From: shannon stoney (sstoney@pdq.net)
Date: 10/13/03-06:21:41 AM Z
Kate wrote:
>
>I only hope our latest bunch of "neo-pictorialists" will refrain from the
>sicky!!!
This is one of the issues that I"m struggling with, in writing about
Pictorialism. Why was so much of it so...sentimental, for lack of a
better word? (I think my teachers are already worried that I like
"romantic" and "sentimental" images because I photograph my rural
neighborhood a lot, and to them anything rural, no matter how gritty,
is de facto romantic and even politically retro.) A lot of Julia
Margaret Cameron's work is brilliant, but some of it is really what
Kate would call "sicky," I think. And not just because it involves
naked children; the real problem is that the naked children are
supposed to personify Spring, or Truth, or some abstraction like that.
I haven't noticed that The Antiquarian Avant-Garde over-indulges
much in the kind of Victorian kitsch that we associate with 19th
century pictorialism, but maybe I have just been associating with
extraordinarily sophisticated practitioners, such as yourselves.
Does late 20th/early 21st century Pictorialism have its own version
of kitsch? Let's pick on pinhole and Holga users for example: seen
any really kitschy Holga or pinhole pictures? (It's ok if they are
cyanotypes too!) And what is kitsch?
I was forced this past summer to read that awful Art in Theory
1900-2000 book and the topic came up a lot in that book, but I want
to know what YOU think it is.
Kate also wrote:
At 11:44 AM +1300 10/13/03, Kate Mahoney wrote:
>Have a look at James Elkins "Pictures and Tears" if you want an interesting
>critique of sentimental pictures of young girls, everyone, there is an
>excellent chapter.
I have this book and I find it very interesting. I have not gotten
to that chapter yet, but it's interesting to think about the whole
issue of why and how art can move people to tears occasionally, and
why most art historians or professional art critics are immune to
this response. The first chapter is about the Rothko chapel here in
Houston, where a lot of people apparently cry. It could never be
described as sentimental. But of course some emotion-inducing images
tread a fine line between being "powerful" and being sentimental.
But so do movies! And people are generally not terrible ashamed if
they cried when Old Yeller died (as the country song goes), but
wouldn't be caught dead crying in an art museum.
Just wondering what people's thoughts are on this. (Forget about
Sally Mann for a while. Those images might make you cry too, but for
a different reason.)
--shannon
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