{"id":224056,"date":"2025-10-19T07:15:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T07:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/224056\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T07:15:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T07:15:22","slug":"jeff-wall-explains-why-beauty-isnt-what-you-think-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/224056\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Wall explains why beauty isn\u2019t what you think it is"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to beauty \u2014 that mysterious quality that draws us to a work of art \u2014 acclaimed Canadian photographer Jeff Wall says it has little to do with how pretty, pleasing or polished a piece may be. In fact, he says the true notion of beauty includes things we find grotesque, repellant and even disturbing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real, original use of the word \u2018beauty\u2019 in art was for the aesthetic experience of something superior, or at least of quality,\u201d he explains in an interview with Q\u2019s Tom Power. \u201cIt affects you physically. There’s a kind of enjoyment that you can’t explain, a certain quickening of your thought process, a kind of happiness that you get, an energization caused by the effect of this work\u2026. So beauty is a complicated word.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>If you\u2019re not familiar with Wall\u2019s work, you should know that he favours staged scenes and large lightboxes over documentary-style photography. His photos have sold for millions at auctions<\/a>, and he\u2019s an Officer of the Order of Canada. Now, he\u2019s getting ready for his first major Canadian exhibit in 25 years, Jeff Wall Photographs 1984\u20132023<\/a>, which opens this weekend at MOCA Toronto.<\/p>\n

\"AJeff Wall, Boy falls from tree, 2010. Lightjet print. Edition 3 + 1 AP. (\u00a9 and courtesy of Jeff Wall)<\/p>\n

If you do end up at the exhibit, you don\u2019t have to worry about doing any research beforehand. Wall doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary or even interesting for viewers to know too much about his photos before seeing them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really believe, seriously, that viewers of artworks understand them when they really experience them and do not need any backstory, don’t need any comments from the artist, don’t necessarily even need to read an article in a newspaper or art magazine,\u201d he says. \u201cIt’s nice to do so. Those are all good things. But in fact, we don’t really need them.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>While Wall admits he pays a lot of attention to his titles, considering that to be his \u201creal literary activity,\u201d he doesn\u2019t care if you remember them or not. He says it\u2019s even better if you don\u2019t, so you can impose your own meaning on the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I notice about my titles is many people can’t remember them,\u201d he tells Power. \u201cThat sort of annoyed me for a little while \u2026 but then I realized that it’s better they forget them because that’s a symptom of them having made the picture for themselves, experienced it for themselves, and they can add a title, which is in a way kind of an outcropping of my idea that they are the writers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wall\u2019s new retrospective, Jeff Wall: Photographs 1984 to 2023, is on view at MOCA Toronto\u00a0 from Oct. 19 through March 22, 2026.<\/p>\n

LISTEN | Jeff Wall’s full interview with Tom Power:<\/p>\n

33:05Jeff Wall says beauty isn\u2019t what you think it is<\/p>\n

The full interview with Jeff Wall is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power<\/a>. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n

Interview with Jeff Wall produced by Vanessa Greco.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to beauty \u2014 that mysterious quality that draws us to a work of art \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-224056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}