Portraits of the artist

I must admit I couldn't wait to see the pair of Sam Taylor-Wood portraits in the "British Subjects" exhibit at Purchase College's Neuberger Museum of Art, including "Escape Artist (Pink and Green)," seen here.

That wasn't so much because of the works themselves — delightful sleights of hand though they be — but because of what another Taylor-Wood portrait series means to me.

Several years ago, I saw some of the images in her "Crying Men" series (2002-04) in an issue of British GQ and began a quest to find a copy of the actual portfolio. Long story short: After viewing the resplendent "Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese" show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston this past spring, I found the portfolio in the museum's book shop for $75. (Published by Steidl in a limited edition of 2,500 copies, the book sells for as much as $400 on some Web sites.) It was one of the happiest days of my life.

What is it about a work of art — or series of works — that sets you on a treasure hunt while another fails to grab you? I might as well ask why you fall in love with one person and not another. In the case of "Crying Men," it is the multiplicity of meanings the series offers, each more complex than the last.

"Crying Men" consists of 28 photographs — 22 in color, six in black and white — that depict a group of male movie stars weeping. They range from "Star Wars'" Hayden Christensen to the late Paul Newman. Most, including Oscar winner Sean Penn and James Bond du jour Daniel Craig, are very famous. Some, like Craig and Tim Roth, are actors I've long admired. Others, like Woody Harrelson, I've rarely thought about.

Because Taylor-Wood chose well-known men — as opposed to everyday men in states of distress — her series underscores the tension between reality and the theatricality of art. These are, after all, players who've been instructed to cry on cue, players like Jude Law, Broadway's current fine Hamlet — who sits in a corner, knees drawn up, his crossed arms pressed against his pained features.

He's still shedding real tears, though. He's still experiencing a genuine physical sensation that mirrors the authenticity of our reaction as viewers. We are moved by these pictures, marveling, for instance, at the classical beauty of Laurence Fishburne — tears trickling down his face — framed by a bathroom window as if it were the halo of a religious icon.

If the art-historical allusions tickle us, the gender reversal tantalizes. These are male subjects viewed through the female lens, the moon to their Endymions. Do women see men — or for that matter, any subject — differently than men do? It's hard to say. Women certainly have a reputation for viewing men as all of a piece, which is more than can be said for the countless men who have objectified women. (Here I must confess to getting a certain thrill from seeing these men subjected to a woman's will.)

Taylor-Wood, however, is better than that. The last photo in the portfolio — a 2002 study of Robert Downey Jr. — is the most telling here. It's the only horizontal and the only nude. Downey lies lightly draped in a sparse bedroom — his bedroom, we're told — an arm tenting his face but not so much that we can't catch its contemplative cast. The torque of the body and the languor of the raised arm suggest Anne-Louis Girodet's "Sleeping Endymion" (1791). In the insightful companion essay to "Crying Men," the great feminist art historian Linda Nochlin actually compares the Girodet to another Taylor-Wood image, of David Beckham, which is not part of the series. But the Downey photo is, I think, more analogous to the Girodet painting.

If the poses are similar, the attitudes are not. Taylor-Wood's treatment of Downey is less sensual and more compassionate. Perhaps that's because we know the actor's tabloid story. Perhaps it's because we know what it's like to lie in bed and realize that the addiction, the cancer, the loss — whatever demon eats us awake — is still there.

Perhaps it's because we know, too, Taylor-Wood's story. Before "Crying Men," there was the "Pietà" video, also with Downey, who seems to have been something of a muse for her. And before that, there were her two bouts with breast cancer.

In a sense, every work is a window onto an artist's soul whether it is a self-portrait or not. In "Still Lives" (Steidl), another book of Taylor-Wood photographs, she observes of "Crying Men": "It was also about stepping into a room and asking someone to display feelings that I felt I couldn't necessarily display myself in the work."

"Crying Men," then, is a portrait of the artist in grief.