Art vs Equipment

[Jamie123]

A lot of contemporary art is pure marketing. That's a simple fact. Most 'high art' today is completely irrelevant to 99% of the people. It doesn't form part of their culture, it doesn't document history or illustrate their religion or celebrate their cultural traditions or entertain them. Its empty. Marketing makes empty art valuable to those who buy art. Like it or not, television popular music, comic books, and other 'lowbrow' arts are the only real art done today because the 'high art' world has divorced itself from the national cultures of the places where it is produced.

Well, that's your view of what art should be. Who says art has to be relevant to a lot of people in order to be good?
Also, saying that art is pure marketing and at the same time saying that it doesn't form part of the people's culture is contradictory. Those 'lowbrow' arts like television and popular music are no less marketing than contemporary art, the difference is that they market to a different segment of the population. Just because more people like it doesn't mean it's any better.

 

[Paul T.]

A lot of contemporary art is pure marketing. That's a simple fact.

A lot of 14th century art was pure marketing. For the Catholic church. If not all of it.

A lot of 15th and 16th century art was pure marketing; to promote the Medicis, the Pazzis, and other bankers. If not all of it.

A lot of great British art was marketing. Where would Alfred Wallace have been were he not promoted by Ben Nicholson?

A lot of great American art - Warhol, Pollock, was marketing - where would they have ended up had they not marketed themselves and made alliances with the Guggenheims or the de Menils?

To complain that art is all about marketing today, is a bit like a sailor complaining that the sea today is rubbish because it has waves.

Are we saying that Tichy's work is no good? That he's a fake? That he's a mediocrity taken up by investors eager to make a killing? Then let's say that, and not just resort to pat slogans.

 

[Sparrow]

don't forget that Charles Saatchi is also a bad person

 

[Tompas]

Are we saying that Tichy's work is no good?

I don't know. But it's definitely not my cup of tea.

-- Thomas

 

[taxi38]

Its always a surprise when anyone professes to be an artist,which means by definition that you are a function of someone elses vision as art is not created ,it is just defined.We are all creating art everyday,......a definition of art is when someone else defines something they have witnessed as ART,....it could be a painting or being a plumbers wife. So dont think of yourself as being too grand because you think yourself an artist,the plumbers wifes turn will come and Im sure shes more interesting anyway.

 

[Drewus]

Its always a surprise when anyone professes to be an artist,which means by definition that you are a function of someone elses vision as art is not created ,it is just defined.We are all creating art everyday,......a definition of art is when someone else defines something they have witnessed as ART,....it could be a painting or being a plumbers wife. So dont think of yourself as being too grand because you think yourself an artist,the plumbers wifes turn will come and Im sure shes more interesting anyway.

^What he said

I think a lot of photographers need to get over themselves 🙄

 

[taxi38]

All we poor souls ,with a need to create something,can do is be honest,entirely ,abolutely selfish........this is youre personal vision.Once you start producing stuff that people will like deliberatly you are not an artist and what you have produced is not art.Art is only of interest when it is a direct view of consiousness,I will give an example........any of Keith Jarret s live concerts.

 

[rolleistef]

Actually (there was a reportage on his work on German-French TV arte) he also used a Kiev RF, which draws him a little closer to us, folk! (But compared to a Leica, it's near enough to a cardboard camera, I do agree on that point 🙂)

 

[rolleistef]

Not a fan of his work at all. I feel like it's mostly marketing....

There was no such thing as marketing in 1960s Czechoslovakia. Tichy is a little mad character, but certainly an artist. He started at a time when "communism" was the press' equivalent for today's "terrorism", and when that part of Europe was gated by the iron curtain. This is an important thing to remember when considering his work, I guess.

 

[Keith]

I actually like his work ... but can't hep feeling that there are boxes of photographs in attics all around the world that are moth eaten, poorly exposed, badly printed and possibly uninteresting that are just waiting for discovery and the right entrepreneur to ram them down our thoats.

 

[gshybrid]

My hat is off to Tichy... he made no compromises. I've had to make plenty supporting myself solely as an artist for the last 25 years. Thichy's work is less about equipment and more about process. If your process involves a Leica more power to you... I know I like mine.

 

[outfitter]

These days I tend to get most excited by photographers who push the limits. Tichy's work succeeds with me, not because of the cardboard camera - the talking dog phenomena (its not how well the dog talks but that he talks at all) - but because it is evocative of dreams and memory. Of course it doesn't hurt that Tichy has a strong sense of composition and layout.

The eroticism doesn't bother me, quite on the contrary fleeting glances of parts of the female form (mostly clothed) is what stimulates us as we move out in the world and is the stuff of dreams and memory. I find photographing the human form very difficult. Nude or erotic photography usually divides between boring evocations of classical forms that have been around for two thousand years or cheesy eroticism that borders on pornographic.

Calling Tichy creepy for stalking women to take photographs is like saying Wegee was a sadist or ghoul for photographing murder victims. Anyone in to street photography is stalking people - often surreptitiously, and there is a big difference between poking a hidden camera under a women's skirt and photographing what is on public display.

 

[Sparrow]

I’m not sure that evocations of classical forms are necessarily that boring but I’m pretty sure it is normally a mistake to judge any art on the morality of another time and place.

Our morality has it’s roots in Victorian values not the more earthy classical dionysian outlook, his stuff is pretty tame in that context

 

[semilog]

I will say only that it is the viewer's responsibility to make a judgement. I happen to like Weegee's work. I think it says useful and revealing things about when and where he lived. Tichy? Not for me.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that there are many ways to depict eroticism that do not require photographing the subject without his or her consent. One cannot say the same of murder, since the subject's ability to consent has already been stolen.

 

[Paul T.]

Honestly, compared to the widespread expoitation of women practised arund the world, expecailly all the new generation of nasty magazines full of wannabe footballers wives showing off their airbrushed or otherwise enhanced breasts, I can't see how a grainy photo of a clothed backside taken with a carboard camera even registers on the creepiness scale.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I will say only that it is the viewer's responsibility to make a judgement. I happen to like Weegee's work. I think it says useful and revealing things about when and where he lived. Tichy? Not for me.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that there are many ways to depict eroticism that do not require photographing the subject without his or her consent. One cannot say the same of murder, since the subject's ability to consent has already been stolen.

The more you think about this, the harder this is to reconcile with respect for their life/death.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

memento mori has always seemed to me a particularly obscene subject for an artist yet it runs throughout history, these things are rooted in their time and place without context, history and empathy no art can be "understood"

 

[Jamie123]

Perhaps the biggest difference is that there are many ways to depict eroticism that do not require photographing the subject without his or her consent. One cannot say the same of murder, since the subject's ability to consent has already been stolen.

Women are such delicate creatures, aren't they? Completely helpless when a fat, bearded pervert takes blurry pictures of their clothed behind. 🙄

Sure, there are many other ways to depict eroticism. There are many ways to do many things but that's no argument against doing it a specific way. I suppose Tichy's work wouldn't be the same if he did it any other way.

I think you put way too much importance on consent as if consent makes everything ok. As we can see with the recent Terry Richardson 'incident' , people can be exploited despite giving their consent.

As for your argument that a murdered subject's ability to consent has been taken and hence it is ok to photograph him/her, what about the relatives? And what about respect for a deceased person?
Besides, taken a bit further your reasoning could be used as an argument for necrophelia. Just saying.

 

[outfitter]

I will say only that it is the viewer's responsibility to make a judgement. I happen to like Weegee's work. I think it says useful and revealing things about when and where he lived. Tichy? Not for me.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that there are many ways to depict eroticism that do not require photographing the subject without his or her consent. One cannot say the same of murder, since the subject's ability to consent has already been stolen.

Well consent is a legal issue and a moral issue not an aesthetic issue. I bet the families of the corpses so liberally sprawled out in Weegee's work would tend to disagree about how freely the images should be disseminated. If we didn't ignore the families feelings and need for privacy we wouldn't have the great Weegee images.

 

[outfitter]

Our morality has it’s roots in Victorian values not the more earthy classical dionysian outlook, his stuff is pretty tame in that context

I think the Victorian's get a bad rap - a convenient catch phrase for sexual repression that is not historically accurate. Merely pondering the sexual peccadilloes of the famous men of that age would give the lie to that shibboleth. Recent studies of 19th century medical studies, personal diaries and other primary sources clearly demonstrate that both male and female interest and pleasure in sex was not any different from our current age. Not surprising when one considers the biological imperative and doing what come naturally hasn't changed - ever.

As to boring classical references, there has to be a more creative means of portraying the female form than copying classic sculpture or its frequent reiteration through Western art.