1972, The Magazine Women Believe In

  

Excerpt from an interview referencing 2015 exhibition “Ludwig Goes Pop”,

Cologne Germany and MUMAK, Vienna :

                                                                                                                 

Prof. William Ganis : That image of Mia Farrow is certainly a Pop icon - but Howard is not primarily a Pop artist.  He always seemed to go well beyond straight presentation of media imagery.  For example,  “Journal” made me think of how the camera’s gaze is also a commercial gaze, which sells itself as truth.  It is likely that Howard’s deliberate translations of photographic errors, like the blurred registration in “Journal”, was his way of questioning that truth.

 

Oldenbusch (HKF)  : I agree. Howard scrutinized all representation, with a knowing eye to art history.  For example, think of the Mia Farrow as a Pop version of a traditional portrait. The cluster of texts around her face functions the way descriptive attributes might have in classical portraiture.  What are they telling us about her reality? – and by implication, ours?  Consumer and celebrity culture is a strange fiction that we are all caught up in.