From: shannon stoney (sstoney@pdq.net)
Date: 10/13/03-11:43:48 AM Z
Sandy wrote:
>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.
>
Plus, in the last twenty years or so, photography has started being
narrative again, right? It's confusing. though, because certain
narratives are considered ok, whereas others aren't. That is, there
are politically correct narratives in photography, and politically
incorrect narratives. And the latter don't have to be overtly
neo-Nazi or some such to be condemned as "wrong."
I think the "anti-narrative" bias you're talking about is part of the
legacy of modernism, as I understand it. That awful theory anthology
that I had to read this summer taught me that, if nothing else.
Right now we seem to be in a confused period where modernist ideas
against narrative exist side by side with postmodern diatribes
against beauty and in favor of certain politically correct narratives.
It's hard to know exactly what the zeitgeist is right now in all this
confusion, where anything sort of goes, but not really.
The book that Kate mentioned by James Elkins, Pictures and Tears,
talks about an image by Greuze of a girl weeping over a dead canary.
This seems silly and sentimental to us, but apparently the picture,
and others like it, was much admired in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I guess it all depends on what you think makes a good story, and this
depends a lot on what era you live in. I wonder what kinds of things
we admire today will be seen as hopelessly silly and sentimental in
100 years? Possibly Arnold Schwarzenegger movies?
--shannon
--shannon
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