Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => But is it Art? => Topic started by: Tim Gray on April 01, 2006, 11:00:47 am
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I think the discussion of the question "is it art or not art" misses the mark. Even if there were concensus as to what constitutes art, the question "so what" still remains. If we were to discern that something is art, what would we know that we didn't know before?
I've been enjoying the daily critiques at the Radiant Vista http://www.radiantvista.com/dailyCritique/index.php (http://www.radiantvista.com/dailyCritique/index.php) for the past several months.
What I like about Tanner's approach is that it implies a relatively objective standard of "goodness". Basically - the longer the viewer is held by the image, the better the image. His critiques focus to a great extent on what causes the viewer to be drawn out of the image, and what could be done to keep the viewer's attention within the image longer. I suppose this approach would work for any visual media - installations, painting, sculpture, architecture etc.
I suggest that the right question isn't "is it art", but rather "is it effective in holding one's attention."
Any thoughts?
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I couldn't agree more.... What may not be art one day to an individual may be art later in ones live. The ability to draw one into the image and have them thinking, contemplating, wondering about the event, scenery, place, time more adequately describes the purpose of why I engage in this hobby.
I took a shot of a girl in Barcelona on a subway a few years ago... photojournalistic style you could say (from the hip). Is it art? I don't think so... but it certainly draws my attention into the image and think... "Where is she at? Where is she going? .. to school... from school. What about the guy standing on the platform outside the subway?
[attachment=386:attachment]
Or the next image with the cross mounted on the bottom of the tree. What happened? Someones pet? Or a memorial to a loved one?
[attachment=387:attachment]
I'll look at these types of images any day vs. the long strokes of a paint brush gone wild that someone calls art. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
Kelly
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Consider, if you will, other motivations why someone looks long and/or often and/or hard at an image: 1) a deceased/missing/separated loved one, 2) an image of sexual fetishism, 3) it is displayed where one is frequently gazing (i.e. on the wall behind the toilet (for males) or on the wall just next to the toilet (for females) (BTW, this is the place where I prefer to have my works hung for that very reason).
There are undoubtedly others, but one cannot seriously claim these as a necessary indicator of quality of any kind. Trust me, the quest for a qualitative measure (the engineer's approach) is a futile one. But don't give up on it for just that reason.
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Consider, if you will, other motivations why someone looks long and/or often and/or hard at an image: 1) a deceased/missing/separated loved one, 2) an image of sexual fetishism, 3) it is displayed where one is frequently gazing (i.e. on the wall behind the toilet (for males) or on the wall just next to the toilet (for females) (BTW, this is the place where I prefer to have my works hung for that very reason).
There are undoubtedly others, but one cannot seriously claim these as a necessary indicator of quality of any kind. Trust me, the quest for a qualitative measure (the engineer's approach) is a futile one. But don't give up on it for just that reason.
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It still works. A "good" image of a deceased/missing/separated loved one will engage the viewer longer than a "poor" image. So I seriously do claim....
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Tim: What a trooper you are! What wonderful assumptions you make! We'd better send off the specifications for an experiment to the gang in forensics.
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The problem with discussing art is often:
A. The people discussing it don't know anything about it, except for what they have made up from their own imagination.
B. The people caliming to know what Art is often make the follwing assumptions:
1. Art is something beautiful or skillfully craftet
2. Art is something to be instantly enjoyed and understood
3. Art isn't something that could be made by my three-year old.
The fact that something is labeled Art is what makes all the difference, hence the need to understand what Art is and isn't. Art is an abstraction, hence it is meaningless to discuss it as if one could make a simple definition of it. Art isn't science, it is culture, hence constantly developing and changing from the inside and outside.
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I think the difficulty with the "Is it art" question hinges on the fact that without knowing the photographer's intent, you cannot really make that decision. What is a simple vacation snapshot from one photographer may be a social commentary on the consumeristic approach of the average American family from another photographer. Both photos may look the same, but one is "art" and another is just fodder for the family album.
I prefer to think of photos more in terms of the "goodness" factor. Holding one's attention is a key component to me, but a lot of time that is subject matter more so than photographic prowess. I think my person litmus test for a good photograph is whether it 1) Engages me and 2) Communicates something to me (hopefully it communicates what the photographer intended).
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The problem with discussing art is often:
A. The people discussing it don't know anything about it, except for what they have made up from their own imagination.
B. The people caliming to know what Art is often make the follwing assumptions:
1. Art is something beautiful or skillfully craftet
2. Art is something to be instantly enjoyed and understood
3. Art isn't something that could be made by my three-year old.
The fact that something is labeled Art is what makes all the difference, hence the need to understand what Art is and isn't. Art is an abstraction, hence it is meaningless to discuss it as if one could make a simple definition of it. Art isn't science, it is culture, hence constantly developing and changing from the inside and outside.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=71256\")
too right...
Its one of life great mysteries why people in general, not just photographers, feel that they can have a valid view of art when they have never studied it. The same people wouldn't for a moment have the bravado to pontificate on the meaning of nuclear physics without first trying to study it or read about it. Yet, the literature relating to art theory and art history is today as deep and rich as that of any field of intellectual enquiry.
We have to keep in mind that the two most popular artists in the UK today are Rolf Harris
[a href=\"http://www.rolfharris.com/art/paintings1.htm]http://www.rolfharris.com/art/paintings1.htm[/url]
and Joe Vettriano.
https://secure.westend-gallery.co.uk/weg-ca...o?categoryId=27 (https://secure.westend-gallery.co.uk/weg-catalogue/department/show.do?categoryId=27)
There are some wonderful books about photography and art and its a shame people don't read them. As a start everyone who is interested should read Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes.
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I suggest that the right question isn't "is it art", but rather "is it effective in holding one's attention."
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=61500\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Holding the viewer's attention is certainly a very important aspect of a good photograph. One that is not addressed often enough. There's so many ways one can lose attention when looking at images. There is also the issue of images with an unsustained powerful initial pull. Then there are images that grow on the viewer if enough attention is placed upon examining the photograph. The images of Duane Michael come to mind. The first time I saw them, I walked by them one by one. I then went through the entire exhibit again (it was a the Palais de Tokyo in Paris) and it took me a long time until I found my way into Duane's work.
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I was drawn to this discussion by Tim's original post. I keep wondering why people with a desire to create images worry so much about defining what art is. A component of this is of necessity economic, which is driven by the "art" industry arising from cultural necessities to conduct commerce. Having acqired a piece of paper which states I am a "Master" of Fine Arts, and having maintained 20+years of self employment from a financial acknowledgement of the perceived value of said degree, I find myself in no better position to define what art is than before.
Tim's comment about engaging a viewer's attention strongly engaged mine. For myself personally, I would have substituted "attention" with "focus" and I would include myself as interchangeable with the viewer. I believe art can be created without a viewer outside one's self. The engagement of focus in self must occur within, for the work to be manifested in visual form. I also believe that the greater that engagement of focus, the more likely the potential to engage others. Increasing the "depth" of focus often coresponds to an icrease in response.
It might be more usefulf to talk about the concept of engagement in terms of either active or passive when it comes to response. Art is afterall an experience we are trying to quantify. The skills I learned in art school were intended to aid that quantification, when applied actively. But they cannot guarantee it. Although such skills are certainly useful, they are not mandatory to engaging focus. (We often judgementally label unskilled active engagement as "primitive"in relation to art.)
Separating a simple, yet conclusive definition for "art" from all the numerous categorical venues that apply the term is not possible when such venues have vested interests in maintaing their own limiting definitions. Beauty, will (and I think should) remain in the eye of the beholder.
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I was drawn to this discussion by Tim's original post. I keep wondering why people with a desire to create images worry so much about defining what art is. A component of this is of necessity economic, which is driven by the "art" industry arising from cultural necessities to conduct commerce. Having acqired a piece of paper which states I am a "Master" of Fine Arts, and having maintained 20+years of self employment from a financial acknowledgement of the perceived value of said degree, I find myself in no better position to define what art is than before.
Tim's comment about engaging a viewer's attention strongly engaged mine. For myself personally, I would have substituted "attention" with "focus" and I would include myself as interchangeable with the viewer. I believe art can be created without a viewer outside one's self. The engagement of focus in self must occur within, for the work to be manifested in visual form. I also believe that the greater that engagement of focus, the more likely the potential to engage others. Increasing the "depth" of focus often coresponds to an icrease in response.
It might be more usefulf to talk about the concept of engagement in terms of either active or passive when it comes to response. Art is afterall an experience we are trying to quantify. The skills I learned in art school were intended to aid that quantification, when applied actively. But they cannot guarantee it. Although such skills are certainly useful, they are not mandatory to engaging focus. (We often judgementally label unskilled active engagement as "primitive"in relation to art.)
Separating a simple, yet conclusive definition for "art" from all the numerous categorical venues that apply the term is not possible when such venues have vested interests in maintaing their own limiting definitions. Beauty, will (and I think should) remain in the eye of the beholder.
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Emma
The trouble with engagement as an arbiter of whether something is art is a somewhat dangerous one to support: think about the Tate's wonderous bricks of some years ago; think of Miss Emin's unmade bed and even of those poor, sad creatures in formaldehyde. Eye-catching, passage-stopping (in the non-personal sense) but art?
Ciao - Rob C
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Emma
The trouble with engagement as an arbiter of whether something is art is a somewhat dangerous one to support: think about the Tate's wonderous bricks of some years ago; think of Miss Emin's unmade bed and even of those poor, sad creatures in formaldehyde. Eye-catching, passage-stopping (in the non-personal sense) but art?
Ciao - Rob C
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Well, to a large extent my point is I don't care whether it's art or not. I personally don't find art/not art a productive debate. In the field of photography (and perhaps some other areas eg painting, sculpture and architecture etc) what I care about is engagement. __Maybe__ engagement isn't the best context in performance or installation art, but I don't care about those genres - my context is photography. And based on that, when a photograph is presented for criticism or analysis I don't ask "is it art?", but rather measure how long am I pursuaded by the image to stay with it (and not necessarily just in the first instance of viewing, but over time - as per Alain Briot's point) - and how that degree of engagement is accomplished.
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Personally, again, I have to agree with Tim. Whether something is or is not art is unimportant to me. The debate over how to define art has gone on for centuries, and the definition has been redefined by each generation of artists. I have never had a client ask me to make some art. Nor have I ever set out personally to do so. Something engages me as inspiration. The stronger that engagement, the more I feel the need to persue it as an inspiration. I seek out what I feel connected to by this engagement.
Just after art school, I had the opportunity to study with both a master Chinese calligrapher, and a Japanese sculptor. I learned a great deal about the aesthetics of these two cultures first had. Calligraphy and pottery are both considered higher forms of art in these cultures. Even though the technical concerns of these aesthetic, like composition, were very different from my western training, the idea of engagement both for artist and viewer is central in both. And both differentiate between active and passive engagement.
Commerially, we are barraged each day with attempts to engage us. Television, radio, newspapers, the internet etc. We accept at least some of this engagement on a passive level as distraction from more active engagement. Because these are passive, we tend not to even ask whether or not they are art. When one does engage us more actively, we might even be surprised. It is only fairly recently in western art history that the category Design has been inducted to the art aena. Design is like the poor unsophisticated relation to fine art at the moment. But photography was considered a lesser art to painting for a long time as well. In many peoples minds it still is. Technolgy has always filtered very slowly into acceptance as legitimate media.
A few years ago, painter David Hockney wrote a very subversive analysis of the work of Leonardo Da Vinci and several other great painters and proposed the idea that they employed a camera obscura to project their intial drawings onto their canvases. Art historians were outraged. Yet reading the letters and notebooks of Leonardo, I firmly believe he would have taken full creative advantage of any technology if it opened new avenues of engagement. And I doubt if he'd have questioned whether or not it was art.
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too right...
Its one of life great mysteries why people in general, not just photographers, feel that they can have a valid view of art when they have never studied it. The same people wouldn't for a moment have the bravado to pontificate on the meaning of nuclear physics without first trying to study it or read about it. Yet, the literature relating to art theory and art history is today as deep and rich as that of any field of intellectual enquiry.
We have to keep in mind that the two most popular artists in the UK today are Rolf Harris
http://www.rolfharris.com/art/paintings1.htm (http://www.rolfharris.com/art/paintings1.htm)
and Joe Vettriano.
https://secure.westend-gallery.co.uk/weg-ca...o?categoryId=27 (https://secure.westend-gallery.co.uk/weg-catalogue/department/show.do?categoryId=27)
There are some wonderful books about photography and art and its a shame people don't read them. As a start everyone who is interested should read Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=77485\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
So, if I read a great many books about art theory and art history, I will be allowed to have a view of art? And maybe even a valid one, no less? To think that I had the bravado to pontificate on the meaning of art before! Now, if you could point me to the books I will have to read to elevate my invalid view to a valid one, I would appreciate it.
Sorry, couldn't resist!
Karsten
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Personally, again, I have to agree with Tim. Whether something is or is not art is unimportant to me. The debate over how to define art has gone on for centuries, and the definition has been redefined by each generation of artists. I have never had a client ask me to make some art. Nor have I ever set out personally to do so. Something engages me as inspiration. The stronger that engagement, the more I feel the need to persue it as an inspiration. I seek out what I feel connected to by this engagement.
Just after art school, I had the opportunity to study with both a master Chinese calligrapher, and a Japanese sculptor. I learned a great deal about the aesthetics of these two cultures first had. Calligraphy and pottery are both considered higher forms of art in these cultures. Even though the technical concerns of these aesthetic, like composition, were very different from my western training, the idea of engagement both for artist and viewer is central in both. And both differentiate between active and passive engagement.
Commerially, we are barraged each day with attempts to engage us. Television, radio, newspapers, the internet etc. We accept at least some of this engagement on a passive level as distraction from more active engagement. Because these are passive, we tend not to even ask whether or not they are art. When one does engage us more actively, we might even be surprised. It is only fairly recently in western art history that the category Design has been inducted to the art aena. Design is like the poor unsophisticated relation to fine art at the moment. But photography was considered a lesser art to painting for a long time as well. In many peoples minds it still is. Technolgy has always filtered very slowly into acceptance as legitimate media.
A few years ago, painter David Hockney wrote a very subversive analysis of the work of Leonardo Da Vinci and several other great painters and proposed the idea that they employed a camera obscura to project their intial drawings onto their canvases. Art historians were outraged. Yet reading the letters and notebooks of Leonardo, I firmly believe he would have taken full creative advantage of any technology if it opened new avenues of engagement. And I doubt if he'd have questioned whether or not it was art.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=78240\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Emma
I think that we are slightly off at tangents, the two of us. You were writing about engagement, if I remember correctly, as being almost a definition or at least an essential ingredient to something being or not being considerable as art.
Now, I bother to post here because I am 'engaged' by your writing. That means that I like the way you do it, that I find you literate, eloquent and a pleasure to read because, as a bonus, you also appear to know your field. So far so good, but that engagement does not mean that I consider your writing art. For that to happen, you would have to apply it in the form of a book or some such work which would give it a recognizable format which would enable it to be seen in a context which would legitimise it as art.
Rob C
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Rob C
I was not purposely trying to propose a definition for art. I was acknowledging rather that Tim's statements on engagement seemed to be the same criteria I apply in valuing my own responses toward creative expression in general and the response that expression can produce in an individual.
Recognizing the commonality of components in an experience is part of what makes an experience engaging on a personal level for me. Sitting in a museum in the afternoon, I can be engaged by watching the people walking past paintings or photographs, either without looking at them, or frozen before a single work as if soaking it into their pores. And I have done the same thing myself. What engages me? I want to understand that in the hope of filtering it into my own work.
I found Tim's statement about the purposeless nature of debating art ringing true to me. If we had a conclusive definition and that definition conclusively excluded us on a personal level, would we cease to take photos or paint?
You raised a good point about legitmacy. I think it is the pursuit of legitimacy which is the source of the debate. Precedence in history is an arbiter of legitimacy. (Ironically, the forum of debate was considered an art form by Greco-Roman culture). The trouble with standards of legitamacy is that they hinder, at least for a time, the evolution of new approaches and ideas and narrow the realm of possibility. The application of a "definitive" standard has not proven a valid approach in any field of human endeavor thus far. Why should there be such a standard in "art"?
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I think that art has a lot in common with other areas of human behavior; there is a broad spectrum of activity with a solid center bracketed by ludicrous extremes. On one hand you have formulaic kitsch that resonates with the visually illiterate masses, but nauseates viewers with any degree of artistic judgment or taste. (free1000 gives wonderful examples). On the other you have the smug, self-indulgent, deliberately opaque or intentionally offensive stuff that passes for art, most often found in the vicinity of Universities.
Tom Wolfe wrote a heart-felt elegy for sculptor Frederick Hart in which he convincingly argued for the role of actual skill and craft in the creation of art. Wolfe was disparaged and ridiculed for this by the art school crowd, which ironically proved his point.
To my mind Ansel Adams personifies the solid center, with beautifully crafted and thoroughly accessible work that is certainly art. From there you can go to either extreme- from babies in bumblebee costumes at one end to incomprehensible blurred photos of trash at the other.
Just my rant.
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I think that art has a lot in common with other areas of human behavior; there is a broad spectrum of activity with a solid center bracketed by ludicrous extremes. On one hand you have formulaic kitsch that resonates with the visually illiterate masses, but nauseates viewers with any degree of artistic judgment or taste. (free1000 gives wonderful examples). On the other you have the smug, self-indulgent, deliberately opaque or intentionally offensive stuff that passes for art, most often found in the vicinity of Universities.
Tom Wolfe wrote a heart-felt elegy for sculptor Frederick Hart in which he convincingly argued for the role of actual skill and craft in the creation of art. Wolfe was disparaged and ridiculed for this by the art school crowd, which ironically proved his point.
To my mind Ansel Adams personifies the solid center, with beautifully crafted and thoroughly accessible work that is certainly art. From there you can go to either extreme- from babies in bumblebee costumes at one end to incomprehensible blurred photos of trash at the other.
Just my rant.
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Geoff
Yes, you are probably right - no, you are right. The perpetuation of this nonsense is seen in almost any 'artist's statement' that is appended to collections of pictures in either internet sites or magazines catering to, mainly, black and white photography enthusiasts.
For pity's sake - the picture either makes you want to go and shell out your few hundred bucks or you just move along to the next window and look there. Or does it? Perhaps such blandishments are really required in the effort to shift merchandise.
Your mention of babies in bumblebee costumes brought to mind my neighbours whose daughter was given a photo-shoot as a present; the catch was that after the shoot she was responsible for picking and paying for the prints. Well, the job represented (to me) the very worst of photography in the public domain: the session consisted of numerous exposures of her three kids in all manner of 'action' poses; these were later blended with skate-boards and such crap and presented as composites. Apart from the fact that the young mother was actually impressed, the full horror of the pitch was to be seen in the prints, so high-key that there was no skin tone at all. The cost of the numerous prints she was ordering was verging on two thousand pounds until the mother's dad stepped in and suggested she take a grip on reality; fond grandparent or not, the older eye can spot a con when that amount of dosh is concerned!
So, yes, not quite the art world I guess, but not a million miles away in ethics.
Cheers - Rob C
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Tim certainly provoked engagement in dialogue in starting this thread! Interestingly enough the phrase "so what" seems to have gotten bypassed by our individual passions. So would I be wrong to infer that passion is a component of art?
I must admit I too have difficulty with babies as bumble bees or dogs as Little Red Riding Hood. My photographic experience is less than many of the people who contribute here. Though I was passionate about B&W photography thoughout art school and several years beyond, I only recently began shooting photographs again , after 20 years. Having made the transition from hard media painting to digital work out of commercial necessites, the return to photography in digital format meshed well with my current circumstances. I have always admired landscape photographers because I personally found it difficult to capture those elusive moments I admired with any degree of satisfaction. I whole heartedly agree with Geoff about Anselm Adams as being an example of a "centered" artist. I purchased an original print of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico in 1972. I love the photo as much today as I did when I first saw it. That single print took me on an almost magical journey through the poetry of tonal variations possible in black and white photography.
I purchased only one other original photograph two decades later. This one would be more controversial: Man with Dog, by Joel Peter Witkin. I might be sticking my neck out here, but I feel he is also an extremely centered photographer, but considerably more difficult to approach subject wise.
In both cases, what I perceived as the skill of the photographer was an important component of my response. I personally am more engaged by work that appears to be skillfully executed. I might infer from this that for me art needs to be skillfully executed. But the degree to which that skillfullness is apparanent is a variable I cannot always quantify. Being a painter, I am more sentive to sublte nuances in this media. I know how hard it is (or not) to achieve certain qualities of brush stroke, certain nuances of shading etc. These perceptions evolve over time and may change dramatically. Alain Briot metioned this as a component of art for him.
I find myself smiling in agreement with several of Geoff's other statements. Once upon a time, I was one of those smug students brandishing her portfolio as a body of work. In defense I would add that art school is for learning and part of learning is testing the boundaries of what we learn. Hopefully we learn from our mistakes.
Art has always co-existed with a commercial component, for better or worse. The number of venues for visual expression has expanded phenomenally, as have the venues that exist in symbiosis to art. Ocassionally symbiotic becomes parasitic. The issue of ethics reaches deeply into all human interaction, of which art is only one variation. Sheldon raised the idea of knowing intention as an entrance to understanding. I don't completely believe this to be necessary in relation to discussing"What is Art", though it migh prove helpful in marginal instances. In discussions of ethics however it would seem to be essential.
Tim's original point was, I think, to question how our attention is engaged, and if we understand how, to then effectively increase the depth of engagement so we might make our own work more meaningful for ourselves and others.
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Tim's original point was, I think, to question how our attention is engaged, and if we understand how, to then effectively increase the depth of engagement so we might make our own work more meaningful for ourselves and others.
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Yes, precisely, thank you!
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Tim certainly provoked engagement in dialogue in starting this thread! Interestingly enough the phrase "so what" seems to have gotten bypassed by our individual passions. So would I be wrong to infer that passion is a component of art?
I must admit I too have difficulty with babies as bumble bees or dogs as Little Red Riding Hood. My photographic experience is less than many of the people who contribute here. Though I was passionate about B&W photography thoughout art school and several years beyond, I only recently began shooting photographs again , after 20 years. Having made the transition from hard media painting to digital work out of commercial necessites, the return to photography in digital format meshed well with my current circumstances. I have always admired landscape photographers because I personally found it difficult to capture those elusive moments I admired with any degree of satisfaction. I whole heartedly agree with Geoff about Anselm Adams as being an example of a "centered" artist. I purchased an original print of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico in 1972. I love the photo as much today as I did when I first saw it. That single print took me on an almost magical journey through the poetry of tonal variations possible in black and white photography.
I purchased only one other original photograph two decades later. This one would be more controversial: Man with Dog, by Joel Peter Witkin. I might be sticking my neck out here, but I feel he is also an extremely centered photographer, but considerably more difficult to approach subject wise.
In both cases, what I perceived as the skill of the photographer was an important component of my response. I personally am more engaged by work that appears to be skillfully executed. I might infer from this that for me art needs to be skillfully executed. But the degree to which that skillfullness is apparanent is a variable I cannot always quantify. Being a painter, I am more sentive to sublte nuances in this media. I know how hard it is (or not) to achieve certain qualities of brush stroke, certain nuances of shading etc. These perceptions evolve over time and may change dramatically. Alain Briot metioned this as a component of art for him.
I find myself smiling in agreement with several of Geoff's other statements. Once upon a time, I was one of those smug students brandishing her portfolio as a body of work. In defense I would add that art school is for learning and part of learning is testing the boundaries of what we learn. Hopefully we learn from our mistakes.
Art has always co-existed with a commercial component, for better or worse. The number of venues for visual expression has expanded phenomenally, as have the venues that exist in symbiosis to art. Ocassionally symbiotic becomes parasitic. The issue of ethics reaches deeply into all human interaction, of which art is only one variation. Sheldon raised the idea of knowing intention as an entrance to understanding. I don't completely believe this to be necessary in relation to discussing"What is Art", though it migh prove helpful in marginal instances. In discussions of ethics however it would seem to be essential.
Tim's original point was, I think, to question how our attention is engaged, and if we understand how, to then effectively increase the depth of engagement so we might make our own work more meaningful for ourselves and others.
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Emma
'I might infer from this that for me art needs to be skillfully executed.'
With that there can surely be no contradiction. It is the basis of everything, the reason why the doodlings of an artist are just as much art as are his finished, painted productions. It is in the understanding and ability of the artist that the art is to be found. I doubt that Leonardo could have produced duff work in any medium; the ability to produce the goods on demand is a further measure of the artist, at least within a professional context. The 'art' of throwing paint at a blank canvas where that is to be the finished product does not, for me, constitute art, however pleasing a result such random acts might sometimes produce. The hand and mind of the artsist must both be engaged directly, not in a random act of gravity v. motion.
Ciao - Rob C
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In an effort to explore Tim’s statements about engagement more fully, I have spent a fair amount of time over the past few days trying to understand how I personally am engaged specifically by what I view. The effort proved surprisingly difficult in terms of precisely verbalizing how and why something engaged me. I decide to try an experiment and downloaded 50+ images from various photographic forums. I simply collected them in sequence, without any conscious editing. Then I watched them as a slide show on my computer, taking note of my reactions.
The most direct method of initial engagement seemed to be one of connection through an association that I could easily access. This connective association could be either emotional or intellectual, based initially very strongly on personal taste (I like /I dislike). This first impression seemed to govern whether or not there would be an engagement of attention of any duration. It took more conscious effort to stay with an image I did not respond to positively on first view. I had to ask myself rather deliberately “Why?” didn’t I like it.
The next internal phase I became conscious of was a state of critical analysis. I wanted to know more about some images. It seems to be during this stage that questions of skill, intention and purpose were explored. If I resolved any of these questions quickly as a negative response, I was ready to abandon the image. Again, I had to consciously stay with the image to explore it further. The strongest reason for abandoning an image at this point was if I felt manipulated or coerced by it in a formulaic way. Phrases like “Too Cute” or “Too Disgusting” came to mind. Even with a great deal of conscious effort, 90% of the time, I simply abandoned such images. The 10% remaining had some other attribute, such as technical accomplishment that held me a little longer.
I should probably clarify that my observation of “skill” encompassed more than technical prowess. Several technically perfect works left me cold. There seemed to be no intention directing the technique for any specific purpose, other than a display of facility. They reminded me of the exercises I had to do in school in classes like color theory or anatomy.
What surprised me was that 35 images held my attention passed the initial view in some way. I repeated the whole process of viewing and questioning, until I was down to only 6 images. The images were mixed in terms of subject, yet all were powerful at engaging my attention. They all contained a high degree of skill, but other elements too in equal proportion. Adjectives like drama, tension, movement, pathos, reverence: are the best I can do at verbalizing these elements. These few seemed like complete works, while the others were like short statements. My assumption was that a skilful photographer was totally engaged by the subject and actually managed to capture that engagement in the work.
I don’t claim such an exercise proves anything definitive. I found it quite enlightening however to question my own conclusions, and have decided it would be beneficial to occasionally re-evaluate what I’m doing and where my own work is going. Just because I’m walking with my eyes open doesn’t mean I see where I’m going.
Thanks Tim
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In an effort to explore Tim’s statements about engagement more fully, I have spent a fair amount of time over the past few days trying to understand how I personally am engaged specifically by what I view. The effort proved surprisingly difficult in terms of precisely verbalizing how and why something engaged me. I decide to try an experiment and downloaded 50+ images from various photographic forums. I simply collected them in sequence, without any conscious editing. Then I watched them as a slide show on my computer, taking note of my reactions.
The most direct method of initial engagement seemed to be one of connection through an association that I could easily access. This connective association could be either emotional or intellectual, based initially very strongly on personal taste (I like /I dislike). This first impression seemed to govern whether or not there would be an engagement of attention of any duration. It took more conscious effort to stay with an image I did not respond to positively on first view. I had to ask myself rather deliberately “Why?” didn’t I like it.
The next internal phase I became conscious of was a state of critical analysis. I wanted to know more about some images. It seems to be during this stage that questions of skill, intention and purpose were explored. If I resolved any of these questions quickly as a negative response, I was ready to abandon the image. Again, I had to consciously stay with the image to explore it further. The strongest reason for abandoning an image at this point was if I felt manipulated or coerced by it in a formulaic way. Phrases like “Too Cute” or “Too Disgusting” came to mind. Even with a great deal of conscious effort, 90% of the time, I simply abandoned such images. The 10% remaining had some other attribute, such as technical accomplishment that held me a little longer.
I should probably clarify that my observation of “skill” encompassed more than technical prowess. Several technically perfect works left me cold. There seemed to be no intention directing the technique for any specific purpose, other than a display of facility. They reminded me of the exercises I had to do in school in classes like color theory or anatomy.
What surprised me was that 35 images held my attention passed the initial view in some way. I repeated the whole process of viewing and questioning, until I was down to only 6 images. The images were mixed in terms of subject, yet all were powerful at engaging my attention. They all contained a high degree of skill, but other elements too in equal proportion. Adjectives like drama, tension, movement, pathos, reverence: are the best I can do at verbalizing these elements. These few seemed like complete works, while the others were like short statements. My assumption was that a skilful photographer was totally engaged by the subject and actually managed to capture that engagement in the work.
I don’t claim such an exercise proves anything definitive. I found it quite enlightening however to question my own conclusions, and have decided it would be beneficial to occasionally re-evaluate what I’m doing and where my own work is going. Just because I’m walking with my eyes open doesn’t mean I see where I’m going.
Thanks Tim
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Emma
An interesting experiment, but as per your own conclusions, inconclusive.
And that's perhaps where we came in, or at least perhaps that's the party many of us thought we were going to attend: any definition of what art might be seems to end up being shaped ever more by definitions of what it ain't!
I was taken with your thought that looking isn't the same as seeing, something which has annoyed me about certain aspects of my own photographic life. For example, if perhaps one too literal: much of my professional life was model-related where the girl or, at a stretch, the clothes were meant to be the object of the shoot. This worked well for years and I travelled a lot of the globe looking for and using locations to suit my pictures (always at a client's expense, I'm delighted to confirm); now, however, I have moved sideways as in crab and want to use landscapes/locations as subject without the model, for my own projects. But, what has haunted me everv since starting this, is that I can't do it very well. I find that I continue seeking out shapes that simply scream for the inclusion of a figure. How do you deal with that? Is it, as you say about yourself, looking sometimes without seeing, or is it something more sinister, more terminal, in that I might just not have what it takes to work that kind of genre? The closest I get to what I want is some interesting close-ups of textured walls, doorways etc. which has to be derivitive to say the least.
Quo vadis, Rob?
Take care - Rob C
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Rob C
I wasn’t certain if you were making rhetorical statements, or asking specific questions for feedback. Speaking from personal experience, I certainly can sympathize with the difficulty in shifting the focus of subject matter from an area you’ve explored to one you have not. The skills I’ve previously acquired can actually make that process more difficult initially because I expect too much from them. Painting has a different basis than photography in that you can often compose the painting as you choose. In commercial work, I’m usually restricted by a brief of some sort, but there is almost always at least a little freedom. It’s not possible to move mountains, trees etc. around before you take a photograph. It may be why compositing multiple images is so popular a method of engaging attention, both for photographers and clients. But the photographer is always free to emphasize one element over another to define his particular vision.
Whenever I get frustrated with my own work, I try to go back to working on exercises that break the problem I’m having into individual components to work through. Maybe just looking at composition or colour. Then devising strategies to bring what I already can do into service to explore what I can’t do. I’ve spent the last five years sketching, photographing and analysing the quality of light so I could paint it better. I’m only just starting to feel like I understand it a little.
We could start a whole new thread about the terms literal and derivative. There seems to be a very thin line where either term can be applied positively or negatively. Ovid was an extremely popular poet in ancient Rome. Unless you study Greco-Roman classics your not likely to encounter any of his work. His poem, Pyramus and Thisbe is essentially a blueprint for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare even acknowledges the influence Ovid had on him in numerous of his plays. The derivation in this case becomes genuine inspiration. There is a quote by Picasso often circulated in art school: mediocre artists copy, great artists steal. To take from a source and make it your own is often the starting point for spectacular and unique work.
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Rob C
I wasn’t certain if you were making rhetorical statements, or asking specific questions for feedback. Speaking from personal experience, I certainly can sympathize with the difficulty in shifting the focus of subject matter from an area you’ve explored to one you have not. The skills I’ve previously acquired can actually make that process more difficult initially because I expect too much from them. Painting has a different basis than photography in that you can often compose the painting as you choose. In commercial work, I’m usually restricted by a brief of some sort, but there is almost always at least a little freedom. It’s not possible to move mountains, trees etc. around before you take a photograph. It may be why compositing multiple images is so popular a method of engaging attention, both for photographers and clients. But the photographer is always free to emphasize one element over another to define his particular vision.
Whenever I get frustrated with my own work, I try to go back to working on exercises that break the problem I’m having into individual components to work through. Maybe just looking at composition or colour. Then devising strategies to bring what I already can do into service to explore what I can’t do. I’ve spent the last five years sketching, photographing and analysing the quality of light so I could paint it better. I’m only just starting to feel like I understand it a little.
We could start a whole new thread about the terms literal and derivative. There seems to be a very thin line where either term can be applied positively or negatively. Ovid was an extremely popular poet in ancient Rome. Unless you study Greco-Roman classics your not likely to encounter any of his work. His poem, Pyramus and Thisbe is essentially a blueprint for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare even acknowledges the influence Ovid had on him in numerous of his plays. The derivation in this case becomes genuine inspiration. There is a quote by Picasso often circulated in art school: mediocre artists copy, great artists steal. To take from a source and make it your own is often the starting point for spectacular and unique work.
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Hey, Emma
Lovely to hear from you again and yes, the thoughts I spoke out loud were really looking for answers, not rhetorical at all!
I have a feeling that my problems are not, possibly, as recent as I might have believed. When I was in my late teens I came across a book, Lust for Life, which was a romanticised biography of Vincent Van Gogh. I had been interested in art in a general sense (at least, I did visit art galleries whenever I could) and I was really smitten with the idea of living the bohemian life, not that poor old Vince had much of one, come to think of it, but the sense of doing something that was so personal was very attractive to me.
Much of my school-life was spent moving from one country to another and when I came to the last school, I discovered that art was considered a very poor relation in the general scheme of things. In a nutshell: art went out the window as far as education was concerned and that, directly, made art school impossible to access. Anyway, I painted away at home and eventually realised that I was never going to have the talent to exist off that. So, photography entered my life, largely through the influence of an aunt's fashion magazines; she had Vogue and Harpers Bazaar lying around and I found them amazing. I'd been interested in photography much earlier, but hadn't thought of it as a job, but those magazines fired me up and I realised that maybe Van Gogh was a step too far but not so with photography.
In those days, mid to late 50s, Pop Photography used to put out annuals: Popular Photography Annual and also Popular Photography Color Annual. There I discovered Ernst Haas, Saul Leiter, Bert Stern (did you get to see his Jazz on a Summer's Day?), Sam Haskins and so many others that were to become giants in my eyes. There was not a lot like that in Britain, where I lived at the time, just tedious amateur photographic how-to weeklies and the one, worthy, Photography edited by Norman Hall. In fact, it was there that I had my very first published picture, sharing a page with Peter Sellers: he had Britt (if my memory serves) and I had another, equally stunning girl. It was one of those moments.
Anyway, from then on in it was model related photography or nothing. At least, that was what I wanted it to be, but it took a lot of work in industrial photography. learning how to print well and paying my dues before I was able to take that big leap forward and go freelance and follow the model route. So, as I wrote before, I'm now at the stage where I feel that economic reality precludes following the pulchritude and demands that I make something out of what God provides for free. And, of course, this little bit of self-analysis has answered my own question: I don't really want to make the change from girls to landcape/still-lifes of one form or another, it's being forced upon me by circumstance and that's the reason I'm not getting a whole lot out of it. Catharsis, the internet solution.
Ciao - Rob C
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Rob C
I must admit I enjoyed Lust For Life when I read it in my teens also. I also enjoyed the author's book on Michaelangelo, The Angony and The Ectasy. The title pretty much sums up life as an artist as I've experienced it thus far!
Just remember Michaelangelo lying for hours on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel for not even minimum wage, only a vague assurance of a better afterlife whenever it gets to you. His consolation if I remeber correctly was to paint the face of the pope onto one of the residents of hell.
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Most would-be artists of any kind would do better to consider art a job, rather than a life-style; considering it a life-style just adds a lot of chromatic noise.
Whatever art is, you can see it; and not only can you see it, you can develop taste by looking at it. If you page through a huge (western) art history book that covers everything, say, from Egyptian New Kingdom nature art to minimalism, you begin to see that some painters are simply better than others, even though their subject matter may be the same. Some just paint better. That's all very clear, when we look into the past, because we are not encumbered by currrent cultural noise. And 200 years from now, when people look at the 20th and early 21st century, I think it will be easy for them to pick out the good stuff from the bullshit, in both photography and painting. (And if you want to endow your great-grandchildren's education by buying art now, buy Bay Area figurative art or other cutting-edge California art done since 1950...)
But, just for discussion:
Annie Leibovitz made a famous photo of John Belushi standing by the highway. What will that photo mean 50 years from now, when nobody knows who John Belushi was, or what he meant to his generation? (How many people now would recognize and tremble at a photo of Oscar Wilde, of which there are many?)
When color field painters explore the "flatness" of the field, or when minimalist sculptors make a huge rusty wall out of a Cor-Ten steel sheet, what will that mean fifty years from now when virtually nobody, except few specialists, are aware of our current art controversies and thinking?
My own brief answers are 1) Nobody will care about the Belushi shot, because it's too specific, and at the same time, tells you nothing. It's opaque. You have to know about Belushi before you can care about the photo. On the other hand, with a shot like "Moonrise," you can read all kinds of things into it; and if those things change over time, so what? People will still read their own feelings into it, and it will continue as art. 2) Most (not all) twentieth century abstract art is simply too pure and too intellectual. When the passing intellectual currents are gone, nobody will even understand it, or will even understand why they should attempt to understand it. The exploration of flatness, for example, seems a rather limited goal compared, say, to the exploration of the sublime, or even the exploration of sex, or the exploration of landscape, or the exploration of light...
JC
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Rob C
I must admit I enjoyed Lust For Life when I read it in my teens also. I also enjoyed the author's book on Michaelangelo, The Angony and The Ectasy. The title pretty much sums up life as an artist as I've experienced it thus far!
Just remember Michaelangelo lying for hours on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel for not even minimum wage, only a vague assurance of a better afterlife whenever it gets to you. His consolation if I remeber correctly was to paint the face of the pope onto one of the residents of hell.
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Emma
You see? That's part of the reason I told you when I first read you that I 'engaged' with you. You speak my spiritual language even if you articulate it in tune with a different syntax; that's something all too rare for me to find, here, or anywhere much else, for that matter. Thank you.
Ciao - Rob C
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Most would-be artists of any kind would do better to consider art a job, rather than a life-style; considering it a life-style just adds a lot of chromatic noise.
Whatever art is, you can see it; and not only can you see it, you can develop taste by looking at it. If you page through a huge (western) art history book that covers everything, say, from Egyptian New Kingdom nature art to minimalism, you begin to see that some painters are simply better than others, even though their subject matter may be the same. Some just paint better. That's all very clear, when we look into the past, because we are not encumbered by currrent cultural noise. And 200 years from now, when people look at the 20th and early 21st century, I think it will be easy for them to pick out the good stuff from the bullshit, in both photography and painting. (And if you want to endow your great-grandchildren's education by buying art now, buy Bay Area figurative art or other cutting-edge California art done since 1950...)
But, just for discussion:
Annie Leibovitz made a famous photo of John Belushi standing by the highway. What will that photo mean 50 years from now, when nobody knows who John Belushi was, or what he meant to his generation? (How many people now would recognize and tremble at a photo of Oscar Wilde, of which there are many?)
When color field painters explore the "flatness" of the field, or when minimalist sculptors make a huge rusty wall out of a Cor-Ten steel sheet, what will that mean fifty years from now when virtually nobody, except few specialists, are aware of our current art controversies and thinking?
My own brief answers are 1) Nobody will care about the Belushi shot, because it's too specific, and at the same time, tells you nothing. It's opaque. You have to know about Belushi before you can care about the photo. On the other hand, with a shot like "Moonrise," you can read all kinds of things into it; and if those things change over time, so what? People will still read their own feelings into it, and it will continue as art. 2) Most (not all) twentieth century abstract art is simply too pure and too intellectual. When the passing intellectual currents are gone, nobody will even understand it, or will even understand why they should attempt to understand it. The exploration of flatness, for example, seems a rather limited goal compared, say, to the exploration of the sublime, or even the exploration of sex, or the exploration of landscape, or the exploration of light...
JC
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John
I understand what you say, and, in principle, I can but agree with it; perhaps part of the reason why I do agree with you is that I don't rate Miss L as being anything special. In fact, what the example you quote might come down to, is this: a picture by a photographer who is perhaps more famous for being famous than for her photography; a subject who falls, in my estimation, into an equally empty slot.
And that is the problem or, indeed, the reason why such photography exists: it services the needs, real or imaginary, of a media-besotted public. It is, almost by definition, temporary in its appeal.
But, paintings are often very different: take the Mona Lisa, for example, a girl called Lisa del Giocondo (born Gherardini) painted by our friend Leonardo. Arguably the most famous painting in the world it owes its fame to the continuity of acceptance accorded it by the art pundits perhaps as much as the fact that it was produced by a great craftsman. So, perhaps photography as portraiture is doomed to second-class status for eternity...
Or is it? The jury has got to be out on that one - we are too early into proceedings to have arrived at any reliable verdict, but I have a feeling that the way it's going to come down is that the subjects will remain more famous than the photographers.
Will landscape photographers fare any better in the historical sense? Somehow, I doubt it. For my money, I have come to the conclusion that the best part of photography is not a lot to do with the genre, but simply the reality of being a photographer at a particular time in one's life. I was lucky in that I was at my zenith from the late 60s up to the mid-80s at a time when it meant something special - as someone once said, for a short while it was like being a rock star. It was, even if the money didn't exactly follow the musical example!
What fun.
Ciao - Rob C
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Rob C
Your welcome. And thank you for the compliment of connecting to my words.
John Camp
Your comments allowed me to consider again some thoughts I’d put on hold for a while. I have always believed that my “job”, at its most fulfilling, became my lifestyle and ceased to be a job. The challenges involved in maintaining that fulfilment, I’ve regarded as challenges to my creativity equal to the challenges that arose in my specific individual works. Even in the most restrictive commercial situation, I have been able to find some element of self-fulfilment to focus on. When I truly couldn’t, I did not do the work. At its best, I believe my work to be an accurate (though not always literal) documentation of my evolving self, but skewed nonetheless by my personal vision of what that self is and what it could potentially be.
You raise the subject of art history, which I think is inseparable from most discussions about art, though not as any true qualifier of a definition for art. All history has a skewed perspective. What survives as history usually serves the interests of the preservers of that history. Museums for instance have many interests in preserving cultural artefacts, one of which is entirely financial. When a financial consideration is foremost, it becomes hard to discard the value of an object over time, except through actual physical destruction. Museums do not periodically clean out the garbage, though they will trade works to balance their portfolios: i.e. Thomas Hovings controversial sale of a Van Gogh & a Rousseau to pay for a Velasquez.
Consider all the “art” produced by cultures lost to current history. Rob C’s comment “ it owes its fame to the continuity of acceptance accorded it by the art pundits perhaps as much as the fact that it was produced by a great craftsman.” has an acute insight in it. If the Mona Lisa had been destroyed during WWII for instance, would it still be the most famous painting in the world?
My point is that any comparison used as a parameter for definition has value only within the framework of that particular comparison. Art is in a double bind here since we expect it to be both personal and universal in respect to its defining parameters. The best we seem to come up with is consensus with levels of validation that often overlap, but are not truly universal.
I find myself again returning to Tim’s original post, which at this moment I’m reinterpreting as a speculation for investigation of one of the parameters used commonly as a validation of art: the ability to engage. Most of us who function as “artists” are continually “defining art” for ourselves through our work, whatever the media. It can be extremely useful to explore our individual definitions through a focus on how we approach individually such issues as engagement. A bit like sharing our bag of tricks with each other. The idea of outside validation has great economic weight obviously, but it sometimes is only just that: economic validation. It does little to improve my craftsmanship outright, though the “freedom” it can generate might make improving an easier task.
What I like & admire in the successful techniques of others gives me a goal to strive for and a possible path to follow. What I regard as failures can help me stay on my path by providing an insight into what I’d choose to avoid. Constructive critiques and criticisms help me sort out my blind spots more easily. And without having a definitive solution, I can still choose to agree to disagree.