😃 We used to have some interesting arguments, sometimes quite heated, in art school over whether Warhol was and artist or a con artist.
I rather like that as a definition. Beautifully non-specific. Art is ...
May 3, 2023
251
-
-
Some good photography pushes the boundaries of what is already there beyond recognition:
That may or may not be good photography. It's just a little something I whipped up this morning. But the image that you're looking at bears little relationship to the thing in front of the camera.
-
It means using a word processing is not an art form. Composing the novel is.
The performance is not art, the composition is.
And, as I've already said, that's fine. The tool is not capturing what's already there (despite the famous "removing the unneeded bits" quote).
[quote[
What is already there is just the starting point for a photograph. And for some photographs, there was nothing there to begin with; think Man Ray.
[/quote]I don't know what Ma Ray is.
-
That is a humorous, tongue in cheek definition of art and illuminates and expands my reality...
-
art is 3 dimensional. photography is 2 there is no argument to this theory.
-
-
I don't know what Ma Ray is.
[/quote]Use the technology to find out who was Man Ray 😁.
-
A camera doesn't view and consider the world around it, react to it emotionally, and then think about how it wants to express those feelings. A camera doesn't think about how it wants to interpret a selected or composed scene. A camera doesn't compose the scene, the set, or the resulting image. A camera has no emotional response to what it sees. It may have some programmed automatic responses to light coming in thru the lens, but a camera is utterly brainless and soulless.
The intellectual and emotional processes of selection, interpretation, composition, and ultimately expression come "from the the mind and senses of the artist, and using their hands [eyes] (or feet, or whatever body parts)" to produce a creative expression of not: a scene, or a set of notes, or how paint looks when brushed onto canvas — but a creative expression of themselves.
A pianist uses a piano to express their creative desires. The technology that forms a piano: keys, hammers, strings, etc. are already there; it's then up to the pianist to decide how to apply that technology in expressive ways.
A painter has their tool set of pigments, paints, etc; a means of application; and material to which to apply them and then chooses how to apply those as a means of expression. A photographer generally uses a camera as a means for their creative expression.
-
I never said an artist doesn't use technology. The difference I see is in the capturing. The tape recorder recording the pianist is not an artist.
Put a simpler way, Mozart was an artist, the recording engineer at the sound studio recording a performance is a craftsman.
-
This is really just a way to rephrase the old question "What is art?" Only when there's an answer to that can the process of photography be included or excluded.
LeeJay feels that photography can't be art because the process captures what already exists; the photographer just records it. (Correct me if I've misstated that in any way.)
By extension, I assume he feels that all the readymades presented by the well known dadaists and surrealists are also not art. Those things already existed, which is why they're called readymades. Artists just picked them up and presented them. We know that a large number of people do consider those things art - and another large number don't consider them art at all.
There probably will never be a reconciliation of these two views, and never be a universally accepted answer to "What is art?"
-
Some photographers create the things they photograph. I've already mentioned Man Ray, but anybody who makes photograms qualifies.
Then there are people like Gregory Crewdson
gagosian.com/artists/gregory-crewdson/
How about Cindy Sherman?
Andy Goldsworthy double dips.
-
Bokeh is abstract, and some people pay good money for it. lol
-
If a scene is constructed by the photographer, didn't LeeJay say he feels the act of constructing the scene is the art, and the photograph is just a record of it?
There's also a companion question: "What is photography?" Depending on how that's defined, LeeJay might feel certain things that are similar to photography, but not exactly photography, can be art.
-
How well liked something may be is not the measure of art. It's the expression itself which creates art in all different shapes, sizes, forms, and variations and by all kinds of people; regardless of how well liked that expression may be by anyone at any given time or place.
No one can define that for you. You are free to have as broad or narrow and as rigid or flexible of a viewpoint as you like.
But if "art" holds an elevated position for you which does not include all the visual means of artistic expression, including photography, and you approach other art forms or other things in life in the same way; my friendly suggestion is to lower your gaze once in awhile or you'll miss some really good stuff.
Once, I actually had a painter and illustrator say to me: "Oh, photography isn't art; anyone can push a button." To which I replied: "Anyone can apply paint to a canvas, it doesn't make them an artist. Anyone can walk up to a piano and push the keys, it doesn't make them a musician." We've remained close friends, but that assertion has never been brought up again for whatever reason.
-
I subscribe to Jean-Paul Sartres' definition :
"For a work of art to really exist, it must have the creative cooperation of the person who receives it"Regards,
Joe. -
As I said above, it doesn't.
-
Then what difference does it make?
-
That's circular. Who says you have no artistic talent? I think everybody starts off with artistic talent, and some people have it trained out of them.
