Chris101
summicronia
I love photographic art, and I do it for fun. Occasionally I do the other kind too.
But then critics have usually been kind - when they say anything at all.
But then critics have usually been kind - when they say anything at all.
Sejanus.Aelianus
Veteran
Do you ever find that recommendation can be a double edged sword, the client having too high an expectation? I've experienced that in my own career and wonder how it affects others.
Keith
The best camera is one that still works!
Lets face it Simon ... a lot of the threads here are 'boring' but I don't really feel the need to point it out in the thread itself. I just don't go there when the subject of a thread has no interest to me!
John E Earley
Tuol Sleng S21-0174
The guy who welded on my trailer hitch was an artist. Unfortunately he was a lousy painter.
Charlie Lemay
Well-known
If art were racehorses, then jockeys would be artists, owners would be galleries, art historians would be the media and the bookies would be the art critics. In the real world when the the bookies mess with the other players, they get pinched if they get caught. Critics openly mess with everyone with impunity. The Art World can be very corrupt. Artists shouldn't listen to critics, they should only listen to that inner voice that knows what they must do. As teacher these days, we are being bombarded by the technological application of neuroscience. Despite the repeated assertions by leading neuroscientists, that the only thing we know about the brain is that we know very little, there is a great deal of pseudoneuroscience being applied to teaching that smells like what we used to call brainwashing 50 years ago, or the Dale Carnegie Method, a way of pushing peoples buttons to get the desired response. My understanding of neuroscience today is that they have experimentally and irrefutably established a timeline for human action. Milliseconds before we act, a part of the brain governing that action lights up indicating a command to act. Milliseconds before that some kind of impulse stirs in the brain, and no one. has any idea where that comes from. Te current speculation is that the various chemical, biological and electrical systems that make up our bodies compete with each other in pursuit of their own agendas and the winner somehow must initiate this impulse. The last on to the party, milliseconds after the action is our conscious mind. It actually creates a story to account for what we just did, and fools itself into believing it initiated the whole process, when in fact it is just creating a rationalization for it.
Lets say Art is allowing that originating impulse to express itself in the physical world through us with the least amount of interference on our parts, then Art Criticism would be the ultimate interference, putting more value on the rationalization than the thing itself. Unfortunately, that is pretty much the way we humans do things, and a lot of us get really upset with those who don't.
in a perfect world, everything would be art. Everything would be a perfect expression of those. originating impulses.
Lets say Art is allowing that originating impulse to express itself in the physical world through us with the least amount of interference on our parts, then Art Criticism would be the ultimate interference, putting more value on the rationalization than the thing itself. Unfortunately, that is pretty much the way we humans do things, and a lot of us get really upset with those who don't.
in a perfect world, everything would be art. Everything would be a perfect expression of those. originating impulses.
teddy
Jose Morales
This is a bit long winded, but here it goes...
I have a very particular view on art - which for most includes photography. I don't believe photography is art, but a craft. And if anyone here loves to produce works of art that include painting and sculpture in its finest forms of excellence, then you would be interested to analise with an open mind the ethos of the Art Renewal Centre's Chairman Key note speech which includes this paragraph:
"Our 20th century has marked a period that celebrated the bizarre, the novel and the outrageous for its own sake. The defining parameter of greatness to Modernism is "has it ever been done before," "is it totally original where there is no derivation from any former schools of art," "does it outrage," "does it expand the definition of what can be called art?" I propose to you today that if everything is art then nothing is art. If I call a table a chair have I expanded the definition of the word table? Would this make me brilliant? If I call a hat a shirt have I expanded the definition of hat? If I call a nail a hammer, have I expanded the definition of the word nail? Am I now a genius? If I call screeching car wheels great music have I expanded the definition of music?
Or in reality have I perpetrated a fraud on the people who wanted to buy tables, hats, nails and music and instead got chairs, shirts, hammers and a headache.
Modernists have not expanded the definition of art at all. What they have done is attempted to destroy art, created icons that represent this destruction, and then called these icons the thing that they have destroyed i.e. works of art. A urinal or an empty canvas, hung on the wall of a museum, are especially pure examples of this. They are not works of art but symbols of the victory of the Huns, who have sacked the bastions and forums of our culture. It would be like saying that the Roman Forum today is far greater architecture than it was when all the buildings and streets were intact."
When it comes to photography, and meditate on the paragraphs above, I think that making a photographic image is not art. The camera mundanely opens the shutter and exposes light to film. It may take great skill to compose, and perhaps a lot of experience to make a print as perfect as Ansel Adams. But mere taking photos isn't art, but a craft that can be practiced. That's right, a practise - a profession. But not art. Not art that is full of pain staking brilliance, "to standards of excellence both in training and in artistic execution, and a dedication to learning with great discipline and devotion, to the methods, developments and breakthroughs of prior generations". And this excludes the Picasso's and the like.
You can read these thought provoking speech about art should be here:
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/ArtScam/artscam.php
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/PullingBacktheCurtain/pullingbackthecurtain.php
Ok, I'm done.
I have a very particular view on art - which for most includes photography. I don't believe photography is art, but a craft. And if anyone here loves to produce works of art that include painting and sculpture in its finest forms of excellence, then you would be interested to analise with an open mind the ethos of the Art Renewal Centre's Chairman Key note speech which includes this paragraph:
"Our 20th century has marked a period that celebrated the bizarre, the novel and the outrageous for its own sake. The defining parameter of greatness to Modernism is "has it ever been done before," "is it totally original where there is no derivation from any former schools of art," "does it outrage," "does it expand the definition of what can be called art?" I propose to you today that if everything is art then nothing is art. If I call a table a chair have I expanded the definition of the word table? Would this make me brilliant? If I call a hat a shirt have I expanded the definition of hat? If I call a nail a hammer, have I expanded the definition of the word nail? Am I now a genius? If I call screeching car wheels great music have I expanded the definition of music?
Or in reality have I perpetrated a fraud on the people who wanted to buy tables, hats, nails and music and instead got chairs, shirts, hammers and a headache.
Modernists have not expanded the definition of art at all. What they have done is attempted to destroy art, created icons that represent this destruction, and then called these icons the thing that they have destroyed i.e. works of art. A urinal or an empty canvas, hung on the wall of a museum, are especially pure examples of this. They are not works of art but symbols of the victory of the Huns, who have sacked the bastions and forums of our culture. It would be like saying that the Roman Forum today is far greater architecture than it was when all the buildings and streets were intact."
When it comes to photography, and meditate on the paragraphs above, I think that making a photographic image is not art. The camera mundanely opens the shutter and exposes light to film. It may take great skill to compose, and perhaps a lot of experience to make a print as perfect as Ansel Adams. But mere taking photos isn't art, but a craft that can be practiced. That's right, a practise - a profession. But not art. Not art that is full of pain staking brilliance, "to standards of excellence both in training and in artistic execution, and a dedication to learning with great discipline and devotion, to the methods, developments and breakthroughs of prior generations". And this excludes the Picasso's and the like.
You can read these thought provoking speech about art should be here:
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/ArtScam/artscam.php
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/PullingBacktheCurtain/pullingbackthecurtain.php
Ok, I'm done.
Sejanus.Aelianus
Veteran
Then my entries would be along these lines...
Sparrow
Veteran
Ok, I'm done.
... that's good cos "Modernists have not expanded the definition of art at all." really is a tad simplistic.
__--
Well-known
These quotes, as well as a few others above, reming me of the old reactions (1950s, 1960s?) to "modern" or abstract art: "hey, my five-year old could do better than that."
True.
Also, true.
MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Nightshots from Tristes Tropiques
Download link for PDF file of 16-shot portfolio
Charlie Lemay
Well-known
In my experience, boredom, fear and hatred are huge billboards proclaiming there is something of real value that should be examined here, beneath the assumptions we have made.
Sejanus.Aelianus
Veteran
While true, I would advise the wearing of tin hat and full body armour, when doing so. :angel:
Jamie123
Veteran
Other than the absurdity of comparing artists to jockeys (in my understanding jockeys do not birth horses) the analogy is simply so silly an inaccurate that it's hard to know where to begin. If anything, the bookies would be the auction houses and the media would be...well...the media.
Both critics and art historians aren't much more than bystanders in the art market and it's inherent corruption (which simply results from the fact that it's a completely unregulated market). The widespread criticism of artists such as Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst hasn't hurt their market value very much. And why should it? Critics and art historians aren't the target market for art and the millionaires and billionaires who pay record prices for those artists' work don't seem to be all that concerned with what critics say. Critics can 'openly mess with everyone with impunity' because at the end of the day no one really cares what they say.
maggieo
More Deadly
It's been four days and we're getting close.
bobbyrab
Well-known
__--
Well-known
Somewhat, but not entirely, related to your point is the work of Michael Schmidt, which I first saw only last week after reading that he just won the prestigious 2014 Pictet photography prize for his book, Lebensmittel (Foodstuff) and died three days later at the age of 68. As reported in this Guardian article, Schmidt's series is an exploration of the world food industry; the theme of this year's Pictet prize, which focuses on photography and sustainability, was Consumption. A Google search on "Michael Schmidt photo vimeo" throws up several 'flip-throughs" of Schmidt's photo books. What I find interesting is that Schmidt's books show that he was interested in the cumulative effect of his photos in a book rather than in the quality or beauty of an individual inagem which I find interesting. Indeed, the only individual picture from the Lebensmittel book that comes to mind as standing out is one of several pigs that fill the frame, in which the eye of one is looking into the camera. You can read an evaluation of Michael Schmidt by Jörg Colberg here.
In my web search on Schmidt, I also came across this interesting Gurdian article by philosopher and social commentator Slavoj Žižek, who is a subject in himself. You can get an idea of Žižek's general outlook in this article that he published in LRB. Here is a capsule of Žižek s general point of view: Žižek sees bleak aspects both in totalitarian and democratic contemporary societies as “Duty becomes pleasure…there is the obverse paradox of pleasure becoming duty in a ‘permissive’ society. Subjects experience the need to ‘have a good time,’ to enjoy themselves as a kind of duty, and, consequently, feel guilty for failing to be happy.” At the same time, the act of prohibiting other people from pleasure becomes our pleasure. Žižek asserts that the scope available for freedom is extremely narrow in our post-modern societies.
In case you find all these links too time-consuming, here is the title of Žižek's Guardian article: Fat-free chocolate and absolutely no smoking: why our guilt about consumption is all-consuming, which says a lot in itself.
MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Download links for book project pdf files
Chiang Tung Days
Tristes Tropiques
Bangkok Hysteria
Paris au rythme de Basquiat and Other Poems
semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
I'm not sure -- not at all sure -- that what engages me is a good proxy for what qualifies as art, fine or otherwise.
Juan Valdenebro
Truth is beauty
To OP:
Do you dislike it when it's bad, and when it's good?
Or do you hate a word but not a work?
It's like saying "I hate the blue color"...
When it's next to what?
Haven't you ever liked it?
In paintings?
What about the sky? Maybe it can be beautiful even if you just don't wear it...
Art means nothing because it means whatever anyone wants it to mean anytime.
To me, art is not beauty, but placing several meanings in the same place.
From Atget to Newton I recognize art in some photographs...
Cheers,
Juan
Do you dislike it when it's bad, and when it's good?
Or do you hate a word but not a work?
It's like saying "I hate the blue color"...
When it's next to what?
Haven't you ever liked it?
In paintings?
What about the sky? Maybe it can be beautiful even if you just don't wear it...
Art means nothing because it means whatever anyone wants it to mean anytime.
To me, art is not beauty, but placing several meanings in the same place.
From Atget to Newton I recognize art in some photographs...
Cheers,
Juan
SimonSawSunlight
Simon Fabel
i agree, but i guess an innocent part of me thought it could have been interesting so i made the mistake of reading it through.
take it easy lads
teddy
Jose Morales
There is a lot of sense in what you say, specially when recognize art in some photographs. The photography that has a lot of "art" to me is the work of Steichen, and Josef Sudek or August Sander - perhaps because during their time - pictorialism was the trend and it had roots in the vision of the romantic, classical and impressionist masters.
teddy
Jose Morales
Yes, I think it sounds rather simplistic on the surface. But when stuff like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhein_II
sells for 4 million, and realizing that you or perhaps 99% of everyone in this forum could have done same or better. Apart from gathering gear, looking for a location and knowing certain connections, it would have taken him perhaps 1/500 of a sec to make this image. While Michael Angelo took years to complete one of his alfrescos. Is this good art or bad art?
I'm sure some photographs take far more effort.Anyway, these sorts of topics are interesting to me, and not to others. It's ok to rant here and there sometimes.