jewelia (jewelia@erols.com)
Thu, 22 Jul 1999 06:25:10 -0700
the thread on pricing is becoming something else?:
i'm not really picking on ya' gary--you're not the only one--yours is a
common popular photography sentiment.
but, the price difference between say--a Gary Miller print? and say Edward
Weston's of Pt. Lobos--is not so simple as a matter of money or print
quality--there is history--Artists help make a history--Weston contributed
to the development of a school of thought--it's past now--really, i'm sure
you've heard--culture changes with time---his work is considered
symbolically important of that era of work--has become what R.S. called
iconographic -- artisans just make prints--reenactors reperform the
past--history is cultural and straight photography was an expression of
modernism that fit into "what was happenin' socially at the time" --i don't
mean like social drinking just at the parties-- artists make art and you can
call them unique for that--but that doesn't deny the overwhelming
similarities that artists share with other persons darlin'--making art for
sale or exhibition is hardly an exercise in individualism. what you call
"hype" is what a lot of others call good or great--all these descriptors are
just subjective adjectives for the same thing--Taste, well Kant, I'm sorry
to say--never turned out to be universal. So, today, the enlightenment gets
a Great Swirlee! and culture marches on to -- well nowhere probably -- but
who can stand still?
what you call illogical, economists have called rational choice for
decades--before postmodernism--that the choice to pay $47 million may not
make sense to you but that's not relevant to its valuation. you ain't even
in the game if you ain't got no checkers on the board. the problem is that
you call your tastes logical....????? and theirs something else....i just
don't see much point in what you say there...unless of course--you live on
Mount Olympus???
just to add a little to what R.S. posted about icons--or referred us back
to--i read his essay on his site that he referred us to and don't recall
off-hand where he mentioned icons: to have your work BECOME
iconographic--well, i think that means it is taken to be very important--who
wouldn't want to achieve that---else why show or sell or bicker on a list
with such emotion (as ususal) --it is the reproduction of icons that i think
he means to diminish--maybe i'm readin' ya wrong here richard? but icons
demand to be autoreproduced and that they are--in popular culture over and
over and over-- those decorator prints, and we could toss in popular or
"common" collectors -- as opposed to collectors who are in the game---so in
galleries we have this tension between popular now and popular tomorrow--the
past and future presently in the galleries here at the same time--trying to
make something new?--which we understand to be really impossible--but there
is a conversation taking place--i don't mean the one on the list--you may
not understand her work--but Cindy Sherman's--just to give an example--has
been taken to be important for the same fundamental reason as Weston's
was--i'd guess--that's why $24 million was paid, i think this was the
amount, for about 24 prints of hers for the LA museum -- that weren't
exactly presumed to be archival--as say platinum prints??
Don't figure??? sure it does, if you want to understand...of course its not
a matter of physics my dear--its a matter of culture...and culture has
always exhibited chaotic patterns--which doesn't mean there its not
rational--just difficult for us to understand its determinism--as in
reality.
love for now--enjoy...
jewelia Margueritta Cameroon
performing a set of decompositons
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