Why Oh Why?

Maybe I shouldn't be too hard on Joe Cornish. After all, as a commercial photographer he has to create photographs that will sell. And as Ian has said, he has done some good projects. A recent one, on Fountains Abbey, sounds interesting. I read about it in the Yorkshire Post, but haven't seen it yet.
Joe Cornish is actually pretty big round here. I was up on the North York Moors one day doing a big charcoal drawing, when a car pulled up, and a man got out, carrying a camera and tripod. He said, " Do you mind if I photograph your view, only I know Joe Cornish."
How could I refuse?
He set his camera up and then waited for the sun to come out. I didn't need directional light as I was trying to capture the structure of the land, and the patterns made by gamekeepers who had burned patches heather. So he waited, and I carried on drawing.
After half an hour he gave up and drove off. Five minutes later the sun came out.
This just shows that even if you know Joe Cornish you can't make the sun shine on demand.
 
This is what artists (and art promoters) claim. I don't know if it's ever been tested systematicaly. At first sight it seems to impose an obligation and a limitation on the person constructing the art. Can we not contemplate the possibility of a work of art that depresses the human spirit?
Not a good marketing strategy, I grant you. But surely it could be done with the same mental and physical skill set. Perhaps some music might be deliberately made depressing. Consider "He was despised" from Messiah - a huge contrast to "For unto us..." In this case we might argue that the work is the whole of Messiah and not individual items. A quick and superficial Google search turns up Goya's Third of May, which may be worth considering. We could advance benefit to humanity rather than sublimity in this case.
In photography, we might think of Salgado's pictures of mining.

Please understand I'm not denying the uplifting aspect of art. I'm just exploring the claims we make.
 
I dunno, Alan. You miss out all the important stuff. What brand of camera? What sensor size? What ISO setting? RAW or JPEG? What lens? Not even the brand of tripod. What were you thinking of?
 
David M said:
I dunno, Alan. You miss out all the important stuff. What brand of camera? What sensor size? What ISO setting? RAW or JPEG? What lens? Not even the brand of tripod. What were you thinking of?
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Sorry David, I should have taken more notice. Will try to do better next time! All I remember was that his camera was big and digital, and expensive looking. Oh, and he had a shift lens. I bet that cost a bit more than my stick of charcoal.
 
Big, eh? Not as big as a Real Camera, I bet. Probably not quite as shifty, either.
 
No, his camera wasn't as big or as shifty as my big Real Camera. Definitely not. But he did know Joe Cornish!
 
David M said:
It may be argued that although these people were widely known, it was only to a small sector of educated people and that must be true. I suggest that it still is.
The painters and sculptors of Pharaonic tombs remain anonymous.
Vivian Maeir conforms to the stereotype.
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In my view, something rather different is going on. The immediacy of communications and mechanisms like social media are making the promotion of anyone's claimed "art" nearly frictionless. You don't need an agent or a gallery to flog your work. That means a great deal of mediocre dreck that would have been filtered out in earlier times now survives and is often taken far more seriously than it merits.

I've said this before here in other threads. Time is a first class filter for art of merit. I'd hazard to say that Bach will still be sung in 500 more years, but that the Beatles will be forgotten

Maier's work is interesting. I saw the exhibit in Chicago when it first came to public view. Is it good work? Without question, but in the sense that a Time, Life, or National Geographic photography is "good". It captures a time an place very well. But - at least to my eye - much of it is photojournalistic with almost no interpretive elements
 
Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
I always thought art is for the benefit of humanity which includes both the artist and the audience. :) Isn't one of the benefits of art that
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That may be one of its byproducts, but I maintain - without apology - that art is made first and primarily for the artist.


Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
it lifts the human spirit from the mundane to the more sublime?
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Sometimes, but I don't think that's inherent. Consider something like Munch's "The Scream". It's indisputably art, but I hardly find it uplifting or sublime. Maybe I just don't have enough existential angst ...
 
People as artist have different approaches, all the people I know make work for audiences, regardless of the medium. That has been my approach for been my approach for many years.

Ian
 
Well. Perhaps someone here is being a bit pessimistic.
There’s certainly more of it about, but that doesn’t mean that it’s getting worse. It just means that we see all of it. The distribution curve of quality remains constant.
Technology means we can see more of it very quickly. Much of it isn’t designed to last forever, like ice cream. Do we deplore the temporary nature of that delicious confection? I suggest that it’s something that increases our delight and lifts our spirits. Better an ice cream on a boiling day than a Rembrandt.
I’d also like to suggest that Time is a very inefficient filter for quality. If a minor boy, buried in a hurry, was given such treasures as Tutankhamen, what might have been in the tomb of Rameses? Gone, alas, scattered and destroyed by Time. And what of cave art? The filter that gave us what remains was inaccessibility, not excellence. Who knows what masterpieces have been lost?
A final (as if…) point. Perhaps it‘s taste that varies over time, rather than the quality of work.
 
Ian Grant said:
People as artist have different approaches, all the people I know make work for audiences, regardless of the medium. That has been my approach for been my approach for many years.

Ian
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I have an audience ... it is me. The fact that others may like my work is nice, but that's not for whom I produce pictures.
 
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David M said:
Well. Perhaps someone here is being a bit pessimistic.
There’s certainly more of it about, but that doesn’t mean that it’s getting worse. It just means that we see all of it. The distribution curve of quality remains constant.
Technology means we can see more of it very quickly. Much of it isn’t designed to last forever, like ice cream. Do we deplore the temporary nature of that delicious confection? I suggest that it’s something that increases our delight and lifts our spirits. Better an ice cream on a boiling day than a Rembrandt.
I’d also like to suggest that Time is a very inefficient filter for quality. If a minor boy, buried in a hurry, was given such treasures as Tutankhamen, what might have been in the tomb of Rameses? Gone, alas, scattered and destroyed by Time. And what of cave art? The filter that gave us what remains was inaccessibility, not excellence. Who knows what masterpieces have been lost?
A final (as if…) point. Perhaps it‘s taste that varies over time, rather than the quality of work.
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The problem isn't that there is "more of it" and that we see it all. It's that the standards by which we judge aesthetic greatness have been substantially dulled with this onslaught. If I hear one more person describe some piece of pop music trash as "awesome" I may scream out loud. The Verdi Requiem is awesome. In more modern times, the Karl Jenkins Stabat Mater is awesome. Miles Davis' Sketches Of Spain is (arguably) awesome. Some poptart grinding a pole dance on stage as they squawk out their sexual innuendo is not.

I am put in mind of the Rand book "The Fountainhead". In this novel, the people of little or no ability work to refine what "greatness" actually means, so that they themselves can be perceived as great. One of the side effects is that the truly great artists (architects in this case) become marginalized.

To be clear, I don't think time preserves all great work. I merely believe that all great work still extant has stood the test of time. I also believe that which did not - for the most part - did not deserve to survive.

I'd rather know my work isn't great against a very high bar, than take comfort in my excellence against a diluted standard.
 
I'd rather push against that high bar, that means I don't want to be in a league or two lower, or even lower than that.

It's easy to use words to make excuses, and that's all I see in the verbage. Images not words would say far more.

Ian
 
Surely this is about the way language changes, not about what it describes. Words mutate. Presently used to mean now, but now it means in a while. Nice once meant precise and now it’s used as faint praise. A bathroom may contain no bath and a powder room no powder. Awesome comes from the word awe (obviously) but that’s more allied to fear than delight. Other examples may come to mind. We may deplore having to navigate the shifting sands of meaning, but it seems inescapable.

A word on the Beatles: I do hope that the phrase “Give peace a chance.” survives for a thousand years.
 
David M said:
Surely this is about the way language changes, not about what it describes. Words mutate. Presently used to mean now, but now it means in a while. Nice once meant precise and now it’s used as faint praise. A bathroom may contain no bath and a powder room no powder. Awesome comes from the word awe (obviously) but that’s more allied to fear than delight. Other examples may come to mind. We may deplore having to navigate the shifting sands of meaning, but it seems inescapable.

A word on the Beatles: I do hope that the phrase “Give peace a chance.” survives for a thousand years.
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These days, I'm more of a mind to give war a chance ;)
 
thronobulax said:
I have an audience ... it is me. The fact that others may like my work is nice, but that's not for whom I produce pictures.
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Just curious to know what makes you think that you are an artist? I ask this without malice to understand your own standards.
 
I am an artist because I seek to make art. Whether I am a good or successful at making art is another matter altogether.

There is art that is good and I like.
There is art that is good that I do not like.
There is art that is bad that I like.
There is art that is bad that I do not like.

I think I have made art that is in all four categories. But, again, keep in mind that I am making art for me, not for accolades of other people or the pontifications of critics so I alone am passing judgment on what is good/bad, not just whether I like it or not.

Note that I am making a number of particular claims and distinctions in my understanding of art:

  1. Art the intentional act of the human creative process.
  2. While randomness can be used to produce art, the acting of using it is intentional. i.e. Beauty can be found accidentally (the tourist's stunning single shot of a sunset that accidentally turns out well), but art is always intentional.
  3. Art and Beauty are related but not inextricably so. One does not imply the other necessarily.
  4. What is "good" art and what I prefer or like are not necessarily the same thing. I do not care for Stravinski's music even though I acknowledge its importance in the canon of classical music. I do much enjoy the velvet wall hangings of dogs playing poker which - at best - are pretty low art.
  5. "Good" art is invariably an interpretation of reality and/or the human experience. The best art rises above propagandizing and has - at least in principle - the ability to become timeless.
Your Mileage May Vary, of course and everyone drinks from this well their own way. The above is my way.

P.S. There are clearly corner cases that are hard to categorize neatly. Karsh's portrait of Churchill drips with the politics and history of the time. Without those, the subject would be uninteresting. But that portrait is - at least to my eye - a stunning piece of art that will be held up as an exemplar for generations to come.
 
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thronobulax said:
P.S. There are clearly corner cases that are hard to categorize neatly. Karsh's portrait of Churchill drips with the politics and history of the time. Without those, the subject would be uninteresting. But that portrait is - at least to my eye - a stunning piece of art that will be held up as an exemplar for generations to come.
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But then look at the one of General Charles De Gaulle, same set up and location, it's underwhelming.

Churchill was an artist (painter) and writer himself, he also understood he had to make a powerful pose.

One then asks why is Karsh important, you can look at BJP Almanacs from the 1920s and 30s and see similar style portraits of all walks of life. He had access to High Society.

Karsh's importance is he was one of a very few portrait photographers to use 10x8, and a 1930s Hollywood studio style of lighting, with very high end subjects, post WWII. More importantly he was very good at it.

Ian
 
thronobulax said:
There is art that is good and I like.
There is art that is good that I do not like.
There is art that is bad that I like.
There is art that is bad that I do not like.

I think I have made art that is in all four categories.
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Fantastic! Thanks. Can you share one photographic work of yours for each of the above categories? And maybe in a line or two tell why you think it is good/bad and why you like/dislike?
 
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