NickTrop
Veteran
@Juan Valdenebro - "Photography has not been too influential, and has not changed seriously anything around the concept of art."
Couldn't disagree more...
"(Prior to Photography)... the Impressionists, other painters, notably such 17th-century Dutch painters as Jan Steen, had focused on common subjects, but their approaches to composition were traditional. They arranged their compositions in such a way that the main subject commanded the viewer's attention. The Impressionists relaxed the boundary between subject and background so that the effect of an Impressionist painting often resembles a snapshot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by chance.[13] Photography was gaining popularity, and as cameras became more portable, photographs became more candid. Photography inspired Impressionists to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of people. ...The rise of the impressionist movement can be seen in part as a reaction by artists to the newly established medium of photography. The taking of fixed or still images challenged painters by providing a new medium with which to capture reality. Initially photography's presence seemed to undermine the artist's depiction of nature and their ability to mirror reality. Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography "produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably". [14]
Alfred Sisley, View of the Saint-Martin Canal, Paris, 1870, Musée d'Orsay
In spite of this, photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of artistic expression, and rather than competing with photography to emulate reality, artists focused "on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph – by further developing into an art form its very subjectivity in the conception of the image, the very subjectivity that photography eliminated".[14] The Impressionists sought to express their perceptions of nature, rather than create exacting reflections or mirror images of the world. This allowed artists to subjectively depict what they saw with their "tacit imperatives of taste and conscience". [15]Photography encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like colour, which photography then lacked; "the Impressionists were the first to consciously offer a subjective alternative to the photograph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
Photography had a direct impact on art. The decisive moment - candid photography, directly influenced how subjects were captured, like candid photos in photography. And also Impressionists and Impressionism, like Cubism, was a direct response to the introduction of this technology.
This response put art in line with what a number of philosophers like Kant argued about fine arts prior to the advent of photography:
Because the purpose of fine art is pleasure rather than utility, art should not represent nature "as it ordinarily is." Genius should modify nature into a "beautiful whole, more perfect than nature itself."
http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil of art/hume_and_kant.htm
As illustrated in the provided quotes, it was photography that forced artists to "not represent nature as it ordinarily is..." but to modify it and make it "more perfect" than nature. This is directly evident in Impressionism and Cubism.
Photography forced artists to create what by Kant's and others of this philosophical school would consider fine art. Thus, photography enabled art or artists to produce art, by Kant's definition. Prior to this, art was merely the utilitarian representation of nature... i.e. not art. By their own admission, Picasso and Impressionists adhered to Kant's school as a reaction to photography.
Couldn't disagree more...
"(Prior to Photography)... the Impressionists, other painters, notably such 17th-century Dutch painters as Jan Steen, had focused on common subjects, but their approaches to composition were traditional. They arranged their compositions in such a way that the main subject commanded the viewer's attention. The Impressionists relaxed the boundary between subject and background so that the effect of an Impressionist painting often resembles a snapshot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by chance.[13] Photography was gaining popularity, and as cameras became more portable, photographs became more candid. Photography inspired Impressionists to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of people. ...The rise of the impressionist movement can be seen in part as a reaction by artists to the newly established medium of photography. The taking of fixed or still images challenged painters by providing a new medium with which to capture reality. Initially photography's presence seemed to undermine the artist's depiction of nature and their ability to mirror reality. Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography "produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably". [14]
Alfred Sisley, View of the Saint-Martin Canal, Paris, 1870, Musée d'Orsay
In spite of this, photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of artistic expression, and rather than competing with photography to emulate reality, artists focused "on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph – by further developing into an art form its very subjectivity in the conception of the image, the very subjectivity that photography eliminated".[14] The Impressionists sought to express their perceptions of nature, rather than create exacting reflections or mirror images of the world. This allowed artists to subjectively depict what they saw with their "tacit imperatives of taste and conscience". [15]Photography encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like colour, which photography then lacked; "the Impressionists were the first to consciously offer a subjective alternative to the photograph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
Photography had a direct impact on art. The decisive moment - candid photography, directly influenced how subjects were captured, like candid photos in photography. And also Impressionists and Impressionism, like Cubism, was a direct response to the introduction of this technology.
This response put art in line with what a number of philosophers like Kant argued about fine arts prior to the advent of photography:
Because the purpose of fine art is pleasure rather than utility, art should not represent nature "as it ordinarily is." Genius should modify nature into a "beautiful whole, more perfect than nature itself."
http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil of art/hume_and_kant.htm
As illustrated in the provided quotes, it was photography that forced artists to "not represent nature as it ordinarily is..." but to modify it and make it "more perfect" than nature. This is directly evident in Impressionism and Cubism.
Photography forced artists to create what by Kant's and others of this philosophical school would consider fine art. Thus, photography enabled art or artists to produce art, by Kant's definition. Prior to this, art was merely the utilitarian representation of nature... i.e. not art. By their own admission, Picasso and Impressionists adhered to Kant's school as a reaction to photography.
Last edited:
