Once again, the Portland Museum of Art astounds me with its two newest exhibitions: André Kertész: On Reading and American Menagerie. Two very disparate, but equally interesting, exhibitions that are good enough to beckon me indoors, away from this recent stretch of gorgeous weather. So, I took a trip to the venerable PMA (whose current abode, the Charles Shipman Payson building, is celebrating its 25th this year!) to view and review.

André Kertész was born in Hungary in 1894. He attended business school and then began work as a clerk in the Budapest stock exchange. He taught himself photography in 1912 and in 1925 he moved to Paris, joining such luminaries as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, to concentrate on the spontaneity of street photography. Using his Leica camera, Kertész depicted everyday life, and used that talent when he moved to New York in 1936 to become a photojournalist, which he remained until his death in 1985.

On Reading features nearly 100 photographs which depict people reading. The images display Kertész's talent for capturing both the public and private domains, and that tension between the two is certainly evident in these images. One cannot help but think of voyeurism when looking at many of these pictures, most notably a series of rooftop photos. Seemingly taken from a distance - perhaps adjacent rooftops or, even more jarringly, from windows (hello Hitchcock) - the images show men and women, usually alone, sunbathing and reading. The people are apparently unaware that someone is watching and recording their private moments. But this is where the genius of Kertész lies. These images raise the question: what is truly private? In such densely populated urban areas, a private moment is a rare one.

Untitled (woman sunbathing on roof reading), September 21, 1964 by André Kertész

On a related note, the act of reading is isolating. When reading, people enter a different world, populated by themselves and the characters they picture in their minds. By capturing these readers, Kertész introduces a third party into the mix, at once pulling them out of isolation and making them even more vulnerable. Thus Kertész's photographs have the air of the documentary. He records the truth and displays it for us to contemplate on a level we might not have before. But there is more to his work than this. His fine art techniques temper the starkness of a documentary.

New York (boy eating ice cream on pile of newspapers), October 12, 1944 by André Kertész

Shooting almost exclusively in black and white and employing dramatic and unusual angles, Kertész finds the beauty in the mundane, and elevates the common to the extraordinary. These moments are of the kind that people rarely take the time to notice, especially in the modern age. The innocence of a young boy seated on a pile of newspapers, reading while eating ice cream, is touching and humorous. Academics both young and old, sitting in libraries or book-laden studies, are adamant in their pursuit of knowledge. A young woman seated in a Parisian café, reading the newspaper, is wistful. These moments show that despite our differences, we can find common ground in even the simplest things. The people captured by Kertész's lens are all unique, but they are united by one thing: their love of reading.

Bright Barnyard, 1965 by Dahlov Ipcar

American Menagerie, drawn mostly from the museum's permanent collection, explores the role of animals in art. Whether they add symbolic significance, or explore issues of identity, or something else entirely, animals are powerful tools for artists. Situated on the tiny mezzanine level at the top of the PMA, the exhibition goes from whimsical to philosophical, and everything in between. For the most part, the animals in these works appear to be stand-ins for something more intangible. In colonial era portraits, pet dogs signify affluence and fidelity. In a contemporary piece by Will Barnet, crows lend a sense of urgency and foreboding to an austere portrait of two women looking out at a bleak seascape.

Bernard Langlais, an artist well-known for his wood carvings, felt that animals lend themselves more easily to the imagination or symbolic associations than humans. His massive work, "Animal Farm," is included in this exhibition, and serves almost as an anchoring point to the works that surround it. The simple, straightforward forms in the "collage" belie their underlying significance, forcing the viewer to wonder what it all means.

Similarly, "Snow Moon" by Roger Winter, is a strange and beautiful work that begs for a long, deep period of introspection. This is by far one of the most compelling pieces in the exhibition, and I could have stood in front of it for hours, poring over the subtleties and layers of meaning until my eyes glossed over. But, even if that isn't your thing, it is still a wonder to look at.
Winter used animals as "emblematic forms" to explore the concepts of life, spirituality, and the mysterious workings of the world. The creatures do not interact with each other, and are depicted in strange ways. A fox seems frozen mid-jump, while a black crow, made huge by its placement in the foreground, flies by. Adding to the complexity of the composition is an angel, suspended mid-air, its arms raised, whether in benediction, prayer, triumph, or defeat is unclear. In the distance, rising up over a hill, is a car with headlights on full blast, suggesting the unwelcome intrusion of humans on this odd landscape.

"Peaceable Kingdom" by Edward Hicks, employs an icon of early American art. Meant to allude to a time when the strong and the meek (represented by a leopard and a lamb, respectively) would live in harmony, the Peaceable Kingdom in this context is meant to portray hope for America as a new nation. In the piece, a child leads a group of animals through a bucolic landscape, presumably to a new world of peace, love, and togetherness. Whether the young nation of America has achieved this ideal has yet to be seen.

In art, animals are symbols upon which we can impose our own ideas, allowing us humans to pontificate about things we don't quite understand, while looking like we know what we're talking about. But sometimes, maybe, animals can just be animals. The painting "Bruiser" by Nicholas Winfield Scott Leighton comes to mind, in which a dog is portrayed in the frontal format used in traditional human portraits. Bruiser looks out at us, bemused perhaps, wondering what people will think when confronted with his cute mug. Only he knows the truth.

André Kertész: On Reading is on view until November 16; American Menagerie is on view until November 9. For more information, visit www.portlandmuseum.org.

* All images courtesy of Portland Museum of Art