On September 16, 2015, PIASA will stage a sale devoted to the American artist William Wegman. Among the fifty photographs selected, PIASA will also offer for sale on September 16 a series of unique, unpublished photographs inspired by the furniture of George Nakashima.

Since the 1970s, William Wegman has been creating work that blends humour, irony and wit, often taking as his central subjects and muses, his Weimaraners. Wegman was born in Massachusetts in 1943 and studied painting at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana. He taught at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Los Angeles in 1970.

“Sometimes it’s the dog who makes the picture,” said Wegman. In 1971, Wegman adopted his first dog, a Weimaraner who he named “Man Ray” in honor of the legendary photographer. Wegman was hypnotized by the dog’s imposing, intelligent presence and Man Ray soon because his main collaborator, the subject of Wegman’s seminal video and photgraphs of the 70s. Along with his fellow Los Angeles artists John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha and ruce Nauman, Wegman created work that was funny, even perverse, upending the Minimal and Conceptual work established on the East Coast and helping to invent along the way what became known as West Coast Conceptual art.

In 1979, Wegman moved to New York. Man Ray died in 1982 and in 1985 Wegman adopted a new dog, Fay Ray, who gave birth to pups who in turn gave birth to pups. This large canine family became a multi-talented new cast of characters for Wegman.

Through the years, Wegman has often found inspiration in juxtaposing his dogs with furniture. Some of the most famous examples were made with the Polaroid 20 x 24 camera with which Wegman worked from 1979-2008. Included in the PIASA auction are such highlights from this body of work as Kit realized in 1991 or the acrobatic Classical of 1994.

"What struck me about working with my dogs and the Nakashima furniture is how alike they are," William Wegman says. "I have always enjoyed seeing my dogs on furniture: the couch, the bed, an easy chair and yes up on the table but only in the studio. I have made it a habit of looking for things to accommodate their poses. Usually stuff I find on the street or in dumpsters.

Sometimes it comes as a surprise which objects will work. After years and years of lifting and placing them on so many different pedestals I can still be surprised. Sometimes it’s the dog who makes the picture. My current models, Topper and Flo, can’t be draped the way the exceptional Battina could. But no past Weimaraner of mine could pose as
heroically and proudly as Topper. Not even the peerless Man Ray. And no one, not even Fay Ray, can embed her poses with the deep, possessed look of Flo." he states.

About the opportunity to work with George Nakashima’s furniture, William Wegman says: "Dog and furniture blend together and at times become one and the same. I saw an even deeper connection when I visited Mira Nakashima at the Nakashima studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania, a beautiful and natural setting surrounded and immersed in the soul of the tree. Mira said that her father believed that he was giving a second life to the tree that he used in making his piece. In some way my dogs give that tree a third life."

With their elegant bearing and piercing gaze, Weimaraners are immediately playful and appealing. As captured by Wegman they also become poignant metaphors for human behavior.

William Wegman has been the subject of numerous retrospectives in the world’s leading museums, notably the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Frankfurt Kunstverein; and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In addition to being included in most major museums collections, Wegman’s photographs and videos have also appeared on Saturday Night Live and Sesame Street, at the Sundance Film Festival, the Metropolitan Opera, in ad campaigns for numerous fashion houses, in the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue and the Times Square jumbotron and on the cover of The New Yorker. Wegman lives with his dogs and family in New York and Maine.