“…. Taste is the enemy of creativeness.” ?

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Phylo--</p>

<p>In browsing around (superficially) about Wu Wei, I came across this: "'Wu Wei' means natural action - as planets revolve around the sun, they 'do' this revolving, but without 'doing' it; or as trees grow, they 'do', but without 'doing'. That actually seems to be my answer for your doubts about putting Sartre or Kierkegaard into practice. It gets done. I don't actually find there's much to "put into practice" but it seems to infiltrate and have its effects.</p>

<p>John--</p>

<p><!--StartFragment-->"There ain't no such sweeping thing."</p>

<p>Generalization. "Impressionism" does not get as specific as "Monet," which in turn doesn't get as specific as "Haystacks On A Foggy Morning." There's no such thing as Impressionism in the same way as there is such a thing as "Haystacks On A Foggy Morning." (Depends a little on one's definition of "is," of course.) Generalizations or categories help tie together loose ends and can apply in an edifying way characteristics to a context or within a milieu. "Eastern Philosophy" is a convenience, as is "Sartre," short of reading or referencing every multi-syllabic word of <em>Being and Nothingness</em> or every nauseating novel or play, which could be cumbersome. <!--EndFragment--></p>

[don_e]

<p>"In browsing around (superficially) about Wu Wei..."</p>

<p>Fred, you might find Philip K Dick's Man in the High Castle an interesting read, whether you enjoy sf or not. This link has a quotation regarding wabi and wu from it:</p>

<p>http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html</p>

<p>"By contemplating it, we gain more wu ourselves. We experience the tranquillity associated not with art but with holy things."</p>

<p> </p>

[jtk]

<p>hot off the Internet re "instinct" and "memory"...Yahoo reported it, so must be true :-)<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090209/sc_livescience/studysuggestswhygutinstinctswork">http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090209/sc_livescience/studysuggestswhygutinstinctswork</a></p>

<p>As for Tao, I'm not sure we're referring to a "philosophy" so much as a Western summary of results of quiet meditation/observation...maybe more observational science than philosophy (like Freud's work)...but I'll yeild the point because I'm not a scholar...more a drive-by recollectionist</p>

<p>Fred, I'm not sure how Sartre's philosophically more "Western," less "Eastern" than, say, the Dalai Lama...</p>

<p>...except that the DL seems more emotionally complex, more stable, and less narcissistic...plus, the DL's a handsome dude and Sartre was a gargoyle, so personal aesthetics might be one difference (prefer bonsai to topiary?)...</p>

<p>Don't know them boys, but I suspect the DL would be happier with a pipe wrench than would Sartre or Joe-the-P...maybe happiness/narcissistic dimensions are the playing fields of East vs West.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>John--</p>

<p>Talk more about the awkwardness you feel in doing portraits. Do you accept it, try to get over it, work with it, sometimes want to make it even more awkward as a challenge? How does that awkwardness affect what you shoot and how you shoot? Does the genuine awkwardness you feel conflict with what you mean by "simple" portrait? </p>

[jtk]

<p>Fred, I'm drawn to the awkward, feel guilty about the easy. As you mentioned, I'm trying to make emotionally loaded semi-formal (mostly unlit) portraits. Until I actually complete a body of what I claim to want, it's bullshit.</p>

<p>I was thinking yesterday about "the other," having failed to stop and meet three people in wheelchairs, one at my gym and two wheeling in back streets ...my alibi for not doing that was that they were "human interest" stories, not my thing, not to my "taste" la-de-da. </p>

<p>A broken-down community just 5 miles south of me is full of poor, tattooed, and troublesome hispanics, many who somehow love chihuahuas...I imagine getting it together to photograph them, giving them prints. It'd challenge me seriously and would contribute in some cultural way if I actually got it together. If wishes were horses..</p>

<p>I started last year to photograph a small-time livestock auction. I do sympathize with them politically/ethically, made the connections, built the trust, started...but then animal rights politics caused all photographers to be totally excluded and most of the auctions to collapse ..need to respond faster to those little voices (thanks Josh :-) </p>

<p> </p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

"Until I actually complete a body of what I claim to want, it's bullshit."

 

Have you read ' Art & Fear ' ? It might proof helpfull in turning the bullshit into a bull and grab it by the horns, although those

horns can and will be very sharp.

[Norma Desmond]

<p><!--StartFragment-->John--</p>

<p>"my alibi for not doing that was that they were 'human interest' stories"<br /> <br /> My dad's in a wheelchair due to M.S. His best friend is often in the position of wheeling him into restaurants. To address all the curious and/or sympathetic stares they get when wheeling him down the aisle, Mel will often loudly say "too much sex." My dad knows he's a human interest story and keeps a sense of humor about it.</p>

<p>Honestly, I'm not quite sure why I relay this story, but it seems relevant to what you're going through. Thinking more about why, maybe it's "significance." Somehow, with (a transformative way of) photographing, one can try to <em>create</em> (or at least guide oneself and one's viewers toward) what's significant.</p>

[cyr_smith]

<p>Hey Josh, I agree with your original post in that I usually say to myself, "I'm not sure I like it but it is interesting enough to keep looking." So, maybe it is creative enough that I'll learn to like it. Sort of like asparagus. Grin.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Taste can be the enemy of creativeness, if the taste is but a child of convention. </p>

<p>Worse, in my opinion are the absences of commitment, curiosity and application (perspitation versus inspiration) </p>

 

[inoneeye]

<p>Hiya Cyr. For me it was Riefenstahl's early film work and broccoli. Don't even cook brussels sprout in my presence, i have limits. But i did do a self portrait trying to down one.</p>

<p>Arthur, i am with you up to versus. I like to take it from anywhere it comes, and i don't mind the hard work.</p>

<p><br /></p>

[inoneeye]

<p>ALL,<br /> Well, i would like to let you all know that your comments and time spent here was genuinely appreciated by me. So thank you for your insights, contributions. Normally i would not be writing a thank you note for having a discussion. But this one has been especially beneficial to me.It gave me a needed boost. And i was rewarded with a minor epiphany during the course of this one. You gave clarity wings to a little voice i was hearing. It has been an interesting room. I didn't have much of a taste for philosophy forums <strong>before</strong> this. See you all. around. take care, <em>j</em>osh</p>

[joe_jackson4]

<p>"This is no more Art but art market, and on the contrary to the 16th century mecenes, the new art amateur is not a connoiseur but at best an investor and at worst an illiterate snob sucker."</p>

<p>Hmm...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.masterworksfineart.com/inventory/2227">http://www.masterworksfineart.com/inventory/2227</a></p>

<p> </p>

[Art X Photography]

<p>I find 'taste' to be bound by social norms, historical influences, legal implications and to a lesser extent a combination of 'nature and nurture'. On the other hand I find 'creativity' to have no bounds but the ones we apply to it. Taste may very well be the enemy of creativity but only if we allow it to be, so to some extent I agree with the statement</p>

[don_e]

<p>"I find 'taste' to be bound by social norms, historical influences, legal implications and to a lesser extent a combination of 'nature and nurture'. On the other hand I find 'creativity' to have no bounds but the ones we apply to it."</p>

<p>I disagree with that division. I do not think we are autonomous individuals distinct from our milieu, or capable of becoming so. It may be 'magical thinking', the inner two-year old, we each still are, speaking when we think that.</p>

<p>We, each of us, are "bound".</p>

 

[jtk]

<p>I think both Art X and Don E are dead right.</p>

<p>If we conclude otherwise, we step on a banana peel, embrace folly, are blessed with The Big Kahuna's custard pie.</p>

<p>We are simultaneously individual and bound....and we know it. Yang & yin. Truth in paradox. It's entertaining to think about truth, but of little other utility. Claim a non-paradoxical truth, listen for the cosmic laughter.</p>

[don_e]

<p>"We are simultaneously individual and bound"</p>

<p>Yes, but we are not autonomous individuals. We want individuality to imply, at least, autonomy; we desire it to be so, but it doesn't follow.</p>

<p> </p>

[jtk]

<p>"We want individuality to imply, at least, autonomy; we desire it to be so, but it doesn't follow." - Don E</p>

<p>Don, that's a popular "modern" idea , not a truth ...it may even be a pathology, like Sartre's on the one hand (autonomy) or the traditional Army's on the other (soldier's just cannon fodder...unlike today's bogus "army of one" fantasy).</p>

<p> You may desire autonomy, I may desire it, but the idea doesn't even occur to tribal people, even today in some places. We all did spring from tribes...and we may even be hardwired that way, accounting for alienation and other stress.</p>

<p>Seems true of traditional Navajo people, for example, I've seen strong evidence. Some say that when ill, they don't even pray for anything individual, just to come back into balance with the tribe's/clan's system (eg taboos and practices). It's pretty obvious that their most important identity has, until recently, been clan: "Towering House" (watchtower) or "Standing By Water" people, for example. When a young man meets a young woman, their first concern is the clan lineage of all sides of their family...that's true even today. It's compulsive.</p>

<p>For a long time, humans virtually never existed beyond their group identity. In the British Isles, for example, people had no names beyond their jobs until relatively recent centuries. "Cooper," "Chandler," Smith," "Potter" etc.</p>

[freewolf]

<p>This is EXACTLY why I quit grad school...</p>

[don_e]

<p>John, it was not a "Truth" even in our own society prior to sometime in the 18th century. The idea that the individual could create autonomously seems to be a development in Romanticism, a part of a reaction to the collapse of 'universal truths' in religion and the hierarchic concept of society and nature, and in tune with the rise of democracy, the republic, the appearance of the bourgeoisie, and the 'rights of man'.</p>

<p>So, the individual, and especally the creative individual took this turn into the notion of autonomy, as someone who could create de novo from something within them (their "passion") that was unrelated to the verities of the ancien regieme now vanished and therefore society as such. Of course, society as such continued on so the artist took on the job of social critic; the artist, being autonomous and a creator having a special insight, standing aloof from society, could see the hypocrisy and philistinism of "the masses", the bourgeois, and joe and jane sixpack. No surprise, though, that these special people were always "bourgeois" themselves. The avoidance of the modern from the Impressionists until finally Photorealism is interesting, too. The romantics seemed to find Nature a suitable substitute for old religion.</p>

<p>I don't know when or where such romanticism came into photography. I don't recall it from the 60s and 70s. Maybe it is taught that way in art schools or maybe it is memetically transmitted on the internet, but it seems charmingly old fashioned to me.</p>

<p> </p>

[jtk]

<p>Don, good insights.</p>

<p>I think printing technology, specifically Gutenberg (consequentially Bible and Shakespeare specifically), was the source of "individualism" more fundamentally than Romanticism. Catholic theology relies on top-down authority of Church. As with Islam, the game is obedience and practice rather than "belief". "Mainstream" Protestant theology ( vs anti-gospel evangelical/pentacostal type) puts the weight entirely on individual internal experience and individual public expression of belief, relies on individual Bible-reading (ie literacy) and individual "born again" experience (ergo belief).</p>

 

[jtk]

<p>"I don't know when or where such romanticism came into photography. I don't recall it from the 60s and 70s." - Don E</p>

<p>I recall three 60s/70s engines of "romantic" photography...</p>

<p>#1 discovery that money really could be made while having fun ("Blow Up")</p>

<p>#2 idealism (photojournalism, eg Civil Rights and Vietnam).</p>

<p>#3 enthusiasm for Weston's life (Daybooks), zen (eg around Minor White), and nature photography (notably Sierra Club publishing, emerging environmental movement..such as around Glen Canyon's flooding).</p>

<p>" ... it seems charmingly old fashioned to me." - Don E</p>

<p>Sometimes to me, too. However www.lightstalkers.com and many other websites/books perpetuate (nourish, didn't recently invent) "old fashioned" photojournalistic romanticism...www.strobist.com and Nikon (and B&H and Adorama) promote visions of romantic professional fun.</p>

<p>Unfortunately (IMO), arch (and "art") posturing, cynicism, and a certain hackneyed type of B&W photography (won't name it) have eroded much of the romanticism in #3, above.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>"The romantics seemed to find Nature a suitable substitute for old religion."</p>

<p>I wonder if that has to do with the fact that you can see and touch nature . . . well . . . actually . . . you can't see and touch Nature . . . just like you can't see and touch God, Sin, or Heaven . . . but you can see and touch flowers, streams, and bridges.</p>

<p>I appreciate Don's point about the artist not creating <i>de novo</i>. It often comes up in these forums when people (mistakenly) compare painting to photography as if the former gets created <i>ex nihilo</i> and the latter is dependent on the "real" world. We've had some good discussions on influence, history, culture, etc. all setting the table for the artist even before his own passion and creativity takes over.</p>

<p>I think a discussion of substance could take place on the difference between creating something <em>ex nihilo</em> and maintaining individuality. Individuality, of course, gets some of its sense in relation to community and does not have to be absolute to be meaningful. While we are all "bound," we are also all able to assert individuality to different degrees. Except for identical twins, we all have different genotypes (and even twins have different phenotypes), which provides all the tension needed for any debate on nature vs. nurture, individuality vs. the herd.</p>

[jtk]

<p>The "old religion" usage forgets the individual-centric American religion (equivalent to Baptist) already dominant in here the 17th and 18th centuries..."old religion" seems an European academic construct that assumes Catholic or Church of England.</p>

<p>When I was a kid in Newfoundland, Canadian CID (FBI) required me to fill out a form that specified "CofE" or "RC." I was nominally Presbyterian at the time, not Church of England or Catholic, but didn't have that option, so specified CofE....allowing me to legally shoot my .22 at seagulls and beer cans. A little earlier, and leading up to the First Continental Congress, noisy agitators like Samuel Adams used denunciation of both Pope's and England's churches to underscore the noxious nature of "old religion." They didn't much like Presbyterians either, were more comfortable with Quakers. They didn't seem to be tree-huggers, were romantics and did create something new.</p>

<p> </p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>Only from the outsider's perspective, the one who's trying to look in, things can and will have a flavor of romanticism in them while the insider's experiences and perspectives are only drenched in realism, be it cold or warm, hard or soft, but ultimately just plain and sober realism. Both perspectives are ' real ' in a way. After viewing a very recent documentary I couldn't help but sense a sort of romanticism ( as an outsider looking in ) in the cat and mouse game between the palermo maffia and the carabinieri, and the ' normal people ' being stuck in the middle, but by once being afraid of the maffia some of them where speaking back, a trend was being formed. The heroïcness of it all, the exoticness also, or so it seemed for me. Because for them it was the <em>realness. </em>Realism, no romanticism.<em> </em></p>

<p>Like mobgangsters, Big Name Artists are also just plain human, as vulnerable and penetrable to outside circumstances as any other. We can see them as being creatively or destructively ' obsessed ' with something, yes. But ultimitaly we must see them as nothing else than what they truly are : human like us. It's that what makes their ' obsession ' more approachable, more understandable, and in this ' common light ' even more victorious if you will, but not anything less<em>. Possibility's</em> can and will emerge<em> </em>when one becomes ' both insider and outsider '. But in most cases we can only chose either one.<br /><em></em><br /><em></em><br />Beasts Bounding Through Time(1986)</p>

<p>Van Gogh writing his brother for paints<br />Hemingway testing his shotgun<br />Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine<br />the impossibility of being human<br />Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief<br />Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town<br />the impossibility of being human<br />Burroughs killing his wife with a gun<br />Mailer stabbing his<br />the impossibility of being human<br />Maupassant going mad in a rowboat<br />Dostoyevsky lined up against a wall to be shot<br />Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller<br />the impossibility<br />Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato<br />Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun<br />Lorca murdered in the road by Spanish troops<br />the impossibility<br />Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench<br />Chatterton drinking rat poison<br />Shakespeare a plagiarist<br />Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness<br />the impossibility the impossibility<br />Nietzsche gone totally mad<br />the impossibility of being human<br />all too human<br />this breathing<br />in and out<br />out and in<br />these punks<br />these cowards<br />these champions<br />these mad dogs of glory<br />moving this little bit of light toward us<br />impossibly.</p>

<ul>

<li>Charles Bukowki, Beasts Bounding Through Time, 1986 </li>

</ul>

[jtk]

<p>Phylo, thanks for Bukowski. See "The Wrestler."</p>