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GEORGE PLATT LYNES PHOTOGRAPHS 1931-1955 |
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PORTRAITS Two of the most useless questions that continually plague critics are these: "Is Photography an Art?" with its inevitable corollary; "Is Greater Art greater or more Minor than Minor Art?" Both questions get themselves asked in front of these portraits by George Lynes, as they have been for thirty years. Greatness aside, Lynes fixed the face of nearly every artist and writer and musician of importance in his epoch, in a unique attitude. He has seen their faces as a symbol of the particular quality of their essential talent, not as a melodramatic mask which reflects the corroboration of a public icon. There is a big market for such journalism, because it makes every famous face a close-up of nervous eccentricity or muscular mastery. Lynes' faces remained private faces. Sometimes he used accessories in the manner of symbolic badges; sometimes an object found around the studio suggested itself as a good positive or negative complementary shape, but his decor never got into gadgetry, and although he took some of the best fashion pictures of his time, the portraits are never fashion plates. They are dandiacal and elegant, but they do not date. George Lynes was the friend of painters and writers all his life; he saw through the eyes of their observings and this schooling was a permanent academy. His real education started in the south of France when Cocteau first went to the Azure Coast which he made known through the initial contemporary works of the international Russian Ballet. Cocteau spent a lifetime as a dandy devoted to the program that every dandy since Beau Brummel has slavishly pursued: the rehabilitation of the commonplace, the elevation of contemporary behavior into myth. Contrary to present notions, the dandy as repository of true elegance has always impressed by stern discretion rather than outrage. Beau Brummel made our permanent revolution in male dress by sticking to a black and white uniform, fresh linen and an immaculate person. Lynes was by way of being a dandy. His prematurely white hair capped a face with the open quizzicality of a Bronzino princeling; with it, at the same time, a hint of insolence, which was not a personal but an aesthetic judgment. He wore American work clothes as a working costume and diplomatic uniform almost earlier than anyone else. He was a physical, not a social snob. He preferred the looks of fascinating or beautiful faces. Just before his death he destroyed the negatives of his years of fashion photography. This was a pity, but he grew to dislike the automatic and factitious shiftings of the mode by which he made his living. His portraits are his great work. Elegance is a moral virtue which distills the aristocracy of personal grace and individual gift. Diluted, it becomes negotiable fashion, but the clothes in these portraits of talented men and women do not date the portraits as pictures. He chose characteristic silhouettes, stance, the cant of heads on necks, the placement of fingers, which somehow stamped the sitter. One tool he used supremely was flattery, not in his final focus, but as the slow or staccato approach to it. He wanted you to look your best -- that is: most yourself. He had no strong opinions but only affections and clear eyes. That is why these photographs are great reminders of exceptional gifts, and why photography is a great historian and he a great photographer. Lincoln Kirstein, 1960
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