From: shannon stoney (sstoney@pdq.net)
Date: 04/09/02-06:53:26 AM Z
At 10:13 AM +0200 4/9/02, Alejandro Lopez de Haro wrote:
>Not only was occasionally but more often as one can imagine. Just to give
>you an example, Cézanne's self-portrait of 1861 was painted directly from a
>photograph.
>
>Degas, along with Delacroix, are perhaps the greatest exponents of the use
>of photography for paintings. As an example, Degas' self-portrait: "Degas
>saluant" circa 1862 was painted from a photograph; also his: "Portrait of
>the princess de Metternich".
>
>Courbet's "Les Baigneuses" and "La femme au perroquet", both were from a
>photograph. The former from an unknown photograph and the latter from
>Villeneuve. Also his painting "Le château de Chillon" was painted from a
>photograph of Adolfe Braun. And his "Seascape" was from painted from a
>photograph of one of the most outstanding photographer of the XIX century:
>Gustave Le Gray's "Sky and Sea".
>
>We don't even have to go that far in time, even one of the most influential
>movement in painting: Cubism came from photography.
I re-read the Jed Perl article last night. He is not saying that
painters should never use photographs; he objects to copying
photographs "slavishly." As somebody who has painted both from life
and from photographs, I agree with him that you can tell the
difference between a painting from life and one copied from a
photograph, and the latter has a kind of flatness to it. I think
this is because we see in stereo, with two eyes, and a camera sees
with one eye. It's as if it has one eye in the middle of its
forehead. The camera's monocular vision does not bother me in a
photograph, but somehow when it's translated literally into a
painting, something is lost.
I think Perl's larger point was about the vacuity and nihilism of a
lot of contemporary art that descends from Duchamp. It's not that he
hates all contemporary and modern art; he loves Mondrian, Matisse,
Picasso, et al, and he says nice things too about a lot of
contemporary artists. He just despises Richter evidently, and
worries about the direction of the MOMA.
If anybody wants to read this article, it's in the archives of The
New Republic site online.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020401&s=perl040102
Or go to www.tnr.com and click on the link to the Jed Perl article on Richter.
--shannon
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