Edition Announcement #243 - William Wegman

I'm so pleased and so proud to present a very special paired edition — About Four Thirty and The Architects — from William Wegman today. And a paired edition it is! These prints are only available together; Mr. Wegman and I agreed that it was a good idea to present the broader view of his practice. (We both well know how distracting and disarming those Wiemeraners of his can be.)

Some notes about the edition:

- We're limiting collectors to two 10"x8" / 8"x10" or 14"x11" / 11"x14" pairs each, and only one per collector for prints 20"x16" / 16"x20" and larger.
- This edition is not eligible for any discount or promotion.
- We reserve the right to refund purchases if we determine that a single collector has acquired multiple prints or used a discount code.

William's work is the perfect incarnation of Bill the person. As an artist, he is William Wegman and to call him Bill seems disrespectful. And yet, to refer to him as Bill, to other people, can easily seem to allude to a familiarity that's like, so Hollywood — that LA thing where everyone refers to super powerful people by their first name only. But to call him William in person, or even refer to him as William seems to signal a different kind of respect. He's serious, but please don't take him so seriously.

He's so funny, affable and distracted that it's easy to underestimate him. People think of him as the dog guy and don't even know that he's an artist with a broader practice. Even if people do know about his other work, they complain about his obsessive repetition of a theme (the postcards), to which I say: who hasn't met an obsessive artist before? The dogs and the humor belie a very intense, earnest and important inquiry.

I want to perch myself up on a chair and wave my arms and say: take this man seriously! If you spend your life looking half as hard as he does it'll be much richer. Humor can be intelligent and revealing, even when it's downright silly on its surface. It reminds me of how I talk about what I want people to look for when they look at art: a connection. Only connect, and then fall into it.

"Only connect! Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

— E.M. Forster, Howards End

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