From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 09/05/02-09:05:30 AM Z
I agree with Judy's assessment of Ansel Adams vs Minor White, think it's
right on. (It's not a first, but Judy and I don't agree about much of
anything, so it's remarkable when it happens.)
While I agree with and appreciate much of Robert Adams' writing about
photography (speaking of writing) I really thought he missed the boat on
Minor White, didn't get what he was about at all.
kt
Judy Seigel wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2 Sep 2002, Jack Fulton wrote:
>
> > Now, listen here . . if Norman Rockwell is okay then why not Ansel? I'd say
> > that to say AA is a calendar artist is to recognize his, (and perhaps David
> > Meunch) contribution as an interpreter of the American 'majestic' outdoors.
>
> I would have replied sooner except I've been off doing "Upgrade,2 the
> Sequel", compared to which Upgrade 1 is a walk in the park. But sitting
> with my take-a-number at Techserve I wrote this on back of the invoice:
>
> Ansel Adams takes something generally accepted as beautiful -- trees,
> mountains, bodies of water, moonrise, et al, and photographs it. Let's say
> he optimizes, tweaks, and masterfully renders it so we can admire, even be
> thrilled by, the picture and/or the scene it evokes -- maybe even
> experience it as "sublime." But he's not telling us one thing we don't
> already know. Or not any Adams I've seen.
>
> In contrast, Minor White (who was as I recall mentioned in same breath),
> starts with nothing, what you might not even notice, and turns it into the
> sublime. I suppose he has some humddrum pictures, no one can sustain that
> level unbroken, but that's his *vision* -- finding sublime in the mundane,
> even invisible. I think in particular of a worn work glove on the street
> next to an open manhole, with (as I recall, haven't seen it lately) an
> arrow painted on the street, pointing to either hole or glove (maybe he
> moved the glove?). Another iconic White is the shadow of curtain on wall
> under an open window -- nothing really -- but a revelation.
>
> There may be mastery, beauty, et al, in Adams, but no revelation. We KNOW
> nature is grand (until ruined anyway, another kind of picturesque, &
> another topic). We didn't know about that glove or shadow until White
> found them, showed us.
>
> "Calendar art" in the sense I used the term celebrates the beautiful,
> which is harmless enough. But the reflexive accolades to Adams are I
> believe due more to his subject than his *vision.* Someone along the way
> seemed to think I was calling Adams "kitsch" -- not at all: kitsch is
> something else. But Minor White is *creative* -- in seeing/creating
> "manifestations", making something out of nothing by putting it together
> in his head. Even in a calendar, these wouldn't be "calendar art."
>
> As for edge: "Edge" can perhaps only be found in "new" art... it wears
> off quickly.
>
> > There are far fewer art critics I've enjoyed. Shall we discuss Ruskin here?
> > I see them more as reporters telling us about an exhibit. Few write
> > substantially interested and valuable critiques of work. It takes an
> > artist/critic along the lines of Victor Burgin or Alan Sekula to make some
> > sense . . though, darn .. hard to read. Maybe they're too social.
>
> In the 1970s, this school of writing was hellaciously contagious --
> Kuspit, Krauss, Solomon Godeau, Gilbert-Rolfe, Pincus-Witten, all did the
> jargon, copied I suppose from the French. Amazing how when the vogue
> passed they suddenly became capable of plain sentences. As for Burgin in
> particular, if I can say the word without sending this list into a tizzy,
> he made some very perceptive comments about Freud.
>
> Judy
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