"liking photographs" Vs being challenged

<p>It seems to me that 90% of the talk about "art" in photography has to do with values that are nearly automatic for people who have been raised up with magazine/movie/television production values. </p>

<p>We talk about easily-appreciated VanGogh and Cezanne, and and celebrities such as Mappelthorpe and Leibovitz, we salute the famous photos of famous photojournalists but we don't talk about photographers such as Francesca Woodman.</p>

<p>I just discovered Woodman's name in the B&W film processing forum ("Similar Look to Francesca Woodman"...I don't think we're supposed to cross link) . I doubt Goodman would get good "ratings" on P.N and she's far too good for street (my value judgement).</p>

<p>http://www.google.com/search?q=francesca+woodman+photos&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=bif&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=MW2TTaqiOY24sAOhmsjUBQ&ved=0CBgQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=751</p>

<p>Her work brings Francesco Goya to mind (politically-weighted not-nice images) : </p>

<p>http://www.google.com/images?q=francisco+goya&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&rlz=1I7ADRA_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&sa=X&ei=H2mTTcHILO3SiAKl_bGAAg&ved=0CEEQsAQ&biw=1259&bih=770</p>

<p>What about elementary school "aesthetic" issues such as composition (the holy golden mean!), prettiness and evoked memories? Are they ideals or chump change conventions? </p>

<p>How hard do we work to avoid being challenged or challenging?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>As a relative newcomer to the art world I find myself wanting to be challenged by images and I am discovering that many, many beautiful images are not much more than that--technically well-done, beautiful images. They contain little intellectional or emotional challenge. Now, the hard part, of course, is to know that and then try to incorporate some sort of challenge into one's own work without it being contrived.<br>

BTW, I found your reference to Francesca Woodman very interesting. We were born a month apart, yet she committed suicide at the age of 22 and I live on. She also grew up in the Denver - Boulder area where my family has lived for years. A tragedy. (Do the best artists have to be suffering inside in order to produce good work?) Her work is definitely challenging for the viewer and is something I'll take a closer look at. Thanks.</p>

 

<p>This strikes me as a false dichotomy. I have no trouble enjoying a classically composed image featuring (for example) what a subject wants to convey about themselves while also deciding to take some time to rattle around in (for example) an angry person's photographically presented psyche. <br /><br />If we didn't avoid some challenges or challenging conditions some of the time, we'd never get around to having a moment's peace or satisfaction. Enjoying the latter doesn't mean always forgoing the former.</p>

<p>Matt, I don't have anything against the pretty 90% (everbody loves sunsets) and it needs no defense here (IMO). Pretty rules.</p>

<p>There is quite a bit in the OP. First, I know what I like and what I don't like. Nevertheless, I can appreciate something even if I don't particularly like it. An example from movies: I dislike the jiggly camera work found in movies like Borne Identity--it gives me a headache. I can still appreciate the effect used to heighten tension and movement. </p>

<p>Second, you reference "easily-appreciated VanGogh.." He died penniless, never having sold a painting. If you look back at the time he painted, he was hardly "easily-appreciated." </p>

<p>Third, do you really care what ratings your photos get on PN? If you do, then taylor your shots for your audience. Otherwise ignore the ratings and concentrate on finding like minded artists whose opinion you value. Relying on PN ratings as a guide to art photography is kind of like considering "Popular Photography" as groundbreaking. </p>

<p>Allen, I asked about values. I meant to address photography, not "art."<br />The ratings system does seem to perfectly address the values of the 90%...we all know the drill...I don't fault it for that. Beautiful snaps of beautiful subjects. A beautiful girl, an orchid, a sunset. A hike in the mountains. An amusing sign or a piece of fine architecture. Candid B&W of the ever-present and anonymous homeless. Nothing wrong with that comfortable 90%. I asked about the 10%.</p>

<p>As for VanGogh, we love him. Right? He's one of the few painters that gets mentioned right here. Very popular, totally accepted. People who can't remember his name use VanGogh posters to decorate their bathrooms. And they make beautiful snaps.</p>

<p>That's the way it's always been John. If you lived in the early 20th century, you might have heard about Stieglitz, Steichen, Coburn and later Strand - but, what about <a href="http://www.corbis.co.in/searchresults.php?s=&rm=&rf=&mr=&loc=&col=&listRF=&orient=&view=&people=&pht=Herbert+W.+Gleason&max=&p=1">Herbert W. Gleason</a>? Probably not. Making interesting, challenging images has nothing to do with notoriety or being challenged by others' work. I'm not challenged by someone elses images, only by my own photographic insufficiencies.</p>

<p>I don't avoid to like and I don't avoid being challenged by or through a photograph's<em> subject*</em>.But one viewer's/maker's "like" is another viewer's/maker's "challenge". Going by what I think is your use of challenge here, in this thread's context, I don't really feel challenged by work like Woodman's ( which I had seen before and I think was mentioned here some time(s) ago ). By which I don't mean that there's nothing to it - on the contrary - or that it wasn't a challenge to make or that it doesn't ignite something, but simply that I like it ( yes, it is a different "like" than the way I also like fuzzy 'n' fluffy baby-animals ), more, than that it would be a challenge for me to appreciate it. Just like I like watching Lynchian films and stuff. I also like sunsets, and it would be avoiding being challenged to <em>not</em> like them in a picture ( on a different level than "pretty" ), because the photograph may not always and only point to the subject photographed. And a sunset's red can scream as much as it can whisper ( Monet ).</p>

<p>* different than saying "being challenged by or through a photograph"</p>

<p>Steve, I'm evidently more challenged than you are, and I don't mean that ironically. I find challenges everywhere, and not just in my "photographic insufficiencies."</p>

<p>I appreciate beauty but my question has to do with aversion to the work of people whose work has some sort of weight to it...some of which actually is beautiful by your standards and mine (per previous discussions), but some of which seems actively anti-beautiful, as perhaps Woodman's or much of Goya's.</p>

<p>I don't get your point about Gleason. People have appreciated the beauty of birds nests and ice forever. I'm just finishing Moby Dick. Lots of magnificent, weighty, horrible in that...1930 Rockwell Kent edition.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I love Woodman's work. Found her a few years ago. One of the reasons I harp on Flickr's talents is because it's full of searching untutored people with some real feelings. An actual need to make pictures. They aren't just after pictures either. I think they are confronting themselves, and communicating first with their own self.</p>

<p>I don't discount the enjoyable past time, or whatever people want to call it. But the arts are what they are because of the what the few have suffered. Suffering means seeing things for what they really are.</p>

<p> I don't think the real thing can be taught, because it comes from a deeper place. All the mechanics that people speak of, rules of composition, etc. are assembled after the fact and regurgitated by well meaning lackluster teachers, and piled up into all those books that are really a photographers portfolio mixed with the same old suggestions about how to. Fine for beginners, but rare is a book that goes further. And why? Because they can't.<br>

You have to go there alone. And if you don't go there, all you'll ever see of another's work will be tonality and sharpness. Woodman's work will be a combination of depth of field studies, or "troubling" because of her bio. </p>

<p> </p>

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>As for VanGogh, we love him. Right? He's one of the few painters that gets mentioned right here. Very popular, totally accepted. People who can't remember his name use VanGogh posters to decorate their bathrooms.</p>

</blockquote>

 

 

<p>John, nothing wrong in liking pretty pictures whether they are considered art or not. It is like food. We prefer eating dishes that give pleasure than disgusting meals that someone tells us is haute cuisine. </p>

<p>What should be noted, is that the two painters you mention passed almost all their lifes as rejected painters, laughed-at-"artist" and it was only later on that dealers and critics started becoming more gentle - and with that came the general recognition by the 'informed" public of art lovers. Meanwhile others during the same period integrated perfectly early on in their career in the shared contemporary understanding of what was interesting and agreeable to hang on the wall in your living room (Monet, Renoir). What does that prove ? Nothing really. "Art" cannot be defined as something the 90% loves immediately - neither something the 10% worships and the rest rejects. Art, as you write, cannot be defined as works that follow certain rules - nor as works that transgress rules. Art can neither be defined as works that chocks more than gives you pleasure.</p>

<p>Art can maybe be defined as a works that changes the world for those that contemplate it and understand it. It can be defined as groundbreaking new forms of expression. It can also be defined as works that by others, the designated connoisseurs of art, are defined as such. It can be defined as works of the arts that can be sold and are shown in galleries and museums - and especially as such works that keep their prices and stay exhibited for future generations to admire and learn from. </p>

<p>I think Francesca Woodman is well known, and has the sort of appeal that is very easily appreciated.</p>

<p>What makes for the modern or avant garde in art is it's capacity to forego the ideal for the "messy" personal. Although personally I avoid the challenge of creating images that stem from my distaste for modernity in all it's anemic stratifications. I am guilty of romantic moods and feelings, even in a strip mall, and cannot bring myself to deadpan it completely documentary style. It would be far more challenging to toss out good light, mood, texture, dynamic lines, etc. and make the subject as superficially dull as I actually find it. But I won't do it. </p>

<p>Anders, You have reasonably asserted that easy eating is similar to goodness in food. We may agree, more or less (I like okra, you may not). But I reject your subsequent implication that easy appreciation equals goodness in photography. </p>

<p>A more useful food/photo analogy that differs entirely: Minor White said that if we were distressed by an image it was feeding something in us and might have value because of that. </p>

<p>That VanGogh was once rejected is totally irrelevant: Today he's a decorative product, a poster, an absorbant place mat to protect your table. </p>

<p>Kenneth, we seem regularly to come close to agreement, not a good sign :-)</p>

<p>I don't know/care much about Woodman's short life. But that while I "dislike" it, I understand/appreciate/worry-about her images at a couple of levels, the most obvious of which is feminist/political.</p>

<p>She directly/specifically addresses the role of women, used as decorative elements by people who think of them as nothing more. She directly depicts suffering and abuse... the plight of women as she perceived it (evidently a very young woman).</p>

<p>Woodman goes beyond mere "depicting" and actually conveys (for me) something about suffering and pain and about being used, even tortured, which are the reasons her work reminds me of Goya's. I hate some of Goya's work in the same way I hate Woodman's, and I appreciate them both much more intensely than I appreciate pretty pictures. Which is not to say that I dislike pretty pictures.</p>

<p>What do you think about this: I find Ansel Adams work handsome etc, sometimes startling, but not nearly as "challenging" as most of Weston's. Weston didn't (IMO) reduce his nudes to mere objects, and some of them are hard to appreciate without knowing something about them as people (per Daybook II) while others pose knowingly for political reasons (anti-war, nudes with gas masks...usually overlooked by devotees).</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I did a search of the Painting.net (P.N.) archives and found the following post from 1886, which I think fits in well wit this discussion:<br>

"It seems to me that 90% of the talk about 'art' in painting has to do with values that are nearly automatic for people who have been raised up with classical painting production values.<br>

We talk about easily-appreciated DaVinci and Rubens, and celebrities such a Michelangelo, we salute the famous salon painters but we don't talk about painters such as Monet and Manet.<br>

I just discovered Van Gogh’s name in the new painting forum. I doubt Van Gogh would get good "ratings" on P.N (my value judgment).<br>

His work challenges all official salon concepts of what is good and valuable about painting. His bright colors, his technique of applying paint so thickly, his deliberate distortion of proper perspective. His painting are ugly--landscapes are not yellow and red. Will this radical artist ever be accepted as anything other then a quack? <br>

What about elementary school "aesthetic" issues such as composition (the holy golden mean!), prettiness and evoked memories? Are they ideals or chump change conventions?<br>

How hard do we work to avoid being challenged or challenging?”</p>

<p>Oh sorry. I forgot we weren't talking about art here, even though the first post mentions art, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Goya. </p>

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<p>That VanGogh was once rejected is totally irrelevant: Today he's a decorative product, a poster ...</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br />I wonder if I had been there at the end of the 19th century how I would have responded to Matisse's rebellion of pure color and abstraction against the grays and browns and realism of the academies. I thought that's what being challenged is about. I know in contemporary photographic art practice, for example, the idea of the staged tableau has had its moment, with Jeff Wall as an example. But I don't know what's next. What is emerging that will replace it?</p>

<p>I don't know how references to history or reduction of photographs or paintings to "art" relate to "value."</p>

<p>I think those references and reductions are used fearfully, to avoid candor, to prevent reflection about personal responses. They suggest lack of ability to appreciate more than what's been spoon fed in "art" context.</p>

<p>What's replacing it, has for a while, is shock for shocks sake. Art careerists that just go as far as they can, as movies and TV almost rely on a degree of censorship to titillate. Without some kind of resistance they're out of a job. It's deemed necessary because the audience that you have deadened with your souless exploitation and optical machine guns have become desensitized yet hungry for more.</p>

<p>So what the connoisseur looks for is some authenticity. Am I being lied to here to evoke a response, or is this creative really sincere? If sincere, no matter the look of the thing, it's a go. Lets hear what you have to say. Then there's the elite critics. They say, it's all a lie, but who lies the best?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>What's replacing it, has for a while, is shock for shocks sake</p>

</blockquote>

<p>While this sounds all self-important, there is little data to back it up. </p>

<p>...and for those who insist on reducing these matters to "art," I suggest revisiting Kenneth Smith's comments, above, about "lackluster" and "regurgitation." I might argue about Kenneth's thoughts on "suffering," but I did notice how agitated some became when on another thread I wrote respectfully about the work of Diane Arbus. </p>

<p>There's no worse way to appreciate works by people like VanGogh than to accept what you read about them. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Today he's a decorative product, a poster, an absorbant place mat to protect your table.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> And he can even be grasped casually in <a href="

youtube videos</a>, just like <a href=" None of that however has much bearing on the value of what they were doing and making. </p>

 

<p>Thanks Jeff,<br>

Yeah, that's what I'm really looking for here is establishing my importance. People are so interested aren't they?</p>

<p>Theres plenty to back it up. Robert Hughes' book alone, "The Shock of the New" has a few thoughts. This isn't science. We're allowed to have opinions about all that has assaulted our senses in this culture. I've had a look around a few galleries. </p>

<p>I have never heard of Francesca Woodman until today. I am challenged to see art in photography anyway so all I really see there is just some titty pictures. Now that I looked at the pictures I feel like my day is a little bit worse then before and I wish I could un-look at the pictures. I will make sure I do not click on another photo.net link. I assume your question about work and being challenged pertains only to photography. I like to shoot scenics a lot and I work real hard at it. Yesterday I was trying to make my way over to take a shot of a Natural Bridge in Santa Cruz and fell off a rock into the Ocean. I did not get my pic. It's the second time I have become soaked trying to get the shot. I have not made that picture yet but I will. It's challenging but in a physical sense as once I get set up it's just pushing a little button on the camera and exposing a bit of film.</p>

<p>Thanks John for posting this.</p>

<p>I have written two posts already for that thread(responding to what you wrote specifically), but while writing them it was obvious that what I was writing was not appropriate to that thread. I have saved them as texts, will edit them, and post them to the end of this thread soon.</p>