters continually appear, the gas station, the automobile, the motel, the highway, the revolver, logos and signage, the wasteland, the isolated train track and the trailer. If these form a loosely defined structure into which human characters and events are cast, then Schneider always remains the fulcrum and mechanism of their exposure. Sometimes using actresses, friends, her sister, colleagues or lovers, Schneider stands by to watch the chance events as they unfold. And, this is even the case when she is a participant in front of camera of her photo-novels. It is the ability to wait and throw things open to chance and to unpredictable circumstances, that marks the development of her work over the last eight years. It is the means by which random occurrences take on such a telling sense of pregnancy in her work. However, in terms of analogy the closest proximity to Schneider’s photographic work is that of film. For many of her titles derive directly from film, in photographic series like OK Corral (1999), Vegas (1999), Westworld (1999), Memorial Day (2001), Primary Colours (2001), Suburbia (2004), The Last Picture Show (2005), and in other examples. Her works also include particular images that are titled Zabriskie Point, a photograph of her sister in an orange wig. Indeed the tentative title for the present publication Stranger Than Paradise is taken from Jim Jarmusch’s film of the same title in 1984. Yet it would be dangerous to take this comparison too far, since her series 29 Palms (1999) presages the later title of a film that appeared only in 2002. What I am trying to say here is that film forms the nexus of American culture, and it is not so much that Schneider’s photographs make specific references to these films (though in some instances they do), but that in referencing them she accesses the same American culture that is being emptied out and scrutinised by her photo-novels. In short her pictorial narratives might be said to strip films of the stereotypical Hollywood tropes that many of them possess. Indeed, the films that have most inspired her are those that similarly deconstruct the same sentimental and increasingly tawdry ‘American Dream’ peddled by Hollywood. These include films like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990) The Lost Highway (1997), John Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1994) or films like Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise with all its girl-power Bonny and Clyde-type clichés. But they serve no more than as a backdrop, a type of generic tableau from which Schneider might take human and abstracted elements, for as commercial films they are not the product of mere chance and random occurrence. Notwithstanding this observation, it is also clear that the gender deconstructions that the characters in these films so often portray, namely the active role of women possessed of a free and autonomous sexuality (even victim turned vamp), frequently find resonances within the behavioural events taking place in Schneider’s photographs and DVD sequences; the same sense of sexual autonomy that Stefanie Schneider possesses and is personally committed to. In the series 29 Palms (first begun in 1999) the two women characters Radha and Max act out a scenario that is both infantile and adolescent. Wearing brightly coloured fake wigs of yellow and orange, a parody of the blonde and the redhead, they are seemingly trailer park white trash possessing a sentimental and kitsch taste in clothes totally inappropriate to the locality. The fact that Schneider makes no judgment about this is an interesting adjunct. Indeed, the photographic projection of the images is such that the girls incline themselves to believe that they are both beautiful and desirous. However, unlike the predatory role of women in say Richard Prince’s photographs, which are simply a projection of a male fantasy onto women, Radha and Max are self-contained in their vacuous if empty trailer and motel world of the swimming pool, nail polish, and childish water pistols. Within the photographic sequence Schneider includes herself, and acts as a punctum of disruption. Why is she standing in front of an Officers’ Wives Club? Why is Schneider not similarly attired? Is there a proximity to an army camp, are these would-be Lolita(s) Rahda and Max wives or American marine groupies, and where is the centre and focus of their identity? It is the ambiguity of personal involvement that is set up by Schneider which deliberately makes problematic any clear sense of narrative construction. The strangely virulent colours of the bleached-out girls stand in marked contrast to Schneider’s own anodyne sense of self-image. Is she identifying with the contents or directing the scenario? With this series, perhaps, more than any other, Schneider creates a feeling of a world that has some degree of symbolic order. For example the girls stand or squat by a dirt road, posing the question as to their sexual and personal status. Following the 29 Palms series, Schneider will trust herself increasingly by diminishing the sense of a staged environment. The events to come will tell you both everything and nothing, reveal and obfuscate, point towards and simultaneously away from any clearly definable meaning. If for example we compare 29 Palms to say Hitchhiker (2005), and where the sexual contents are made overtly explicit, we do not find the same sense of simulated identity. It is the itinerant coming together of two characters Daisy and Austen, who meet on the road and subsequently share a trailer together. Presented in a sequential DVD and still format, we become party to a would-be relationship of sorts. No information is given as to the background or social origins, or even any reasons as to why these two women should be attracted to each other. Is it acted out? Are they real life experiences? They are women who are sexually free in expressing themselves. But while the initial engagement with the subject is orchestrated by Schneider, and the edited outcome determined by the artist, beyond that we have little information with which to construct a story. The events are commonplace, edgy and uncertain, but the viewer is left to decide as to what they might mean as a narrative. The disaggregated emotions of the work are made evident, the game or role playing, the transitory fantasies palpable, and yet at the same time everything is insubstantial and might fall apart at any moment. The characters relate but they do not present a relationship in any meaningful sense. Or, if they do, it is one driven the coincidental juxtaposition of random emotions. Should there be an intended syntax it is one that has been stripped of the power to grammatically structure what is being experienced. And, this seems to be the central point of the work, the emptying out not only of a particular American way of life, but the suggestion that the grounds upon which it was once predicated are no longer possible. The photo-novel Hitchhiker is porous and the culture of the seventies which it might be said to homage is no longer sustainable. Not without coincidence, perhaps, the decade that was the last ubiquitous age of Polaroid film. In the numerous photographic series, some twenty or so, that occur between 29 Palms and Hitchhiker, Schneider has immersed herself and scrutinised many aspects of suburban, peripheral, and scrubland America. Her characters, including herself, are never at the centre of cultural affairs. Such eccentricities as they might possess are all derived from what could be called their adjacent status to the dominant culture of America. In fact her works are often sated with references to the sentimental sub-strata that underpin so much of American daily life. It is the same whether it is flower gardens and household accoutrements of her photo-series Suburbia (2004), or the transitional and environmental conditions depicted in The Last Picture Show (2005). The artist’s use of sentimental song titles, often adapted to accompany individual images within a series by Schneider, show her awareness of America’s close relationship between popular film and music. For example the song ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’, becomes Leaving in a Jet Plane as part of The Last Picture Show series, while the literalism of the plane in the sky is shown in one element of this diptych, but juxtaposed to a blonde-wigged figure first seen in 29 Palms. This indicates that every potential narrative element is open to continual reallocation in what amounts to a story without end. And, the interchangeable nature of the images, like a dream, is the state of both a pictorial and affective flux that is the underlying theme pervading Schneider’s photo-narratives. For dream is a site of yearning or longing, either to be with or without, a human pursuit of a restless but uncertain alternative to our daily reality. The scenarios that Schneider sets up nonetheless have to be initiated by the artist. And, this might be best understood by looking at her three recent DVD sequenced photo-novels, Reneé’s Dream and Sidewinder (2005). We have already considered the other called Hitchhiker. In the case of Sidewinder the scenario was created by internet where she met J.D. Rudometkin, an ex-theologian, who agreed to her idea to live with her for five weeks in the scrubland dessert environment of Southern California. The dynamics and unfolding of their relationship, both sexually and emotionally, became the primary subject matter of this series of photographs. The relative isolation and their close proximity, the interactive tensions, conflicts and submissions, are thus recorded to reveal the day-to-day evolution of their relationship. That a time limit was set on this relation-based experiment was not the least important aspect of the project. The text and music accompanying the DVD were written by the American Rudometkin, who speaks poetically of “Torn Stevie. Scars from the weapon to her toes an accidental act of God her father said. On Vaness at California.” The mix of hip reverie and fantasy-based language of his text, echoes the chaotic unfolding of their daily life in this period, and is evident in the almost sun-bleached Polaroid images like Whisky Dance, where the two abandon themselves to the frenetic circumstances of the moment. Thus Sidewinder, a euphemism for both a missile and a rattlesnake, hints at the libidinal and emotional dangers that were risked by Schneider and Rudometkin. Perhaps, more than any other of her photo-novels it was the most spontaneous and immediate, since Schneider’s direct participation mitigated against and narrowed down the space between her life and the art work. The explicit and open character of their relationship at this time (though they have remained friends), opens up the question as the biographical role Schneider plays in all her work. She both makes and directs the work while simultaneously dwelling within the artistic processes as they unfold. Hence she is both author and character, conceiving the frame within which things will take place, and yet subject to the same unpredictable outcomes that emerge in the process. In Reneé’s Dream, issues of role reversal take place as the cowgirl on her horse undermines the male stereotype of Richard Prince’s ‘Marlboro Country’. This photo-work along with several others by Schneider, continue to undermine the focus of the male gaze, for her women are increasingly autonomous and subversive. They challenge the male role of sexual predator, often taking the lead and undermining masculine role play, trading on male fears that their desires can be so easily attained. That she does this by working through archetypal male conventions of American culture, is not the least of the accomplishments in her work. What we are confronted with frequently is of an idyll turned sour, the filmic clichés that Hollywood and American television dramas have promoted for fifty years. The citing of this in the Romantic West, where so many of the male clichés were generated, only adds to the diminishing sense of substance once attributed to these iconic American fabrications. And, that she is able to do this through photographic images rather than film, undercuts the dominance espoused by time-based film. Film feigns to be seamless though we know it is not. Film operates with a story board and setting in which scenes are elaborately arranged and pre-planned. Schneider has thus been able to generate a genre of fragmentary events, the assemblage of a story without a storyboard. But these post-narratological stories require another component, and that component is the viewer who must bring their own interpretation as to what is taking place. If this can be considered the upside of her work, the downside is that she never positions herself by giving a personal opinion as to the events that are taking place in her photographs. But, perhaps, this is nothing more than her use of the operation of chance dictates. I began this essay by speaking about the apparitional contents of Stefanie Schneider’s pictorial narratives, and meant at that time the literal and chance-directed ‘appearing’ qualities of her photographs. Perhaps, at this moment we should also think of the metaphoric contents of the word apparition. There is certainly a spectre-like quality also, a ghostly uncertainty about many of the human experiences found in her subject matter. Is it that the subculture of the American Dream, or the way of life Schneider has chosen to record, has in turn become also the phantom of it former self? Are these empty and fragmented scenarios a mirror of what has become of contemporary America? There is certainly some affection for their contents on the part of the artist, but it is somehow tainted with pessimism and the impossibility of sustainable human relations, with the dissolute and commercial distractions of America today. Whether this is the way it is, or, at least, the way it is perceived by Schneider is hard to assess. There is a bleak lassitude about so many of her characters. But then again the artist has so inured herself into this context over a long protracted period that the boundaries between the events and happenings photographed, and the personal life of Stefanie Schneider, have become similarly opaque. Is it the diagnosis of a condition, or just a recording of a phenomenon? Only the viewer can decide this question. For the status of Schneider’s certain sense of uncertainty is, perhaps, the only truth we may ever know.

1 Kerry Brougher (ed.), Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors, ex. cat., The Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, 1996) 2 Im Reich der Phantome: Fotographie des Unsichtbaren, ex. cat., Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach/Kunsthalle Krems/FotomuseumWinterthur, (Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997) 3 Photoworks: When Pictures Vanish – Sigmar Polke, Museum of Contemporary Art (Zürich-Berlin-New York, 1995) 4 Slavoj Žižek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, Occasional Papers, no. 1, 2000. 5 Diane Arbus, eds. Doon Arbus, and Marvin Israel...

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