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Re: BIG

Hi

----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>

> Aside from all the modifications of painting's "reality" throughout
> history -- from the Etruscans to the Egyptians to the Euphasians, the
> function of "art" changed greatly with the introduction of photography.

No it didn't. The "function of art" remained exactly the same- what happened
was that as a result of the changes in society brought about by the
Industrial Revolution and the increasing wealth of the middle classes, the
patrons of art changed. New patrons had new tastes.


> For a while at least, painters struggled mightily exactly to show painting
> was NOT just "an imitation of reality"


No again. Prior to the mid 19thC Western painters had come from an academic
tradition which trained them to draw and paint by copying the works of
artists who had gone before. Artists would spend years simply copying
drawings before they were allowed to tackle drawing from life. So a very
refined and stylised view of the world was trained into these artists from
the beginning. Photography, and the discovery of other ways of depiction,
for example Japanese prints, did have a huge influence- but men like Monet
were actually trying to be _more_ honest to "reality", not less so. Their
new styles, full of vibrant energy, caught the imagination of newly wealthy
buyers and the rest, as they say, is history.

The central, and oft repeated, misconception is that painters were trying to
imitate reality prior to the invention of photography. They most
emphatically were not. They were using a complex visual language, which had
evolved over centuries, and which required years of training to learn, to
create metaphors and equivalents, just as composers do. (Not to mention to
remove the boils and warts from portrait subjects). Photography simply
opened their eyes to new ways of seeing and working.....in this case ways
which depended on understanding the effect of light rather than the
understanding of underlying form. It has nothing to do with "glossing over"
and everything to do with the revealing the  "essence of" the real.

Monet, Seurat and DeGas were convinced that their representations were more
"real", not than a photograph, but than the academic style which had come
before, and in which they had all been trained. They were definitely not
trying to move away from representation of the real, rather to tackle it!
They saw the photograph as a useful and liberating tool, not as a threat.
(DeGas was himself a very enthusiastic photographer, as were many other
painters.)



BTW one of the main reasons that painters like big canvases  is that oil
paint is a sod to use on a small scale............


Rod