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09/13/2011 07:20:06 PM · #1 |
The art object is not like other objects. It shares qualities with non-objects, like people, pets, etc., beings that you love.
An art object is half object and half being. Unlike most other objects, an art object can be loved, hated, cherished, missed, longed for, etc. Unlike most other objects, an art object cannot be owned (you can own a copyright to your art object, controlling distribution, but you don't own the art object, it is your gift to the universe). There are objects that can be loved, like teddy bears, but only by those who own them. There are objects that can't be owned, like park benches, but they are not loved. The art object fulfills both criteria. In addition, the art object is created by a person or persons, which excludes rocks and trees (but not parks).
If you're wondering whether a photo is "art," ask yourself if it qualifies as an art object. Is the photo more than just an object to you? Do you have some sort of *relationship* with the photo? Not the subject, but the photo itself. If not, then the photo is not art to you.
If you're a documenter of things and people, and all your efforts are based on showing these things and people in the sharpest detail possible, then you're not creating art. If you want to transition to art, you can't do this simply by putting symbols in your photographs. You need to change your entire approach. The photograph must no longer be the slave of the subject. The subject must become the slave of the photograph. The photograph must have a life for you if it is to have a life for anyone else.
People ask if art is useful, or they ask why it cannot be useful. This is easier to understand in terms of the art object. The art object has its own life, so it is useful only in the sense that a person is useful, which is a very important sense, but not in the same sense that an object is useful.
So... if you find yourself feeling strange emotional attachments to your photos, as if they were beings in themselves, then you are on the path of the artist. Do not be afraid. Or rather, be afraid, but carry on anyway. |
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09/13/2011 08:39:19 PM · #2 |
| Great post Don. Thank you. |
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09/13/2011 08:41:19 PM · #3 |
One hour since this is posted. I assume that it was read already by a few and is in the process of being digested.
I bump it up. Thanks Don.
"A word is a thought, of course. But any image, including a photograph, may become an instrument of sufficiently lucid cogitation.' - Peter Schejeldahl - art critic
Also, since it was mentioned in a forum thread (but without wanting to open another can of worms) it's interesting to read this piece (one of so many on the subject) so that some of the disputes here can be a bit less about hurt feelings or judgment in B&W, good/evil, good/bad:
//csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/kitsch.htm
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09/13/2011 08:57:26 PM · #4 |
..."like" a lot.
Thanks for taking the time to share that Don. |
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09/13/2011 09:16:44 PM · #5 |
Interesting read, there. Thanks. A conceptual question, however: Does it require prior thought and planning to be art, in other words, a vision that you have brought to life, or can it evolve on it's own?
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09/13/2011 09:19:21 PM · #6 |
Very excellent post, Don. Thanks.
R.
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09/13/2011 09:25:59 PM · #7 |
Interestingly, this comment I got yesterday seems to express almost exactly the same sentiment ... hey, maybe I have at least one piece of "art" here after all ... ;-)
Originally posted by levyj413:
It strikes me that this photo and the story behind it demonstrate precisely the difference between DPC scores and artistic greatness.
DPC is all about a 2-second look, and for many people, a mental checklist: sharp? subject on a thirds line? lit perfectly? Every hair on every head perfectly in place? That's what the voting format and the need for voting on hundreds of photos creates.
In contrast, a photo hanging in a museum is almost exactly the opposite. It's an invitation to intimately examine not only the photo, but the feelings the photo generates within you. You get a chance to breathe, to soak in the title, read the story, and consider how it relates to your own life.
Two radically different ways of experiencing photos. Neither is intrinsically better or worse than the other.
But while this is going straight into my favorites list, I can see why it scored low on DPC.
Thanks very much for sharing the photo and the story! |
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09/13/2011 09:32:43 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by Yo_Spiff:
Interesting read, there. Thanks. A conceptual question, however: Does it require prior thought and planning to be art, in other words, a vision that you have brought to life, or can it evolve on it's own? |
It can be both. One doesn't have more weight than the other. |
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09/13/2011 11:03:59 PM · #9 |
Originally posted by RKT:
Originally posted by Yo_Spiff:
Interesting read, there. Thanks. A conceptual question, however: Does it require prior thought and planning to be art, in other words, a vision that you have brought to life, or can it evolve on it's own? |
It can be both. One doesn't have more weight than the other. |
right, there are many paths to art. planning runs the danger of losing spontaneity. lack of planning runs the danger of superficiality. different methods work better for different artists. |
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09/13/2011 11:28:01 PM · #10 |
I found this post enormously settling. A lot of the time I feel I am making my way through an enormous miasma, sans pilote, sans magneto. I forget. And then I remember. How does that happen? Sometimes a glance, sometimes the weather, or a dog. Every now and then it is a paragraph or two or more. (Occasionally a photograph).
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09/13/2011 11:41:13 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by Yo_Spiff:
Interesting read, there. Thanks. A conceptual question, however: Does it require prior thought and planning to be art, in other words, a vision that you have brought to life, or can it evolve on it's own? |
A great question. I believe it must be unique to each of us and I would hope that the process evolves for each individual. A worthwhile excercise would be to pick a few of your most meaningful images and sit with them, and seek to understand how you created them. I do this occasionally, and I usually learn something. |
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09/13/2011 11:53:23 PM · #12 |
| I'll be mulling this over for some time to come. |
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09/13/2011 11:53:29 PM · #13 |
Hmmm. A thought provoking thread, that's an art in itself.
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09/14/2011 04:23:48 AM · #14 |
Good post Don. This is the best part:
Originally posted by posthumous:
... The photograph must no longer be the slave of the subject. The subject must become the slave of the photograph ... |
Some of your other criteria, such as love and ownership, while perfectly true, are nevertheless capable of being misunderstood. But the snippet that I've quoted is unequivocal. It ought to be posted in every thread where photography as art is debated.
A couple of days ago I saw a thread – now mercifully dead & buried – where you (Don) and I were cited by name, and most of the other likely readers of this thread by inference, as being art snobs & highbrow wankers for presuming to differentiate between popular photographs and art photographs. The part of your post that I have quoted here is the best and clearest explanation I've ever seen of what the fundamental difference is.
Thus a popular photograph that fails your 'slavery' test cannot ever be art no matter how popular it is, no matter how technically impressive it is, no matter how long it took to create, because it falls at the very first hurdle. In fact it can't even be bad art.
And that leads with an elegant simplicity to the conclusion that art, unlike beauty, is not in the eye of the beholder.
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09/14/2011 05:19:49 AM · #15 |
Writing about art is like dancing about architecture.
But....
There are many truths about art, but when you begin to lay down the laws, the limitations and the definitions, they will tend to sneak around and bite you in the butt. Style can be narrowly defined, and can move within an aesthetic philosophy. Art can not. Art is the spark of the divine wrought out of concrete matter, the ephemeral caught, if only for that moment. When a viewer feels that a style that differs from theirs is bereft of art it says less about the constraints of art than the constraints of the viewer. |
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09/14/2011 05:27:33 AM · #16 |
Originally posted by BrennanOB:
Writing about art is like dancing about architecture. |
No. It isn't. |
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09/14/2011 06:08:46 AM · #17 |
Originally posted by ubique:
Originally posted by BrennanOB:
Writing about art is like dancing about architecture. |
No. It isn't. |
Yes. It is. The analogy is perfect in every way. Mostly. OK, the original quote was "talking about music is like dancing about architecture" but the basic issue of translating one art form into a different medium tends to steal the magic from it, still holds. Craft can be relayed through words, art must be experienced.
Speaking of craft, I used to throw pots. I knew guys who would never make vessels, they would sculpt,or close the openings of a tea pot, or mound, or make the stuff they threw unusable. That way they were making art, not craft. It struck me a silly. If Ito Sekisui V can make work that people decide to fill with rice, does that mean his work ceases to be art? Denying the classical utility of a craft is not what shifts it into the realm of art, it is the ability to capture the spark.
Same goes for photography. Making a non-documentary photograph does not insure it is art, anymore than making a tea pot that would not hold water made it art. Craft and art are not an "either or" proposition, in fact when any craft rises to art it is usually a "yes, and" proposition.
Message edited by author 2011-09-14 06:36:04. |
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09/14/2011 06:13:21 AM · #18 |
Ban Art...? :P
Nice read. Thanks.
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09/14/2011 06:45:23 AM · #19 |
Originally posted by BrennanOB:
Originally posted by ubique:
Originally posted by BrennanOB:
Writing about art is like dancing about architecture. |
No. It isn't. |
Yes. It is. The analogy is perfect in every way. Mostly. OK, the original quote was "talking about music is like dancing about architecture" but the basic issue of translating one art form into a different medium tends to steal the magic from it, still holds. Craft can be relayed through words, art must be experienced.
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Sorry, but this is simply nonsense: it doesn't even pass muster as sophistry.
Message edited by author 2011-09-14 06:48:04. |
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09/14/2011 06:48:42 AM · #20 |
You have very high standards, I pray you don't hurt yourself when you fall from them. As for what passes for proper levels of sophism, I will bow to your expertise. Your bland denials without argument or evidence, allegory or wit are terribly convincing.
I keep thinking Monty Python and the argument clinic
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
Message edited by author 2011-09-14 07:58:39. |
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09/14/2011 07:07:01 AM · #21 |
posthumous's work fuses chaos with order, with lines and shapes laid randomly - at first glance. Closer inspection gradually reveals that a set of rules governs the placement of shapes and the choice of colors. Thus, the artist challenges the viewer to explore the rules encoded in the subconscious that shape our aesthetics, to consider why we find beauty in the juxtaposition of chaos and order.
Rather than any implied meaning or message, the minimalist nature of his photographs encourages the viewer to consider the visual qualities of the work - the composition, surfaces, textures and the relationship of depicted space to line and form. In simplicity, art becomes more direct and incisive in its dissection of the human mind, a more lucent mirror of our collective subconscious.
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09/14/2011 08:02:29 AM · #22 |
Originally posted by BrennanOB:
You have very high standards, I pray you don't hurt yourself when you fall from them. As for what passes for proper levels of sophism, I will bow to your expertise. Your bland denials without argument or evidence, allegory or wit are terribly convincing |
Yes, I see your point Brennan. I̢۪m sorry. Let me try it again.
I can’t accept your comparison of ‘writing about art’ to ‘dancing about architecture’ as having any validity.
The very idea of ‘dancing about architecture’ is of course intentionally absurd. And that’s the point of its comparison with writing about music; that writing fails to convey the experience of music because it’s simply a mismatch of media. You can’t experience music just by reading about it.
But the comparison, however witty and appealing it may at first seem, is in fact invalid and specious. Writing about music is not supposed to be music; it̢۪s not even supposed to be a substitute for music. There is plenty of superb writing about music, and it contributes much to the understanding and enjoyment of music. Writing about music is not in the least absurd in the way that dancing about architecture clearly is, and so the comparison is simply nonsensical.
And so is your substitution of ‘writing about art’ for the original ‘writing about music’. Of course you can legitimately write about art. In fact the literature of art has actually done more for the appreciation, promulgation and understanding of art than has the actual art itself.
I hope that that has clarified and amplified my position regarding my earlier posts. I was simply trying to point out that the reasoning in your opening simile about the dancing and the writing was unsound, in spite of its superficial appeal. That is; sophistry.
That doesn't necessarily invalidate anything else you said of course, about the pots and the craft and the spark of divinity and so forth. I wasn't intending to imply anything at all about that.
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09/14/2011 09:04:44 AM · #23 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
If you're a documenter of things and people, and all your efforts are based on showing these things and people in the sharpest detail possible, then you're not creating art. If you want to transition to art, you can't do this simply by putting symbols in your photographs. You need to change your entire approach. The photograph must no longer be the slave of the subject. The subject must become the slave of the photograph. The photograph must have a life for you if it is to have a life for anyone else.
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Before it falls off the main page, this is a "must read", again and again |
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09/14/2011 09:09:18 AM · #24 |
I certainly understand the points being made about what constitutes art. However, I don't think photography always HAS to be art. There are many genres of photography that are perfectly valid and not art in any way. For example, I have been doing the product photography at work the last several years. I see my work appreciated when it saves my division money on hiring a pro (who did a sloppy job, IMO) and seeing those efforts used in our product brochures.
It does not all have to be art. It does not always have to tell a story or have some greater implied meaning.
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09/14/2011 09:32:48 AM · #25 |
Originally posted by Yo_Spiff:
I certainly understand the points being made about what constitutes art. However, I don't think photography always HAS to be art. There are many genres of photography that are perfectly valid and not art in any way. For example, I have been doing the product photography at work the last several years. I see my work appreciated when it saves my division money on hiring a pro (who did a sloppy job, IMO) and seeing those efforts used in our product brochures.
It does not all have to be art. It does not always have to tell a story or have some greater implied meaning. |
Correct. In a very narrow sense though. ART shall creep in everything, don't you agree?
And it always has to tell a story or to have a meaning, especially if you are talking commercial photography.
I said several times that I consider DPC an all encompassing site embracing a multitude of usages of photography. But during or after a challenge there are discussions in which all gets jumbled, art and craft, art and commercial art, and, very recently photography and digital art. And the comments and marks do not make the difference.
That's why this post is very useful.
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