Whenever I travel to New York City, I make a point of visiting the Society of Illustrators' Museum of American Illustration. The current show is comprised of classic masterpieces from the Society's permanent collection, most of which are rarely seen. I heartily recommend it to anyone in the NY vicinity.
The star of the show, as far as I'm concerned, is this muscular tour de force by Harold von Schmidt:
This large oil painting (over four feet wide) was greatly reduced for publication in a 1933 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. It must be seen in person to be appreciated.
The Society's exhibition showcases a cross section of other strong artistic personalities. William A. Smith is represented by one of his gritty noir paintings.
There's a striking Bob Peak employing his trademark psychedelic colors
And illustrators such as Orson Lowell and Henry Raleigh show off their draftsmanship.
The illustrators in the show included many bold, opinionated artists who helped shape the popular taste of their generation.
When I left the Society I walked down the street to the Museum of Modern Art where I viewed the work of conceptual artist Luis Camnitzer. His exhibition consisted of 195 pages from the 2009 Montevideo phone book with the names of victims of political repression in Uruguay.
The pages were framed and displayed in rows:
I had to fight my way through the crowd of art lovers in order to admire Camnitzer's photocopies close up.
Today our definition of "art" is broad enough to encompass both Harold von Schmidt's horse race painting and Camnitzer's phone book pages. In fact, our perimeter for art is sufficiently porous to include almost anything.
This creates a real challenge for us to articulate standards-- any type of standards-- sufficient to make such diverse types of "art" cohere as a category. For the word "art" to have meaning, it must stand for something more than random jumbles of unrelated molecules. Even Clement Greenberg, the leading advocate for abstract expressionism, wrote that the aesthetic validity of nonrepresentational art can only come from "obedience to some worthy constraint."
Judging from my mail, we are nowhere close to a consensus on standards for "a worthy constraint." Readers frequently object when I criticize a picture. They say, "You're not allowed to criticize a lack of skill or crummy drawing or poor design, because such cosmetic concerns are irrelevant-- this picture is more about the concept, or about irony or cultural observations. Its visual appearance is secondary." Or they say, "You shouldn't say one picture is better than the other because all standards are inherently subjective. You should accept a picture for what it is. If you don't like it simply pass it by."
I agree that each artwork is entitled to be judged by its success or failure in achieving its own ambitions. (Of course, I also believe the quality of its ambitions are also fair game for criticism, but I'm old fashioned.) But subjectivity doesn't means that two works of art with different ambitions can't be fruitfully contrasted. I believe apples and oranges can be weighed on the same scale, just as I believe the art at the Society of Illustrators and MOMA can be meaningfully compared. An excellent image is still superior to a mediocre concept most days of the week. Many of the anemic intellectual puzzles found at MOMA melt away in the face of some of the bold artistic choices at the Society exhibition.
For better or worse, we seem to be living through a period when it is popular to focus on concept over visual execution. But anyone who believes conceptual art is categorically superior should visit the Society of Illustrators to refresh their memory of what creative design, composition, harmony balance and other traditional aesthetic experiences have to offer.
82 comments:
I went one time in NY and went to the Museum. It was closed :-)
I need to go back to the Society. I used to go there a lot.
David, by "quality of its ambitions" you mean hierarchical determination of values compared among various artistic types, not the nature of what art should aspire to do, right? I guess I'm more old fashioned than yourself. Personally I don't have a problem throwing stuff out of the art field, narrowing the category itself. Since I can't experience an intensive, uplifting aesthetic communication through intellectually constructed conceptual piece, I don't know how to value "achieving its own ambitions" in terms of artistic merit. I don't think ambitions of a drifted dead plant in a gallery could lead to a meaningful artistic experience so I don't care much if a drifted plant manages to bring us viewers to some conservationist, existential or whatever intended conclusion. The nature of such work's communication doesn't carry the qualities that an artistic experience is supposed to.
Or they say, "You can't claim one picture is better than the other because all standards are inherently subjective."
Their art probably hangs beside Rembrandt. These people are idiots.
I just want to thank you for these articles. I sometimes think I'm taking crazy pills and this is a breath of fresh air. This blog is consistently a source of inspiration and education for me.
I'm inclined to agree with Aleš that the definition of art needs to be tightened. A workable first cut would be use of the term Fine Arts in, say, the 1900 sense. Then something like Fine Commercial Arts might be added to account for the sort of illustration found on E. 63rd Street by David. That would rule out the Montevideo phonebook, cans of an artist's merde, sharks in formaldehyde, Tracey Emin's bed and that ilk.
Then there is the matter of a general loss of standards imposed by our intellectual betters often found on university campuses whose goal is the destruction of that eeeevil Western Civilization. That will be tougher to fight given that, as mentioned in the post, subjectivity is an issue tough to deal with barring exercise of fiat or force. And bravo to mentioning "the quality of its ambitions are also fair game" ... recall the road paved with good intentions.
Thanks for posting this great painting of Dad's. I fall into the category of someone who was raised in a household which included a great illustrator, but an illustrator who avidly visited MOMA his entire life and had a huge circle of friends who were at the cutting edge of non-representational painting and sculpture. He himself painted
experimentally; never fully abstract, but those paintings were very successful. I went to every modern, contemporary, historical, or ethnic museum or gallery in New York with him on our weekly jaunts from Bucks County, when he would have his meetings with art directors regarding some job or other. We of course went to the Society as well, where we half-lived before we moved out of NY to Bucks county in 1956.
I am proud that I was raised with such a broad view of the possibilities of expression. I inherited what I've often been told is the "good eye"that both my parents had/have, and an understanding of the "structure" (in its various meanings) that underlies my OWN fairly broad definition of art. Occasionally, since I was brought up in a later era with somewhat different concerns, my father and I would disagree about a painter, notably Anselm Kiefer, whose crusty work I love. It upset Dad very much that Kiefer's work would need so much conservation over time. Understandable. But Kiefer's work is so very tactile and brings me exactly where I think Kiefer himself was positioned when he did the painting.
I absorbed most of my knowledge and skill in art and art history from Dad and my mother who herself was and is a very talented painter, but I went on to study studio arts with no particularly commercial plan. I work commercially now, but that broad scope of artistic appreciation has served me well.
I must add that recently walked into a large museum in LA and felt insulted by what was on every wall, feeling that the building was wasted by the exhibition. Didn't even like the building. So I'm finally at that point; where often I do not find the structure, depth or emotional impact, underlying my own definition of art, in many but not all contemporary works.
On a completely other subject, I love that Harold Von Schmidt painting. David knows I have a huge interest in horse depiction, and Von Schmidt sure nailed it.
Kim Smith
Li-Ann-- Yes, you have to keep an eye on the Society's hours. They are closed on Sunday and only open a half day on Saturday.
MORAN-- The Society has become more robust in the last several years and is definitely worth following. It has three exhibits running right now.
Ales-- By "quality of its ambitions" I mean that some artists aspire to take on greater challenges than others, requiring a wider range of abilities or a more profound thought process. As William Blake wrote, "Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street." Sometimes such works fall short of their ambitions. Sometimes radical and prescient innovations look dated and cliched a few decades later. I think the size of an artist's aspirations should be taken into consideration when evaluating the success of a work of art. A magnificent failure can sometimes be more worthwhile than a safe, technically perfect drawing that is simply a variation on a minor theme.
I have felt the same reactions you describe, but at the same time I think we have to tread carefully when we say that a "work's communication doesn't carry the qualities that an artistic experience is supposed to." There is such a range of artistic experiences and such a variety of legitimate art. It's a challenge to simultaneously keep an open mind to new kinds of experiences and to recognize the "idiots."
Lobeless-- What a kind comment! Thank you, your response means a great deal.
Donald Pittenger-- If you can locate someone with the power to tighten the definition of art, I would appreciate an introduction. I fear that for the short term, the entropy of art may be a one way process; there is just too much of an economic investment in merde, sharks and Tracey Emin's bed for anyone to give up too easily.
(I'm glad that you mentioned Emin, because I think she is exhibit A for the proposition that conceptual art is not entitled to preferential treatment merely because it is the most recent style. The intellectual and emotional quality of those concepts must be taken into consideration, and Emin seems to be responsible for many of the most light weight platitudes on the art market today.)
Kim Smith-- How nice to hear from you. I am not surprised to learn that your father, the excellent illustrator William A. Smith, was an avid follower of progressive art. Robert Fawcett shared your father's interests and was a personal friend of Henry Moore. Another illustrator, Austin Briggs became a charter member of MOMA when it was founded. In those early days, people with intellectual curiosity followed what was taking place with modern art, and the vanguard of the illustration community was as curious and as energetic as they come. Even today I think the art at MOMA from the 1930s to the 1960s stands out well. However, as the art field became poisoned with money, and as fine art became more decadent, self-absorbed and irrelevant, you can see the quality of MOMA's offerings dwindle.
Re "If you can locate someone with the power to tighten the definition of art, I would appreciate an introduction."
Somewhat agreed regarding entropy ... or might it be thought of as a pendulum swing? The former is one-way, the latter more of a dialectic. Given fashion swings, transitions from austerity to over-ornamentation and back again in automobile styling, etc., I think pendulum is probably more valid than what Newton stated in physics.
The advent of Modernism and its sweep to dominance wasn't due to one man wielding power. Instead, it bubbled up away from the establishment and eventually became establishment bit by bit as new generations moved into positions of art-critical influence, plus some conversions of existing influentials. Once reaching critical mass, there was power to determine what was acceptable (I think of my limited architectural training in the late 1950s).
So the process of moving to a different dominant aesthetic will take time, though there is plenty of evidence that over the last few decades traditional art is gaining acceptance again. A slow process, but more and more minds are being changed. And it probably helps that much current "art" has long since reached the point that the people who most admire the emperor's postmodern clothes are those with skin in the game (critics, academics, dealers, collectors and art flippers, museum directors, etc.).
Though this is not exactly on topic, I thought I'd comment again. I was just showing the blog and Dad's painting to a colleague and we were commenting on the various references which come to mind: Rodin, Daumier, David's "Death of Marat", Michelangelo's "Pieta". Always interesting to see the affinities in an illustration....
Kim Smith
Boy David the world sure looks like a more physical place in those illustration.
Although the painting by Bob Peak seems to be sliding into a more flatten conceptual space then the other illustrators.
I believe that a work can be said to become Art when a feeling is given exterior form as a shape. What is a painting but a shape made from something felt? The same can be said of literature and music. The means and the subject are indissolubly fused, if this does not happen, we have 'Illustration'.
And this is why photography cannot be art. It is also the reason why the 'found object' cannot be art. And why nearly all the productions under the Post Modernist banner are not art - including the example David drew our attention to in his post.
“It would take a while before the postmodern Narcissus perceived the ruins of society behind the emptiness of his mirror.”
Paul Verhaeghe
How can I see the Society's collection during the rest of the year?
JSL
Chris: "I believe that a work can be said to become Art when a feeling is given exterior form as a shape."
"And this is why photography cannot be art."
do you also think that movies can't be 'art' since they also rely on photography ?
Laurence, pictures rely on paint. But paint on its own ain't art.
The movie is shaped by its editing: in the writing, in the acting, in the directing and in the final cutting.
Donald Pittenger-- I agree that the pendulum will swing in another direction, but the technologies that have eroded the demand for art-- for example, photos and videos that serve the purpose that portraits and historical military paintings once served-- and the technologies that have reduced the skill and talent needed for representational painting-- for example, Photoshop-- those aren't going anywhere as long as we have electricity. They will only become more powerful.
Kim Smith-- Thanks, yes many of these illustrators appreciated and followed classical painters.
Tom-- I agree. These painters had a far better appreciation for the colors and shapes of the physical world than the current generation of illustrators.
Chris Bennett wrote: "And this is why photography cannot be art. It is also the reason why the 'found object' cannot be art. And why nearly all the productions under the Post Modernist banner are not art."
Wow, Chris, I thought I was a retro guy but you've even beaten me. Your definition of art ("when a feeling is given exterior form as a shape") has integrity and internal consistency but it also excludes a substantial amount of what most creatures walking upright with opposable thumbs on this planet would include as art today. Can't photography, like movies, be "shaped by the editing"? The choice of subject, the composition, the angle, the lighting, the contrast, type of lens, shutter speed-- aren't these all artistic choices? If not, how can we all tell the difference between a "good" photo and a "bad" photo?
Tom-- It looks like it will take the "postmodern Narcissus" a while longer thanks to the invention of the selfie stick.
JSL-- Are you a member? They've always been generous with me when I had specific works I wanted to see, for example when I was writing a book about an illustrator.
"Can't photography, like movies, be "shaped by the editing"? The choice of subject, the composition, the angle, the lighting, the contrast, type of lens, shutter speed-- aren't these all artistic choices? If not, how can we all tell the difference between a "good" photo and a "bad" photo?
Well David, to take these things one at a time:
Choice of subject is not in itself an artistic choice, but a personal one - many have chosen apple to paint, many have made cider, but few have made art out of them.
The 'composition' of a photograph is entirely to do with when and where the lens was pointing when the shutter was pressed. So one might say the 'choice' to do this is the little window where the art comes in. Is this 'choice' to be considered authorship? I believe not, it is only a 'noticing' of something that is worth recording. (I'm completely with Kev Ferrara here in his assertion that photography is essentially journalism)
Angle, lighting and contrast are all contained by the choice of when and where to press the shutter.
The type of lens and shutter speed, like selected whether to use filberts, brights or sable brushes to paint a picture, is not an artistic choice but a technical one.
The photographic image is, I believe, essentially a found object. And being so, it is essentially devoid of authorship.
Chris, you're talking as if there's only the 'photojournalism' type of photography and nothing else.
you're ignoring a photographer like Gregory Crewdson who often builds elaborate sets and manages every aspect of the shot down to the smallest detail, much like a film set but only for a single frame rather than for a moving image. therefore his photographs aren't simply "a 'noticing' of something that is worth recording."
Chris Bennett (and Kev Ferrra, if he wants to defend his unreasonable claim)-- if photography is essentially devoid of authorship, why is it so easy to recognize the work of Edward Steichen? We can easily pick his photos of roses out of a thousand other photos of roses. What makes Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado so powerful, when a hundred other photographers merely record the object they find? What makes the photos of Diane Arbus so eerie? Why do Thomas Eakins' photos reflect the qualities of his paintings? Photographers such as Eugene von Bruenchenhein (who I've written about on this blog) take photographs in a reportorial style, but when you obsessively take pictures of your wife naked except for the crowns and jewelry that you fashion for her out of clay, the "reportorial" photographs still reflect very distinctive personal choices and eccentricities. If we are able to distinguish between good photographs and bad (and I'm willing to bet you can) doesn't that mean photographs are not devoid of authorship?
I understand Kev's analogy between photography and journalism but it is pretty well established that there is a continuum between journalism and literature. There are hundreds of journalists whose writing qualifies as art-- Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Arthur Koestler, William Allen White, to name a few. If journalists can be artists, why can't photographers (who Kev thinks are "essentially journalists") be artists too?
Laurence: In cases like Crewdson and others like him we are not talking about photography but building a mise en scene that is recorded. We are assessing a construction by way of a photographic record. It's exactly the same as appraising the work of Andy Goldsworthy by way of photography.
And because it is a record of a construction (whether that construction has any merit as art is irrelevant) it is still essentially journalism.
David: I ought to make it clear that I am not quoting Kev directly, but rather expressing what I understand to be his take on this. My purpose in mentioning him is to give credit for something I have come to understand by way of him. Kev no doubt has many caveats and further conditions to the statement, but this is my particular understanding of what I think he means.
I don't believe that because someone has a habit of noticing particular things and takes records of them in particular aspects it makes them an author in the way it is understood applied to what an artist does. 'Distinctive personal choices and eccentricities' does not an artist make, otherwise we would all be artists...
A journalist can be an artist, yes, but not by writing journalism. Are you saying that journalism can be art?
couldn't agree less Chris.
Crewdson's sets exist for the singular viewpoint of his camera. they're not installations designed to walk through and be viewed from multiple angles.
and, like a film set, if you panned left or right you'd start to see the edges of the scenery and lighting equipment. everything is designed specifically for how it will appear in the final photograph.
Yes Laurence, I agree. But my point is that it is what the photograph is recording that solicits our interest, not the photographic surface per se. This, I believe, is true of all photographs.
i don't see a problem with that Chris.
couldn't you view the negative and / or print as simply the medium on which the work (in the case of Crewdson) is trapped, in the same way that a painted image is trapped in oil on canvas ?
(personally, i see little of interest in the actual surface quality of paint or canvas devoid of the image... it's the image on the canvas / board / paper that interests me)
"couldn't you view the negative and / or print as simply the medium on which the work (in the case of Crewdson) is trapped, in the same way that a painted image is trapped in oil on canvas ?"
Therein lies my distinction.
Just to recap, I wrote: "A work can be said to become Art when a feeling is given exterior form as a shape... The means and the subject are indissolubly fused, if this does not happen, we have 'Illustration'."
So by my definition, it follows that the image, to be Art, is shaped by its making. An artist has a feeling and they struggle to give it corporeal shape, be it a painting, music, literature or a film. With painting, the marks related to one another on the surface of the picture are at one and the same time expressing the image of subject and are themselves given meaningfulness by the subject they are coalescing into. The magic, the meaning, is contained in their fusion, not in their separateness. As I said, when this doesn't happen, we have illustration.
So when the handmade image becomes just a way of rendering something in the world regardless of the medium by which the image of it is realised we are left only with 'subject'. How the subject is realised is where the authorship lies. When brought to us impartially, which the camera does by default, it is only subject, ie; journalism.
So I am not talking about superficial aspects of the surface like 'texture', 'impasto' or 'pentimento' here. I'm talking about authored connections across the surface by which the meaning of the work is, quite literally, spoken. And this is precisely why it can still be felt (though not so vividly) in reproduction.
Chris, the 'shaping' of Crewdson's work happens with the set construction, set dressing, directing of actors, lighting etc.
i see a direct correlation between the amount of time, thought and work that the construction of one of his images takes and the amount of time, thought and work that a painter might spend at the canvas.
the fact that the final thing is recorded on film by a camera doesn't invalidate all of that work.
I totally agree. But the work on the set is separate from the photograph, which just records it. The quality of the work is not a product of the photograph per se.
Chris, i would go even further and say that there's no way that Crewdson could achieve that work UNLESS it was recorded on film... in the same way that a movie is only viewable by being recorded on film; you can't show a motion picture any other way, since it includes performances by living people which are preserved on film for repeat viewing.
Crewdson's sets couldn't be viewed in real space/ time because A: they're not complete 'in the round' and B: like movies, they also include living people, and it would be impossible for the actors to hold the poses indefinitely.
therefore the 'captured moment' aspect of photography is actually integral to the work.
David, apologies for going off-topic.
as for the actual point of the post, that "An excellent image is still superior to a mediocre concept most days of the week"... i couldn't agree more.
Laurence John-- I think Crewdson provides an excellent test. He's as close to a movie director (or an orchestra conductor) as I think we are likely to find behind a still photograph. He consciously shapes a narrative (although not overly literal) and creates every ingredient, just as a movie director has final approval of the cast, the wardrobe, the scenery, etc. It's very hard for me to think of a consistent basis for distinguishing between art and what Crewdson does.
Chris Bennett wrote: " I ought to make it clear that I am not quoting Kev directly, but rather expressing what I understand to be his take on this. "
Don't worry about it; if Kev didn't say it explicitly he probably thought it, followed by some wicked insult. Your version will do just fine.
Chris Bennett and Laurence John-- I think your discussion is a variant of the key concern that I was stretching for in this post.
Chris writes, "it is what the photograph is recording that solicits our interest, not the photographic surface per se. This, I believe, is true of all photographs." For me, this dichotomy comes apart at the edges. How the photograph is taken-- with black and white or color film, with a fish eye lens or a standard lens, with a super fast exposure or a slow, Ansel Adams style exposure, with high contrast or low contrast film-- makes a huge difference to the way we perceive "what the photograph is recording." It is form melding with content in precisely the way I think Chris says is required for art.
But circling back to my initial quandary, if Chris agrees that there are (at least) two ingredients to art: form and content. ("a feeling is given exterior form as a shape"). What if the feeling is jejune but the exterior form is brilliant? Can the good form compensate for the bad content? Does bad form + good content result in art as good as good form + bad content? I think so much of what we see from MOMA is bad form rationalized because of good content. Personally, I think much of the content at MOMA today is puerile, but I'm willing to put that issue aside in the hopes of isolating and clarifying the standards we apply to art.
Chris seems to have strong standards about the form of art, and to feel that the form cannot be a mere photographic capture. But applying the dilemma described above, Chris, would you say a photograph that conveys profound emotional content is as art-worthy as a brilliantly executed painting of a superficial, emotionally callow subject?
"How the photograph is taken-- with black and white or color film, with a fish eye lens or a standard lens, with a super fast exposure or a slow, Ansel Adams style exposure, with high contrast or low contrast film-- makes a huge difference to the way we perceive "what the photograph is recording." It is form melding with content in precisely the way I think Chris says is required for art.
That is a good point David, and helps to focus the issue: The technical conditions of the camera, set by the photographer when they press the shutter and afterwards in the darkroom or in front of the Photoshop application, are really only a spin on the found object (the passing moment chosen to be recorded) and are by their nature before and after the fact and therefore superficial and intrinsically 'outside' the subject. In other words the subject of the photograph as not been built out of the means used to present it, they are only commenting on it by way of adjustment to its given settings.
"But applying the dilemma described above, Chris, would you say a photograph that conveys profound emotional content is as art-worthy as a brilliantly executed painting of a superficial, emotionally callow subject?"
The degree of emotional content in a work is not proportional to the degree to which a work can be said to contain Art. Those bed sheet commercial 'illustrations' you posted a while back have far more Art in them than the paintings Britain's official war artist brought back from the Gulf. The term 'illustration' here should be swapped; 'illustrated journalism' in the latter and Art that happened to be commissioned for commerce in the former.
Further to this, I'd say that the quality of Art is not proportional to the profundity of its emotional content. Inside the great galleries of the world one can walk through roomfuls of huge brown monstrosities depicting 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' or whatever and be unmoved, only to be spellbound by a painting of an apple on a plate. Ruben's 'Decent of Christ', or Vermeer's 'Maid pouring Milk'? Humanity helping a man down from the cross on which he has been crucified, or a young girl going about her daily chores? I am moved equally by both these paintings because it is the communication of a truth that touches me (Art), not the truth itself (life).
Nice definition Chris.
Pretty funny David, I forgot about selfies!
Laurence: "therefore the 'captured moment' aspect of photography is actually integral to the work."
This is why I gave my definition first: A work can be said to become Art when a feeling is given exterior form as a shape.
How do you see the process of recording the found 'conditions of a moment' (regardless of whether that moment is the completion of a construction you have made) being able to fulfil that definition such that you can call that process Art?
Photographing the construction or set-up in order to ensure that the viewer looks at it from a certain angle is just a more convenient way of placing their eyeballs in the correct place in front of it. In other words the photography part is entirely functional; just a higher tech version of the hole at the side of a box in which one views those 17th century models of Dutch interiors.
But then again Laurence, perhaps you disagree with my definition. In which case the ground of our discussion would have to shift somewhat. :)
Laurence John wrote: "David, apologies for going off-topic."
Laurence, no one has stayed on topic since this blog began, and the discussion is always better for it.
as i said above Chris, i view the photography element in Crewdson's work to be just as necessary as the photography element in a movie; i don't see how either could be achieved without it. everything is created FOR the film frame. the film part is not merely a record of something that was going on regardless.
i do think however, that many photographers are simply talented technicians, and that f-stops and lenses don't an artist make, any more than brushes and tubes of paint do.
i don't place Crewdson in that camp, which is why i used him as an example of (in my opinion) an 'art' photographer.
p.s. i don't regard Crewdson's work as being the 'found conditions of a moment'.
Firstly, David, thank you so much for the excellent scans and close ups of that wonderful Von Schmidt. I'd been seeking an accurate telling of that painting for a long time. And these shots fit the bill splendidly!
It is a bit difficult to just jump in here because there's been so much that warrants response. I can't even begin to hit all the issues.
I'll start by pointing out that any debate about, let alone new codification of, the standards of Art can only proceed from actual art appreciation. As opposed to or at least distinguished from moral, political, intellectual, or ethical appreciations. Or even appreciations of what excellent documentation entails, or such matters as decorativeness or symbolism. (Since I cannot even manage to get a discussion going on the differences between prettiness and beauty, I realize that I'm basically tilling a rock quarry here.)
The first step in art appreciation must be to understand the actual language of art. This is the very crux of the matter because without this understanding, every possible mode of communication can be thrown into the same catch-all bin of Art. And the complete want of an understanding of this language is exactly why the high visual arts are in their current cultural state.
So I will begin with Chris Bennett's assertion that "A work can be said to become Art when a feeling is given exterior form as a shape." Implicit in this statement is a kind of definition of the language of art which is profoundly incomplete. Namely that art, at bottom, is the manipulation of shape. And also (!) that the way in which art functions to provide aesthetic information is by the translation of an emotion into an "exterior" manifestation or embodiment, which is also not so.
This may have just been a sloppy formulation by Chris, which he felt compelled to defend given how strongly he put it forward, so I'll refrain from dumping on him too hard. I know he knows that shape is only one part of the visual language.
Actually codifying the specific constituents of the visual language turns out to be a supremely difficult matter, one that has occupied me for quite a few years. I've not seen a single artistic or scientific reference that even gets close to tackling the matter with rigor. I keep thinking I have it all, and then some subtlety makes itself known which clarifies or distinguishes things even further. The task translates into the question, "What are the simplest plasticities (plastic simplexes) available to the visual artist." Another way to ask the question is, "List the essential abstract qualities the visual artist may mold in the effort to visually symbolize." The second question after this is how such simplicities form complexities, the basics of how the language achieves structure.
The even more profound question still is, "How do plastic simplexes mean?" And then, "How do plastic complexes mean." And all these questions stand outside the matter of referential meaning. Which is another crucial point which will allow for sensible distinctions between Art .... and all other forms of communication, which must rely on reference. If one does not understand the distinction between aesthetic force and reference, the conversation cannot even begin. In other words, one must appreciation, fully, that there is a essential, insurmountable difference between the language of Art and the language of text. And with that appreciation, the dirt-simple logic must follow that a work written in the language of art must de facto be art. And a work written in the ready-made language of text is de facto a work of text.
Kev Ferrara-- I'm glad to hear that Harold von Schmidt horse race painting called out to you, as it did to me. It's a real beauty. We tend to forget how good von Schmidt was.
As for your larger point, I don't pretend to be have a comprehensive list of the constituents of visual language, but I'd bet reasonable people can agree on the most important ingredients, and I think those ingredients should be sufficient to enable us to draw the most important conclusions. In the comparison I posited, the conceptual piece was a purely mechanical reproduction of printed pages, requiring no hand/eye coordination, taste or skill (other than, perhaps, the choice of black certificate frames). It embodied an idea in physical form, and so it necessarily contains some constituents of visual language, but they are minimal. The contrast between apples and oranges (or rather, between art devoted almost exclusively to conceptual content and art which respects visual form) is instructive, I think.
The former received a prestigious location, big reviews and the concomitant large audience. The more traditional art, which was the produced by the most talented illustrators of their era, who'd spent a lifetime honing their craft, was displayed in a more humble venue without a crowd. Personally, I think it's an excellent example of the importance of the role played by the Society of Illustrators. Others can draw whatever conclusions they want about our cultural priorities from the juxtaposition of the two.
Laurence said: as i said above Chris, i view the photography element in Crewdson's work to be just as necessary as the photography element in a movie; i don't see how either could be achieved without it. everything is created FOR the film frame. the film part is not merely a record of something that was going on regardless.
As Chris said, the photo is there to frame the point of looking at the staged scene. You said that those sets couldn't be viewed irl because »they're not complete 'in the round'«. But do they have to be? The photographer wants the set to be viewable only from one point of view anyway. And you said that »it would be impossible for the actors to hold the poses indefinitely«, but we don't need them to do that, a moment would be enough to see the desired image without a camera, right? We need the camera just to copy the fleeting scene on a permanent medium.
In the case of a movie you can't stand on the set and see the actor talking to a son, immediately followed by watching him in the middle of a war from the past. You can't see the directors desired idea irl because only the movie which happens over time contains things like rhythm of the scenes, etc. which is needed for the emotional content to get formed. A mere video capture of a single performance on the other hand is probably similarly journalistic as photography is, it's a factual recording of an actor performing his art.
Well, that's how Chris and Kevs views make sense to me, I hope my wrong conclusions get corrected.
Laurence said: and that f-stops and lenses don't an artist make, any more than brushes and tubes of paint do.
The question is does the camera hardware/software provide you with the same level of freedom when it comes to creating an image as brushes and tubes of paint do? After you determine those few adjustments and effects on the camera program mode and you press the button, you're done, the machine ignores your existence and performs the creating process of the image by itself.
It embodied an idea in physical form, and so it necessarily contains some constituents of visual language, but they are minimal.
I think not. If we actually scrutinize the thing, we see that the piece does not actually embody its idea in physical form. The idea, such as it is, is not embodied, but is written in the text on the pages in conjunction with the text accompanying the display of photocopied pages which explains the piece. Thus, it is not actually the visual language of art that is doing any of the meaning in the display.
Therefore any theory that attempts to assert that this display is a work of art misunderstands the basic difference between text and art. It has nothing whatever to do with the Von Schmidt.
I don't pretend to be have a comprehensive list of the constituents of visual language, but I'd bet reasonable people can agree on the most important ingredients
It is not a question of importance at all. The point is to look at the language of art as a scientist might in order to arrive at the full basic lexicon objectively, the whole thing, without bias, and beyond question. And then, and only then, can the discussion really begin. Because without the scientific foundation, nobody can tell who is crazy and who is reasonable in the argument.
For me, there needs to be Heart in anything I consider art; this nebulous thing is an emotional response within me elicited by the painting or whatever I am looking at. I notice that I perceive no heart when the hand of the maker is not evident, and I don't mean visible brush strokes. I mean "editing" as in deciding to make this mark and not another one, this placement on the page; deciding on the gestures of the actors in a play; deciding on the light, the framing, the dialogue (or lack of it), and the editing in a film; the interrelationships of forms in sculpture; or shape and colour and texture in painting; of pattern whether it be by melody or rhythm in music. Some photography moves me, usually more from a journalistic sense. I have clipped newspaper or magazine photos of people and pinned them up to look at again for years & years, because their expressions are so divinely human. Usually these are related to war and strife; the humanity that comes out of good people caught up in horrible things.
I am old, and I still keep the notion that art needs to be both expression and communication, and that each form has some skills which are used as standards because without them, there is no Heart, just a lot of hoo-rah. It is not easily defined, it is apparently very non-au-courant, and yet I think that children and open adults do perceive that they respond with more heart to certain works, and that jars of unspeakable things, clothing made of pounded-out sheets of meat, and generally sloppily conceived and sloppily presented conceptual art cancels its own message, whatever it might be. I do not believe that all art is equally valid, although some things may turn the self-annointed cognoscenti into raving enthusiasts, that doesn't mean the majority of the population doesn't see that the emperor is naked, and while that may be an interesting fact, his image needs please us for its own sake because it is rendered with Heart. But that is not the aim of the tailors of emperors' clothing; it is to sell us what they purvey. Art as an aesthetic disappeared when it become referred to as "product" and was sold as an "investment". The only reason to buy art is because you love what you see and you want to have it there in your home to see all the time. In that respect art, and art in museums, resemble churches; they feed our souls. I know of nothing else that art can DO for us.
Really wonderful post. i thoroughly enjoyed this out
I used the term 'shape' in its widest and most comprehensive sense. The word, if taken literally, will render the definition very limited, as Kev has rightly pointed out.
By 'shape' I mean the orchestrated organisation of elements. For instance, when we talk of the 'shape of a piece of music' we are talking about its organisation, the shaping, of its structures which involve notes, note values, timbres, dynamics, time meters, themes, movements etc.
With painting, the shaping is the organisation of colour-value marks into shapes, shapes into structures, structures into wholes etc. And while this is happening there is the shaping of the colour scheme, the sense of light 'shaped' (directed, edited) to produce a unity with the structural ideas consonant with what those structures are meaning in terms of the subject, the shaping of the implied movements and gestures of the things evoked.
Ales "...that's how Chris and Kevs views make sense to me, I hope my wrong conclusions get corrected."
Well Ales, as far as I'm concerned, you have my meaning exactly. :)
To clarify the photography issue: A camera records in some small instant of time the light rays bouncing off and through real objects toward its lens. Real objects obey the laws of physics as do the light rays bouncing around a real scene. What is in front of the camera must be real. The camera cannot, for example, record the images in a mind's eye.
With journalism, the reality in front of the camera is "found." That is, it was already there and the photographer happened upon it. For the sake of clarity or politics, the subject is often posed by the photo-journalist. Which is to say the subject is sculpted by them to provide a better result. The subject can also be sculpted a bit by moving the camera around to get different framings of the scene and subject. And by taking multiple shots of the subject as natural variations in behavior provide random sculpting variations in the subject. With increasing sculpting of the reality in front of the camera, the scene in front of the camera becomes more of a creative sculpture than a found reality. But this sculpting hasn't changed the nature of the camera as recording device of the light rays bouncing off the reality in front of the lens.
Sculpture is undeniably art. And the sculpting of scenes in front of a camera is undeniably art. But the recording of those scenes is still only a documentation of that art. The recording is not the sculpture itself.
As an analogy, imagine a sculpted frieze. The frieze really only "reads" in one way, which is from the standpoint of the viewer who is directly perpindicular to the surface of the frieze and looking directly at it. This viewer is analogous to the photographer.
What if we took a photo of the frieze from that optimal standpoint. No one would mistake that photo for the real sculpted work of art. The photo would be recognized, rather, as a flat facsimile of that sculpture recorded by a light gathering machine. Just so, all unmanipulated photos are recordings of the sculptural realities that appeared before them at the time of light-ray capture.
To the extent that any photo is manipulated after the image of the found sculpture or created sculpture is captured, where its elements are manipulated in a more plastic way in defiance of the actual physical reality the original captured image was subject to, it becomes more like a painting. Which, in itself, is a demonstration that a photo is not inherently like a painting. That is, a photo must be manipulated as a painting is manipulated in order to become painting-like.
So a camera is basically a recording instrument in between two art forms.
Ales,
i understand Chris's definition, i just disagree with his conclusion, and the lack of consistency; If Crewdson's work is disallowed as 'art' due to the delivery system of photography being present, then movies would also be disallowed for the same reason. no ifs or buts. your attempt to argue that the 'art' of movie making resides in everything BUT the photography (the editing, acting, script etc) is frankly silly.
Kev, your assessment of photography above: i don't disagree with any of it, although i think your use of the word 'sculpting' will only confuse more than it clarifies.
personally, i don't care whether the vehicle of an image is pigmented gunk on stretched fabric, light bouncing off the construction on a soundstage and into a lens, or entirely computer generated. what matters to me is the quality of the fiction within the final image.
Kev
Well the Frieze is part of the entablature which is always well above the ground as its rests upon the architrave and then the column and artists knew they where craving for that viewpoint.
But yes people don't mistake a photo for the real thing.
A camera is one "eye" it doesn't see around things the way two eyes do. Which is why camera pictures always lack so much clarity of space.
So when I look at something with a camera and I move around the thing I am "Sculpting"? When I move around a found reality with multiply views I am then creating creative sculpture? So everything before my eyes is sculpture? It all is a little too painful.
Who is a better sculptor Crewdson (granted that we only have a photo of Crewdson's sculpture and not the actual sculpture) or Rodin?
Are you just giving validating Norman Rockwell's painting methods?
Tom and Laurence,
A photo takes a scene in from a pinhole, a cyclops with little depth perception except atmospheric perspective and depth-by-line/occlusion. The eyes are stereoscopic, in addition to taking in cyclopean information (atmospheric perspective and depth-by-line.) Art has 15 eyes, so to speak, and achieves depth in many fascinating ways which not even most artists appreciate.
Yes, as you move around looking through a camera lens you are testing out various ways of sculpting the frieze that will become the subject of the eventual photo. This is the best analogy I can come up with and I think it serves its purpose to elucidate the issue. It certainly doesn't warrant your accusation of being "painful." Rather, if it legitimately helps us understand, it surely ameliorates the discomfort of confusion.
Crewdson achieves some interesting photographic results, influenced by Edward Hopper and the Davids Lynch or Cronenberg. But after seeing a few of them, you've pretty much seen them all. Ultimately reality is quite limiting, light falls like light falls, linen looks like linen, without handwriting, no matter how much manipulation you bring to the sculpted set. The textures and light bulbs of the world are simply generic, whereas every great artist's handling is sui generis. Brass is brass everywhere in the world. But brass is a different thing for every great artist, and reflexively so. And not simply because each artist is a different physical being, but because each picture demands its own expression, and that expression seeps into its handwriting. So the brass in one picture by a great artist will be encoded with different feeling symbols than the brass in a different picture by the same artist. Reality can't do that, so therefore a photo can't do that.
And getting back to Crewdson... just seeing a photo of any reality is even more severely limited than reality itself. I imagine being in the place where Crewdson placed his camera and seeing it all in person would be more engaging. It would be more of a live theatrical event, than a dead photo of that event.
Tom, I don't need to validate Rockwell's methods. His successes speak for themselves, as do his failures. When he overuses photos, his uniqueness and spirit and expression disappears. With his best works, his soul is fully present.
Kev: "So the brass in one picture by a great artist will be encoded with different feeling symbols than the brass in a different picture by the same artist. Reality can't do that, so therefore a photo can't do that"
the work of the art director, the cinematographer, the set designer etc is to transfigure the stuff of reality (or build it from scratch) so that different expressive qualities are encoded into it, and yes, i believe those aspects of movie making / photography are 'art', and they are done for the camera's eye, not to be viewed like a live theatrical event (i disagree that seeing Crewdson's set-ups in person would be more engaging; they could certainly be staged in a theatrical version, but an art form that takes place in real time has quite a different effect than one which is entirely static, and is viewed in a book or on a wall).
Kev: "Ultimately reality is quite limiting, light falls like light falls, linen looks like linen, without handwriting,"
you talk as if painting is the only real visual art, and therefore anything that lacks painting's hand-made quality is therefore lacking quality per se.
the images in our mind aren't in paint, so therefore film / photography -one could argue- is already closer to the images in the mind's eye. wouldn't the ideal medium be a reality-like realism that could be altered / manipulated at will ?
i.e. where pure CGI is already going ?
Laurence: Do you really believe that the image in the mind's eye is anything like a photograph? I certainly don't. When I 'picture' something it's more like a shifting sensation of some form of presence nudging my mind. It's a sort of invisible visibility. So when I'm making a painting I am aware of trying to realise something that resonates with that presence. And the only guide I have is that the brush marks feel right when that resonance is happening, and they feel wrong and heavy and awkward when they are 'out of tune' with it. The same thing occurs when I 'lose' track of this 'apple of my inner eye'.
Also, your 'ideal medium' would not be any kind of medium at all, because it would be indistinguishable from reality. It is the limits of a medium that define it. And the limits of a medium define its language and grammar. And to speak poetry, to communicate that which enchants us, we need a language.
Chris: "Do you really believe that the image in the mind's eye is anything like a photograph?"
yes, (for me) it's more like a moving film* ... so i completely understand why film has become the dominant -popular- art form, supplanting painting. it seems like the logical progression.
Chris: "Also, your 'ideal medium' would not be any kind of medium at all, because it would be indistinguishable from reality"
i know. except, it would be a medium you could shape, like film, except without the need to photograph anything (you must have heard someone say "i wish i could just attach some plugs to my head to record my mind's images / dreams")
i think this is where CGI is already going.
* when i say 'film' i mean 'moving image' since 'film' as in the celluloid type is already nearly extinct.
Leaving aside the question of what we in fact do 'see' in our mind's eye, your 'ideal medium', as you have further explained it, is only a 'progression' in terms of mimetic surface, and this, by definition, is without meaning - trompe l'oeuil by another name.
Chris: "It is the limits of a medium that define it. And the limits of a medium define its language and grammar"
i agree. but the 'limits' of a medium are arbitrary; painting is defined by the limits of oil paint on panel / canvas, by what can be achieved by smearing pigmented gunk on a surface with a brush, to create a static image.
moving film is defined by what can be achieved within the limits of available camera technology, set design, lighting, acting, editing footage within real time etc.
Chris: " trompe l'oeuil by another name."
oil paint was the chosen medium precisely because of it's malleability; because it could mimic the surface quality of wood, leather, fur, satin etc.
CGI is the logical outgrowth.
oil paint was the chosen medium precisely because of it's malleability; because it could mimic the surface quality of wood, leather, fur, satin etc.
Whoah there, tiger. You've got the wrong end of the stick. The malleability of oil paint indeed allowed artists to mimic stuff like wood, leather and fur in painted images, but the prime value of oil paint was/is that it remains malleable for some time after it is set down. Thus you can mold it and mold it some more and correct mistakes and shape it according to any whim or intuition that strikes. Later, as aesthetics advanced, painters realized that the incredible plasticity of the medium had tremendous expressive possibilities. Duplicating textures is only a tiny fraction of its scope and power as a plastic language.
the work of the art director, the cinematographer, the set designer etc is to transfigure the stuff of reality (or build it from scratch) so that different expressive qualities are encoded into it...
Well yes, sure. And I agree that is a kind of visual art, a sculpting art with a strong narrative aspect. But every photographed object, and photography is still the subject here no set decoration, is still a real thing and obeying the laws of physics and light as it is captured by a pinhole. Plastic visual art has its own physics entirely, which is poetry-based. As Howard Pyle taught his students; reality and art cause their effects in opposite ways. (Of course sculpture, dance, writing, and movies also have their own poetry based physics too.)
It is the limits of a medium that define it. And the limits of a medium define its language and grammar
Well, a medium's basic plastic language, as distinct from the plastic languages of any other medium, is what defines it and "limits" it. But this alone is not sufficient to cause poetry. It is the way each medium uniquely bounds implications with its plastic elements that causes poetry. This is why it is not the "giving of form to an emotion" that makes something art. But the giving of form to that which implies that emotion. (Which is the reason why the "more, more, more" of cgi is increasingly inartful. The word Art, when it meant anything, meant suggestion.) Anyway, I'm not even in agreement on the emotion point. As Herbert Read wisely put it; "The function of art is not to transmit feeling so that others may experience the same feeling. The real function of art is to express feeling and transmit understanding." This is the core of the onion.
Kev, I used the word 'feeling' in the broadest possible sense. (Perhaps I should have said 'significant feeling') When one of my pictures 'works' for me, any sense of understanding I might have is only the technical one of managing to 'resolve the painting'. Whether a universal understanding is encoded in that, if such exists, is not consciously known to me. There is satisfaction, relief, that what I've made is finally resonating with something glimpsed in my mind's eye - that I've managed to make a shape, i.e. 'a wholeness' (perhaps a better word than 'shape'), that resonates with the feeling this half-glimpsed 'something' evoked.
This is all the artist can do, and having done so, trusting that their feeling is a universal one (significant; a human truth), the work might therefore resonate with other people.
Kev: "...but the prime value of oil paint was/is that it remains malleable for some time after it is set down."
the slow-drying nature of oil is one of the properties that allowed it to be such a good medium for depicting realistic surfaces.
Kev: "Later, as aesthetics advanced, painters realized that the incredible plasticity of the medium had tremendous expressive possibilities. Duplicating textures is only a tiny fraction of its scope and power as a plastic language. "
what happened later is another story.
i don't need to post links to hundreds of paintings from the 15th, 16th & 17th century to prove that the life-like quality that oil paint could achieve was one of the main reasons it was used.
or that depicting the luxuriousness of the fabrics, objects and furniture (in what we would now call a near 'photo-real' way) within the world of the sitters of a portrait was one of the main way's such portraits had their intended effect.
Yes, one of the main reasons oil paint has been used is because of its ability to render textures. But that is still just a single instance of the deeper essence of the medium; which is its plasticity. So your cgi argument, that cgi is a logical extension of oil painting because of this one aspect of oil painting, is obviously based on a very limited notion of oil painting's value. The aesthetics of cgi are much more tied to photography when you actually analyze it. CGI, after all, tries to duplicate actual physics. Art, again, has its own physics which is poetic in nature. Even when CGI is used in a cartoony way, it is still using ray tracing techniques, speculars and such, which are mathematized according to real physics equations.
'Art is a way of perceiving' is the mantra that I've established as my own working definition. "Well doesn't that mean its just subjective" becomes the obvious question. My answer is that perception is not yet understood and perception coupled with sentience understood even less. 'Punning' for instance is a very general concept, mis-hearing or mis-reading words or mis-'seeing' pictures and getting different meanings which (sometimes) enhance the 'actual' meaning in non-intuitive ways is an example of HOW the 'wet-ware' inside our heads can provide 'value' beyond the materials at hand. So now specific debates in this thread 'is photography art' because it uses fewer 'highly trained physical skills' than painting... ummm, if this was the case then ballet would be a 'better art' than violin (only uses hands/arms) than guitar (fixed pitch) than saxaphone (monophhonic). Theres a more to art than physical skills and despite my appeal to neuroscience, I will readily admit that cultural aspects are probably more important than the basic connections we have. Other cultures see (or hear) Western art and don't get why we Westerners seem to think its the pinnacle of civilization.
In Crewdsons case, the work on the photograph continues long after the images are taken as he works on the photoshopping aspects (compositing portions from different 'snaps', applying filters individually to portions of the picture etc). I suspect that the final printing gets as much attention as the rest of the production. In terms of 'seen one, seen them all'... ummm, Crewdson himself said something like 'an artist has one story to tell and it is up to him to tell it as best he can'. I think his different series are quite distinct, even if there is a single 'meta' story that he is circling. Having just had a Vienna museum binge, I think the same could be said of Reubens : I saw dozens of paintings that were, to modern eyes, virtually identical : impassioned religious person, flying demons and angels, random naked people in some sort of struggle and some unusual animals and objects for contrast (and perhaps to display additional virtuosity in technique : scales, fur, gold, etc). To my jaundiced modern eye it was preposterous and bombastic. Huge splash panels being rendered by a workshop full of uncredited, anonymous craftsmen. I loved it!, but probably not in the same way the original purchaser did.
Frebnedzo: I think you are missing the central, active point of the argument. This is not about the hierarchy of manual or mental dexterity. It concerns the principle by which the content of art is realised; built from the inside out, the means by which it is given form are intrinsic to and indissoluble from the intentions (be they conscious or subconscious) of its author. So photography or the principle of found objects assigned value, is outside my opening definition.
However, as far as I understand Herbert Read's definition quoted by Kev, photography or the found object could be seen to fit with his particular take on the matter.
Chris,
disallow moving film as 'art' too (because of the presence of photography) and your definition is consistent.
Laurence, as I said regarding the role of paint in making pictures, the fact that photography is present does not disallow film from being included as Art as I have defined it. See my post on the 'shaping' of editing within all aspects of building a film. Andrei Tarkovsky called his book on cinema 'Sculpting in Time'...
We need to look at what is uniquely cinematic in order to understand just how Cinema means in its own unique way: movement within the frame, movement of the frame/camera which causes movement within the frame, and the juxtposition of shots through cutting (or swift reframing). These are the plastic qualities of the medium itself. Now, a whole host of other kinds of plasticities can, and often are, flown in to enhance a cinematic experience... from plays, dance, music, and painting. But these are not inherently cinematic... each is its own art form with its own unique plasticities, which afford meaning uniquely in each case.
The point of the matter is, just as Chris says, to figure out and truly appreciate the way in which the content of an art-form is realized; to appreciate the innate language of each form. But no matter which form we analyze, Herbert Read's quote still applies. That what makes art Art is the communication of understanding through feeling. And the corollary is that by "feeling" what is meant is aesthetic force. And aesthetic force is an experience in the audience which is produced through the manipulation of the plastic language inherent to the form.
Chris & Kev,
i'm well aware that cinema uses editing in order to shape the material. but without cameras which record light bouncing off people, sets, real locations etc. there would be nothing to edit or shape.
so your attempt to reduce the plastic 'art' of cinema down to one aspect (which conveniently ignores the photographic / light capture part you both find so disagreeable) is once again, unconvincing.
Laurence, nothing has changed about photographs. But once we are talking about moving pictures, then the matter has to be considered anew. I had said that photography is basically a recording machine in between two artforms (sculpture and painting.) You seemed to understand that argument without argument earlier. With the recording of movements and the ability to cut between shots, new plasticities come into play, unique ones, which do not happen in still photos. These differences are absolutely incontrovertible, so I know you know that they exist. So what are you complaining about? What are you "unconvinced" about specifically?
Laurence,
Without stone (material) there would be nothing to carve. But rocks are not Art.
Photographing something is just finding and picking up the stone.
Temporal photography (film) is picking up events in time.
The plastic means of film is shaping, by way of editing and set-up, both before and after the camera is switched on, events in time.
Chris said
"This is not about the hierarchy of manual or mental dexterity. It concerns the principle by which the content of art is realised; built from the inside out, the means by which it is given form are intrinsic to and indissoluble from the intentions (be they conscious or subconscious) of its author.'
Isn't manuel and mental dexterity of an artist a direct reflection of the thought and intentions that gives shape to form? How you "think" about making a form is how you realize the form.
Chris said
"Photographing something is just finding and picking up the stone."
Photographing something is framing something isn't? To frame something is to compose. Isn't composing giving shape to the subject?
Tom, to answer your first point:
I guess this question becomes 'how is skill and knowledge related to the qualitative making of Art?'
We all know that skill and knowledge do not automatically produce Art. Robert Hughes, insightful as well as knowledgeable, never produced any Art that I am aware of. Pollyanna Pickering is skilful at painting the fur of animals and the shine in their eyes, but not a single one of her paintings ever touches the condition of Art.
Concerning your point about how you think about form is how you realise form; I absolutely agree. But I see this as one's tone of voice or way of speaking; their signature 'style'. It is the wholeness they build with their forms that counts,otherwise we have empty mannerism.
On your second point:
I've covered this earlier on up the thread, but it will be useful to unpack it a little more.
Choosing where and when to press the shutter is to select what is caught in the viewfinder. So yes, in that sense a piece of reality has been 'framed'. But how is this single action related to giving external shape to a nest of feelings trying to take flight from one's heart into the world? You could answer by saying that what the photographer is in the habit of noticing and recording accrues to become evidence of their innermost concern. Evidence, yes, but it is not expressing it, because a collection, however interesting or eye catching or remarkable is not a language. A photographer's 'style', if we can even call it that, is just a hallmark of their personality, their collection is distinguishable from others in the same way people will pick up different things during a day at the beach; each pocketful a clue to a different personality.
The usual way I would put it is that taking photographs is a kind of curation.
When a host of artists, let's say a group of eight, gather together to paint from the model, each will sit or stand where they can get the best vantage of the model. Maybe they will station themselves for what angle they like best or what pose they need work on, or some will even take the easiest vantage because they hope to sell what they make at a future date. Some will take the hardest vantage because they believe in Howard Pyle's and Harvey Dunn's maxims about it being the artist's responsibility, not the model's, to make the painting into a work of art. Sometimes artists will negotiate if they prefer the same vantage. Either way, lighting and posing the model and then jockeying for vantage points is the smallest part of the session. The vast majority of the time is spent in constant creative thought with the struggle to both capture the model and the surrounding atmosphere as a reality, and to capture, (if we are referring to halfway decent artists), the character and gesture of the model, some sense of the emotional milieu and other intangibles of the session, all toned unconsciously by their personal expressive handwriting/artistic temperament as they set down their marks.
So this matter of sculpting the subject and framing it from a particular vantage point... the endpoint for the light-capturing machine operator, is just the beginning of the process for the artistic painter.
Back to the Apples and Oranges, are we really comparing a well-done painting of a rich mans hobby with an installation which commemorates the victims of political oppression and in doing so alludes to ALL oppressions where people are reduced to lists of numbers including modern 'freedom' where phones and IP addresses ('its just metadata', the numbers...) are monitored all the time. Furthermore, there is the graphic element in the installation where the negative space, wrapping around the walls, visually provides the bars of the cage that we (the viewer) are in. The only reason we haven;t been singled out like the victims of political oppression is that we are insignificant, or haven't yet said/done the 'wrong' thing under the 'wrong' administration. In terms of providing shape to emotion, who can say, but considering the subject matter, the MOMA artist probably cried more and the number of people leaving the exhibit feeling depressed, anxious or saying 'that was so powerful' is also more than a horse-race painting, no matter how skillfully depicted.
Back to the divergence at hand... even ignoring 'low quality' paintings versus 'high quality' photography, there are genres where the artistic 'value add' seems to be reversed : photorealist or extremely 'non-painterly' painters versus surrealist photographers (where I would place Crewdson though others are more extreme in warping reality).
Really now. Can you think of a small gallery space where the hung works don't "visually provide the bars of the cage that we, the viewer, are in?" The hanging of these phone book pages is literally the most generic imaginable. A million shows have been hung in just the same way. Aesthetically, we are talking about an utterly inert aspect of the event. It is bad faith to argue that there is some clever plastic-experiential manipulation there that is causing the emotional effect on the audience.
The emotional effect of this installation has everything to do with the social conscience of the audience members combined with their susceptibility to emotional manipulation, and nothing to do with art. The work is functioning solely on that text-prompting level, which is literary/editorial.
That some audiences respond viscerally to the mere thought of the realities of fascism and genocide, or mothers holding their dead babies in arms, or any other human tragedy, oppression, or pathology... doesn't magically convert the text that prompts that thought into visual art. Not every communication that is transmitted visually is Art.
Take the saddest short story you've ever read. Cut the pages out, frame them individually and hang them on the wall in sequence. Is that short story now an extremely sad-emotional work of visual art? Or is it just a really sad short story tacked to the wall?
This goes back to the pseudo-intellectual notion that it is the gallery itself that makes its contents into "works of art." Even Duchamp didn't believe that idea. What putting something into a gallery context does do is isolate the framed object and call attention to it. Which is just, once again, an act of curation. I can understand the motivation why intellectuals without talent would want to call any thoughts they write down and frame art, (to use aesthetics to draw attention to their otherwise aesthetically uninteresting works) but I don't accept that reason as transforming the basic reality of the differences between text languages and the language of art.
I met a fellow some years ago who barely drew and was technically inept in any medium he touched. But he was political. And he would draw page after page of incoherent blotty ink scribbles with a few dabs of watercolor and name them something like "A Weeping Mother Holding the Severed Limbs of Her Murdered Son, Karachi, Pakistan." This "work" is not good visual art, because all its "charge" is coming from the text that accompanies it. He thought he was hot stuff though. Because he was political-emotional and that, in the pomo deranged mind, makes what he's doing important. And the honorific postmodernists bestow on any "important" politico-emotional installation at all is "Art." And that's because they don't give a damn about art. All they care about is politics.
Nice comments Chris and Kev.
Frebnedzo, I think Chris and Kevs talk about a process of creating an artistic form and it's way of transferring meaningfulness to the viewer serves as an answer. The lesson about political oppression you talk about is not being communicated through aesthetics. I too don't see/feel/experience any cage bars in the installation, there are black frames around the pages that form a graphic pattern through a repetition. Your conscious interpretation isn't something that is an intrinsic part of an artwork. Kev once described this interpretative process of pomo stuff as flattery game where viewers play with easely solvable puzzles and then pat each other on the back for coming up with an interpretation and marketing it to the others. He expressed doubt about art that needs our assistance exactly because the worth of such work is being determined on something outside of it's own internal qualities. I always failed to comprehend the importance of these works - If there is no aesthetic content in such installations that would address us directly through epiphany and if there are hundreds of essays and books that deal far better with the subject of political oppressions, I wonder what the purpose of such pomo works is supposed to be. Why do we present/treasure this shallowness on the marble walls of museums.
Chris
Well guess Hughes must not have had the "knowledge'" to produce art (which is the knowledge I was talking about) he had the knowledge to interpret art. One only has to compare the Von Schmidt painting with a Pickering painting to see how connected knowledge is to skill. Insight or knowledge is what brings skill into being. Copying is a minor skill. But I wouldn't say she is without art.
Knowledge is more objective then one's tone of voice isn't it? One's tone of voice sounds so weak. It is more then style. The only thing that shows up in a painting is what one has thought about. And what one thinks about can not be vague.
Pickering would not consider, she may not even be aware of the same relations in a horse as Von Schmidt. She seems to see painting as a sort of copying. Von Schmidt sees the whole horse, he considers the relation of all four legs in space and to the ground, he considers the mass of the body in relation to those legs and the jockey's relation to the horse's body and so on.
He senses and captures the invisible relations that give form to all things. A much more demanding task, but it gives him a freedom Pickering may never experience. Von Schmidt is a more skillful artist then Pickering's because of his knowledge. Skill which is not copying is a large part of art. Because skill reflects how the artist has thought, what they have given value to.
"But how is this single action related to giving external shape to a nest of feelings trying to take flight from one's heart into the world?'
Let's say the photographer wants to expressed man's insignificance in relation to the vastness of the universe. He might compose the picture to give expression to that internal feeling. Where things are place or arrange in a picture can clearly correspond to internal feelings that exist in an artist. One can find infinite about of external situations that correspond to internal feelings. If this is the endpoint of the camera and only the beginning point for a painter as Kev wrote the point is shared and it remains on the same line.
Jeez Kev no one is sculpting when they are deciding on what viewpoint they are going to take in relation to a subject. It really degrades the efforts of many great sculptors.
Dearest "Jeez" Tom,
Framing in Parallax, to coin a phrase, is an aspect of sculpting in bas-relief just as it is with photography. I don't think there's any way around that. In the same way that playing with f-stops, focus, and aperture size on any particular photograph resembles aspects of painting. That these plasticities exist for photography doesn't alter the overall fact that the camera is a terribly unplastic information gathering device and thus is quite expressively limited.
The only thing that shows up in a painting is what one has thought about. And what one thinks about can not be vague.
You need to be very careful here to appreciate the nature of language and thought in its full scope. There are hierarchies of abstraction behind all understanding. And the top layers of that abstraction hierarchy will be quite nonspecific factually, while being quite specific emotionally or suggestively. Another way to put it is that the top layers of the abstraction hierarchy have the crucial function of narrowing intended meaning. And while that narrowing is specific, it is not utterly determinant. In language, by saying "he" instead of "she", I've literally unselected half the human race, just with a pronoun. Just as with a painting a flat brown yellow background will evoke an entirely different general environment than a flat green one. In each case, there is no factual specificity to the environment, yet the brown yellow and the green will be absolutely specific colors. So there is specificity at a high level of abstraction, but at the concrete level not so much. Many aspects (actually most aspects, I would argue) of thought (in art and any other form of communication) are specific and vague at once.
Tom,
You seem to be under the impression that if both knowledge and skill are present, Art will automatically ensue. I chose to example Hughes and Pickering because nearly only one of these elements exist in each individual. But there are legions of painters who possess both, and they do not always produce Art.
For a painting to transcend its descriptive and decorative function and become greater than the sum of its parts, everything has to come together to 'make a deeper sense' (I take this to be the 'understanding' Herbert Read was referring to in Kev's quote); i.e. communicate a significant feeling.
And achieving this seems to require something that is not the product of learning. A 'combing force', authorship, that emerges newly minted every time the individual uses their knowledge and skill trying to realise as a work of Art something deep within themselves.
Von Schmidt had superlative skill and knowledge or Art and, as David said, possessed first hand knowledge of his subject. But I believe the deep value of the picture is not found in these things. It is embodied through composing its elements so that everything combines in an uncanny, magical completeness; a wholeness that takes flight beyond the wings of the bird itself.
What Herbert Read was getting at, possibly unbeknownst to himself, is the nature of thought itself. All we have in our minds are sensations. Thus, any understandings we have - real understandings, not "book knowledge" - must be built of sensations as well, which are the noumena of experience from without and within. Thus all understandings, all of which are within us, are complexes of more basic sensations or feelings also within us. The simplexes are vague and abstract, but the constructions built from these simplexes (including the references those construction make) are quite specific. Which goes again to the abstraction hierarchy... feelings and sensation are specific yet vague, and with the addition or concatenation of other feelings/sensations into the mix, increasingly specific understandings are afforded. So the one-ness of an artwork is its unique intuitable meaning afforded by the signifying complex of sensational feelings from which it is built. That signifying complex being the composed unified understanding regarding the subject matter. So it isn't the signifying feeling that makes the epiphany. That would be too vague and uninteresting a statement. It is the complex of signifying feelings that forms the unified intuitable thought.
Thanks Kev, that corresponds very closely to my own experience when trying to make a work of Art. Localised brush strokes evoke a sensation (Cezanne called them his 'petite sensations', which I've cumbersomely called a feeling about something), which I believe is what you have called the simplex. The editing and shaping and orchestration (the composing) is a struggle to coalesce them into a wholeness of sensations that resonate with the internal 'nest of feelings' which prompted me to begin the task. This wholeness or 'oneness' of sensations can, because of the nature of thought itself, indeed be thought of as an 'understanding', and I thank you for your excellent clarification on this point.
This takes us to the heart of the matter David's post has raised.
Because Art's fundamental building blocks are sensations, it follows that Art is written in a language closest to the roots of the actual process of thinking. This is true for literature as well, because although it is communicated by text (the consensus understanding of distinctions), the story, the Art, is written, by way of the events and consequences, drama, in terms of sensations.
But why does Art need to be written in a language that falls short of the high specificity of the text-bound technical manual or essay? In other words; why does it need to be written in a language of sensation rather than symbols?
I believe, by doing so, it is the closest we can get to ourselves while remaining outside ourselves.
Localised brush strokes evoke a sensation (Cezanne called them his 'petite sensations', which I've cumbersomely called a feeling about something), which I believe is what you have called the simplex.
Brush strokes which create a "petite sensation" in a local area of a composition are just one example among quite an arsenal of visual simplexes available to the artist. What makes a visual simplex a visual simplex is that it exists at the same highest level of visual abstraction, not that it exists only locally in a composition.
Regarding how abstractions concatenate, we can maybe use words as an analogy. "Living creature" and "pointy" are at a similar level of abstraction. Concatenate them into a "pointy living creature" and maybe we think of a porcupine or stegasaurus. But we don't think seal or octopus. We have taken two simplexes and made a very minor complex of the two simplexes which begins to specify our reference. If we say "currently living creature" we obviously specify for something like a porcupine and definitely not a stegasaurus. Etc. Each vague abstract term narrows the possibilities for what reference is being suggested.
But why does Art need to be written in a language that falls short of the high specificity of the text-bound technical manual or essay? In other words; why does it need to be written in a language of sensation rather than symbols?
I believe, by doing so, it is the closest we can get to ourselves while remaining outside ourselves.
Well, I think all art is an effort to externalize the internal, thus creating a surrogate self in a sense... a functioning model of a particularly clear moment in the life our mind which can afford that moment to strangers and beautifully.
I think each of our senses has associated with it its own natural language with its own unique plasticities. When we "write" in those natural languages, we speak directly to the soul of the audience in sensation without interference from the labeling mind. Any unnatural language will de facto be a tribal or commercial code of some kind, requiring asensual translation.
When we add in to a work of art text elements or elements that function like text, this hybrid can certainly be informative in unique ways. But the act of surfacing content, almost any content at all, as a known symbol or text-label destroys the sensation-steeped contemplative mood required to experience the aesthetic forces. It converts the whole experience, even the aesthetic forces, into a reading experience. So the reason Art must be written in a natural language is that otherwise it won't be Art, definitionally.
I think intellectuals who feel more comfortable with all content surfaced are naturally enemies of art. They don't like being defenseless against sublimated content. That such intellectuals have controlled high culture for a hundred years explains why high visual culture is so surface level and thus so empoverished as a cultural force.
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