From: Gregory Parkinson (glp@panix.com)
Date: 09/27/00-08:29:17 PM Z
At 2:12 PM -0400 9/27/00, Judy Seigel wrote:
>On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, John Richardson wrote:
>
> > If it hangs on a wall it is art.
>>
>Thanks. But don't forget floor art, and shelf art.
In university, after we got tired of writing manifestos for new art
movements - California Obstructionism, Schismism, Massive
Jardinism, pre- and post-Tutism, etc - a friend had a rubber stamp
made that said "NOT ART" as a response to the theory that says that
everything was/could be art. Only by labelling things as NOT ART
could you be sure that they weren't. We were young and having fun,
but we weren't stupid.
Pulling this back to something specifically alt-related, one of the
reasons I was attracted to alt processes was because the end result
feels more "art" to me, in this sense "art" meaning singular, unique,
not mass-produced (or producible). A thing that you could say was,
because of how it was created, singular. Non-factory (to co-opt
Judy's terminology.) Value based on rarity.
Otherwise, why are we going to this effort? It's the effort that
is definitional - as digital processes improve it is possible to
create the _look_ of anything an alt process can do. I've been
doing this with my toy camera work, I did enough noodling with
junk cameras (Diana, etc) to be able to start with a sharp
P&S 35mm shot and use Photoshop to make it look like it was
taken with an uncoated edge-weak 40's medium-format folder.
Happy accidents are no longer accidents as you learn what
defines them. I make them singular by scribbling over them
with pastels, pencils, watercolor, cosmetics, etc.
So Helmut Newton makes art. Glossy, reproducible images.
Albert Watson does fashion but uses alt processes. Looks like
art to me, and I'd rather own a Watson hand-made print than a
Newton (chunk, chunk, stamp out another copy) print.
Image vs print, object. I'd be fascinated to hear why the
people on this list make the effort to create an image that
requires far more work.
Greg (who hates slow processes but is attracted to the results)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10/01/00-12:09:00 PM Z CDT