Did the Photographic Era Cause the Beginning or the End of Art??

Did the Photographic Era Cause the Beginning or the End of Art??

  • Enabled Art

    Votes: 45 32.1%

  • Destroyed Art

    Votes: 8 5.7%

  • Yawn

    Votes: 87 62.1%
  • Total voters
    140
pawel glogowski said:
Today "art" is just an artificial term used only for marketing and self promotion purposes. Long before that it meant exceptional crafmanship...And by the way - in my opinion photography itself is not an art and never was. Only a "couple" of guys made art using photography, and that's it. :]
Click to expand...

Yes, and yes. There need not be any long winded books about "what is art" and "what is not art", which is the most pseudo-intellectual of all subjects where windbags talk in circles.

Does it successfully attempt to use an artistic medium to communicate Truth with a viewer? Art.

If this is not the objective? Not art. Craft.

A simple, logical cause->effect "if - then".

Simple as that, all there is to it.

Sadly, art/craft have become semantically intertwined, probably for the reasons you've stated. Nor does the emotional impact have anything to do with whether something is "art" or not, which is surely part of the confusion too. A religious depiction of the crucifiction can make someone cry - not art. And work of art may have negligible emotional impact and that aspect has nothing to do with if it is "art" or not.

Michelangelo's The Sistine Chapel - not art
Rodin's The Gates of Hell - art

Simple...

99.99999999% of photography (and I can't think of any examples that would qualify off hand) are not art. It is too innately and inherently constrainted to use this medium as a tool to create art. Its introduction, however, forced painters - however skilled and usually commissioned to depict reality, to become artists. - Or perish, supplanted by a new technology that depicts reality exactly in a way that is better, faster, easier, and cheaper than they could ever possibly do under most circumstances, regardless how skilled they might be...
 
Last edited:
NickTrop said:
...

Does it successfully attempt to use an artistic medium to communicate Truth with a viewer? Art.

...
Rodin's The Gates of Hell - art

Simple...
Click to expand...

...??? huh??? don't you see a contradiction there?
Or, LOL, do you really think that is how the hell's gates look, that is the Truth?
 
Pherdinand said:
...??? huh??? don't you see a contradiction there?
Or, LOL, do you really think that is how the hell's gates look, that is the Truth?
Click to expand...

Nope - no contradiction at all, if I understand you.

The Thinker - overlooking the Gates of Hell, is a far more "deep" communicative work (and the antithesis to, see below) than the Sistine Chapel, which is essentially an illustration:

The Thinker's" posture suggests the conflict between the instinct of "natural" man and the often interfering conscious mind of "civilized" man, suffering from the contemporary disease of shallow, pedantic, over-rationality unconnected with any profound center of existence. "The Thinker's" dumb, brooding, primitive head and chin rest on his hand, forever futilely pondering and struggling with the unanswerable questions of man's fate, made more difficult by societal and personal loss of meaning and purpose.

Obviously, "The Gates of Hell" is not a vision of redemption. No Christ or God waits at their summit in symbolic heaven to greet with loving arms the redeemed, or cast yet farther down to Hell the damned. It is not a Last Judgement in the usual sense. Here, all are condemned to Hell.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...s+in+the+mind+of+man&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Actually, all the interpretations I've read are incorrect, since they are not congruent with my own interpritation of this work which is clearly what Rodin was communicating (which makes it art). Though the above comes closest of the ones I've read.
 
Last edited:
Roger Hicks said:
Not all of 'em. In fact, only the more reactionary, ignorant and self-interested: the intellectual descendants of that miserable worm Ruskin (I use the word 'intellectual' in its loosest sense). All right, Steiglitz could be pretty tedious, but he was not exactly a voice crying in the wilderness, and there were plenty of 'photographic artists' in the 19th century.

Remember: not all art is good art, and daubing ground-up earth on stretched canvas with the aid of bristles fastened to a stick ain't necessarily art either.

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...

A stern assessment of dear john, if quite true, I expect nick will get free passage from stygian, hopefully the dog will keep both them in
 
Chris101 said:
Today would have been his 100th birthday.
Click to expand...

not really.
it's 1 year ago that he died. but he was born in august.

I had to google that, though. But i was ironic with the question.
I don't know him well. I only have seen a number of famous pictures from him. that's probably because he's not that popular like doisneau, or cartier-bresson. Or maybe, his pictures don't always come with his name attached, that also matters.
Like the boy with the baguette, you can see it many times without any credit (e.g. postcards, posters)
 
Pherdinand said:
not really.
it's 1 year ago that he died. but he was born in august.

I had to google that, though. But i was ironic with the question.
I don't know him well. I only have seen a number of famous pictures from him. that's probably because he's not that popular like doisneau, or cartier-bresson. Or maybe, his pictures don't always come with his name attached, that also matters.
Like the boy with the baguette, you can see it many times without any credit (e.g. postcards, posters)
Click to expand...

Provençale Nude

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Not all of 'em. In fact, only the more reactionary, ignorant and self-interested: the intellectual descendants of that miserable worm Ruskin (I use the word 'intellectual' in its loosest sense). All right, Steiglitz could be pretty tedious, but he was not exactly a voice crying in the wilderness, and there were plenty of 'photographic artists' in the 19th century.

Remember: not all art is good art, and daubing ground-up earth on stretched canvas with the aid of bristles fastened to a stick ain't necessarily art either.

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...


I love this. One of your best responses I've read Roger!
 
What I mean is-photography may be beautiful, meaningful and moving, but it generally is information, illustration or decoration.

I came to this conclusion after finally standing in front of several paintings I had admired for years as prints-and realized art requires identity.

In other words, there can be only one, and it must be the product of the artist.

Maybe you think differently-that's ok, it's just a discussion.
 
Sparrow said:
I checked out his gallery, and I fear he is correct ....
Click to expand...

That is a very strong reaction to a very old argument. I hope its not what Nietzsche wrote, "The bite of conscience makes a man bite!".


Photography is not inherently art, it can be art... In other words, an artist creates art in every work that he creates, a photographer might get lucky with nothing more than five in the case of masters, one or two in the case of highly accomplished photographers and absolute none in the case for a majority of us.
 
GSNfan said:
That is a very strong reaction to a very old argument. I hope its not what Nietzsche wrote, "The bite of conscience makes a man bite!".


Photography is not inherently art, it can be art... In other words, an artist creates art in every work that he creates, a photographer might get lucky with nothing more than five in the case of masters, one or two in the case of highly accomplished photographers and absolute none in the case for a majority of us.
Click to expand...

Ah, you missed the irony then? .... I had my tongue very firmly in my cheek as I typed
 
I'm sort of surprised that no one has mentioned "On Photography" by Susan Sontag. The question of how photography relates to art is a discussion that has gone on without letup since about 1843. I'm not sure that there is anything very novel in the discussion. The only thing "new" in photography is digital technology which has led to what I would charitably call promicuous imaging.

My wife, who is an architect and lectures on the history of art, is quite convinced that photography has indeed enabled art in many areas.

Me, I try to make pictures, images as they are now called, and I try not to think an awful lot about it anymore. I voted "yawn"
Ciao!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom