William Wegman: A Comic Conceptualist

As I recall, no one responded, although several of us could not stop smiling as we passed around Mr. Wegman’s latest book, “Being Human,” with its cover portrait of one of his dogs dressed in orange leisure wear.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art tries to wear a sober face with its new show “Before/On/After: William Wegman and California Conceptualism.” Last year Mr. Wegman and his wife,

Christine Burgin,

gave the museum 174 of his short videos, many made in the early ’70s when he was living in Los Angeles and developing his comic style for the camera.

To commemorate this act of generosity and to throw a historical frame around the era, curator

Douglas Eklund

has surrounded a selection of more than 75 videos with a sample of nonvideo works from the ’70s by some of Mr. Wegman’s Los Angeles-area contemporaries, including

John Baldessari,

Robert Cumming,

Douglas Huebler,

Matt Mullican,

Bruce Nauman,

Allen Ruppersberg,

Edward Ruscha,

David Salle

and

Ilene Segalove.

Many of these West Coast Conceptual artists lampooned anything they thought took itself too seriously, not only the conventions of fine-art painting and sculpture, documentary photography, advertising and Hollywood, but also, as Mr. Eklund notes, the pieties of East Coast Conceptual artists.

For instance, Mr. Baldessari’s “Ingres,” a booklet in a display case here, is a shaggy-dog story about a “little-known” Ingres painting that, after being passed from hand to hand, had deteriorated so badly that when finally auctioned off consisted only of the nail in a photograph above the text—“believed to be the only Ingres nail ever offered for public sale.” The “moral” of the story, according to Mr. Baldessari’s not so subtle dig at Sol LeWitt: “If you have the idea in your head, the work is as good as done.”

All of these contextual pieces are window dressing for the centerpiece of the show: a darkened room where roughly 100 minutes of Mr. Wegman’s pioneering videos, made between 1970 and 1977, play on a loop. The crude black-and-white resolution gives the images the fuzzy look of tapes from a police interrogation.

The sets are just as primitive. Equipment in the studio consists of a monitor, a microphone, a pair of lights, and a few sticks of furniture. The only actors are Mr. Wegman, who narrates, and his Weimaraners.

He and Man Ray—the first of his 14 canine collaborators—are a comic duo in which it isn’t clear who is the straight man. Weimaraners aren’t cute; they’re solemn, with doleful eyes and a mien as deadpan as

Buster Keaton’s

. Much of the humor in the scenarios Mr. Wegman draws up for them is that his doggy actors seem far more focused and sincere than he is about the quality of the performance.

They’re complete pros. Just as a Parisian model doesn’t throw a fit if the couturier takes two hours to fit her for a gown, so a draped Man Ray in “Cape On” (1970-71) doesn’t flinch for more than 4 minutes as Mr. Wegman entices him to rotate his head almost 180 degrees.

Anyone who has tried to train a dog learns that it’s a reciprocal process, that the dog is training you, too. During the 6 minutes 27 seconds of “Ball and Can” (1975-76), a record of the many attempts to have Man Ray catch a golf ball and drop it into a can at his feet, Mr. Wegman does all of the fetching.

The master’s patience with his pupil—in “Spelling Lesson” he mildly chastises Man Ray for having confused the words “beach” and “beech”—and the steady monotone of his voice, not unlike that of radio comedians Bob and Ray, adds another layer to the absurdity.

These videos are more of a sketchpad than a set of fully realized ideas. Most run under a minute. About half are duds. The range of targets are unusual but not risky. TV news and performance art are mocked but not war, religion or politics.

Mr. Wegman’s mass appeal is often held against him and shouldn’t be. A product of the art world, he and his dogs have transcended it and belong now to the American tradition of populist tomfoolery—to truck-stop favorites, like Big Mouth Billy Bass,

David Letterman’s

“Stupid Pet Tricks” and the internet of animal videos.

This feel-good record of an artist’s early years lets us see a natural comedian happy at work, figuring out with untried and balky tools how to be funny. Witty artists are rare and should be as celebrated as weighty ones. In times like these, the levity this show provides every few minutes is needed more than ever.

—Mr. Woodward is an arts critic in New York.