They aren’t inkjet enlargements, in which a photographic positive is outputted onto a roll of paper at 300 dots per inch. Putting aside their aesthetic force, these murals were a milestone in photographic printing. The generals and ambassadors leading the American war effort in Vietnam stand flinty and frigid. Paul Morrissey, Viva and the self-proclaimed Superstars of Andy Warhol’s Factory pout and preen. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the other defendants known as the Chicago Seven stare and slouch. For this centennial tribute to American photography’s great purifier, the Met has brought out some of the largest photographs in its collection: Avedon’s wall-engulfing group portraits, made between 19, reaching from floor to ceiling and covering up to 35 horizontal feet. “Richard Avedon: Murals” fills just one gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but fills is an understatement. He needed a fresh start, with a new camera he had to get out of New York he needed to think bigger, in the most literal sense imaginable. Richard Avedon in 1968 was going through an artistic crisis. Not after the assassination in Memphis, not after the riots in Chicago. He had reached the heights of the fashion industry, photographing the most beautiful models each month for Alexander Liberman’s Vogue he was shooting Bette Davis and Barbra Streisand for mink coat advertisements, and Catherine Deneuve for the cover of Life.
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