re: Why ARt Cannot be Taught; photoshop?

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From: shannon stoney (sstoney@pdq.net)
Date: 10/30/01-06:54:45 PM Z


Thanks to everyone who recommended this book. I ordered it from
Amazon, received it Thursday and read it over the weekend. It was a
tremendous help in understanding what is going on in critiques at my
school. Today we had an informal critique in a digital media class,
and I understood much better what was going on and how to steer it,
when I could, into fruitful directions.

However I think the author is right that much of what goes on in
critiques and art instruction is fundamentally irrational, and maybe
necessarily so. It helps to acknowledge this I think.

Another idea in the book that has been helpful to me has to do with
the problem of how to use new media such as digital media. In our
program we are required to make digital images with Photoshop.
Although we are photography majors, there is no expectation
particularly that we will use our own photographs in these images.
For me, the problem has been to figure out what Photoshop is for, as
a fine art medium. The author of the book says that all new media
have this problem, and that usually they take another, older medium
as their "ideal method." His example was wood engraving, which took
photographs as its "ideal method," that is, wood engravings were used
to reproduce photographs, and they imitated the look of photographs.
Another example might be the way in which early photography imitated
painting and drawing,until it found its own "voice." What I'm
wondering is, what is Photoshop's "ideal method"? It could be
photomontage, a la Jerry Uelsmann, or collage, like Dada collage as
done by Johnny Heartfield and Hannah Hoch. I know this is a little
off topic, but since many on this list are well versed in
photographic history and are using digital media for whatever
purposes, I thought you might have some thoughts on it.

--shannon


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