Photography's effect on Painting: a review of "The Painting of Modern Life'' exhibit in London

[ellis_vener_photography]

<I>"The love-hate affair between painting and photography has been simmering

ever since the latter was invented. In the interval, photographers have often

imitated the effects of painting, and -- as a new show at London's Hayward

Gallery documents -- many painters have worked from photographs."<P>

 

This is a big, ambitious exhibition, with a high-sounding title, ``The Painting

of Modern Life,'' and a novel thesis: Photo- based painting, introduced without

fanfare in the early 1960s, was a major turning point in art history, it

argues."</I> <P>

 

<A HREF = http://tinyurl.com/ys4z9l>How Warhol, Hockney's Photos Led to

Revolution: Martin Gayford </A>

[nancy s.]

I am both a fine artist (painter) and a photographer. I have used photos to insure that accuracy of something is retained in my painting (like the markings on a horse's head for a portrait).

 

There is a danger in copying a photo verbatim in that you will sometimes put things in that would be better off deleted or changed. I recall such an image of a white tail deer (oil painting). It was very good and not the usual trite deer painting.. and in the foreground was this scrubby oak tree that was likely in the original photo. The skill of the artist (this was back in the 60's) could not be argued.

 

I have found that photography (I am film based) is much more difficult to do that painting. I can control the light, the direction of light, the color of the light as well as the subject and its placement completely in a painting. I cannot do that when I take a photo. I do find I can take better photos and that I have a better eye in the view finder as I look at the image and before I press the button I say, "Would you paint this?" If it s a resounding "NO!" I back slowly away from the shutter release.

 

When I do digital work I can manipulate the thing in photo shop and I have, but most images look manipulated (including some very good ones by better computer operators than I right on this site).

 

Of course, with computers you can now take a photo and make it look like a painting complete with brush strokes, but that is a whole nother topic for a nother thread.

 

the bottom line is this:

I have never believed that photography and painting countered each other. They are two different mediums and strive to do the same things in end results, depending on the artist. Those end results range from pure art to commercial work.

 

I see no competition between them at all.

[steve_swinehart]

As soon as I see the word "ambitious" - I know the remainder of the article is going to be dreck...and he really never makes a point about either photography or painting or paintings derived from photographs...one might say his review is "ambitious" - having a desire to achieve a particular goal - which, he never does...

[brucecahn]

Painting from photos is not a major point in art history. It is an act of ignorance and/or desperation. Painting from life is painting, not copying.

[dickhilker]

On a local level, I've sensed a resistance amongst painters to the increasing amount of gallery space allocated to photography. Some, those who are probably more secure in their sense of self-worth, accept this as the unavoidable consequence of digital photography, but others would like to see photography relegated to a back room status or eliminated altogether from art shows.

 

In our art guild, we have photographers on the board of directors and have been uniquely successful in achieving full integration of photography in all exhibits and juried shows, though Best in Show still goes without fail to a painting. Someday, even that may change, but I don't expect it to be soon.

 

In hosting a photo workshop, I was pleased that quite a few of the participants were painters who wanted to learn more about photography in order to do a better job of recording information for their paintings. There's no reason not to work together toward the common goal of sharing our creativity and making art a dynamic part of the community.

 

There is a difference between painting from a photograph and painting over one, but if we're to judge art by the finiahed product and not the means whereby it was created, what real difference does it make?

[william_john_smith1]

<I>Painting from photos is not a major point in art history.</I><P>Suggest you restudy the

history of Art, start with the camera obscura and it use by painters, Durer, Varmeer, etc, and

continue on to Photorealism in the 1960s.<P><I>Painting from life is painting, not

copying.</I><P>All painting/art is copying, either from an internal vision or external view.

[brucecahn]

To WJ Smith: Durer and Vermeer did not paint from photos. They may have used a camera obscura as Hockney suggests. But photography started with the ability to print an image done with a camera, not just look at it projected on a surface. All painting is not copying. Painters do not copy. We use a model as a starting point for making something that is anything but a copy. If you look at some of the more advanced student work in art schools, such as The National Academy or Art Student's League, you may see copies of the model. These are failures as painting. Photorealism was a dead end which arrived at something that looked like, but was not painting, unless the painter used the photo as a starting point. But photorealism is understood to mean a copy. That is not painting, it is copying. There is a huge difference, and it is important to understand that.

[brucecahn]

Nancy Stock makes a good point when she says that photography can be more difficult than painting. With film photography, unless you are going to do extensive retouching (which is a form of painting) what you want in the picture has to be there. This is often difficult or impossible. I am also a painter-photographer, and have worked professionally as a photographer and retoucher (on gelatin prints).

[maris_rusis]

Not only does photography have an effect on painting, and vice versa, but I believe that they may nearly have become the same thing.

 

"Digital photography" is the first successful attempt at "mechanised painting." Consider the remarkable parallels.

 

The first need is a mark-making machine which would place spots of colour of exactly the right value in exactly the right place. We pretty well have it now. It's called an ink-jet printer. Its operation is remarkably analogous to the painter's arm, hand, and brush tranferring pigment from tubes of colour to the painting's substrate.

 

Next, the mark-making machine needs a plan to follow to produce a picture. This plan is a file, a set of electronic values which encode the final picture. The painter also needs a plan. This is the mind's-eye picture which consists of a coded array of electric, electro-chemical, and neuro-peptide signals laid out on a neurone-axon network.

 

The mark-making machine needs to know how to turn an electronic file into a picture. This is achieved by software called a printer-driver. The painter also needs to know how to turn a mind's-eye picture into a painting. The software for this (the painter-driver) takes two or three years to download at art school.

 

The picture file that underlies the output of the printer and the painter is synthesised in a data processor (computer core or painter's brain) from a number of sources. Picture files can freely include machine static or painter's whimsy but for realist work they mainly come from the suitably processed output of an optical sensor array.

 

A machine type optical sensor essentially consists of a large array of sensitive elements (CMOS, CCD, whatever) called pixels which may number in the millions - megapixel sensors. The output of the sensor is a stream of electrical impulses which are processed and stored in memory. The painter's sensor is the eye. It includes a fixed array of various sensitive elements accumulating to about 100 megapixels. The output of the eye is a stream of electro-chemical impulses that are processed and stored in memory.

 

These are compelling analogies and equivalents in picture production by human painting and by the mechanised equivalent; robot painting or digital "photography", in popular parlance.

 

It is no accident that painting has been the premium medium of visual art for the last 800 years. Its capacity for versatility and expressiveness is unchallengable. I believe that mechanised painting, or "digital photography" as it is now called, may be greatest thing for the next 800 years. The pictures it can make are limited only by the imagination and sufficient data processing capacity..

 

Tradition photography, in which a physical sample of subject matter flies through the air, through a lens, and into a sensitive surface to cause a picture to form where it hits is a very different thing. It is limited by the operation of the laws of nature and cannot make pictures of just anything the imagination cares to conjure up. I believe it is this austere limitation of traditional photography which will lend its pictures, few though they may be, a separate credibility and persuasive power.

[DickArnold]

I work with an artist I have known for years. She is very good at wildlife and very accomplished. We are now a continent apart. I send her my photos on a regular basis as I used to photograph her paintings for catalogues and to send to shows. She is a very close friend. None of her paintings look like my photos which she uses for inspiration as she is in her late eighties and is not as mobile as she would like to be. I love doing it for her and it gives us something to talk about on the phone. She does not copy. I also belonged as a photographer to a local art association they were very unhappy about my getting awards at their shows so they established a separate photography category to get me out of the way. I don't have much of a taste for exhibiting these days so that's ok. However, I think my friend has much more real talent than I do, has had to work much harder than me to achieve her artistic skill than I have, and when she works in scratch board, pastels and other media she has to spend much more effort and time than I do to produce a picture. I am no slouch at photography but I really do not think of myself as an artist. I know she is an artist as I look at her pictures on a daily basis as they hang in my home. IMHO photography is more of a commercially oriented skill and painting is more artistic. Before I start an argument there are a vast number of exceptions on both sides. In my heart of hearts I wish I could do what she does. By the way she has been a great source of encouragement particularly in advising me to show my stuff. I think collaborations like this are good for both parties.

[sobeystudio]

Bruce-

You seem to be an authority on the subject. Are you saying that the paintings Chuck

Close is currently working on, using photographs as a guide, are mere copying? Do you think

that his photo-realism of the 70's, didn't involve brushstroke and technique? As you are

obviously a great painter, don't you think you are missing some key points as to the essential

elements and importance of being a skilled artisan, just to make a "copy" painting? Let me

ask you this, Do you think James Rosenquist is crap because he uses photos for reference? I

think you are riding a mighty high horse- be careful its a long fall down.

[eugene_scherba]

<p><i>Painting from photos is not a major point in art history. It is an act of ignorance and/

or desperation. Painting from life is painting, not copying.</i></p>

 

<p>Wow, what a silly statement. So according to it, <a href="http://www.google.com/

search?

client=safari&rls=en&q=Gerhard+Richter&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8">Gerhard Richter</a> is

not a major point in 20th century art?</p>

[eugene_scherba]

Many people live in the own world here, with their heads up their asses, with no clue

what is going on in the art world.

[bobtodrick]

I think what gets a lot of these discussions brewing is people inheirent belief that because the clicking of a shutter is so easy, photography isn't an 'art'. Dick A above seems to be falling prey to that thinking...his painter friend having more artistic talent than he.

 

But the medium is im-material...it's the thinking befind it that counts.

 

I think we would all agree that Sheakspeare is a great artist. Is there anything simpler than a quill pen and a piece of paper? (way easier than a modern DSLR to operate). But how many hear could have written MacBeth?

[bobtodrick]

From the spelling errors in my above post...obviously not me!!

[DickArnold]

Although I had my own photo business and have sold some so called art my friend is simply extremely talented. Her work is beautiful, sells and piece for piece is mostly better than mine. Bob T, I think you have fallen prey to thinking you can read my mind. Today at the Sharon Art Center in Peterboro NH I was looking at some photos of Pointers, the canine kind, that are posted at over a thousand apiece. And you know what, that photographer deserves the money. The pictures were stunning. As former aviation professional I knew my limitations and that kept me alive, and I also know my limitations as a sometime artist. So Bob, please go analyze someone else.