"a work of art dies the moment you understand it" (Oscar Wilde)

[jtk]

<p>Look at the Gallery Portfolios of the participants on this OT.</p>

<p> Fred is photographically engaged in "art." Most of the rest, including myself, are engaged more exclusively in "photography." The concepts aren't importantly related, and to pretend otherwise usually degrades both.</p>

<p>Fred never addresses "art" when he writes ... a verbal mechanic (philosopher) rather than poet, it's not reasonable to ask that of him. But he does produce it photographically. This is easy to understand...</p>

[mrraz]

<p>"This sort of argument, which I see many of my artist friends as well as viewers HIDING BEHIND, ignores the rational, intelligent and aesthetic evaluation and response that one can bring to bear and experience on perceiving and understanding a work of art and which, in many cases, justifies either its acceptance or rejection by the viewer. Thankfully, the value of great art is not based uniquely upon the emotional response."</p>

<p>No, your "artist friends" and viewers aren't hiding behind an emotional argument that negates the rational, intelligent and aesthetic evaluation and response Arthur. It may be all of us have taken a step into an intuitive realm where we are free to excercise our emotions the way you might operate in the rational. Neither is right or wrong just different. However, they do in the end achieve the same purpose, a connection to a particular painting, drawing, sculpture, concerto, symphony or sonnet. However great or insignificant its value may be.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>"When I view a painting, drawing or sculpture, does that piece of art communicate with me subconciously? If it doesn't, I move on to the next one."</p>

<p>Glenn, some tend to equate subconscious response (which seems, by your phrase above, to be necessary for your appreciation of a work) with an emotional one. Whether this applies to your manner of perception, or not, I don't know. </p>

<p>In any case, I for one am quite happy to use my conscious rational and my conscious emotional reponse when viewing a work of art. These are behaviours, biases and values that I know better than my subconscious ones. </p>

[dbcooper]

<p>IMO, I think truly understanding a work of art is to connect with the artist vis-a-vis the emotion(s)/angst that drove the creation of a given work. That's difficult, as the artist may or may not be consciously aware of the basis of their creative inspiration for a particular work.</p>

<p>For better or worse, all else is either appreciation or internalization of the work (e.g. 'what this piece means to me' as opposed to truly knowing what the artist's soul is trying to let out). IMO, the work only dies for the viewer if the viewer connects and finds the creative emotion somewhere between uninteresting and repulsive. Otherwise, I would think understanding a work of art would enhance experiencing it with the senses.</p>

[Art X Photography]

<p>I like your approach here D.B. Understanding certainly adds to the level of appreciation and that in turn can either keep that work of art interesting or not.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>I agree with D.B. too apart from including "repulsive" in the category of art works that die. Repulsion is an artictic expression too used by many (ex Francis Bacon). <br>

I wonder whether most of the references to experiences with works of arts are not made to artwork some 20-30 years ago. Has the category of "uninteresting" works of art not increased significantly the last years especially with the "death of painting"? It seems to me that presently video, film and maybe photography are lending themselves to the category of works of art that involve the reflections D.B. refers to</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Some of the best video and film has come out this year ("The Reader", or in French, "Le liseur" film, Robert Lepage's Quebec City 400th anniversary outdoor projection, amongst others), but they are like short term Christo works, you cannot access them continually. They are there and gone. That doesn't deny their artistic impact of course (I saw Lepage's work 5 times), but the value of non cinematic art (sculpture, paintng, photography, etc.) is that it is revisited easily, and if you are lucky, part of your own home ambiance.</p>

<p>Technological fashions may come and go. People still line up to see rock paintings produced 25,000 years ago. </p>

<p>Painting, sculpture and other fixed art forms are far from dead. </p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Arthur my point was not that what you call fixed art forms are dead, on the contrary, I thing it is very much alive. What I wanted to express is that I don't have the impression that such art have been the mainstream art production the last years. I have no problem of envisaging art forms such a video and film as major future forms of art. Whether you can put it on the wall and easily revisiting them might be a definition of art as consumption but not necessarily as art as such.</p>

[kristina_kraft]

<p>I'd say that work of art dies the moment you recognize it. But dying here means transformation into personal, subjective world, for me.<em> </em> I'll talk about transformation<em>. </em><br>

<em>Recognition</em> is much more powerful than <em>understanding</em> . (I'm puzzling myself right now.) That kind of recognition is on personal basis, of course. Person can simply recognize his/her own <em>state of mind</em> in a particular work of art.<br>

For example, I find myself biologically thrilled when I listen my favorite singers, songs. Pure electricity runs through my blood. And I feel high. Because my feeling through my senses recognize a musical mode that fits to my taste, to my perception of particular emotional state ("...<em>Cry me a river that leads to your ocean</em> ...<em>It's just emotion that taking me over</em> ..." - BeeGees, <em>Emotion</em> .) It's not only recognition in lyrics, but in the singer's voice which suits my senses.<br>

When it is about visual art form, I just recognize some kind of universal beauty, a real canon. And I'm just silently in awe and sensing it with my eyes, fulfilling myself. It's my inner world that I <em>feed</em> . Nothing ever dies.</p>

<p>Great conversation is going on here.</p>

 

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Kristina--</p>

<p>You've described beautifully your sensual experience.</p>

<p>Understanding and Imagination are often presented as two sides of the coin of consciousness.</p>

<p>Understanding is often taken as part of the conceptual realm and Imagination as more sense oriented.</p>

<p>There's no reason why art shouldn't hit us on both levels. In my experience, it's often the case that each feeds on each other.</p>

[kristina_kraft]

<p>Fred,<br>

you have nicely described a two side of the coin of consciousness. Thanks for the compliment.</p>

[darryl-taylor]

<p>At the risk of proving myself to be the uneducated idiot that I probably am....<br>

I was always under the impression that art was a tool for communicating and relaying abstract concepts that the creator was unable to voice for whatever reason, be it lack of vocabulary or even lack of opportunity in the case of those individuals who felt persecuted and isolated in the extreme. If this is the case then once any other human being has understood the underlying message, the art has served it's purpose and as such could be classed as "dead" or spent.<br>

I shall leave it to those who have a greater grasp of these things to argue about it, I'd rather be taking average pictures that remind me of how I felt when I was "there"</p>

[saskphotog]

<p>"Never trust the artist". D.H.Lawrence</p>

<p>Art is always a personal interaction between the art and the observer; what the artist thought he was doing is irrelvant to what the art does. Kristina is talking about her interaction with the art, not with the artists intention or purpose. Art has that ability to connect you with yourself or it isn't art. </p>

<p>I just don't like the quote. I think becoming aware of the connections art is making for you is never the death of art; it is the art becoming alive, its blood is starting to flow. Art without understanding (meaning recognizing effects of the art on your perceptions) is irrelevant.</p>

[iliafarniev]

<p>Good point me, wish I had one of those.<br>

Why. Seriously. Let me paraphrase D.H. Lawrence and say: "Never trust anybody who says [he or she] understand art."</p>

[darryl-taylor]

<p>Good points Larry and Ilia, Me get a life<br>

any life will do, your own would be preferable of course, but failing that latch onto any available</p>

<p>and that would be the problem with anyone who claims to understand art, they are assuming that they can relate to the emotions that drove the artist to create the work in the first place. How many people have researched the "meaning" of the Mona Lisa? It has to be one of the greatest works of "art" in the known world, which I can only say is complete and utter tosh, it shows DaVinci's exceptionally high level of craftmanship but was created to fund what he considered his art. Which was creating new and fabulous mechanisms to better understand and control the universe as he saw it, not making things that would allow people to carry on seeing the world around them in the way that they had been taught was normal.<br>

Art should cause the viewer to look at the world in a slightly different way, not necessarily adopt a new perspective in all that they do, but at least accept that an alternative perspective exists. The whole issue of "understanding" is an attempt to twist the artist's original view into something that conforms with a collective ideal of what the artist should have been trying to say, not always what they were actually trying to say. Curiousity is what drives humanity to make new discoveries, once an idea has been analysed and accepted/pushed into a ordered structure of recognisable subsets it ceases to be a work of art as it ceases to have the power of mystery.</p>

<p>I'm going before I get anymore involved</p>

[Art X Photography]

<p><a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=4786029">me kawayi</a><br>

I see no relevance, in what you have written, to this forum.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Larry, Ilia and Darryl, if he has not "left", no-one, as far as I have seen, has postulated to "understand art", so it is somewhat irrelevant for the discussion. What has been argued is that understanding is an ongoing process that sometimes increases the experience and "feelings" of the contemporary viewer. Some art never loose there power to create experiences, feelings and wisdom about life.<br>

<br /> As Fred mentioned earlier in the discussion: "<em>there is something about art that also transcends any individual and many of its significant aspects are universal</em> " . Everybody is free to close there eyes for such dimensions of art but denying the very existence of it is not reasonable (not to use a stronger term!)<br>

<br /> To take an example from the current expositions in Paris on "Picasso and the masters". The overall message of the show is that one cannot appreciate especially his early paintings fully without understanding that when he painted he looked for example at the works of Manet, that looked at Goya, that looked at Vélasquez. No painter works in a vacuum of imagination, but always within a frame of references of previous artistic work of fellow living or long time dead painters. One can chose not to know such matters and be satisfied with the guts feeling, but luckily art is more than that for those that care and are open for it.<br>

<br /> A quote from Picasso, that might also serve as an answer to the original question of this thread: <strong><em>"For me, there is neither a past nor a future in art. If a work of art cannot live for ever in the present, it is meaningless to pay attention. Greek and Egyptian art and art of the great masters that have lived in other epochs is not an art of the past; maybe it is even more alive today than it has ever been"</em> </strong> . (my tentative translation). Luckily, such art fill up our museums throughout the World for the inspiration of us all.</p>

[iliafarniev]

<p>Never trust a french who runs a Picasso exibition in Paris.</p>

<p>It seems to me that some of us really want to reserve themselves a right to understand. Can anyone of understanders come forward and tell us just what they understand, say about Picassos art works? Or any other of your choice?</p>

[Art X Photography]

<p>

<p>Ilia "Can anyone of understanders come forward and tell us just what they understand, say about Picassos art works? Or any other of your choice?"<br />I don't pretend to understand the mindset of any work of art's (photo, drawing etc..) creator, nor is it a priority for me to understand that mindset in order to appreciate it both visually and in meaning. Very much the same way as reading a book, listening to music, or watching a movie. I can <strong>understand </strong>a work's significance to me and I can <strong>understand</strong> what visually, acoustically and metaphorically stimulates me (or doesn't). I can come to <strong>understand </strong>that creativity has no bounds. I can <strong>understand</strong> that people have various tastes by the way they associate, talk about, or feel about art. I can come to an <strong>understanding</strong> of different views of the world.<br />And if all that seems nothing more than hog-wash to you, I would suggest that art can also work as a conjure to an <strong>understanding</strong> of one's own imagination.</p>

</p>

[iliafarniev]

<p>Looks like somebody avoiding the issue here. What's hog-wash, anyway?</p>

[Art X Photography]

<p>hog-wash means rubbish</p>

[Art X Photography]

<p>i'm simply offering what I see as understanding to me, not avoiding any issue</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>"Never trust a french who runs a Picasso exibition in Paris"<br>

Such xenophobic nonsense might give applause in some marginal quarters but it is still nonsense and does not help us discussing together. <br>

In stead of investing time in trying to explain to Ilya, what has already been written earlier in the thread (read it !), I withdraw from the discussion.</p>

[Art X Photography]

<p>

<p>I think it's important to understand that this is a discussion based on individual perceptions, opinions and experiences and that, if and when this individualism is expressed, we maintain a level of appreciation for each others opinions. As passionate as each and every one of us may be about this subject matter, it's important that we don't allow sarcasm and cynicism to replace the level of maturity evident throughout this thread. Attacks on race, creed, and individual opinions has no place here. Anders, I respect your choice to withdraw from this discussion but would add that Ilia is only one of many people here contributing to this forum thread.<br>

In your initial posting you state: "The real question on whether "does <em>creative photography lend itself to life and death ?</em>" needs in my opinion more elaboration before a meaningful discussion can be expected."<br>

When I initiated this thread I chose <strong>not</strong> to elaborate beyond what I did (initially) so that this "meaningful" discussion could be initiated. Had I gone beyond this and elaborated perhaps this discussion would have had a premature and painful death. As it stands, yours and everyone else's opinions have made it what it is. For that I thank you all and hope you withdrawal from this discussion is based on having exhausted your opinions and not because of another's</p>

</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Ilia--</p>

<p>Your brief, definitive statements are somewhat rhetorical in their own right. ("Understanding means not understanding." "Why would anybody try to understand the work of art, exept for he/she is real stupid?") You continue to ask for examples and specifics, when you have given none yourself. Can you explain in more detail why a human being (one of whose salient features is "understanding") shouldn't use that faculty in approaching a work of art. What about "understanding" scares you or is at odds with your emotional or spontaneous reaction? Is there not room for both, in varying degrees, depending on the artwork and situation? Many examples and insightful explanations of the role "understanding" plays in art have been given. Actually, even a few different definitions of "understanding" have been proposed that suggest the term is not as fixed as is often assumed. You have acknowledged my own explanations but really haven't discussed them in any depth and you have not really said <i>why</i> all these examples people have offered don't undercut your beliefs. You have provided no argument (which seems to me crucial in a philosophical inquiry). You've sidestepped thoughtful answers that have countered your own beliefs in favor of just restating those same beliefs. </p>