RE: [Leica] #$@%$^ art photographers

["Kit McChesney" <kitmc@acmefoto.com>]

Actually, the debate between what we are arguing about here began during the
Renaissance, with Leonardo, who felt that painters were intellectual and
enjoyed a higher status than sculptors (he wrote a treatise on it), who he
compared to laboring "bakers" with flour all over their shirts. The painter,
on the other hand, was able to sit and work and stay clean, while the lowly
sculptor (you can figure out which "lowly" sculptor he was thinking of) was
merely a workman. But that lowly sculptor was quite the entrepreneur, and
very good at self-promotion as well. His work for the Medici tombs is one
good example of just how skilled a businessperson he was. 

The paid artist, those with patrons, really began to assume a different role
during the mid-19th century. The artists we remember today are those who
gained prominence because their work was viewed as downright ugly, and
therefore were written about and reviewed in the press by those who hated
their work, and were championed by influential writers like Zola, who came
to their defense. Artists began to break away from the idea that their work
was about "beauty" in the academic sense (I'm thinking of Courbet, whose
work was viewed as outright horrible, and Rodin, who also curried much
disfavor among the salon types--his Balzac was compared to a penguin in the
press at that time) and were more free to express other ideas. But artists
have always had to make a living, and most had to work for money. It is the
exceptions to this rule--Van Gogh primary among them--that we remember and
romanticize. But he had a patron, too. His brother supported him for most of
his life. 

Yes, the 20th century ushered in a new way of thinking, but that way was
pioneered by people like Cezanne, in the 19th, whose influence on Picasso
was profound. But the artists we may or may not be speaking about (I'd like
to see some specific artists named, rather than a sweeping generalization
about modern or contemporary art being merely a stunt or an antic), whose
work many think is absurd, are heirs of the Dadaists and the artists who
came back shattered from WWII believing that everything was absurd, that the
world had been turned upside down, and that life had no meaning, that beauty
did not exist. After experiencing what they did, it was impossible to paint
a picture in the same way again. 

Kit

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Saganich,
Christopher/Medical Physics
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 8:52 AM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] #$@%$^ art photographers

Thanks for bringing the discussion into the 21st C. 

Chris Saganich


- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Peter Klein
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 11:32 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] #$@%$^ art photographers

At 06:29 PM 12/8/03 -0800, "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net> opined:

>Allow me to throw a rotten tomato into this discussion and suggest that
>self-promotion has been an important aspect of the successful artists
>repertoire not for the last several decades, but rather for the last
>millennium. Do you really think that the successful artists of the
>renaissance weren't inveterate self-promoters? Obviously the
>self-promotion took different forms - sucking up to rich princes,

No thanks.  Besides, I don't think today's corporate CEO is the equivalent 
of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  Perhaps of the Borgias or the Medicis, but 
minus the patronage.  These guys don't build monuments to their 
greatness.  They just stash the cash offshore.

>sleeping with rich princesses, etc.,

*Now* you tell me!!!

>but it's always been part of the
>game. Virtually any artist who wanted to sell work in his or her
>life-time, rather than wait to be discovered after death, had to be a
>self-promoter.

True, but I'm not sure the self-promotion took quite the degree of 
flamboyance and self-indulgence that it does these days.  In most eras, art 
served God or society, self-expression was filtered through fairly strong 
conventions, and new techniques were based on the desire to find better and 
broader ways to order things to express how we perceived the world.

The idea of the artist as revolutionary, and the idea of emotional 
self-expression as an end unto itself is a 19th-century Romantic 
concept.  Some of today's so-called artists are the heirs of 
Romanticism--but their antics are amplified by the power of media and the 
science of mass influence into something much more.  Add to that the desire 
to sweep away all convention and regarding any sense of order as the 
enemy--these are things that the turn of the 20th century started, and the 
post World War I era cemented.

We end up with something that, yes, evolved from the sucking up to princes 
and sleeping with princesses; but has metamorphasized into something very 
different.  And in many cases it has replaced or supplanted the art 
itself.  Franz Liszt was in many ways the 19th Century equivalent of a rock 
star.  But he was also one of the finest composers and performers of his 
time.  The music came first, and the self-promotion served the 
music.  Today the music (or art) often serves the self-promotion, if it 
survives at all.

The revolutionaries of the early-mid 20th century knew what they were 
rebelling against.  I'm not sure many post-1960s artists do.  It is one 
thing (and, I think a good thing) to say that content dictates form.  It is 
quite another to say that lack of form dictates content.  It is a good 
thing to do something new and different.  It is quite another to do 
something completely incoherent, guided only by libido, ego and 
self-indulgence, and claim that anyone who doesn't like it is an ignorant 
Phillistine.

OK, I'll shut up now. . .

- --Peter Klein
Seattle, WA


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