From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 04/13/02-02:13:04 AM Z
On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Christopher Lovenguth wrote:
> It's not that gallery owners and graduate review committees are against
> images of nature or children, they are against "been there done that". I
> can't really imagine how your professors are Shannon, but I have been around
> plenty to know and have seen them try to teach a student what they are
> producing sometimes isn't going to help their art career once they enter the
> real world. It seems personal because art is a personal thing and people
> don't like to be told they are wrong. That is their job, to make you ready
> for an art career. That is why they discourage over done images because they
> know that you will not get in to grad school with them or in to a gallery.
>
> I have also found in a class setting that most students, who take pictures
> of landscape or children, etc when pushed by the instructor to give
> reasoning to their work, don't have a reason for doing it. They instead get
> mad at the instructor or blame them for the way art is now making it
> impossible to just make a pretty picture. The reason I say this is that when
> I was in art school I had teachers who did the same thing that most of you
> are saying about discouraging the taking of landscape, flowers and children.
> What I found was there were students who did all of that and were left
> alone. Then there were students who were discourage from taking these types
> of images when they couldn't defend their position. Let's face it, present
> day are is about having a position. You can't just be about perfecting an
> image anymore (unless of course you are perfecting an image to show how
> imperfect the world is, etc.). Some of you will think that to be
> intellectual artist bull, but art is 80% conceptual.
Thanks Christopher, I think you said it perfectly.
Not to mention, say, Rob't Mapplethorpe & Sally Mann's photographs of
children that galleries clamor for. It's not the subject, it's the "been
there done that."
Judy
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