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11/16/2011 05:02:01 PM · #1 |
Visiting my homeland and this week saw two great exhibitions:
150 paintings, drawing & sculptures by Picasso in Sydney, and
260 photographs by Cartier-Bresson in Brisbane.
HC-B was absorbing, interesting, admirable & inspirational. But Pablo was beyond all that, and by a very long way: quite close to being literally mind-blowing! I could reasonably relate to Cartier-Bresson, but it's hard to believe that I am even of the same species as Picasso.
Is photography really art? Possibly, but if so then only in very modest way. |
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11/16/2011 05:15:43 PM · #2 |
| sure it's art i actually think for me painting is easier. |
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11/16/2011 05:33:02 PM · #3 |
It's one of those things I tire of thinking about, yet can't stop myself.
I don't think it's "art", today anyway...photography is photography...then again anything can be deemed art...things like cupcakes.
Photography is a thing unto itself, a place of it's own. |
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11/16/2011 06:30:22 PM · #4 |
| like photography, it is the rare cupcake... |
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11/16/2011 06:35:08 PM · #5 |
| Picasso was a dirty old man, maybe that's why you felt like he was "beyond you". :) |
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11/16/2011 10:09:18 PM · #6 |
I don't know, Paul. Photography blows my mind, too. If I had to choose... painting. But I don't have to choose.
Actually, if I had to choose, poetry.
Thank goodness I'm not choosing! |
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11/16/2011 10:22:21 PM · #7 |
| mmm cupcakes. what do you think of dali? |
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11/16/2011 10:39:17 PM · #8 |
Paul,  ubique, your question is unfair and you certainly know it. I just have to quote Picasso here as his aphorisms were remarkable:
"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen."
Same goes for Magritte as well.
Now for the DPCers, I have to go back to Picasso:
"Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."
As to  DrAchoo quip, we are happy that notoriety never rested on good behaviour or we would be without a lot of masterpieces.
And Don, posthumous, there is no point in choosing when we can have it all.
More Picasso:
Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
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11/16/2011 11:18:35 PM · #9 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Picasso was a dirty old man, maybe that's why you felt like he was "beyond you". :) |
I wonder how many great artists were prudes and/or hypocrites. |
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11/17/2011 12:06:41 PM · #10 |
My comment was meant in an entirely humorous manner.
I wonder if the difference ubique found was in his selection of artists in his study. Would one feel the same gulf of what the two represented if we compared Picasso with, say, Mapplethorpe? This is not saying Mapplethorpe is somehow greater than HCB, but his work is more directly comparable in the sense that his photography clearly sets out to make "art" (whatever that is) and does not serve a secondary function like HCB's work (to preserve and record the ephemera of life). In fact, I would argue that HCB's work is far more powerful in this secondary aspect than it is as a presentation of "art". I wouldn't argue with anybody who said it was art, but it is art in a much different way and that is, perhaps, what ubique is responding to. |
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11/17/2011 05:48:53 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
My comment was meant in an entirely humorous manner.
... |
I thought your observation was funny Doc. Alas it was also erroneous (though I thank you for having given me the benefit of the doubt): a taste for a touch of lasciviousness seems to be the only point of intersection between Pablo & me.
I don't think Mapplethorpe in lieu of Cartier-Bresson would have made any difference. We aren't talking about degree of difference here ΓΆ€“ it's an entirely different universe with an alien set of physical laws.
I'd before seen only a maximum of 2 or 3 Picasso works gathered at the one place and time, and then always of the same genre and context. This was 150 paintings, drawings, constructions and sculptures covering every period of his life. Faced with that, your jaw quite literally drops, your carefully cultivated facade of urbanity falls away and you begin gibbering absurdly to strangers standing beside you, "Can you believe this?" They can't, of course.
Mapplethorpe or whomever with a camera may well have 'clearly set out to make art' but Picasso apparently never did anything as banal (and human) as that; he seems to have actually been art.
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11/17/2011 06:00:44 PM · #12 |
I appreciate your sentiment. My own wrestling with Picasso has yielded other results. I have been to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and I felt like I was experiencing a man's descent into madness. Now, that doesn't mean he doesn't make art, but it became less and less meaningful to me as he aged. Not because he became more and more abstract (though that may play some role), but literally because he struck me as an old man who liked to doodle naked women. Was it really necessary to pencil in her anus Pablo? There is art that makes you uncomfortable, but you emerge stronger for it. Then there is art that just makes you uncomfortable. A fair amount of his latter work was like that for me.
Just my $0.02. |
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11/17/2011 08:02:41 PM · #13 |
Picasso: Genius or Fool?
Anyone remember the SNL skit John Lovitz did of Picasso? |
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11/17/2011 09:01:41 PM · #14 |
| okay Paul, now you're not being fair. Other painters don't stand up against Picasso's range, either. |
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11/17/2011 09:30:27 PM · #15 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
okay Paul, now you're not being fair. Other painters don't stand up against Picasso's range, either. |
Michaelangelo and Leonardo come pretty close ... for range if not for sheer quantity. |
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11/17/2011 09:44:48 PM · #16 |
I've seen paintings have blown me away, and I've seen photographs that have blown me away.
They are different media, and have different qualities that they are judged on.
For anyone that hasn't done so, go to your nearest major art museum and peruse through the photography section. It's a lot different seeing the pictures blown up to a reasonable size than seeing them in a book or on a screen.
You might find that your feelings change, and if not, at least you have something to base the decision on.
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11/17/2011 09:53:34 PM · #17 |
| honestly, its basically just opinion.... i mean, anyone could balance a bottle cap on a piece of paper mache and have people think its amazing... practically everything is art, but only a random selection of things are perceived as "beautiful" or "special." |
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11/17/2011 10:03:47 PM · #18 |
Originally posted by nickyb:
honestly, its basically just opinion.... i mean, anyone could balance a bottle cap on a piece of paper mache and have people think its amazing... practically everything is art, but only a random selection of things are perceived as "beautiful" or "special." |
you can look at your images or your paintings and conjure up the emotions you felt taking it, but it becomes special when someone else can feel that same emotion while looking at your work. |
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11/17/2011 10:15:01 PM · #19 |
Originally posted by nickyb:
honestly, its basically just opinion.... i mean, anyone could balance a bottle cap on a piece of paper mache and have people think its amazing... practically everything is art, but only a random selection of things are perceived as "beautiful" or "special." |
This argument comes up so often it deserves a name.
reductio art absurdum?
if I can't measure it I can't see it?
thinking hurts?
Message edited by author 2011-11-17 22:15:55. |
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11/17/2011 10:51:24 PM · #20 |
| abandon to random, all ye who enter here? |
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11/18/2011 03:04:08 AM · #21 |
apples and oranges folks, live life, be glad that the awe prevails.  |
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