Aesthetics Of Art Form

[Alan Klein]

I'd like to suggest that you are taking a wider view of art in society than me. Even bad art may serve, and serve well, a virtuous cause. It may serve a wicked one too. Consider how Nazi images of Jews served their own cause. A photograph of an atrocity or abuse reveals those things whatever its own aesthetic qualities may be.
I began by deploring the way that then-fashionable "political" dogma elbowed aside any discussion of the other merits of a photograph. There may be a parallel with the way that the intricacies of digital technique have supplanted discussion of the image itself.
When it comes to art used as propaganda, for good or ill, we can still distinguish between different works by what I'm calling aesthetics. I wish there were a better word. So the question for me is why Guernica or Animal Farm have impressed us more deeply than other works. Orwell wasn't the only person to disapprove of Stalin. My suggestion is that the answer lies in the quality of aesthetic craftsmanship. That's an even worse expression, but I'm searching for something better. The maker of a work brings something more than a bare transcription of the facts, and that's what is concerning me.

The art of Guernica and Animal Farm were political in nature to begin with.

 

[Ian Grant]

A bit of history: I did a MA in photography. Interesting but not life-changing. At that time, all photographs seemed to be feminist tracts, whatever their subject, whatever their purpose. I found I could take random objects and devise ways that they illustrated and confirmed that Men are Horrible. You’re seeing my reaction to that.

I saw this from a different perspective, an almost schizophrenic change at times, I was in a relationship with someone doing an MA which was dominated by extreme feminists. I won't go into details. It was another 7 years before I embarked on an MA myself, there were no similar issues.

Photography as a medium is very broad and veers off in many directions. There are no simple definitions of Photography as Art, Fine Art, or the Aesthetics.

Those trying to explain photography as Art are writers, like: John Berger, Susan Sontag, Peter Bunnell, Beaumont Newhall, , Mike Weaver, Peter Turner, and a great many more.

Can't we just enjoy art without having to write a thesis on why?

On a Forum like this, yes. However, on a personal level, understanding why you make images and what you are trying to say, is important. How deeply we explore this is an individual choice. In my case, lecturing, exhibiting etc, and shooting project based work made this relatively easy. The ability to contextualise your own work, or that of others, is critical when approaching galleries, and also applying for arts funding.

On my MA course we had to write an extended essay about another photographer's work in the first year, and an exhibition set and a thesis about that work in the second year, both with extensive references.

It's quite complex to discuss practically in Forum threads, and then we all have different approaches, and are unlikely to agree on all aspects. So yes, we should enjoy art/photography.

Ian

 

[David M]

Evidently not.
In a wider sense, it’s the impulse to ask “why” that gave us photography in the first place and perhaps less importantly, took us out of the trees and caves.

 

[Ian Grant]

There's a thread on Photrio asking "What is Fine Art", it started in 2006, and it's still going around in circles, with no consensus.

Ian

 

[Alan Clark]

The cubist painter George Braque said that you can explain everything about Art - except the bit that matters....

Alan

 

[David M]

Simple.
Art is what artists make and artists are people who make art.
There! A nice simple circle.
There are more interesting questions than defining the boundaries of a category. Almost certainly, no clear answer can be devised.
On the other hand, the search for an answer might lead down interesting and untrodden paths. Might.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

The art of Guernica and Animal Farm were political in nature to begin with.

which was my point

 

[Marley's Ghost]

which was my point - they were still art.

 

[thronobulax]

It's one thing to say, "Artist X's work expresses this point of view about the culture and world in which they inhabit." In this case, we can at least judge for ourselves whether the art or the propaganda dominates, whether the art would stand on its own if it were not propaganda, and whether its worthy of consideration beyond its propagandist purpose. That is, we can judge the art in its own time, in its own context, and with a reasonable understanding of the artist's intent.

But that's not what is going on in today's arts world. The art is no longer allowed to speak for itself. Instead, modern agenda peddlers and "thinkers" have inflicted their own worldview retroactively upon existing art and late artists. We cannot examine, say, a Carravaggio painting without first filtering it through contemporary socio-political pieties, deconstructionist methods and all the rest of the blather that inhabits the arts academy. Instead of reveling in the beauty of the painting, we are instructed to beat our breasts with the guilt of participating in racism, patriarchy, colonialism, and oppression. While all of these are important points of discussion in a broader sense, none of these things have anything whatsoever to do with the merits Carravaggio's work. They are entirely manufactured causes imposed upon that work, long after-the-fact of its time of creation.

Here in the US, this lunacy has taken on a life of its own. Historically important and aesthetically valuable statues are being torn down because they came to be during the course of the country's slaving history. Instead of leaving them in place as moral and artistic lessons, the fingers-in-their-ears crowd that increasingly dominate the popular culture demand these artifacts be expunged from the public square. We used to demand that our art be "transgressive". Now the mere fact that someone's feelings might get hurt justifies the removal of art from public view. How long can it be before someone demands the Edward Weston's figure studies of Charis Wilson be removed from view because they are insufficiently reflective of 3rd wave feminist concerns (or worse still, he dared to call her a "woman")? Sooner or later, someone is going to decide that Michelangelo's "David" represents oppression of one sort or another and demand the Galleria dell'Accademia remove it.

In short, art is under a full on attack by an arts-illiterate, angry mob of villagers with torches and we are all the poorer for it. Tragically, the arts academy is in full cooperation with this movement - in fact, they lead it. That's why it matters. That's why I care about it ... whatever art actually is.

 

[David M]

The tyranny of the thought police isn’t confined to the US. We have been blaming academia, but a major factor is the wide reach of social media. Social media can create the illusion that a particular viewpoint is universal. Any demagogue can summon a statue-toppling mob at a moment’s notice, it seems. Should we be tearing down statues of Steve Jobs?

The real problem here is intolerance. Plus a lack of understanding that the past wasn’t just like today, except with poorer wi-fi. Almost all jobs were manual; women’s lives were severely constrained by childbirth; one poor harvest was a disaster and there were neither avocados to crush on toast, nor bananas to put in bread, although that may very well have been sourdough.

Back to Art. I doubt that it’s possible to fillet a piece of work and lay out its commercial, political, social and artistic components on the slab. They work together.
There are situations where these factors can be separated. Consider Arabic calligraphy. It can be extraordinarily beautiful, but unless we speak Arabic (which I don’t) it remains dumb. Even if we do speak the language, we may not appreciate its full force, unless we know something of Arabic culture. It may be a quotation from a longer passage which brings all kinds of associations to the mind of someone who knows.
The same thing must be true of other cultures, for example, in representations of other people’s deities. We may see them as straightforward representations, but to a believer, they must be different. This may even be true of a non-believer from the same culture.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

There are several interesting points here.

Firstly I totally agree that offence is more easily taken these days than it was in the past. Is this a bad thing? Well in certain circumstances I find it irritating, but I'm also keenly aware that my generation (I'm 62) had it's chance, and the world now belongs to younger voices than mine. I'm also an older white, heterosexual male so few people are queueing up to oppress me: thus I have few causes to get offended than if I was female, gay, transgender or black.

Toppling statues is an interesting thing to be mentioned. I'm sure we all remember the grainy newsreel film of the blowing up of the huge Nazi eagle and swastika statue on (I believe) the Nuremburg stadium, or the destruction of busts and bronzes of Hitler at the close of world war two. We neither see publicly shown the technically stunning Triumph Of The Will by Leni Riefenstahl.
Why are those pieces of art no longer admired in public?
The answer is probably because they would be seen as an affront to the Jews, the gay and Gypsies who perished in Nazi concentration camps - and indeed to the allied lives lost in bringing down an evil regime (I hope we can all agree on that bit of pigeonholing).

So one has to ask oneself why we object to statues that clearly upset a minority who both suffered oppression in the past, and equally clearly suffer discrimination today, are removed to museums where one has a choice whether one wishes to see them - as opposed to being on public view where there is no help but to see them. Personally I have no issues with busts of Hitler being in museums - but I would have an issue with them being raised in public. So why should I feel different to a statue of a Confederate general or a British aristocrat who made his fortune from the misery of slavery?

 

[thronobulax]

The tyranny of the thought police isn’t confined to the US. We have been blaming academia, but a major factor is the wide reach of social media. Social media can create the illusion that a particular viewpoint is universal. Any demagogue can summon a statue-toppling mob at a moment’s notice, it seems. Should we be tearing down statues of Steve Jobs?

But it's been academia that's miseducated the social media generation. Starting in the 1960s, universities increasingly became places of indoctrination and incrementally less places of intellectual inquiry and learning.

The real problem here is intolerance. Plus a lack of understanding that the past wasn’t just like today, except with poorer wi-fi.

This is so great, I am stealing it

Back to Art. I doubt that it’s possible to fillet a piece of work and lay out its commercial, political, social and artistic components on the slab. They work together.
There are situations where these factors can be separated. Consider Arabic calligraphy. It can be extraordinarily beautiful, but unless we speak Arabic (which I don’t) it remains dumb. Even if we do speak the language, we may not appreciate its full force, unless we know something of Arabic culture. It may be a quotation from a longer passage which brings all kinds of associations to the mind of someone who knows.
The same thing must be true of other cultures, for example, in representations of other people’s deities. We may see them as straightforward representations, but to a believer, they must be different. This may even be true of a non-believer from the same culture.

It is interesting to me that we only demand this "filleting" in the visual arts. One rarely hears that we cannot fully enjoy the ballet without knowing the backstory of the composer or the dancers. Similarly, its entirely possible - and common - to revel in the beauty of the Mozart Requiem or the Bach B Minor Mass without knowing much of anything about the composers or the conductor.

But for some reason, painting, sculpting, and photography are regularly required to provide bona fides or - we are told - we'll never really understand the work. (I stipulate that knowing about the backstory of composers is useful, it's just not necessary.) I may not understand Arabic, but I've stood in awe at the patterns and shapes of the language framing a stunning mosaic in a mosque. Sure,
if I read the language, I'd know more about the context of what I'm viewing. I doubt it would have materially improved my appreciation of the mosaic - it stood on its own merits.

This doesn't particularly bother me except that today's intellectuals and their puerile offspring aren't using such exegesis to understand the art as art. They are using it to project their own biases, politics, and social views upon the art so as to engage in self-righteous finger wagging. It's one thing to condemn Riefenstal's Nazism. It's quite another to demand that no one is ever allowed to see "Triumph Of The Will." This isn't just intolerance. It'd intellectual fraud. The actual effect is to reduce our net understanding of art, history, and culture by silencing anything that might possibly offend anyone at any time.

 

[thronobulax]

There are several interesting points here.

Firstly I totally agree that offence is more easily taken these days than it was in the past. Is this a bad thing? Well in certain circumstances I find it irritating, but I'm also keenly aware that my generation (I'm 62) had it's chance, and the world now belongs to younger voices than mine. I'm also an older white, heterosexual male so few people are queueing up to oppress me: thus I have few causes to get offended than if I was female, gay, transgender or black.

Toppling statues is an interesting thing to be mentioned. I'm sure we all remember the grainy newsreel film of the blowing up of the huge Nazi eagle and swastika statue on (I believe) the Nuremburg stadium, or the destruction of busts and bronzes of Hitler at the close of world war two. We neither see publicly shown the technically stunning Triumph Of The Will by Leni Riefenstahl.
Why are those pieces of art no longer admired in public?
The answer is probably because they would be seen as an affront to the Jews, the gay and Gypsies who perished in Nazi concentration camps - and indeed to the allied lives lost in bringing down an evil regime (I hope we can all agree on that bit of pigeonholing).

So one has to ask oneself why we object to statues that clearly upset a minority who both suffered oppression in the past, and equally clearly suffer discrimination today, are removed to museums where one has a choice whether one wishes to see them - as opposed to being on public view where there is no help but to see them. Personally I have no issues with busts of Hitler being in museums - but I would have an issue with them being raised in public. So why should I feel different to a statue of a Confederate general or a British aristocrat who made his fortune from the misery of slavery?

I object to this because it reduces the visibility of past history and culture. When something is banished to the odd corner of a musty museum, it ceases being in the wider public eye. But that wider public eye is exactly where the reminders of racism and oppression should stand. The various cause crusaders seem not to understand the silencing evil doesn't make it cease to exist, it causes it to flourish. The antidote to bad speech is more speech, not muzzling the bad speech.

I also object to this because the current generation of the professionally offended are not really operating out of any particular principle. It's more of a cultural temper tantrum hiding behind self-described noble cause. Every civil person knows that slavery was evil. Some angry culture warrior destroying a Confederate statue doesn't particularly improve that understanding. What it does do is remove art and history from public view. What's next? Shall we cancel the Pyramids since - after all - they were built by slaves? Will we expunge all public references to and paintings of Lord Nelson or the mighty British Navy because, you know, they were sometimes naughty?

There is also a fundamental dishonesty in all this. When Robert Mapplethorpe displayed his (very explicit) homoerotic photographs publicly, the Cause Warriors were outraged, just outraged, that anyone would dare object. It was art, by golly, and no one had jolly well better have a problem with it. But apparently, this only works one way. Not only are the aforementioned Cause Warriors and their spawn offended by art they don't like, they have declared themselves morally entitled to remove- and even destroy work that they deem offensive. They are bullies and are merely repeating the sins of the 20th Century butchers who banished art they deemed to be "decadent".

 

[David M]

When I saw Colton’s statue being pulled down it wwas clearly not a spontaneous outpouring of deeply virtuous feelings. Someone had turned up with ropes. Somehow, another statue was waiting in the wings. The mob was merely stage-setting.
- and how many slaves were freed?
It made me think of book-burning; it made me think of lynching.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

Wow ...
At this point I'd like the administrators to delete my profile. I really don't want to be part of a forum where these attitudes are presented. I can detect the flying spittle of the right wing deranged so I wish no further part in it.

 

[David M]

Oh dear. Please reconsider. You’re a valued member and your wide experience is unique.
If you must leave, could you say which remarks are particularly offensive. I had thought we were exploring the topic of political content and influence in creative work. Inevitably, this means unpalatable matters will arise...
Please don’t do it.

 

[Joanna Carter]

If the problem is folks not approving of the expunging of slavery, then don't forget that, if future generations don't see it because those who supported it are no longer visible, they can be more likely to not realise the effects that it had (and still has)

There are times when infamy can be a stronger deterrent and, let's face it, it is still happening today, it's just that, on the whole, it not practised on such a large scale.

What does seem odd is that, unlike the fairly immediate removal of Naziism, it has taken so many years for a generation to, all of a sudden, decide that the rest of humanity should not be reminded of other things, now deemed unacceptable and learn to avoid them.

How does this relate to photography? Surely, if we feel that statues of certain perpetrators should be removed and their names removed from public view, shouldn't we also "cleanse" the world of all photographic record?

We are now in a world where, as photographers, we are looked upon as perverts and predators, simply for taking pictures of children. As a result, we are losing an entire social history of our times. And yet there are few who do not delight in the photographic history of kids playing on streets that were taken in more carefree times. It's not the taking of pictures, or even their publishing, that creates abuse, it is the people that abuse them.

Then we have the internet, Wikipedia and the Dark Net. Who is going to "cleanse" them?

 

[Marley's Ghost]

David, while I don't agree with you I don't find your remarks offensive,

I agree with Joanna that the whole photography of children thing has been blown out of all proportion - but for that we must blame our 'red top' media that sold grubby newspapers by suggesting that there is a paedophile prowling every street - where the truth is that the majority of child abuse is by other members of the family or trusted adults. This distortion makes it far easier to sit and read your paper in the belief that the danger always lies without - and of course self introspection is always uncomfortable. And yes, I have direct experience of child abuse so I know of what I talk.

To my mind it matters not how long people take to realise a wrong is a wrong - but that action is taken when they do. I'll be clear: I don't approve of violence or the destruction of property.

I find it difficult to understand what is offensive about Wikipedia ... if there is a fact on there that is wrong I'm sure you are aware that anybody can log on and amend the record.

And as for the Dark net ... I have a job to refrain from bursting out laughing at this point. Have you ever used the Dark Web? It's the most boring place in the world - full of advertisements for marijuana seeds that the gullible can order and never receive - the usual inane pages of political ranting - that basically only attract the sad and lonely ... and that's pretty much it. Oh it does serve as a place where political dissidents in repressive countries can have a voice ... but other than that it's not a hotbed of kiddie porn or snuff movies. Download the TOR browser and check for yourself ... don't believe all the papers say.

 

[David M]

Wikipedia is subject to continual attack. Some is simply a prank, but regrettably, there are occasions when it can be malicious and harmful.
Sadly, neither Nazism nor slavery have vanished. There are different estimates of how many slaves remain but all of them are depressing. The picture is blurred because there are different definitions of non-voluntary labour and much of it is difficult to trace. We have seen actual slave markets in this century, but as far as I know, most of the trade is clandestine.
The Bristol protest was about Black lives mattering, as they do, as a response to the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in another continent by another police force, and not ostensibly about Edward Colston.
Perhaps we are occupying too much space with this subject on a forum devoted to a particular branch of photography. It’s a minefield of strongly-held beliefs.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

Once again - this is my last post here - I've found my time here fascinating, but I'm happy to keep politics out of chat about photography, but others here do not seem to have that restraint.
Enjoy your photography and the up and coming better weather. See you around
Ash