After last week's arguments over politics and war, we are overdue for another report on the curious doings at the intersection of art and love:
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| Norman Lindsay and Rose Soady |
Artist Norman Lindsay said that he usually began his complex pictures by drawing a single female form, then built the rest of his composition around that central image. Starting in 1902, the central figure in Lindsay's life was his favorite model (and later wife) Rose Soady.
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| Sketch of Rose, 1905 |
In a dusty used bookstore I recently stumbled across Rose's memoir of her unconventional life with Norman.
Lindsay was married with children when Rose began modeling for him, but after two years Rose reports the two consummated their relationship "spontaneously and without premeditation," then stayed together for the rest of their lives. She was apparently the rare woman who was scrappy and open minded enough to keep up with him.
Rose described the extraordinary measures the couple took to hide their scandalous relationship. She lied to her mother about posing nude and Lindsay lied to his wife that he was sleeping in his studio. The couple lied to their landlady that they were brother and sister (but were sternly evicted when the landlady caught on). Later when the couple rented adjoining rooms, they cut a secret trap door in the wall so they could get together.
The partition was only thin wood, which made entry from room to room easy-- just by cutting a trap door. A saw and two hinges were all that was necessary for the job. It was cut out just above floor level and the drawing table placed against the trapdoor; a chair, a mat, and a scatter of papers and books made it look just right to callers.
But here's the interesting part: despite their elaborate efforts to keep up pretenses, Norman's pictures of Rose seemed to be public advertisements for their affair. Why even bother lying to their landlady if Norman was drawing pictures like this?
Lindsay became famous for his hundreds of pictures of wild nymphs and satyrs trysting.
Artists who draw the most intimate or controversial subjects somehow feel shielded by their art. It's like the child who thinks that if they put a napkin over their head, no one can see them.
The artist's audience might suspect, but can't prove, where fact ends and fantasy begins. This fig leaf often emboldens artists to put all kinds of revelatory and personal subject matter out there. Once a picture has been launched, it becomes something separate from the artist, who-- if pressed-- can disavow any reality in the content.
Of course, some friends and family were unwilling to abide by the polite fiction and stopped associating with Norman or Rose. Shrill letter writers accused her of being a "tart." Publications such as The Sydney Morning Herald and Art in Australia sponsored campaigns against Lindsay's work. Art galleries and museums refused to exhibit Norman's work. Angry clergy clucked at and scolded the couple.
The feisty Rose tried to defend Norman's work, visiting hostile publishers and confronting critics who publicly attacked Norman while privately applauding his work. Norman wrote:
A country that fails to understand that the moral value of Art has nothing to do with the ethics of suburban back parlours is not worthy of being given an art....[N]ot one specimen of the Moral Lion who is at present roaring at my work has the faintest perception of its moral intention, or could, in a single instance, explain the meaning of one of the works he is making such a fuss about.
By 1913, when Norman drew Rose in the role of "Venus Crucified" by society's moral guardians, the jig was pretty well up:
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Looking back, Rose seemed to relish her youthful adventures. In her memoir she proudly reprinted some of Norman's [NSFW] early photos of her. "Those were the days," she recalled.
Norman developed their personal photos himself using chemicals in their small kitchen. Rose recalled that the chemicals smelled terrible, but apparently the results were worth it.
Norman passed away in 1969, and Rose followed him in 1978.
51 comments:
- from the pictures, Rose seems to have been a strong, no-nonsense woman.
- that Venus crucified piece is a banger. Are those white doves? What a great FU.
- that shielding-behind-the-art observation is particularly strong for literature. There have been scandals mounted around wether a book was anounced as a memoir or fiction.
Certainly, one cannot fault Lindsay for succumbing to the allure of a breathtakingly beautiful woman. One can only imagine that Rose besides likely possessed an intellectual and artistic vitality that matched Lindsay's own.
The 1969 film Age of Consent, adapted from Lindsay's 1938 novel starred James Mason and Helen Mirren. Talking about stunning women if you only know Mirren from her most current films prepared to be stunned by her youthful beauty.
I learned about Lindsay from the story on this blog about the horrible train fire where a lot of his work was burned on purpose. No wonder he was paranoid about criticism from the censors.
I've been knocked out by Lindsay's work ever since I first learned about it about ten years ago. His ability to be explicitly and playfully erotic without being pornographic is astounding. It all feels like a completely natural part of the ethereal yet fertile world he creates.
Lindsay’s saving grace is that he really understands sculptural form, light and gesture.
That Lindsay begins his pictures with a single figure and then works outward explains a lot. A lot about the blithe freedom of his work, but also the sprawl and disorganization. Despite his expertise in drawing and lighting, he’s from the Sergio Aragones school of composition. Not surprisingly, he's simply indulging himself.
The deranging nature of photography is brought to light again by the NSFW pictures. There are two levels of weirdness: One is that – if you react with arousal - you are biologically reacting to a recording, not a real person; an unnatural event. And two, in forgetting that the photo is not a real person, you also forget that the ‘real person’ that you think is arousing you is actually rotting in her grave.
There is something inherently necrophilic about the reptile brain getting aroused by the nude body of a dead lady. Nobody stops to realize that that is what is happening - especially those caught up in the arousal - because of the deranging nature of photography.
> And two, in forgetting that the photo is not a real person, you also forget that the ‘real person’ that you think is arousing you is actually rotting in her grave.
I remember being aroused by a copy of L'Origine du monde in a large Art book I had as a child.
It was a photograph of a painting of Constance Queniaux's vulva, which has not only rotted, but at this point, has so dispersed into the water and carbon cycles that I myself may very well contain matter that once belonged to that self-same vulva!
Is this the deranging nature of photography or the deranging nature of French Realism?
And if a 16th century monk is aroused by The Song of Solomon, is he caught in the derangement of poetry, to be aroused by descriptions of erotic love had so long ago that the rise and fall of empires seem like mere waves crashing on a beach?
I’ve been quarantined
"I’ve been quarantined"
On what grounds?
Kev, (and anyone interested who read Kev's comment)
In light of what you have written above I find myself reflecting on two particular portraits I was commissioned to do over recent years; they were both of people who were about to die, one of whom was youthful and beautiful. Of necessity I had to work from photographs. So we might ask ourselves the question; why the need for a painting, especially one that has to be made from photographs?
I have answers for this of course, but I think the best, and most relevant here, came from my wife: When you are functioning properly as an artist you are recreating your subject in the way a sort of minor god would do. The act of a living being engaging with a recording of a subject and making a form out of it is, in some way, the breathing of life into something dead, and thus to bring forth the painting, the presence of the subject without the subject itself. (I've paraphrased her for the sake of clarity)
And this presence, the subject become work of art, is fundamentally different from the subject represented, re-presented by photo-graph.
And I forgot to add, I believe this would be the unconscious reason the clients wanted the painting - although they were not trained in anything like the making of paintings and not given to habitually philosophizing about the nature of art or the aesthetic limitations of photography, they instinctively knew, their sense awoken by the imminence of death and that the body of their loved one would be gone forever, that there was something more, something other, something beyond, than what the machine could give.
Richard wrote: "I’ve been quarantined"
From where? By whom?
Kev Ferrara: "he’s from the Sergio Aragones school of composition."
That's hilarious... and so true! I agree with your assessment of Lindsay; he had expertise in drawing and lighting, and he was hugely productive, working like the devil to "indulge himself," but he was never one of the greats.
I can't draw any conclusions from people reacting with arousal to a recording of a person. People react with arousal to the arrival of new comic books at the corner drug store, to the stars in the sky, the aroma of old paper, calisthenics, good carpentry, that high, sweet violin in the Scheherazade suite, lottery tickets, handcuffs, the smell of a stable, a good sonnet, high heel shoes, the feel of velvet, a spring breeze, a mathematical solution, a ponytail on a jogger, waking up to sunshine on your face, a waterfall, and raspberry jam on an English muffin with plenty of butter. In that kind of a world, the NSFW photos aren't much of a stretch.
xopxe-- Agreed. Words by their nature can be more specific, and it's hard for Philip Roth or John Updike to deny how they knew about all those details, yet they churn out page after page of the most brazen material.
a ponytail on a jogger,
Phew, I though that was just me.
> On what grounds?
> From where? By whom?
By blogger. I guess for saying a few choice words?
Richard— Not around here you’re not. We have very low standards. I checked all of blogger’s filters and didn’t see anything intercepted. Me, I have no filters.
David, lovely post, I always enjoy Lindsay’s dynamic, playful figures and sense of light.
Chris, I agree that people sense that valuable things lie beyond physical or mechanical processes, but when using photo references, that gets achieved only when a perceptive client who knows how to read a plastic aesthetic formulation hires a talented painter who is able to breathe life into a dead photographic structure, as in your case.
Sometimes I come across responses from clients who thank artists that practically copied their photographs, so it seems to me that many clients find the idea of the painting valuable and dignified simply because of its noble art-historical role, and because it is hand made by a special kind of people called artists, and because a painting is exclusive and commissioning it feels personal. And they are attracted to the way these artists promote themselves on their web pages, like proudly emphasizing that the drawing of a client’s dead pet will express their story, which the client then confirms by enthusiastically describing their wonderful memories that the image of their dead cat evoked. Artists say that the drawing of client’s wedding will carry all the emotions of the event, but what they do is they use pronounced design approaches that serve as a decorative makeup on the dead frozen photographic structure. And the sterile, nihilistic, lifeless dna of photos get multiplied and expanded like a virus, while clients, who have internalzed the visual appearance of the photograph to the point that it represents the only way they see the world and judge any visual creation, try to find value that lies beyond physical or mechanical processes in various non-aesthetic ways.
"By blogger. I guess for saying a few choice words?"
I've learned to always copy my comments here before posting them, just in case they get auto-edited by silicon censor scissors. Try to repost and change a few choice words to some less choicey words. (Couch evil in banality and it goes invisible anyhow.)
"People react with arousal to the arrival of new comic books at the corner drug store, to the stars in the sky, the aroma of old paper"
Now, why would you intentionally conflate the broader sensory sense of arousal with the specific sexual sense I clearly meant it in? A mystery.
"a ponytail on a jogger," (...) Phew, I though that was just me.
Boys, boys... that ponytail is just a metonym for a whole girl of a particular type. Put a ponytail on a hustling ogre and you've got a trotting horse by any other name. (It isn't the jogging itself that gets you exercised. It isn't the hair itself that teases.)
"And this presence, the subject become work of art, is fundamentally different from the subject represented, re-presented by photo-graph."
Photographs intercept and capture the light rays bouncing off an object that would have gone into the eye of the photographer (if not for the camera mechanism). Since those light rays could have gone into anybody's camera or anybody else's eye with ~identical visual effect, we must consider them manifestations of an objective mutually existent world.
Thus the light rays - in order to produce the realistic objective imprint of a girl - surely reflected off 'the real girl' that was in front of the camera. Even in black and white this would be the case. 'She' is not, or was not, a conception.
Whereas art is built of conceptions; of thoughts, of interpretations. A great portrait is a grand appreciation of a person built of smaller appreciations. (To appreciate a person from photos alone is no mean task; it's actually quite a feat of imagination.) As an appreciation of a person, a portrait never pretends to be the person herself. Thus it has an aesthetic reality independent from the subject.
A pony tail moves freely and fluidly, advertising the motions of the structure to which it is attached. Same with skirts that swirl. Same with breasts that jiggle. If Lindsay was a better artist he’d try to capture some of that.
JSL
"I come across responses from clients who thank artists that practically copied their photographs, so it seems to me that many clients find the idea of the painting valuable and dignified simply because of its noble art-historical role, and because it is hand made by a special kind of people called artists..."
Imagine being a clueless, vacuous, insensate being. You would need to utterly rely on the common associations of labels and the assertions of other people (particularly 'experts') in order to pretend to have a sensibility of your own.
> I checked all of blogger’s filters and didn’t see anything intercepted.
Damn, weird. Oh well, thanks for checking
I'm from a small third-world country, and like 20 years ago two public tv stations (national and city) had two visual-arts-related shows going on simultaneously. One was about illustration and illustrators (La Mano que Mira, "the looking hand"), and the other was about plastic artists (El Monitor Plástico, the plastic monitor). Both were produced and conducted by people from each respective community and had the same structure: basically, interviews while peering over works.
I remember noting the difference in tone between both was astounding. The illustrator world was full of enthusiasm, with people fawning over each other's works and discussing influences and weird pieces of trivia. All the plastic artists sounded sad and defeated. I remember one particularly timid young man narrating how he was invited to an exposition. As part of the process, he was required to write a write-up explaining his work. The combination of professional success with him having to bullshit through an essay as if he was a high-schooler was heartbreaking.
("the looking hand" also did a lot about animators, who were/are basically illustrators)
Ales,
I thoroughly agree that in the limit case of the literal-minded, severely lateralized left hemisphere type, the desire for a portrait is as you say; the desire for nothing more than an object fashioned by a name that will confirm their status, or at the very least something regarded as valuable in proportion to how skilfully its hand-painted fashioning mimics a photon-graphic.
And although the minds of the general population have been, and continue to be, pulled towards this limit case by the dogma of reductionist materialism constantly reinforced by our technologies there is nevertheless within most individuals a sense, stronger the further they are from the limit case, of this view of the world not accounting for our fundamental being-ness in it. Although this feeling can be just a glowing ember under a heap of ash, it lingers in people's unconscious mind to flare a little whenever they encounter, however trivially, the question of what art is for. This is my view of it at any rate.
And if I address Kev's point:
As an appreciation of a person, a portrait never pretends to be the person herself. Thus it has an aesthetic reality independent from the subject.
A portrait as a work of art is nevertheless grounded, by definition, to something unaesthetically specific wouldn't you say? I therefore see it as an implicit expression of a union between the essential symbiotic top-down and bottom-up generation of reality. As a consequence the sitter is seen as a dancer in the Great Dance.
And a point relating to David's comment in reply to Kev:
I have never ever, not once, been aroused by nudity in a genuine work of art, and I know a number of others who feel the same. This surely evidences a fundamental difference between art and photography.
A further reason why the sitter's relation to their portrait must be different from their relation to the photograph of them.
I agree Chris, stimulation of our automatic self preserving behavior patterns is anti art.
xopxe, I know and I’m sorry, my pessimistic and overly dramatic side gets the better of me more and more often when it comes to discussions about art.
Richard-- I reset my blog (basically unplugged and plugged it back in again and your comment on the origin of life popped up. It is now in the comments above, but placed when it chronologically was written. You may want to move it down tomake it more current. Sorry for the delay.
I remember being aroused by a copy of L'Origine du monde in a large Art book I had as a child."
Had Courbet had a modern camera, he could have offered you a thousand crotch shots in the time it took him to paint the one. With equal or greater effect on your reptile brain. The reptile brain doesn't register artistry; poetics would just be irrelevant information. Same with camera distortions, both optical and mental. Irrelevant.
"A portrait as a work of art is nevertheless grounded, by definition, to something unaesthetically specific wouldn't you say?"
You may recall some time ago we discussed a few Holbein portrait drawings. I pointed out that all of his portrait subjects are long dead and gone and anybody that ever knew them or even saw them is equally long gone. All that remains is the art. So we have no idea at all if the pictures looked like the purported subjects. They may even have been done from imagination or memory. We have no idea.
But regardless, the pictures do have some kind of individual life force to them anyway; a kind of living soul. This is the case with all good works of art (because aesthetic force is an expression of deep nonlinear thought, where feeling and intellect are still unified.)
For a portrait with a known subject, as with your commissions, I would say a process happens akin to what Jordan Peterson said about his collection of Soviet propaganda paintings. That over time, the art of these images has started to win out over the propaganda.
Same as Tutankhaman’s gold and lapus lazuli sarcophagus. Nobody sees a tyrannical theocrat in the decorated case. They just see the stunning artistry; which transcended all time and politics and personage by virtue of its undeniable greatness.
Point being, the references and the code meanings all die away. And all that is left is what is universal, the aesthetic effect on the viewer; the magic of art.
Similar, one can read tributes (portraits in words) give two hundred years ago, and be moved, having no knowledge whatsoever of the individual being honored. The art of rhetoric.
Aleš,
I think credentialism is a subcase of the larger Simple Metric Problem, the bane of Engineers, Economists, and competent managers everywhere. Wherein a complex problem is reduced down and compartmentalized into individual subproblems each of which has some formalized measure for progress; on the presumption that attaining all the numeric goals set for the subproblems will solve the larger complex problem.
And what invariably happens is that the organization’s members then switch from solving the complex problem to attaining the metrics. Which quickly translates to, "How do we game the metric in order to keep our jobs?" Completely putting out of mind that the point of the whole enterprise was only to solve the larger complex problem.
Schools “teaching to the test” is a fairly classic example of the Simple Metric Problem, causing 'education' to become a series of trivia and obedience contests; instead of instruction in thinking, doing, self-possession, skepticism, and leading successful, full lives.
Art schools were no different: Howard Pyle, in the 1890s, said he began teaching illustration because of all the failed illustrators coming out of academic schools who couldn’t imagine at a professional level. Academic students were drawing from casts for a year or more until they achieved competency at drawing from casts, then from the model, learned this and that method for doing so. Then learned how to paint from the cast and paint from the model. This goes on and on and they get better and better at the practice of practicing. They learn to copy the works of masters. They learn to diagram compositions. But this gets them no closer to the goal of making inspiring paintings. Meanwhile getting older and older and increasingly desperate and confused. Meanwhile the teacher of the Simple Metric Syllabus, who himself isn’t usually getting or selling artwork, keeps making a living off the wanna-bes he’s directing. As he makes them an expert in the mostly useless Simple Metrics that he himself is only accomplished in.
The instances and variation of the Simple Metric Problem would take days to name. From gamed government statistics, to poll numbers, to the problems of failing restaurants and other businesses to figure out why they are failing, to ivy league degrees (!) in useless subjects, social media engagement numbers, "Oh you're a doctor, lawyer or a teacher, you must be really smart", "You're an artist so you must be talented", "You're wearing an expensive suit so you must be respectable and successful", "It's taught in colleges so it must be science", "They said it on the news so it must be true", "Oh this well known intellectual name said it so it must be smart", "Miss Saigon made a lot of money, it must be a good musical".... etc, etc, ad infinitum.
The simple heuristic has been around forever. But for the last 100+ years, statists, the professions, big business, art sellers, mass media and public education have been institutionalizing its use, indoctrinating the public into cargo cult thinking.
No image represents and signifies itself: it always aims and points to that of which it is the image.
Kev,
Point being, the references and the code meanings all die away. And all that is left is what is universal, the aesthetic effect on the viewer; the magic of art.
I agree, and I think my belief that if the artist does their job the sitter's 'personal dance' will be seen, via the portrait, to step into the Great Dance, would chime in with what you say. Of course the conscious wish of those who commission a portrait is that it achieves a good likeness, but I believe in wanting something produced by an artist rather than a photon-graphic machine evidences the unconscious motivation for them to achieve what we are talking about.
However, I do find myself reflecting on Rossetti's images of Jane Morris or Millais' Elizabeth Siddal floating down the river or that particular young lady who crops up over and over in Waterhouse's pictures. They are in some way different from Burne-Jones' sorrowing maidens. Then there's Michelangelo's bust of Brutus, or Leonardo's 'Lady with an Ermine', different in the same sense from 'David' or the 'Mona Lisa'. This difference has, I feel, something to do with a sense of the particular as opposed to a sense of the generalized.
This said, I do not think a sense of the particular is necessarily incompatible with what is universal, "the aesthetic effect on the viewer; the magic of art". Why this is so, technically speaking, I'm not sure I can easily say.
No image represents and signifies itself: it always aims and points to that of which it is the image.
So an imagined landscape filled with imagined people living out an imagined scenario is pointing "to that of which it is the image?" Really?
Well what is 'that' exactly in the case of a wholly imagined work of art? What is an imagined image an image of?
"This difference has, I feel, something to do with a sense of the particular as opposed to a sense of the generalized.
This said, I do not think a sense of the particular is necessarily incompatible with what is universal, "the aesthetic effect on the viewer; the magic of art". Why this is so, technically speaking, I'm not sure I can easily say."
Music is ~universal, insofar as the experienced effect of sequenced sounds is more or less universal. You have a song, and then you have the arrangement of the song, and then you have the orchestration, and then you have the individual notes. It is all music, all ~universal, but at different scales. This is the way all art is built; there are large complexes of effects, general effects, local effects, and what were called 'special effects' (long before cinema was a thing) which were detail effects.
What connects it all together is theme, which unifies the pattern that encompasses and weaves everything. What is unique about any person is what is resonant about them, which is thematic. (You may recall me diagramming for you, long ago, the titular Lady of Shalott in demonstration of this point.)
Hey Kev,
Yes indeed, I remember it well, your referred to the theme as 'haunting' the painting. And this theme, as your use of the word 'titular' infers, is not Tennyson's ballad.
So thank you for helping me out here with the principle of how the particular, by way of its theme, is embedded in the universal. Very much the expression of 'the one is in the many and the many is in the one'.
Had Courbet had a modern camera, he could have offered you a thousand crotch shots in the time it took him to paint the one. With equal or greater effect on your reptile brain. The reptile brain doesn't register artistry; poetics would just be irrelevant information. Same with camera distortions, both optical and mental. Irrelevant.
Agreed on those accounts, but I fail to see how that answers the thrust of what I said.
Your idea that "There is something inherently necrophilic about the reptile brain getting aroused by the nude body of a dead lady. [...] the deranging nature of photography." doesn't seem any less true for paintings of dead ladies. Nor paintings of food now rotten, paintings of beautiful landscapes now destroyed by development, or proud historical events now over.
Any old representational image, whether photograph or painting or sculpture, can make us desirious of something now gone. In what way is this issue particular to a "deranging nature of photography"?
Any old representational image, whether photograph or painting or sculpture, can make us desirious of something now gone. In what way is this issue particular to a "deranging nature of photography"?
It is in the nature of art to reveal itself to be art, to be poetic, to suggest rather than document. It is, in my view, impossible that a painting doesn't always look like paint, and that art doesn't look like art.
Although many people look at, for example, Bougereau and say they see reality there, one wonders about such commentators if they've ever actually tried to observe reality as it actually looks before making such remarks. Look at any 'hyper-realistic" painting with fresh eyes, and one will not see reality at all. But some kind of poetic version of reality or a kind of weird ocd visual dogma. Even if one can't see brush strokes, you are always looking at some kind of interpretation of reality when you look at paint. (I understand that the whole suite of visual effects that great artists use so thoroughly fools some people that they will never agree with me on this point.)
Meanwhile, it is in the nature of photography to document... by recording the light rays bouncing into the lens at a moment in time. There is an objectivity to photography because it offers the actual light rays that would have hit the eye had one been in the stead of the camera. Even in black and white, this is the case.
So there is a fundamental difference in quality between the two types of representation which causes distinct experiential differences.
Do you see where I'm going with this, or do I need to flesh it out more?
Could you close the loop and explain why the desire sparked by a poetic or interpretative object isn't "deranged" but the desire triggered by something produced mechanically/journalistically is?
"Could you close the loop and explain why the desire sparked by a poetic or interpretative object isn't "deranged" but the desire triggered by something produced mechanically/journalistically is?"
If one is sexually attracted to something appearing on a piece of paper, or a glass screen, or a piece of canvas; obviously that is unnatural and at least somewhat deranged.
The hallmark of addictive stuff is that it provides an abnormally strong sensation (supernormal stimulus), is hijacking a normal physiological need or process (and oversatisfying it), is essentially unearned via resolute effort and relatively easy to obtain, and is lacking in anything nutritive or substantive.
Ten thousand nudes have been painted by great artists which which are so beautiful as works of suggestion and abstraction; as poetry and beautiful truth - that they transcend sexual attraction. Take all the same poses via photography, and you are ogling a real nude girl; a voyeur through somebody else's peephole/aperture.
Obviously there are a lot of bad erotic works of art that fail to transcend anything, that fail as poetry. But no work of art is actually capturing the light coming through a peephole and passing it around. Pornography is nearly 100% photographic for a reason.
Lost a comment here, David; my reply to Richard. (Just after I said one should always save comments before posting. Smh)
What is an imagined image an image of?
An othering and entirely propagandistic understanding of Hamas, for instance.
A little known fact is that pornography did not exist until the invention of the photography in the XIX century :P
At the same time, the multimillion industry of hentai is completely fueled by artists that can not afford a photo camera.
Kev Ferrara-- I found it, Kev, right next to a comment from the top "celebrity escort service in delhi." (I kid you not.). Your comment is now back in its rightful place above. It seems like every few months blogger "improves" its filters, just to keep me from getting too complacent.
Thanks David.
A little known fact is that p***ography did not exist until the invention of the photography in the XIX century :P
At the same time, the multimillion industry of h**tai is completely fueled by artists that can not afford a photo camera.
Mocking your own reading comprehension errors? Or your own ignorance?
I considered those points and still wrote what I wrote. Because I've read a few studies on the issue, plus internet traffic stats.
And, of course, common sense keeps reminding one that a few hundred photos may be taken in the time it takes to make one crappy drawing. Ten thousand for every good drawing.
Furthermore, the worst animated movie done by a low end studio takes about a week (10,000+ minutes) per minute of screen time. A junk sleaze live movie shot by a low end studio takes about a 6 hours or less to shoot a half hour. That means 12 minutes per minute of screen time. That's a 99.89% difference in speed between animation and live action. (Nevermind how many more live-actions are in production daily than animated.)
That's why "nearly 100% photographic" is an accurate stat.
Thanks Kev, I agree with your Simple Metric Problem concept. We train people to avoid risks, accept values rooted in the status quo and acquire definitive status symbols, which “prove” lifelong professionalism regardless of what we do, which all encourages an attitude towards the kind of success that erodes the community that democracy demands. (btw I’m looking forward to your essays on Walter Everett on the official page)
Kev, it seems you have not considered things enough. First, the fact that drawn/animated porn is done at all despite being so expensive compared to photography/film/video shows that enough people find something in it to make it economically viable.
Then, you failed to address the actual mock point that graphic pornography predates photography for centuries and spans all styles and genres, from realism to cartoons. Not to mention other arts like literature: if arousal from a drawn image is deranged, what is arousal from written words? I'd say is deranged in as much as the human race is deranged.
Finally, it's obvious you are not very experienced handling "simple metrics": what you want is not totals for drawn vs photographic pornography, but what proportion of drawn and photographic material made is pornographic.
Lost another comment here.
Restating the lost comment:
The points I've raised have nothing to do with whether anyone cares to make animated or drawn versions of the type of content in question, nor whether it is economically viable to do so. Nor does the proportion of photographs that are of this type out of the total number of photos matter as to a judgement of photography as deranging. This is all hand-waving.
Mainly because there is a deeper argument at play; a fundamental issue with photography per se. I've previously discussed other deranging aspects: Joseph Campbell's discussion of the question of deceptive substitutes (relating to my early point about the nature of addictive stuff), also the falsity of frozen time and the flattening of dimensionality without aesthetic effects to correct it. The insensate and unthinking mechanicalness of the capturing. The illusion of intimacy. Encouraging passive voyeurism. The presentation of necessarily insufficient facts as sufficient truth and the confusion of the fact and truth. And so on.
Meanwhile, a great drawing tells you it is a drawing (reveals itself as a fiction) and invites you to contemplate a kind of interpretive tribute to a person that is an aesthetic entity unto itself, not the person himself.
I didn't address your 'mock point' about historical material of the naughty type in question because I thought it was obviously irrelevant. The history of photograph-based men's mags (and other material) in the 20th century alone tells the tale. I'd guess that the entire history of salacious hand-done content prior to the relaxation of moral standards in printed material - from ancient 'fertility sculptures' to "tijuana bibles" - was overmatched in production by photography sometime around 1958 or so. And since then it has been an absolute blow out; a complete rout in favor of photographic production. For all the reasons previously stated.
Thus you've made no argument at all yet as to why 'nearly 100% photographic' is incorrect.
Oh, it's not irrelevant at all. You ARE misusing simple metrics. For a technical explanation, check out wikipedia for conditional probabilities or the Bayes theorem. Photography has drowned out all graphic production, not only pornography. You can not claim there is something special in its content or specifics that made it particularly vulnerable to photography unless you prove it has suffered from the photography more than, say, architectonic illustration, news illustrations, or portraiture. In fact, I suspect it's the opposite. I can not prove it, nor will I get into the depths of hell needed to prove it, but pornographic illustration, be in the form of comics or commission-based works, is one of the healthiest segments of illustration. And I can think of lots of practical reasons of why that could be.
One can't disambiguate any of this stuff for the sake of econometric analyses. Photography’s inherent and inherently deranging aspects (some mentioned) inexorably aggregate to play major roles in all its market successes in all the fields it dominates, from news to ads to magazine illustration to movies to pictures of mama. Yet when used at full blast without morals, ethics, values, or taste, these same inherent factors make it even more optimized for producing and proliferating 'interested' content.
That 'hot' visual material causes so much addiction and is so easy to produce via camera - allowing multiple billions of overstimulating images to appear "free-of-charge" online such that it constitutes a cultural as well as public mental health crisis – means it doesn't matter if such content illustrated-on-commission is more commercially viable than the rest of the current illustration field. Even if true, such is just a tiny percentage of the overall ‘demand’ for 'hot' imagery generally (by all reports and measures).
But I don’t think it is true. The ubiquity/infinite scalability plus rampant content theft in the ‘hot’ photo industry entails an almost completely devalued market that can only survive by providing boatloads of cheaply-produced and effective dreck daily for tiny amounts of money to as many limbic slaves as possible. It is the very opposite of a boutique industry. Which explains why the invariably execrable dreck-artists that one sees selling on ebay and comicartfans seem to be selling so cheaply. (Whether there is some dedicated sites for ordering and selling this material seems likely, but wouldn’t change anything. The overall industry is still nearly 100% photographic.)
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