Talk Art Section???

simon ess said:
Nail- head.

For me, anything presented as art is an invitation to think.

You can, of course, decline the invitation.
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And this may be an example of why such a section can't work without strife.

People are very varied, and for a discussion to take place you need that variation. But for something like art, it may be that the kind of work that speaks to a particular type of person may not be able to communicate ideas and concepts to various others, and ignorance at all not the issue.
 
Yes but the comment that is at the root of this thread was something to the effect "it's all s***e" when referring to the entries for a major photographic portraiture prize. Not even "it's all s***e because ..."

I would hope that most people are up for a robust debate but so often "art" threads just get derailed by what amounts to acts of vandalism or trolling, these comments are not debate they are just hyenas chewing on the carcass of a thread that someone started with good intentions. What is left I think puts people off continuing with the debate.
 
sirch said:
Yes but the comment that is at the root of this thread was something to the effect "it's all s***e" when referring to the entries for a major photographic portraiture prize. Not even "it's all s***e because ..."

I would hope that most people are up for a robust debate but so often "art" threads just get derailed by what amounts to acts of vandalism or trolling, these comments are not debate they are just hyenas chewing on the carcass of a thread that someone started with good intentions. What is left I think puts people off continuing with the debate.
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You're right, of course, but the essence of a discussion for those who see art as something of value with those who do not is to call them up higher, rather than call them morons. ;)

A part of my point is that for some people art will only ever be faecal, not because they're dumb or abusive, but because that's how they're screwed together: consider it a form of dyslexia if you will. However hopefully they will find a better way of expressing themselves than that, even if it's only to declare the work of no value because the pictures say nothing.
 
ancient_mariner said:
A part of my point is that for some people art will only ever be faecal
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So shouldn't they try to manage their opinion without bouts of public incontinence every time the subject is mentioned?

They're not morons because they can't get art, they're morons for being so disruptive and attention-seeking about it. The "art is s**e" comments aren't being made as constructive elements of a debate, their being made deliberately to disrupt debate by those the do get it or that want to debate it. No one's complaining that people don't have the right to think art is s**t, they're complaining that they have the right to debate it in a rational thread without the "morons" pi***ng up the lamp posts.
 
@ancient_mariner I got your point and I think @Alastair has addressed it nicely but I would add that it is impossible to tell on a forum such as this whether a person just doesn't get it or whether they are trolling, i.e. being deliberately provocative to draw others into a specious debate. I get a strong sense that art threads are considered fair-game on this forum and if that is the case then there is no way to bring them to a higher level. It also means that any further response is fundamentally devalued.
 
sirch said:
@ancient_mariner I got your point and I think @Alastair has addressed it nicely but I would add that it is impossible to tell on a forum such as this whether a person just doesn't get it or whether they are trolling, i.e. being deliberately provocative to draw others into a specious debate. I get a strong sense that art threads are considered fair-game on this forum and if that is the case then there is no way to bring them to a higher level. It also means that any further response is fundamentally devalued.
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Alastair said:
So shouldn't they try to manage their opinion without bouts of public incontinence every time the subject is mentioned?

They're not morons because they can't get art, they're morons for being so disruptive and attention-seeking about it. The "art is s**e" comments aren't being made as constructive elements of a debate, their being made deliberately to disrupt debate by those the do get it or that want to debate it. No one's complaining that people don't have the right to think art is s**t, they're complaining that they have the right to debate it in a rational thread without the "morons" pi***ng up the lamp posts.
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There's no way to know who 'shot first', but the post I first quoted in the thread suggested not 'getting art' equalled not thinking, and until that world view changes on both sides we'll always have the trolls and baiters. If we're going to discuss photographic art at all then that's just going to be part of the landscape.
 
Alastair said:
There is. You could read the threads in question.
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I was thinking in general terms, rather than a per-thread basis. The conflict was going on before I joined the forum nearly 3 years ago, and I suspect was just a spill-over from pre-internet days.
 
Watched it, thought it was good up until the last artist, can't remember her name, where the presenter seemed somewhat smitten and presented her work as the future. Whilst I appreciated what she was doing, just saying "oooo space stuff" does not, IMHO make it the future. David Bowie was doing "space stuff" in the 1970's, radio hams have been doing moon-bounce for a good few decades. I am not critising her work but its use as a conclusion to the program and as an attempt to show the future of conceptual art, I think there is plenty of other work from the past decade or more that seems to be pushing the conceptual boudnaries further.
 
I'm working my way through the Genius Of Photography videos, and it makes me think that in some cases people are reading too much into an image in order to try to give it a greater value than it really had.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I'm working my way through the Genius Of Photography videos, and it makes me think that in some cases people are reading too much into an image in order to try to give it a greater value than it really had.
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You don't get to say things like that without an example ;)

Have you got a specific image in mind?

Edit: and are we talking artistic value or £/$ value? - I've never figured out the latter with art
 
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Alastair said:
You don't get to say things like that without an example ;)

Have you got a specific image in mind?

Edit: and are we talking artistic value or £/$ value? - I've never figured out the latter with art
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Yes, there was an example or two, one in particular with a white line down the side of a building that was being talked up, another with a tree in front of a building to contrast organic & man-made (IIRC) a third with a group in front of a car touted as being the ultimate image - the pinnacle of photography. There was also a category of work that was rubbished because it was trying to recreate painting-style images using cameras instead of joining in the vernacular style: a couple of the images shown as examples looked quite interesting. No mention was made of monetary value.

It may be best to forget I said anything - I've had a long day on the road and am probably a bit too tired & fuzzy to discuss this usefully.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Yes, there was an example or two, one in particular with a white line down the side of a building that was being talked up
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I think I know the one you mean, there's a discussion about how the line would have appeared in the ground glass back (reversed and upside down) if it's the one I'm thinking of.

ancient_mariner said:
There was also a category of work that was rubbished because it was trying to recreate painting-style images using cameras instead of joining in the vernacular style: a couple of the images shown as examples looked quite interesting
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Pictorialism vs. Modernism - it's an ongoing debate, you'll still find it active on this very forum and it's a debate that's been running within photography since 1869..

Modernism is generally dominant in discussion, Pictorialism is usually ridiculed by "serious" photographers. The descendent of Pictorialism include HDR. looks-like-film, lomo, "alternative" lenses/filters, etc. The sort of thing that usually gets relegated under the "Creative" banner here and recieves comments along te lines of "I don't normally like ____, but in this case.." or in one memorable case I can recall, ""I don't normally like ____, and this hasn't changed my mind."

If you're interested in Pictorialisn and the Photo-Succession, Taschen republished Camera Work by Alfred Stieglitz - http://amzn.to/2d2CKBa - and it's very well illustrated.
 
Alastair said:
If you're interested in Pictorialisn and the Photo-Succession, Taschen republished Camera Work by Alfred Stieglitz - http://amzn.to/2d2CKBa - and it's very well illustrated.
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Surely it's just the photos sans text? I have a copy, and I've seen various references to articles in the actual work.
 
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StephenM said:
Surely it's just the photos sans text? I have a copy, and I've seen various references to articles in the actual work.
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Yes,you're right. It's all the photos from the original volumes, with a multilingual introduction but not the original articles.

For the full text as published (with the images) you need to look here - http://library.brown.edu/cds/mjp/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=CameraWorkCollection - to view it online or to download as PDFs, but the I find the Taschen book more convenient for inspiration.
 
TBH my tastes go more to Man Ray than Steiglitz, and it's nice to see his work in the second video. Not terribly impressed with Rayographs (Rayograms?) but liked his portraiture, sense of fun and the effects he created with pseudosolarisation - made me try it when I still did darkroom work.

The image with the white line was by Eugene Atget, probably shot with a Leica. The commentator talks about him seeing a white zipper - which was probably not invented pre-WW2 and extracts all sorts of things from what I suspect was just intended as a simple street scene record shot.

One of the earlier pictorialism images I likes was The Pond by Edward Steichen.
 
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ancient_mariner said:
...extracts all sorts of things from what I suspect was just intended as a simple street scene record shot.
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That's one of the ways photography works, though. Photographers often captures things they hadn't been aware of in their photographs. Stuff which they, or others, see after the fact. I know I do. Maybe it' registers unconsciously, or maybe it doesn't, but photographs are open to interpretation by anyone.
 
This is an interesting thread as I am a self taught photographer (via the Internet mainly - forums - youtube - Flickr etc)

I then went & studied a degree in Photography as it is an obsession of mine however I quickly realised at degree level it was literally 5/10% photography and the rest was art based theory..... I really struggled as my tutor said I was doing scientific experiments which although technically sufficient would not have pass their criteria for a degree.... Art to me became the subjective bane of my uni life and I had to comform under duress in order to pass my degree - i got a 1st in my degree however I felt I was making up the "art" descriptions just to fit in - I am still and will always be more drawn to technical geeky elements than other people's views of the arts when it comes to photography

It's been great to read the comments on here in comparison to the views on a degree course
 
@CheekyAngels - I think you have probably expressed what a lot of the art nay-sayers on here feel but struggle to articulate. They want a formula, a set of rules, buy this kit, use this lens set to that f-stop, position the light there. And that is all good craft and necessary skills to produce a decent photo but where is the creativity and the emotion? I think the answer to that is what takes us from the craft of photography towards art. It is interesting that in one of these threads someone was questioning why the process by which the photo was created seem to matter and indeed that the merit attributed to the photo was based on the creative process rather than the content of the image. I suspect that it is that depth of creativity, not just seeing a scene and photographing it, but bringing something of one’s self to the photo that contributes towards it’s art.

Some really good images on your flickr BTW.
 
sirch said:
@CheekyAngels - I think you have probably expressed what a lot of the art nay-sayers on here feel but struggle to articulate. They want a formula, a set of rules, buy this kit, use this lens set to that f-stop, position the light there. And that is all good craft and necessary skills to produce a decent photo but where is the creativity and the emotion? I think the answer to that is what takes us from the craft of photography towards art. It is interesting that in one of these threads someone was questioning why the process by which the photo was created seem to matter and indeed that the merit attributed to the photo was based on the creative process rather than the content of the image. I suspect that it is that depth of creativity, not just seeing a scene and photographing it, but bringing something of one’s self to the photo that contributes towards it’s art.

Some really good images on your flickr BTW.
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Thank you for your comment, and really appreciate you looking at my Flickr

The good part of having to learn about 'art' was finding out that certain artists rebelled against the system over the years - in my own view, art is very subjective and elitist with social & environmental factors governing exposure of artworks. That being said, I applaud the fact that there are a multitude of social media outlets and competitions nowadays that we can enter our photography into, giving chance for us 'everyday people' to show our own creations.

During the degree I had to assign my style of photography to a movement - I realised my work fell under the guise of 'conceptual art theory' mostly. I did however end up becoming rather engrossed in learning about all different types of art photography from pictorialism to post modernism. some of the genres I still didnt like but at least armed with the knowledge of what they were about I found I had broaded my horizons

Ive listed below some important scientists/artists/photographers and resources that helped me come to this conclusion and start to understand why we have art and what is its purpose (forgive if any of the links are not allowed on the forum - I tried not to link to anything that can be purchased)



Hope the various links throughout this thread give others the opportunity to seek out more information on art, as the discussions are really interesting when they come from a cross section of society not just from an art based mindset and it definitely gave me a great amount of inspiration for my own images :)
 
Thanks for taking the time to put that post together @CheekyAngels, I'll read it in detail later but I do agree with you about subjectivity and elitism.


CheekyAngels said:
some of the genres I still didn’t like but at least armed with the knowledge of what they were about I found I had broaded my horizons
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Isn't that a key part of what it's all about? On the BBC 4 program "Who's afraid of conceptual art?" mentioned further up this thread one of the artists says something to the effect of "If I see something I don't understand I am interested" and that's what it is like for me, I might not "like" a lot of what I see but as a window on the minds of others I find it fascinating.
 
Thank you

sirch said:
"If I see something I don't understand I am interested" and that's what it is like for me, I might not "like" a lot of what I see but as a window on the minds of others I find it fascinating.
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yes this is the part that intrigues me too, and I will make sure I have a listen to the programme on BBC4 mentioned above aswell
 
posiview said:
Just exhausted my Youtube Subscriptions so I'll have another watch...love the narrator's voice :)

Cheers.
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And that's interesting, because I've frequently found myself falling asleep while trying to watch them (Genius of photography series). I don't expect this kind of thing to be exciting, but I would like it to be involving in a way that draws me in, and was disappointed.

The BBC's Will Gompertz has something to say about this years Turner prize that is appropriate to this thread.
 
Had a day out in London over the weekend and saw the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition at Tate Modern, I keep forgetting she was married to Alfred Stieglitz and had a deep connection with photography. You can see the influence that photography had on many of her works, and it was interesting to see the same scene represented by both her paintings and Stieglitz's photographs. There's also some obvious cross-fertilisation of ideas going on with Ansel Adams and Edward Weston as well. A few of Adams' prints are in the exhibition.

The exhibition is on until 30th October.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/georgia-okeeffe
 
ancient_mariner said:
And that's interesting, because I've frequently found myself falling asleep while trying to watch them (Genius of photography series). I don't expect this kind of thing to be exciting, but I would like it to be involving in a way that draws me in, and was disappointed.

The BBC's Will Gompertz has something to say about this years Turner prize that is appropriate to this thread.
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And that is the crux of the thread, each to their own. Imagine if we all liked the same things

Cheers.
 
posiview said:
And that is the crux of the thread, each to their own. Imagine if we all liked the same things

Cheers.
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It was really disappointing: I'd hoped to be excited by it all. As much as anything, I wonder if art hasn't ceased to be about the stories that the creator intended putting into the work, but about the stories those who view read in (or not) to them.
 
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ancient_mariner said:
As much as anything, I wonder if art hasn't ceased to be about the stories that the creator intended putting into the work, but about the stories those who view read in (or not) to them.
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Imo I believe you have it spot on here and they mention this in a few of the publications/journals about art

I found that lots of art pieces in major exhibitions don't tend to have indepth information/descriptions near them and that leads us to bring our own views & emotions to the table.... It's up to the viewer to seek out more info if they want - i like this about art as it gets my curiosity going, not only about the artist but about the the theme they had conveyed & why my thoughts and mind was trigger by particular emotions because of the piece
 
ancient_mariner said:
As much as anything, I wonder if art hasn't ceased to be about the stories that the creator intended putting into the work, but about the stories those who view read in (or not) to them.
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Art has always been about how the viewer reinterprets what they see within their own context. What you see in art is as important as what the artist intended to be seen.
CheekyAngels said:
I found that lots of art pieces in major exhibitions don't tend to have indepth information/descriptions near them and that leads us to bring our own views & emotions to the table
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Increasingly, the in-depth information is provided in the catalogue rather than on the wall - and maybe it's in the audio guides, but I've never chosen to pick these up at any exhibition I've seen.
 
What I found really interesting when researching was how photography (from its conception) had struggled to be part of the art world and also it's firm hold it had once it did - understandably this will not be everyone's view

This thread has been great for debate and answers to why people still now have problems with following art & also photography's placement within
 
View: https://youtu.be/atHQpANmHCE


I like this youtube video about art as it simplifies it in a lighthearted way

The video includes a famous painting of a smoking pipe which is entitled in French "this is not a pipe"

This opens debate because it is a painting of a pipe - throw in photography to the mix, which can record in some instances a more realistic interpretation of a pipe and would it still not be a pipe?

This kind of discussion made me admit I actually enjoy art because it was confusing and thought provoking
 
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