Woodman begins with an idea, but the idea is only the starter button. For instance, she is enthralled by the amount of doubling and mirror-imaging in Jasper Johns' work, as exposed in the MoMA retrospective. This is shown in the current exhibition by several pieces that play with twinning. We are in a hall of mirrors. We may now look forward to a new period of cross-referencing in Woodman's oeuvre.
Inspiration is an explanation.
It was also inspiration that drove her recently to investigate the garden pottery workshops near Florence and dream up altered versions of their distinct wares. She and her husband, the painter and photographer George Woodman, have spent their summers in Italy since the '50s, so the appropriation is more than appropriate. The Italian planters now on display, complete with flowering plants, are giant pots hybridized by the addition of cut-out forms and then loosely decorated with clay slips. Thus does a new series begin. I do not intend Woodman's achievement to be seen as something totally mysterious and poetic or, on the other hand, something totally formal.