[pure-silver] Re: At long last you can watch Long Live Film
- From: Tim Daneliuk <tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 14:16:10 -0600
On 11/19/2013 11:34 AM, Bill wrote: Is that a group? An organization?
Photographers bounded > “post-modern”, I don’t.
Postmodernism is a very specific intellectual theory school that is applied
to the interpretation of the arts and letters. It - along with
Deconstructionism -
have wrought great harm to art as a human product, but they are clearly
discernable
schools 20th Century criticism. For a fantastic treatment of this topic - and
why these schools are so utterly debauched, see Kimball's "Rape Of The Masters".
If you love art, this is a must-read.
Question: why on earth should a picture be a “beautiful object” to have value?
It doesn't and that's not the point. Some years ago, I tackled this general
"what is art" discussion. I think it may have been on my original
pure-silver list, so I've taken the liberty of reproducing it here for
your dining and dancing pleasure:
To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [pure-silver]: OK, I'll Jump Off The Cliff WAS:The Decline
Of Fashion Photography
DarkroomMagic wrote:
Tim
Hang on a minute.
How come art has objective qualities if it uses beauty in its definition,
which is subjective. If art has objective AND subjective qualities (like
beauty), then it must be in the eyes of the beholder what to call art.
<Decides to dive head-first off the "What Is Art" cliff.>
Art does have both subjective and objective qualities: The objective ones
(for the most part) are what _define_ it to even be art. The subjective
ones determine whether it is good or not. - though there are also arguably
some objective ones which help in assessing the goodness of a particular
work.
Let's see if I can be a bit more precise in my definition and use of terms:
"Taste" is personal - it is what you or I _like_ and it is very
much subjective. It is possible, however, to categorize taste as
better or worse - not our subject here today.
"Beauty", at least as defined in Classical and Western thinking, is about
the _innate quality_ of an object, artifact, or even person. For many
millenia, thinkers from almost all traditions, Western, Eastern,
and even Mystical, have wrestled with the question of what makes
something "beautiful". But beauty is _not_ a matter of opinion;
it is a property of an artifact.
An artifact need not be beautiful to be "Art". But there are some things
that are non-negotiable - if something is to be considered "Art", it must have
these things. Note that these are a _minimum_ set of things. Actual art
has far more attributes. Here are a few of those objective properties
that leap to mind off the top of my head (there are probably more):
1) Art has a _human author_ - nature is beautiful, but it is not art.
2) It must have been an _intentional act_ by that human - accidents
are not, in and of themselves Art. But an artist who is trying to
make art will sometimes do so "accidentally" - a subtle but important
distinction. For example, if I trip in the studio and pour paint
all over a canvas unintentionally, it is not art. But if I am painting
a portrait, and unintentionally use the wrong brush or color, it is still
art. The difference? In the first case, I was not trying to make Art, I
was trying to walk through the studio. In the second case I _was_ trying
to make Art. That's why my drop cloth from painting my house is not Art,
but Jackson Pollock's splatterings are.
2a) As a consequence of 2), a given piece of Art always has an
_architecture_ or plan imposed upon it by the artist. This
is true without regard to the methods or media selected by the
artist. If if my method as a painter uses randomness somehow,
that very choice of randomness is itself a kind of artistic
architecture.
3) In a closely related point, Art requires _skill_ or _technique_ of
some sort. It is not something anyone can just do because they
are alive. But ... I happen to be an optimist: I believe all
normally functioning humans have the innate ability to acquire
such skill if they desire - in principle, anyone can become an
"Artist", but not everyone is, in actual fact.
5) Art has _compositional elements_ which the artist conciously chooses.
Some or all of these either exist explictly, are implied, or exist
consciously in the negative: Form, space, pattern, repetition, and
singularity
are all examples in visual forms. Negatives exist for each.
There are analogous forms in music including melody, harmony,counterpoint,
rhythm,
and so on along with negatives such as dissonance. Implication also exists
in music. For example, in Bebop, the melody is frequently implied by
some combination of harmonic, melodic, and even rhythmic improvisation.
6) Art has _binding elements_ which connect the compositional elements
to create the final work: integration, flow, context, placement,
perspective, and timing are examples. Some or all of these are
present in varying degrees in all true Art. These are the way the
architecture of a given work of Art is actually realized.
7) All Art, in principle, is _timeless_. That is, it has the potential
of living forever in human existence. Most of it, of course, does not,
but the very best (and sometimes worst) examples do become timeless.
This is why, for example, the vast majority of hip-hop and rap cannot
possibly be considered art - it is largely pop culture commentary which
becomes irrelevant as soon as the popular fashion shifts. It may have
some value to sociologists or even historians as a record of a period but
it is not even in principle, timeless, let alone actually so.
8) Art always _interprets_ reality or human experience somehow, it is not
just a recording of the world - that's journalism (or what journalism
is supposed to be) or a textbook. For example, we photographers
who are in this bag would argue that we _make_ fine art photographs,
we do not _take_ them. This is the principal reason I dismiss Madonna's
output as "Art". It is certainly a skill or craft to effectively
demonstrate sexuality or incite sexual arousal, but she is not interpreting
anything about human sexual experience in doing this. She is merely
displaying
it in essentially the same way a stripper does, albeit and arguably at
a much higher level of skill.
There are more, I just can't think of them at the moment.
Notice that all of these apply across culture, time, language, and
tradition. Although the actual expression of these components will be
different in, say, Chinese pentatonic music and the Bach Motets, each of
these have all the above mentioned elements. Even something as
apparently random as Burroughs' book "Naked Lunch" has these properties.
Notice too, that none of these speaks to the goodness or badness of
the art (an entirely different discussion exists on that topic). These
merely are qualities something must have to even be Art.
So, back to my original point: What makes something "Art" is not just a
matter of opinion, experience, interpretation, history, deconstruction,
and so on. A minimum set of objective, non-negotiable "standards" can
be identified which transcend medium, culture, and method. The various
philosophical schools of the 20th Century which relativized _all_
human knowledge effectively threw this away. And *that's* how anyone,
doing anything, in any way, can call themselves an "artist" and their
output "art" and get away with it.
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