Do the photographs of David Graham engage the real as poetic, the ordinary as extraordinary, the everyday as eternal?

Graham's aesthetic interpretation and celebration of reality within American culture represents not an original approach in art. There is the precedent, of course, of Dutch genre painting of the 17th century depicting bourgeois delight, of 19th century Realist schools of painting celebrating peasants in fields and bohemians in cafes rather than gods in Arcadia or nobles in palaces. And there are Beethoven's third movements based on peasant tunes and Michelangelo's St. Peter's dome based on convention rather than originality—Brunileschi did it first in Florence. Viva reality and convention in terms of content and technique!

And then there is magnificent precedent within Graham's own medium; that of the work of Walker Evans. But between the work of the two photograpUers there is a significant difference and in this context, vive la difference!—where the reality within the content of Evans' work explicitly engages social dimensions within the American scene and that of Graham's work explicitly engages issues of taste within the American scene. And this can make Graham more controversial or harder to take than Evans because of condescension concerning levels of taste in general and of intolerance concerning commercial iconography as a significant element of American culture in particular. The art of our time, that of Graham, can acknowledge and accommodate multiculturalism and varieties of taste cultures as defined by the urban sociologist, Herbert Gans. Can't we celebrate vitality within vulgarity? Will not someday commercial billboards hang next to patchwork quilts in American craft museums?

Another difference emerges between the art of Evans with its explicitly social content and that of Graham with its explicitly cultural content—another difference which works to illuminate the work of Graham and that is the subject content of the art as well as the expression within the art of Graham engages communication. Ornament and advertising depicted within the American environment engage ways of explicit communication so that you have communication about communication and this makes for richness of method as well as of content for our Information Age.

And then there is the element of juxtaposition within Graham's art interpreting and celebrating the everyday American experience involving ranges of mess iconographic and natural, including statues of Lenin, balloons as pumpkins, real motels and pretty scenery that make for richness via tension in the art. Viva messiness over unity!

In the end, must not David Graham's art be admired for its profound quality and loved for its consummate wit plus joy?

Robert Venturi, 5/2/01