What turns the image art?

<p >Recently I saw a very interesting advertisement which was having the following inscription - <strong >“1 + 0 = 10”</strong>. It struck me that this was the shortest formula describing the concept of the <strong >GESTALT PERCEPTION</strong>. The idea of composing the elements on the plane of the image (and in particular - photograph) in such a manner that the image becomes enticing and the observer gets a desire to look on it over and over (“pregnant” image or Grastalt). Slightly different distribution of the elements of the image turns it dull and boring. The lack of this feeling both of the photographer and the viewer makes the majority of the posted images mediocre. By the same reason some images are underrated. The aesthetics of many viewers is limited to colorful landscapes, sunsets, flowers, etc. They are sort of blind to this “pregnancy” of the image that turns it into art. I would be interested to here your opinion on this subject – what makes the image art?</p>

<p>Hmmm...Frank Zappa, "<em>Broadway the Hardway"</em> (1988);<em> </em>track #4 (title probably wouldn't make past the software filter)....</p>

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<p>One 'n one is eleven!<br />Two 'n two is twenty-two!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>and you find 1+0 = 10 to be a gestalt perception? Maybe you should listen to more Zappa...?</p>

 

<p>Art is simply what the avantgarde considers it to be. For me it is a non-concept, an illusion. Gestalt instead of content is just a fashion.</p>

<p>I speak of touching images instead. Images, that send a message to me, emotionally, subconsciously or outspoken. Something to keep me watching, thinking and busy in my brain and my phantasy. Something, that touches me.</p>

<p>Perhaps I'm cynical, but I have several operating answers... art is what artists create (is that a Max Ernst quote/paraphrase?), art is whatever art collectors/museums pay money for and collect, and art is whatever it is art historians teach is art. I'm not sure it's possible to be 'down in the trenches' creating and truly know what art is... a quick read of Gardner's "Art Through the Ages", 1936 Edition will treat you to a whole chapter on "Modern Art" with a long list of the names of the new, upcoming artists of importance, only one of them whose name you would recognize (Georgia O'Keefe).<br>

I try not to fret about it. Time will sort it all out.</p>

<p>A-eh. Would anybody kindly tell me ..</p>

<p> ADVANCED PERSONALITY is my bet for today</p>

<p>If enough people are of the opinion that something is art, then that makes it so; but hopefully that opinion in based on a knowledge of aesthetics <i>and</i> a knowledge of art history. As Thomas says above, time usually sorts things out.</p>

<p>I'm speaking broadly here, but it seems disproportional numbers of photographers are unknowledgeable concerning these things, resulting in a lot of cliched images and an adversarial attitude toward art. </p>

<p >I was not aware that time ago in a song of Frank Zappa there has appeared a similar idea. I also do not know if the guys that made the advertisement with “1+0=10” new about that song. </p>

<p > </p>

<p >The point that I wanted to raise is that there is some sort of “magic” – the way how things are composed (distributed, arranged), that make the image interesting or dull. <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=1686580">Rene GM</a> speaks “of touching images that keep the viewer watching, thinking and busy in his brain and fantasy. Something, that touches.“ This is what qualities the photograph has to have. </p>

<p > </p>

<p >The point is how to achieve that. IMHO art appears there, where form becomes an indispensable and major part of the content. The more the form prevails, the more abstract the art is. The amalgam of form and content makes the image “touching and keeping the viewer watching, thinking and busy in his brain and fantasy”. </p>

<p > </p>

<p >As to the time as ultimate judge, what gets lost through the times and does not survive, does not inherently mean that it was not art and was less valuable than what has come to us through the time. Chance has extremely large role for an artist to succeed. Tremendous amount of valuable photographs in PHOTO.NET are even now neglected and will get lost as time passes. Only some will get lucky to survive. </p>

<p><a href="http://star-techcentral.com/archives/2009/5/5/prodit/e1.jpg">http://star-techcentral.com/archives/2009/5/5/prodit/e1.jpg</a></p>

<p>Art is in the eye of the beholder, and its value changes according to the times were it emerges. So for me, art does not exist outside our mind, there is not a single material in this world that we could posibly considere a work of art. I believe that art is a state of mind, It is a hipersensitive way of perceiveing things that converts a human mind into a work of art. When you find yourself totaly absorved by an object, a moment or anything at all, and you become amazed by its mere capricious existence, you probably have found the piece of art that you were looking for. </p>

<p>A random image from outside a car window is not art. A thoughtful well-composed, compelling subject captured from a clear vantage point, and presented through a medium from where it can be viewed and enjoyed, becomes art. Art requires concept, composition, a quality medium, and art should be subordinate to technology. This does not mean technology is to be shunned. Technology offers a toolbox of tools to be used much like a box of brushes from which a painter selects. The rest is artistic interpretation and rendering. Never accept the presupposition that photography is not art.</p><div></div>

<blockquote>

<p>"A random image from outside a car window is not art.A thoughtful well-composed, compelling subject captured from a clear vantage point, and presented through a medium from where it can be viewed and enjoyed, becomes art. Art requires concept, composition, a quality medium, and art should be subordinate to technology."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Composition, thoughtful and well-composed, is nothing but a convention, which is the very least of a requirement for something to be art or for a work of photographs to be compelling and interesting enough to look at for longer then a postcard glimpse.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/3829028911/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0">http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/3829028911/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0</a></p>

<p>"A random image from outside a car window is not art."</p>

<p>Tell that to Daido Moriyama and his admirers.</p>

<p>Add an F to the word art. The other persons work has abit an ill air about it; yours is great. Learned this in college from an art teacher; many decades ago; 1960's.</p>

<p>"A random image from outside a car window is not art."</p>

<p>Well, I'm pretty sure it would be to someone out there if you were to put in a gallery along with a load of other stuff... Go figure.</p>

<p>Still all this fuss over art, what's art, what's not art?<br>

Have you ever changed anybody's mind about something they thought was and you thought wasn't?...</p>

<p >The notion of J. R. Hudson that '<em >a random image from outside a car window is not art'</em> touches the initial idea of this post. For me it is just the opposite. It is not needed and also, not possible a deliberation in the act of photographing. The photographer has to have the inborn ability in a fraction of a second to recognize the exact moment when elements are distributed appropriately and push the shutter. This magic moment is too short for deliberation. It is a question of intuition to anticipate, get ready and take the photograph while the painter has ample time to compose the image (shape, texture, color, etc.), This was what I meant with “the moment when 1 + 0 becomes 10”. With other words, this is the moment when all things get fit and all of a sudden the “image opens” or according to the Gestalt theory the image becomes “pregnant”. (<em>Gestalt </em>is a psychology term which means "<em >unified whole</em>"). In my opinion that was the famous “decisive moment” of HCB. And this is what makes a photographic image art. </p>

<p>HCB's was only one method and one man's observation about photographs and photographing, insightful as hell but I don't think necessarily pertaining to all photographs all the time.</p>

<p>I don't think the "moment" is always the key element in a photograph.</p>

<p>Sometimes, it's the composition and it could easily have been taken the moment before or the moment after, often it's an inanimate subject, indoors, where the conditions, lighting, and environment are not changing from minute to minute. </p>

<p>Yes, a single moment (or moments if the shutter stays open long enough) is captured, but often I look at photographs I consider art and the particular moment is of little significance to its being art.</p>

<p>My guess is that Ansel Adams did a lot of deliberating both when he was up in Yosemite among the fog and mountaintops and when he was in the darkroom where he was still creating the photograph. Adams and many others didn't leave the photograph at the moment of the click. And, though HCB utilized the decisive moment brilliantly, his writings suggest that he did an awful lot of deliberation also.</p>

<p>Though there is magic in the moment of the click, there's a lot more. You recognized that in your talk of gestalt and pregnancy and pregnancy pregnancy in your original post was not and should not now be limited or only focused on this elusive intuitive moment. It is about, as you yourself said, the combination of many elements, where the sum becomes greater than the parts.</p>

<p>Your comparison of the painter and photographer fails for me. Having now read some of HCB's thoughts about his photographing and his process, though the "magic moment" you talk about is significant, his work does not reduce to that. He thought, he visited streets over and over deliberating on just when the light or situations for him might be right, he did a lot of deliberating and pre-conceiving in his head. He intuited when to click the shutter, and he also knew a lot.</p>

<p>When I first got serious about photography, someone told me that aside from all the unique aspects of photography, it also helps to think like a painter. Good advice.</p>

<p>"When I first got serious about photography, someone told me that aside from all the unique aspects of photography, it also helps to think like a painter. Good advice."</p>

<p>Hmm, which "painter" was that "someone" referring to, Fred...?</p>

<p><a href="http://eu.art.com/gallery/id--a16/pablo-picasso-prints.htm?ui=199740943BBC4F9EBAB1ECA430A0DA8A">Picasso?</a></p>

<p><a href="http://eu.art.com/gallery/id--a76/andy-warhol-prints.htm?ui=199740943BBC4F9EBAB1ECA430A0DA8A">Warhol?</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/hitlerpaintings.htm">Hitler?</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.childrensartcenter.org/img/art/Pico,%20age%203.jpg">A small child...?</a></p>

<p>Perhaps one of the more interesting things about "art" is how much of it there seems to be:</p>

<p><a href="http://eu.art.com/gallery/id--c23946/photography-art-prints.htm?ui=199740943BBC4F9EBAB1ECA430A0DA8A">Half a million works of photographic art</a></p>

<p>Seems that being an "artist" is quite a popular hobby. Go figure.</p>

 

<p>creo que todo el mundo realiza las mismas acciones inherentes a nuestra naturaleza humana pero lo que nos diferencia es la forma y el modo como las hacemos; todo lo que hacemos es un arte: el arte de vivir y de morir, el arte de amar, el arte de la guerra... en la pintura en general o la fotografia en particular vemos como los artistas vuelven una y otra vez sobre los mismos temas, tratando siempre de captar la escencia del momento e imprimiendo en la obra el caracter personal, su vision del mundo o de su mundo; es obvio que en la fotografia, la materia prima de la obra de arte es el juego de luces y sombras sobre los colores y las formas armonizadas en una composicion limitada de espacio y en el cual no cabe el tiempo, de ahi su caracter perdurable cuando ese juego de elementos provoca una sensacion indefinible (por la multitud de sentimientos que puede suscitar) en el artista o el espectador; el arte es el mismo independiente del tema que se trate</p>

<p>What kind of art? Every type has its reasons. The big "art" -the stuff in the Guggenheim or the Met or MOMA- that all has its reasons, not that we have to agree with those reasons. I think that for a piece to qualify in that regard, to be able to be put next to say Degas or Giacometti or Van Gogh, it has to meet criteria based upon a great knowledge of art history wherein the lines of art/non art used to be broadly drawn. As the last century came and went so did the ideas of what art was, along with the times. History itself will dictate what is and isn't art. Applying current thought to an "artistic" medium, seems to garner attention wherein the artworld is concerned. Just like cooking, some people are better than others, some are naturally brilliant and yet others don't even know how to use a microwave. Art is personal. Art is emotional. Artists are perceptive and driven to create an outlet. Art is "thought" before it's time. Picasso didn't show his groundbreaking "Des Moiselles de Avignon" until 5+ years after he painted it. It is now generally considered the seminal painting of the Modern period! (although he took cues from others:) ) Part of the problem with describing art is that there are so many variables. Even after years of taking art history classes, museum memberships, reading art, philosophy, science etc..., I still have a difficult time grasping what is and isn't art. And yes, I am an artist:)</p>

<p>"A random image from outside a car window is not art."<br>

Perhaps, they should read this post:<br>

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/800736/0#7385688</p>

<p> </p>

<p> </p>