buying amateur art?

sounds like many are not interested in photos as wall art here…not really surprising to me.
i too like photos in the form of a book or even a magazine, for easy viewing.
my walls are covered with prints of my own images, a decision i made a few years ago when i first moved into my current place. i also have some original native canadian art though.
 
If I like it, have a place to hang it and the price is what I can pay for the piece then the name of the artist is not an issue.
 
If no one buys an amateurs prints, then how do they go about becoming a "professional"?
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They don't. In my experience, people who want to become "professional photographers", are fantasists. People who are working photographers became so by finding markets and providing products that meet the needs of those markets.

That's how I and all the working photographers I knew did it. There were some people who went to art school and got degrees or diplomas but I didn't move in those circles. In those days, from the mid-sixties to the start of the 'eighties, there were a lot more openings for youngsters who wanted to make a living from photography. However, even by the middle of the 'seventies, those of us with a brain could see the markets getting tougher.

These days it takes even more salesmanship and marketing skills to make money from photography and, frankly, I wouldn't even consider it now.
 
These is no such thing as "amateur art." There's art, and then there's other stuff, like crafts.

How artists supports themselves is irrelevant to the things they create. Many great artists were virtually unknown during their lifetimes but are now considered masters of their genres e.g. Kafka, van Gogh, Cezanne, Modigliani, Fernando Pessoa, Joseph Kennedy O'Toole, Vivian Meier.

William Carlos Williams was an insurance agent while he was writing his poetry, Kafka died completely unknown in Prague without having published anything (he left a note asking that all his manuscripts be burned upon his death), Pessoa worked a day job as an accountant in a small firm in Lisbon. Van Gogh worked as a flunky in an art gallery, then became a teacher, then became a preacher. He sold ONE painting during his life.

Some of the best, most provocative photography I've seen have been by people with day jobs (see Mike Brody's A PERIOD OF JUVENILE PROSPERITY; Brody is an auto mechanic, or Paul Kwilecki, whose 40 year retrospective of life in Bainbridge GA was just published by Duke University Press, was a small town hardware store owner). Likewise, some of the most cliched crap I've seen has been been by recognized "Masters" (see William Eggleston's PARIS for some truly bad trash that I'd have been embarrassed to turn in for a RISDY class would never have seen the light of day if it wasn't by Eggleston).
 
back alley said:
sounds like many are not interested in photos as wall art here…not really surprising to me.
i too like photos in the form of a book or even a magazine, for easy viewing.
my walls are covered with prints of my own images, a decision i made a few years ago when i first moved into my current place. i also have some original native canadian art though.
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I like prints, but only hang a very few prints as decoration or "wall art." For me, viewing a photograph requires space around it, and/or context with other photographs if it's a part of a set. A folio or photo book generally does better at that because I only have so much hang-able wall space to work with at home.

G
 
specifically about buying photographic prints from a 'no name' shooter?
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I'm a no name shooter, especially to everyone here.

What matters to me are the clients who pay me.

The rest are opinions and the bank won't take that for a deposit.

Dean Collins once said, "beauty is in the eye of the checkbook holder."

You probably won't like my philosophy, but for me as an entrepreneur, photography has been my path to take for business. Living in Minneapolis I realize there are other opportunities to become famous, living on either coast, that can help make the photographer somewhat famous. Now that I'm mostly retired I have other paths I'm following.

No corporate umbrella for me.
 
I buy what I like and I don't care who made it.
I also love medieval art the artist are usually not known only the quality of the work counts.
 
ok…so there is no amateur art, only art or not!

let's get closer to home then…ever buy from another rff member?
would you ever buy from an rff member?
 
back alley said:
ok…so there is no amateur art, only art or not!

let's get closer to home then…ever buy from another rff member?
would you ever buy from an rff member?
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I haven't had occasion to buy anything, but I have participated in an RFF print swap. (Some good prints came out of that, although I think the quality of prints in a swap would be raised substantively by instituting more specific sizing and shipping protocols to adhere to.)

G
 
back alley said:
ok…so there is no amateur art, only art or not!

let's get closer to home then…ever buy from another rff member?
would you ever buy from an rff member?
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Joe
Yes I have bought from an RFF member . Gallery framed and matted .A wonderful b and w
Portrait. I intend to create a small gallery wall in my front room when we redo the room this year.

There is a landscape in the gallery section here that I would also like to aquire in the future if possible.

All of my prints are unframed and stored with the exception of three panoramic landscapes I matted and framed for one of my sisters and my eldest daughter .
 
I just took a quick walk around the house and counted 15 pieces of legitimate art by professional artists. There are paintings, drawings, mixed media pieces, engravings, sculptures. None of them are photographs.
 
I just took a quick walk around the house and counted 15 pieces of legitimate art by professional artists.
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I took a little while to look around my books and the net before asking this, so it isn't intended as a troll. I really don't know what you mean by "legitimate art", although I admit I have seen the phrase "legitimate theatre", used in contrast to "Burlesque" or "Music Hall".

Could you explain what you mean by the phrase, please?
 
As others have said, there is just "art" - the artist may of course be amateur or professional (referring to whether or not making art is their career or not).

I will buy an artwork on its merits - the primary of which is that I must like it. I have photographs by casual photographers (including RFF members) as well as by well-known artists (at least in contemporary photography circles).

Also, there are many reasons to buy art. Although I'll happily buy a photograph for no other reason than its appeal, I also collect photobooks (which I consider akin to artworks, and are increasingly being treated and priced as such) - and these for me must, in general, be by well-regarded photographers and signed by them, and ideally rare. If for no other reason than space, I won't buy photobooks by unknown photographers without an exceptional reason.
 
If I was able to afford too I would buy prints to hang on my wall. I would buy them as enjoyment & not as an investment expecting the artist to rise up in fame like, say a Ralph Gibson.
 
Sejanus.Aelianus said:
...... I really don't know what you mean by "legitimate art", although I admit I have seen the phrase "legitimate theatre", used in contrast to "Burlesque" or "Music Hall".

Could you explain what you mean by the phrase, please?
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Very good point as the term "legitimate art" certainly has a very loose definition. I don't know if there is an official definition (where is Chris Crawford when you need him?) but to my way of thinking it is characterized by these attributes:

* one of a kind, not produced in quantity
* produced by the creator of the original idea
* originally intended to evoke emotion to the viewer

I am open to ideas how you differentiate unique pieces from the things that are produced in quantity and sold specialized retail locations.

That does leave open the question if a digital print or "giclee" is priced high enough is a a legitimate piece of art. I would not tackle that one.
 
Bob Michaels said:
Very good point as the term "legitimate art" certainly has a very loose definition. I don't know if there is an official definition (where is Chris Crawford when you need him?) but to my way of thinking it is characterized by these attributes:

* one of a kind, not produced in quantity
* produced by the creator of the original idea
* originally intended to evoke emotion to the viewer

I am open to ideas how you differentiate unique pieces from the things that are produced in quantity and sold specialized retail locations.

That does leave open the question if a digital print or "giclee" is priced high enough is a a legitimate piece of art. I would not tackle that one.
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Don't think that's a very good definition of art. For example, Duchamp's infamous "Fountain" - the urinal he signed in 1917 and which he said was then art because he as artist decreed it - has been long destroyed, but 17 replicas exist, most made many decades later, all sanctioned by and signed by Duchamp. So, technically this artwork violates all of your edicts... assuming that what it invokes in you is not exactly what you mean by "emotion".

In the recent Reith Lectures, Grayson Perry attempted to define art. He pointed out the obvious: there are many answers to "What is art?" His solution was to consider them all and note their overlap - and things that fall into that small, consensual region are most likely "art".
 
Bob Michaels said:
. . .

* one of a kind, not produced in quantity
* produced by the creator of the original idea
* originally intended to evoke emotion to the viewer

. . .
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Dear Bob.

1 -- Lithographs? Silkscreens? Engravings? Ansel Adams prints?

2 -- So HCB's pictures don't count unless he printed them?

3 -- Well, yes. But what art is intended to be viewed with indifference? Not even Warhol.

Cheers,

R.
 
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