After Wegman

An homage to early videoworks by William Wegman, starring Man and Fay Ray's stand-ins.

"Anne McGuire shows that men are dogs."

--Ed Halter, New York Underground Film Festival (2003)

"The droll conceptualism of William Wegman gets the choke chain in Anne McGuire's ode to pedigree, After Wegman. The trim weimaraners of Two Dogs Watching are replaced with equally trim boys, better trained than their canine counterparts. Where Man Ray and pal lavished obedience on man's best artist, McGuire's attentive post-puberty pets track the scent of their own desire. Slyly, we realize that the instincts differ--the ingrained servitude of dogs being perhaps more noble than the libido's leash on guys. As epilogue, McGuire enacts another Wegman piece, the slurping of a glass of milk, grown monumental in the foreground. With the impediment of a less tactile tongue, our young lapping lad struggles toward satiation, the cloudy liquid splashing and slopping often just out of reach. There is sustenance here: at the trough of desire, yes, but also in a lineage of artists that hasn't gone to the dogs."

—Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archive (2003)