GIRL WATCHER.

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Author: Aletti, Vince

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

"I am an observer, observing as thoroughly as possible," Miroslav Tichý says in the brief filmed profile that accompanies his first gallery show, at Nolan/Eckman. The Czech artist, who is eighty this year, has a mischievous gleam in his eye, and it's easy to see why--since the fifties, the primary focus of his observation has been women: sunbathing in bikinis, shopping in miniskirts, taking an outdoor shower, strolling, chatting. Because he worked surreptitiously and from a distance, his pictures can be unsettlingly intimate, like paparazzi or surveillance shots. But there's something so obsessive, eccentric, and delirious about the work that it's hard not to fall under its spell. Tichý's homemade cameras--fashioned from spools, mailing tubes, bottle caps, and scavenged lenses--produce soft, cloudy photos that look like they've been taken in a dream. Breasts, buttocks, and limbs hover just out of focus like the disembodied figures in spirit photos. Tichý,'s goddesses are spectral but also earthy; their radiant ordinariness is their greatest charm.

PHOTO (COLOR)

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By Vince Aletti