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Yes, we can

Real rock life gets 'Extended Play'

by Christopher Millis

For those of us who were enthralled by and continue to listen to the Velvet Underground, the early (as opposed to the resurrected) Patti Smith, and Bob Dylan from the days when his skin was smooth and he smoked tobacco, the current exhibit at the Photographic Resource Center comes as something of a challenge. "Extended Play: Between Rock and an Art Place" proposes to cast these musicians and others as visual artists. As a result, we're compelled to confront what psychologists call functional fixedness: can we get beyond our old associations and see these artists' work in categorically new ways?

Yes, we can. And it turns out to be easy, in part because some of what's on display is so arresting you don't look first to see who created it. Laurie Anderson's sad and acerbic book Light in August, Kevin Coyne's diminutive yet diabolical cartoonish drawings, above all John Cohen's mercilessly tender and exquisitely composed photographs of blues and folk singers of the late '50s and early '60s -- these silence with their strength whatever tunes may be floating in our heads.

Unfortunately, this sprawling exhibit gets sidetracked in ways that don't contribute to its mission. At the center of the gallery's main room, for instance, stands a shoddy monitor projecting several dozen badly produced videos, most of which have no business being here in the first place. (A David Letterman interview with Captain Beefheart? Six numbers by Sonic Youth?) Then there's the predictable groupie paraphernalia, with an entire section given over to faded dust jackets and ratty posters. Tune out and look past; between this rock and an art place flows a channel that offers real transport.

To the right of the tiresome TV and surrounded by a number of forgettable drawings by Patti Smith (lots of attitude, little merit) sits an 8-1/2x11-inch book with thickly laminated pages. Laurie Anderson's poignant and engrossing Light in August begins with a few words about not realizing the density of an electrical outlet until it was all she had left. The next page reads in its entirety: "things stolen from me in August 1974/through a hole cut in the concrete wall/of my loft on Second Street New York City," whereupon an ironic, quietly shocking chronicle begins. Anderson intersperses an enumeration of what she lost, one item per page, with the repetition of a copy of a 1514 woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia, in which a richly robed figure has collapsed in a room that's crowded with bizarre artifacts and looks toward a window where the work's title appears emblazoned on the setting sun.

But Anderson's repetitions are never repetitive; for the naming of each ripped-off item, she colors in red a different object in the Dürer on the facing page. The beauty of the piece lies in part in the correspondence between her own loss and its transformation in the mirror of the master. "Violin" sees a broken table highlighted in the woodcut; "paintings by my grandmother" sees the figure's crown of laurel appear crimson; "amplifier" has the word melancholia itself light up. Humor and art redeem disappointment and violation.

Perhaps the most sustained treasure on display is an extensive group of black and white photographs by John Cohen that deserves far better placement than it receives. Although Lou Reed is as near as we get in this country to a national treasure, and though Laurie Anderson can be captivating tying her shoes, neither one uses a camera with Cohen's boldness or emotional range. A founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, who were pivotal in the folk-music revival 40 years ago, Cohen typically depicts musicians at work -- on stage, on their front porches, in their living rooms. Their intensity is almost too great to look at: Mr. and Mrs. John Sams, Combs, KY, 1959 stare so uninhibitedly into the camera, fiddles in hand and surrounded by children, they seem a cross between gurus and people in a bread line. In another shot, a teenage Bob Dylan stands outdoors on a rug-covered crate, an impish smirk on his face as he holds a guitar nearly his size. Undiluted passion and thinly veiled joy are the deliberate, powerful undercurrents of Cohen's generous vision, suggesting that the passage between rock and an art place is one we may all be able to sail.