Reading Gay Block's mind?

To the Editors:

An unsettling discomfort washed over me as I read Arden Reed's review of Gay Block's recent multimedia exhibition held at the University of New Mexico Art Museum [see A.i.A., Mar. '04]. The show, "Bertha Alyce: A Photographic Biography," features the artist's mother as subject. The article quickly delves into a moral investigation of the motives behind Block's work. Reed is quick to make judgments, and hesitant to offer any broader examination of Block's imagery. Are we to assume that this body of work is simply a vehicle for the artist to explore her own "narcissism"? Perhaps, but this answer seems inadequate.

What other interpretations are possible? Does Block's work raise major interpersonal issues and make us think beyond the established boundaries of mother/daughter relationships? Is the artist's choice to photograph her mother bare-breasted anything more than "erotic"? The review, dismissive in tone, does not tell us. Instead, we are informed of the artist's life, sexual orientation and "abandoned" marriage. The questions Reed poses disregard the work itself. This is puzzling, since we are left with the basic sense that Reed was fascinated with the show.

What Reed does reveal is his own discomfort with Block's pictures. The writer spends more time addressing the impetus behind the work than he does acting as its critical viewer. But is it proper for a reviewer to assume the role of psychoanalyst?

Alexis Terry

Tybee Island, Ga.

Arden Reed replies:

Alexis Terry suggests that I "disregard" Gay Block's work, but there is more than one way to regard. This was not an exhibition of abstract images calling for formal analysis, nor did the show's fascination lie in technical innovation. Rather, its provocative photographs and autobiographical text invite psychological speculation. The work is about the artist's efforts to settle accounts with Bertha Alyce by "exposing" her. It is also about sexual politics--about women's bodies, portraying women's bodies and leaving a husband for a female lover. This makes it relevant to consider the artist's own past, which she explicitly addressed in personal commentary on waft panels. Aside from calling the exhibition "courageous" I conducted no "moral examination" but tried to take the work seriously, on the terms it set.

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