Dan's Papers - August 31, 2007 - art commentary With Marion Wolberg Weiss

Fashion photographer Steven Klein is known worldwide for stylized, striking images that sell a product - clothes. What makes him different, besides his compelling visuals, is his use of celebrities (including Madonna) to make a point.

Even so, this critic sees Klein as a conveyer of conceptual art in the commercial print community. Admittedly, that's going out on a limb, aesthetically speaking, but it's an appropriatly risky statement to describe someone's work who also takes chances.

If Klein's photographs are often conceptual art, does this make them fine art, despite their commercial intention? You bet it does.

Let's consider first Klein's portraits of horses as possible examples of conceptualization (particularly relevant subjects during the current Hampton Classic). The medium close-up images are incomplete, showing either a mane / withers or croup / tail; full bodies are missing, as are heads. Viewers must complete the picture themselves, imagining what the rest of the horse looks like. This closure process, it seems to yours truly, partly defines the nature of conceptual art. Although, obviously, closure is at work every time we fill in information that doesn't exist.

With Klein's horse portraits, we extend what we partially see to complete a whole figure in our mind. The process is akin, perhaps, to the non-linear (vertical) aspect of conceptual art. In a nutshell, it's not chronological / horizontal thinking that allows us closure, but vertical dynamics. It's "what goes with what" instead of "what follows what." (This tenet also applies to non-linear plots in theatre, as we indicated in this series' Part I .)

Klein's equines are given added, potent dimension when he includes Madonna with horses in a series suggesting sexual interaction. Such a connotation is no longer considered offensive, yet the idea is provocative despite Madonna's long association with non-mainstream values.

Closure operates well in interpreting this series of photographs, even though such closure depends on multiple, rather than individual, images similar to cinematic montage. The idea being that several images contribute to a whole idea/feeling which the viewer must determine.

Thus, Klein's Madonna series is like a puzzle, its meaning not defined by any one image (puzzle part), but by a combination of all the images. This process makes the photographs conceptual art, suggesting what happens after the "shots" we do see - Madonna's bonding with the horse, or perhaps redemption for both the beauty and the beast.

Mr. Klein's exhibit will be on view at East Hampton's Vered Gallery until Sept. 18.