William Klein
Bill may deny all of this. He may say it never happened in the way I say it did.
It was 1986. I had long heard that William Klein was difficult. I heard that he was a contrarian, and that he got in his own way. I had heard that the Museum of Modern Art had long sought an exhibition of his work and that he consistently turned them down. I also knew that his work is spectacular and that I would love to show it at the museum. I figured that he was not likely to accept an invitation from me if MoMA couldn't peak his interest.
But what was there to lose? I called him at his home in Paris. I asked him if he would exhibit his work in San Diego. His very first question was, "How far is that from New York?" I told him that it was around 3,000 miles. And he said he was interested. He had not heard of the Museum of Photographic Arts. He only had a vague idea of where San Diego was. In the back of my mind I couldn't help but think that he was more interested in some sort of conflict with MoMA in New York than he was in my institution.
I told him that I would write a grant to the National Endowment for the Arts to support the show and he said okay. When we received the grant I flew to Paris.
Mr. Klein is a tremendous artist. He is quick-witted and very smart. Born in New York in 1928 to a poor family, he whipped through high school and enrolled at City College of New York at the age of 14. The US was at war when he turned 18 and he enlisted. He was stationed in France toward the end of the war and never really returned. He comes to New York periodically but for all practical purposes he is French.
He is well known as a filmmaker and a photographer. Klein has made more than 25 films, primarily documentaries; most famously on Mohammed Ali, Eldridge Cleaver, and the '50s rock star Little Richard. He has worked extensively in fashion photography, and made more than 200 commercials for TV. In his photography Klein is a provocateur. He shoots with a very wide lens and gets exceptionally close to his subjects. In fact, he often gets well within their personal space. Their uncomfortable response at his intimacy is sometimes the raison d'etre of the image. In the best of them, our sense of insertion into someone else's reality is startlingly voyeuristic. Occasionally their response is dramatically aggressive, irritated at our intrusion. In the work of other street photographers there is a sense that we are looking through a window at a slice of humanity caught being oddly normal or normally odd. With Klein's images the window is open and we have stuck our heads through it and are mixing with the inhabitants.
In person Klein has an ironic, slightly sarcastic approach, and he can also be quite direct. When I arrived at his home he was casually welcoming, and we got to our business immediately. We discussed what we wanted to present and we agreed easily. I spent several hours the first day and the next going through boxes of prints and catalogs for exhibitions I had not seen before. The business arrangements, crating, shipping, insurance, his travel to San Diego, couldn't have been more straightforward and easy. I was expecting problems but none arose.
Until, that is, I mentioned that I wanted to travel the exhibition to a number of other institutions. He refused. He didn't want it to travel. I said that there were already three or four museums in the US and one in Japan that were eager to take the show. I explained that it would require no extra work on his part and I would seek his approval on any venue that considered showing it. He said no. No travel. I have come to believe that the other museums may have wanted to take the exhibition from our museum so as not to have to work too closely over an extended period of time with Bill.
Disappointed, I moved on. I wanted to make a catalog. He didn't. I knew he had famously sued Aperture after they published a large book titled simply William Klein. It seems that the printing was far from what he had wanted. In fact he inscribed my copy of that book as follows: "To Arthur, BURN THIS BOOK! All my best to MoPA and my worst to Mi Hoff Bill Klein." ("Mi Hoff" refers to Michael Hoffman, the late publisher of Aperture, the quarterly magazine as well as the Aperture publishing imprint that produced several hundred beautiful monographic books. Mr. Hoffman was a volatile personality, and a perfectionist regarding his publications. It is hard to imagine both of these men in the same room without conflict, even if there was no serious issue, like print quality to deal with.)
I showed him some of our previous publications, and he admitted that our printing was excellent. But still, no book. How about a catalog? I asked. "No." I reminded him that the public wants something with images to take away from an important exhibition. I mentioned that the National Endowment grant had included a publication and they expected to see one. I told him that a publication memorializes and long outlives an exhibition. "Okay," he said, "but no more than 12 pictures can be reproduced. " And so it was.
The catalog is staple bound and bears his signature bright red graphics. The reproduction is excellent. In the catalog my essay begins, "William Klein has been referred to as difficult, demanding, uncompromising, petulant, idiosyncratic and rude; he is also charming, witty, self-critical and professional. His work has been called chaotic, disorganized, threatening, and abrasive, while it is also explosive, evocative and playful. Klein has seriously shifted the European spontaneous street image away from its softly poetic, slightly ironic, and humane vision to a tough, cinematic expressionism never before used in Europe. He calls himself a heretic."
In 1954 he returned to New York to photograph the intensity and ugliness of the city. His resulting book, "Life is Good and Good For You in New York: Trance Witness Revels" is a gritty vision shot through with his alienation. (That was the year before Robert Frank to whom he is often compared started traveling in the US shooting pictures that in 1958 were published in Paris as "Les Americains." It was an immediate sensation in Europe and the next year it was published in the US as The Americans. Here it was roundly attacked as a crude, mean spirited and ugly representation of America. Subsequently, it has become the singular most important photography book of the 20th Century and it influenced generations of artists far beyond photography.)
However Klein's New York book predates Frank's work, and while it made his European reputation, he remained obscure in the US, perhaps because he rejected the US while Robert Frank adopted it. But both books usher in a more personal style of shooting, that allows for a tough appraisal of society, and addresses the artist's angst in the face of patriotism, jingoist nationalism, American sense of privilege and exceptionalism.
Frank and Klein are linked in their tough vision but their lives are like passing ships. Frank was born in Switzerland and moved to New York, abandoning photography at the height of his reputation to embrace filmmaking. Klein was from New York and relocated to Paris, and at the height of his fame as a photographer, he became a filmmaker. They both shot commercially for Vogue and Harper's under the patronage of Alexander Liberman, the senior editorial director of Conde Nast publications. Both artists have rejected more exhibition opportunities than they have accepted. Both mistrust governments and rule makers. But there is no need to put too fine a point on these correspondences. Frank is an observer and has a more distanced editorial stance and Klein is more the participant courting confrontation.
In the 1980's Klein returned to photography. His images are crowded, as he works so close to people that they spill in and out of his frame. There is always a sense of action taking place, perhaps the influence of his cinema camera. In the catalog I state, "The stronger the crowd's emotion, the closer he gets. Eyes, noses and chins are wedged into corners. The crowd blurs with activity and dynamism. Klein is invisible, inundated, yet he emerges untouched, alone and aloof."
Klein arrived in San Diego and immediately wanted to see his exhibition. He walked through it complimenting everything. To paraphrase, "Great gallery, wonderful hanging, terrific graphics, the show is beautiful. Why the hell didn't you want to travel it to other museums? I think many museums would be interested." I couldn't believe it. I reminded him that I had asked him if we could travel it and he said no. How can he say that I didn't want to travel it? He seemed not to recall my asking. I handed him a copy of the small, stapled "publication" with 12 pictures in it. He leafed through it and said, "Beautiful printing. I like it. Why wouldn't you want a full catalog? " What? I had begged for a catalog. Again, he had no recollection of that.
The opening went well. A very large crowd and everyone was enthusiastic. There was to be an "after party" at the home of my Board Chair. Her home was lovely and there were about 50 people at the event. The Board Chair had taken the liberty of inviting the French Consul General from the Consulate in Los Angeles. Our host and I were speaking with Bill when the Consul was introduced. Bill confronted him, "Why are you here? I'm not French." The silence lasted only a few uncomfortable seconds but to me it seemed at least an hour.
The previous year, at a conference in Southern California I had heard Bill give a lecture about his work. I think he showed every photograph he had ever made. The talk went on for more than two hours and twenty minutes and many people left long before he finished. Fearing that something similar might happen at the next evening's presentation, I suggested to Bill that he speak for about an hour, or an hour and ten minutes, and then take questions for fifteen minutes so we would be out of there in an hour and a half. He agreed. I got up and introduced him. His first words were," Your director, Arthur Ollman, told me to keep it short. He said that people in San Diego have very limited attention spans." I suppose he thought it was a joke and there was some nervous chuckling. But it was not said with a humorous delivery. I had spent years cultivating an audience, and he put a serious dent in my efforts in one minute. I admit that it stung. There was, of course no reason for it. Perhaps he is socially tone-deaf, or maybe felt it was a sort of friendly tease, but it felt malicious, a bite to the feeding hand.
After the talk a museum patron wanted to take a small group to dinner. The patron was an elderly gentleman and I'm sure he had little appreciation for Bill's work. His chosen restaurant was an old school "French" restaurant that was well past its glory years. Bill not only did not thank them for dinner, he referred to the place as looking like a bordello. While he was not wrong, there was no need for it. That one stung my benefactor. There were several more episodes of similar character, but no need to belabor the point. I recognize that his art comes from his personality and that one shouldn't expect an artist to be as tame as a Museum Director has to be. However an understanding of the process of how museums survive long enough to be able to get art on the walls is not really that complex.
Bill Klein's art is often "in your face," but in fact there is always sympathy toward his subjects. It is easy at 1/500 of a second to make anyone appear moronic, and he doesn't do that. You can page through his books on Tokyo, Rome, Moscow, and even his New York book and it is hard to find images that misuse the anonymous denizens in his work. Over all he feels the world is populated by just plain folks, trying to get by, with their pressures and fears, their accommodations to larger forces, and their moments of confusion. They are earnest people, showing up, gathering together, and isolating themselves, celebrating or blowing off steam, but most often just crowding around. Suddenly there is a guy with a camera and he gets much too close for one's comfort. He doesn't seem all that interested in you or the others, more intent on looking into his camera, and then he is gone. Hardly lasted more than a few seconds. No harm done.
I'm glad we were able to do the exhibition and the tiny catalog. I wish it could have been a traveling show with a substantial book. And I wish his social skills were more polished. Two years ago I ran into Bill at Paris Photo. We greeted one another and he immediately made some snide comment about the restaurant he was taken to in San Diego 28 years earlier.