From: Sandy King (sanking@CLEMSON.EDU)
Date: 10/13/03-08:46:25 AM Z
Shannon wrote:
>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.
>
Shannon,
I am not sure exactly what Kate meant by the term "sicky." Perhaps
she might want to elaborate on it.
You appear to have associated the word with "sentimental," but please
correct me if that is not correct.
However, to directly address your question, much pictorial work of
the period was sentimental because the artists meant for it to convey
not only visual information but also to tell a story, or a narrative
that shows moral truths. In other words, the object in reality, or
the referent, is important primarily for what it tells us about
another reality (allegorical, biblical, mythological, and
surrealistic).
This way of making photographs was entirely consistent with the art
traditions of the time, and with virtually all preceding art
movements, because virtually all western painting from the middle
ages through the 19th century had an important narrative component.
In fact, the visual element was primarily important for the way it
was used to convey other meanings.
We don't look at photographs that way today, and any hint that the
photography is being used to provide a narrative that would lead us
to moral values is seen as sentimental and trite. But those who
condemn this type of photography do so at the risk of their own words
and works becoming irrelevant because in the end artistic tastes and
movements reflect more local and historical circumstances than any
universal mandate on creativity, meaning, truth or beauty.
I am reminded of a recent exchange in which it was held that there is
nothing truthful in photography, and that Art is about Art, not
truth, and certainly not beauty. But it has not always been and if
you don't believe me just look at how closely intertwined were the
concept of physical beauty with those of moral beauty and eternal
truth in the Neoplatonic tradition of the 15th and 16th centuries.
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