From: Rod Fleming (rodfleming@sol.co.uk)
Date: 09/28/00-03:25:48 AM Z
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Miller" <gmphotos@earthlink.net>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca>
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 4:47 AM
Subject: Re: What makes photography art
> Art is a state of mind, a way of seeing and living,
>
> Gary Miller
>
Ooooh, how very Marcel Duchamp of you:-))
That has overtones of the great over-simplifier Gombrich when he says "There
is no art, there are only artists.".
The problem here is the "Sunday Painter" syndrome. Amongst trained artists
these are often condemned, and the French 19thC primitivist painter Rousseau
was know as "Le Douanier" ("The Customs-man") by the establishment as a
pejorative. Yet there are many cases, no more so than in photography, where
people who have had "day jobs" also produced art work. Indeed many
photographers produce commercial, non-art work, to fund their lives and
their art work. Are they (we, because I am one of those) artists or hacks?
So then what about Edward Weston? And what about those who teach in academic
art establishments to make their livings- are they artists, and so
acceptable to such a definition, or merely academics dabbling in art in
their spare time?
It gets more complex, too- many artists have had an independent means-
Picasso, Cezanne, Steiglitz, Calder........Do we take it that art can only
be made by those who have no need to sully the pristine linen of their minds
with the base preoccupation of staying alive? Or could it be argue that such
an artist has less to give by _not_ having had to struggle through the
difficulties that the less fortunate have had to face?
I think you have to allow that you can't quite be so absolutist as your
statement suggests. But this is a good thing; as I said on another topic, in
the first two centuries of the Italian Renaissance, no distinction was drawn
between artist and artisan, and it was only in the sixteen-hundreds that we
see the hijacking of art by the aristocracy- at least as creators rather
than patrons. So of course "art" suddenly sprouted all sorts of high-falutin
baggage to go with this change, leading in turn to the not unjustified claim
over the last few decades that many notions of "art" were elitist
pontification.
I think there's a strong case to argue that a slightly less angst-ridden
model of art should be adopted- there is no reason why anyone with some
training and desire to express themselves should not make art and have their
art accepted for itself. Naturally this does not mean that their work will
necessarily be held up in a hundred years time and admired by as yet unborn
critics. But the experience of creating art is a positive one, and we should
try not to make it exclusive or elitist.
As has been stated several times now, it's down to the intent of the artist
at the time that they make the work.
Also,
Judy Seigel wrote:
(
I myself have been getting 4 or 5 list
> e-mails a day (less than satisfactory comments about what makes
> photography art, but that's not this problem).
Ah, dear Judy, do I sense that you feel that you have more illuminating
comments to make about what makes photography art? If so why do you keep
them to yourself?
Rod
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