Passion, Ecstasy, and the Heart-o-meter: The Way of Dionysus.

[._kaa]

<blockquote>

<p>Not necessarily, at least not in the present. If the artist is sufficiently ahead of his time, it may take a long time before someone does.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Hmm... Not sure how you'd be able to tell what comes from the author and what comes from the viewers projecting.</p>

<p>As an aside, we must be wired quite differently. I don't feel passion coming from the images you linked to. From the first one, for example, I feel sorrow, probably sorrow for a lover gone. Interestingly enough, I can't come up off the top of my head with images I feel exude passion. I'll try rooting around...</p>

 

[aplumpton]

<p>Luis, can you please explain what makes these three images exude passion or ecstasy and why? Like .Kaa, I have difficulty perceiving that, although perhaps one must look at them and think about them longer than, say, 30 seconds. The two Boubat images, or Capa's falling soldier, rendered some of those qualities more quickly and stronger for me, albeit complemented by or aided by symbolism which worked to amplify the passion. Goya's monster eating his son also does do it, I think, for different reasons, but the emotion it communicates or is perceived by the viewer may not be ecstatic. I am a bit surprised that we are not debating/critiquing the visual examples given to date (the what, why and how).</p>

[luis_g]

<p>This has nothing and everything to do with this thread.</p>

<p>I received an unexpected call from an older artist yesterday. It had been almost a year since he had mentioned I should come by his studio. This time he said I should come immediately. We see each other regularly at art openings and have had coffee and long talks a few times, but that's it.</p>

<p>I pulled into his driveway today. It was by the side of a beautiful beach cottage in a gem of a beachside town. He had the only white picket fence on the block. We sat at a small table by a bayside window. "First, there's something I have to get out of the way. After ten years, my lung cancer has returned, and it's at stage IV. It's apparently metastasized to my bladder. They give me ten months. This is why I never went to a fortune-teller".</p>

<p>He made coffee and pulled out a very large ring binder notebook. There he was as a young college student with a very famous Modernist, his mentor. His early works, then others. Another notebook followed, and it was too much all at once. I kept thinking I would never be able to remember all this, that it was slipping through me. More notebooks, his art changing, in different countries, emphatic lacunae in his stories. He did not want me to know he is gay, which made me sad, and brought to mind how I wish I could somehow bring Fred and this guy together for a portrait session.</p>

<p>His paintings and sculptures are as passionate as they come. Torrents of color, bold energized lines. Barely bridled emotion. I'd written about his work before, and he kept asking me what I thought and felt about the works depicted in the photos in the notebooks. A lifetime of work passed before me... I was riffing poetically off the work, free-associating.</p>

<p>Then he took me into his studio and showed me some smaller finished works. I was shocked to find out that this now infirm old man, in the grips of chemotherapy, having trouble finishing some thoughts, had done these. The energy and passion hadn't flagged one bit. We talked and talked, then we walked into another room where all of the works were emphatically marked <em>"unfinished". </em>He didn't want anyone to mistake them for finished works. Golden light slid noiselessly along the floor. He pulled those works out, and I begged him to photograph them, "For me, just for me, I want to remember this, and hopefully when you finish them I could use them as backstory when I review them." He agreed. I photographed with a small P&S with great care, getting goosebumps with every work he pulled out. I realized his life was likely to end at the peak of his artistic powers.</p>

<p>Then he said he had two things for me. He gave me a DVD, and said that it was his favorite movie, and that it would help to illuminate his life and art. After that, he reached into another room and brought out a print of one of his works, one that I had reviewed more than a year ago. It was one of five. "I wanted you to have it". The shaft of now orange light was narrowing. We hugged and said good-bye.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>A touching story and a fortunate encounter for you both. Despite all the communication likely implicit in his work, your meeting was no doubt an important one for him (as well), possibly cathartic for him at this stage of his life. Bravo.</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>. Kaa - "</strong>As an aside, we must be wired quite differently."</p>

<p>Perhaps we are, and/or our experience differs.</p>

<p>"I don't feel passion coming from the images you linked to. From the first one, for example, I feel sorrow, probably sorrow for a lover gone. Interestingly enough, I can't come up off the top of my head with images I feel exude passion."</p>

<p>That is very interesting, that you can't come up with one passionate image from memory.<br>

____________________________________________________________</p>

<p>Arthur, this may be asking too much, but I want you to mull over these images a little longer before getting into them. I deliberately picked relatively unknown images, without obvious drama (I do not see much passion in the Capa soldier, but plenty of drama-rama). Boubat is a great Romantic. I got zip passion-wise from the girl with the leaves, more from the shot of his girlfriend, but that's also kind of easy, similar to Lartigue's pics of Bibi and her friends, albeit stronger, IMO.</p>

 

[luis_g]

<p><strong>. Kaa - "</strong>From the first one, for example, I feel sorrow, probably sorrow for a lover gone."</p>

<p>http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/beltran/2009/07/24/Tina_modotti_wires447x625.jpg</p>

<p>This image was made by Tina Modotti...</p>

<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Modotti</p>

<p>...Italian photographer and muse extraordinaire. It was made in Mexico, at a time when electricity was beginning to make inroads into the outlying parts of the country. Today we take for granted what a modernizing revolution that was, bringing an impoverished country and a people who had just risen from serfdom up to the standards others had enjoyed for some time. Tina was a revolutionary spirit, always championing the common man, against Fascism, and she loved Mexico. The power lines in this picture represent a better future, and here they are depicted in a Modernist fashion (think of Paul Strand and his films about NYC), For me the passion lies in the (for the time) wild shrillness and power in the formal elemnts of this image. The way the wires seem to come from and anchor the poles to the ground, and burst upwards, out of the frame into the sky. I read that as passionate in an unusual, conceptual, political, content and formal manner. </p>

<p>Here's another...</p>

<p>http://www.lensculture.com/webloglc/images/frank_1.jpg</p>

[Julie H]

<p>In my interpretation, passion <em>in the act of making</em> a photograph means to be completely lost in the sensations of the eye. And this is not necessarily a good thing (nor a bad thing). For me, the first few pictures Luis has linked meet that description, but the Eggleston does not quite (the hands are a little too considered) and the Frank (ditto the arrangement). I would suggest most of Peter Fraser's work as exemplary of someone who loses himself in the visual.</p>

<p>Dionysus, if you'ver ever met the guy, is not into making things. It's about drowning in sensation. Sort of all dessert and no meat and potatoes.</p>

[._kaa]

<blockquote>

<p>That is very interesting, that you can't come up with one passionate image from memory.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It is intriguing, I admit. Though I must say I set myself a high threshold -- there are no problems with finding an image which <strong>depicts</strong> passion, and I also can come up with <strong>high-energy</strong> images as well. But I thought we were talking about images where the passion of the (wo)man behind the camera comes through the picture and you can see it in the image itself -- not in the artist biography, or in the context, or in the story about the picture. And the passion comes from the author, the subject is just transmission medium.</p>

<p>And yes, Dionysus is definitely not into making things :-) As an aside, the Apollonian - Dionysian contraposition, I think, is less about passion and more about rationality and the rejection of it. About deliberate lack of planning, living in the moment, going with the flow. Well, and sensual pleasures, of course :-)</p>

 

[luis_g]

Um, I did give background, but the Modotti picture sings to me of the photographer's passion. A high threshold? Can't think of one? At least Fred and Arthur did. I'd be interested to see what you -- and everyone else -- see passion in.

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Associating Dionysian with passion, I think, can give us some clues in what to look for. Apollonian is the more structured, more formal, and more individual side of the coin. Dionysian is <em>intoxicated</em>, emotional, and whole rather than individual.</p>

<p>It seems to me that photos where structure is less obvious, composition is less formal and contained, and where the content or subject somehow goes beyond the individual or individuals depicted might strike us as more passionate.</p>

<p>A Dionysian would eat meat and potatoes, voraciously, while drinking red wine straight from the jug. And then, even if full, would force down a big old cream pie without using a fork, getting the pie all over his face and the floor in the process.</p>

<p>Passion gets spent outside the lines and the rules. It spills over.</p>

<p>The images I'm thinking of do depict passion. They have to. Otherwise they're not passionate. They don't have to be literal though they can be, as in the case of Wouter's submission of Piss Christ. It's not, for me, just about the passion of the author coming through. Adams's passion for technique comes through, Frank's passion for Americana comes through, HCB's passion for the street and the moment come through. Yet there are few passionate photos, IMO, coming from these guys. A passionate photo depicts passion. It is there to see.</p>

<p><a href="http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kyqjbmY2VD1qzhl9eo1_500.jpg">Fukase.</a></p>

[luis_g]

<p>"Dionysus, if you'ver ever met the guy, is not into making things"</p>

<p>That's true. He makes people whole, not things. Doesn't he do the winemaker thing?</p>

<p>Julie, are there any URLs for this Fraser person? (Too lazy to Google).</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Nietzsche used the Apollonian and Dionysian sides extensively in talking about art and particular Greek drama. Nietzsche actually believed artists used both sides in combination. I think that's a bit of what Twyla Tharp is saying.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Fraser was featured in Aperture not too long ago. I *could* scan and upload some of his pictures ... but, nah, I don't think I'd do that for you.</p>

<p>Another suggestion would be most of Huger Foote's work.</p>

<p>Easier to "get" and surely easier to find online would be most of Ernst Haas's work -- though to my mind, he's sort of Walt Disney passion -- imitation real; his commercial roots always seem to show through.</p>

<p>I think that some of Nachtwey's work qualifies, though I'm pretty sure he, and photojournalists in general, would take that as an accusation and not a compliment. I think W. Eugene's, and Salgado's work is too manipulative to qualify as passionate.</p>

<p>Pop quiz for Mr. Kaa -- why isn't Joel Peter Witkin's work Dionysian? (I really just want to have Kaa write about Joel Peter Witkin ...)</p>

<p>Do my examples mean that photos of random, meaningless stuff is passionate? Nope. It would be hard to find more random, meaningless stuff that Uta Barth but I think she is precisely, intentionally, anti-passionate (I like her work very much, but one needs to be in the mood for navel-gazing when looking at it).</p>

<p>Ms. Barth says that she wants to "look at the finger, not the moon" and "to see negative space, the air instead of the trees." <<< [barth quote]</p>

[luis_g]

<p>For Arthur, Caravaggio's <em>Bacchus</em></p>

<p>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Bacco.jpg/300px-Bacco.jpg</p>

<p>OK, I looked up Fraser, skimmed through three of the portfolio samples on his site. Interesting, democratic (in the Egglestonian sense of the word), out of the box, but self-conscious, not at ease doing it. Somewhat passionate, but I am not seeing the wanton, over the top nature of extreme passion.</p>

<p>http://www.peterfraser.net/</p>

<p>My "threshold", to use a . Kaaiian term, for passion seems to be lower than many here. That may be because I see passion as one quality in relation to others in a photograph, not as something isolated, or that a photograph has or has not. I am not in any way saying that I think my view is <em>the</em> correct one to the exclusion of all others, but for better or worse, the way I see it (today). Nor do I believe that what looks passionate in one culture, say, ours, is what looks passionate to all, or that everything that passes for passion in art in our time is applicable across all time.</p>

<p>The reading of the Apollonian and Dionysian as isolated or mutually exclusive is a misunderstanding of the concept as Nietzsche (and others) envisioned it.</p>

<p> </p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Some of us are saying our passion may be no more than simple enthusiasm for making pictures. I agree, passion is a rather large rubric for a single piece of work. We need visceral and aesthetic dividers to think about it. The gamut of sensual passion runs from maddeningly subtle to extreme chaos. Passion's aesthetic dimensions <strong>are</strong> readily accessible and expressible with photographs.<br /> Real passion demands some sort of psychological change in the passionate. Performances are most likely to arouse passion in the performer and the audience. Music, without doubt tops the list, at least for its comprehensive sensuality. Literature may have an advantage over the visual arts. Writers can frankly state their own passions, have passionate characters and themes, or point to examples of it. But it is really the book author's advantage using whatever the medium - text or pictures. So we are back to a performance.<br /> Subtle nuances of craft and minimal form, rather than setting them aside here, it is important to state that they become an overweening passion for many. Too many? Exotic and forbidden extremes love the camera's gaze. Ralph Gibson, conveniently for this topic, addresses both in his book (magnum opus?) <em>Deus ex Machina</em>. Over a lifetime he has run the gamut passionately producing books. He sees them as his art form rather than a maker of individual images. The short chapter intros are loaded with epigram-ish quotes to inform this discussion but I don't want to resort to a quote fest.<br /> http://www.ralphgibson.com/</p><div></div>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>passion may be no more than simple enthusiasm</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What would be the desire to refer to simple enthusiasm as "passion"? Is there something wrong with enthusiasm that it needs to be transformed by language into passion? </p>

<p>Why lower the bar? Passion, and art, are real. Neither is anything anyone wants it to be. I'm sorry, but we can make a mockery of significant words and concepts.</p>

<p>I would actually say one of the things passion is NOT is subtle. (Every definition I look at of "passion" talks about it being strong, powerful, intense.</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Fred<br>

I'll think about the notion that I've diminished the word. How about: passion <strong>for some </strong>is no more than intense enthusiasm? I can be passionate/intense about some aspect of craft. Or a kind of light. The subtle stuff. I fully agree that there are, as those discussed here, more vital kinds of true passion in art. I also think I implied that viscerally intense passion or ecstasy <strong>can </strong>be aesthetically expressed. I don't do that but I vicariously make note of its expression. This may inform the discussion:<br /> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_(Antonello_da_Messina">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_(Antonello_da_Messina</a>) Compare London Crucifixion with others. For this bit of analysis I thank John Berger ( a man of passions) in <em>Bento's Sketchbook</em>.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>In most definitions of the word passion, there's something to the tune of "<em>boundless </em>enthusiasm" for the 2nd or 3rd sense of the word. We encountered this early in this thread, and I asked that we let that go so as to avoid being drowned out in well-meaning members' testimonials about their fervor.</p>

<p>But Alan is being more specific here, and I'm willing to see where that can go.</p>

<p>What is true passion? Ack! I was hoping we could quorum sense our way past that...</p>

<p>Passion may not be subtle in some ways (though esoteric passions can and often are), but it can be hard to read, which makes it easy to miss or underestimate. Plus, as . Kaa unwittingly intimated, each of us seems to have varying sensitivities to pictured passion.</p>

<p> </p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>I'm actually more stuck on the ecstacy part. Or maybe on the dictionary part.... I'm not quite sure the dictionaries align (despite Luis' efforts).<br>

____<br>

Passion.... Alan's Holy Car(d) photo works for me, in the sense of a visible passion of the owners of the car, due to its extreme contrast to the grey environment it's in. But does it depict passion? Well, no, not only, it depicts 'a' passion versus something else. Depicting passion as main subject, I'm still trying to grasp how it would look.<br /> As Luis said, passion does not have a mutually exclusive relationship to the Appolonian. One could even be very passionate about the Appolonian aspect, I think for example Mondriaan would be a fine example of that, as are many modern architects.<br>

To me, having a passion for something is also 'getting really serious about it', pushing limits and beyond, and stop accepting the sky would be the limit; it surely is beyond enthusiasm. It's an unstoppable willpower to do something, to make something happen, to convince others. <em>Passion gets spent outside the lines and the rules. It spills over</em>. Yes, but yet still (for me) passion is conscious; part of it is inside the lines, it spills over outside the lines and crosses the rules, but there is still something ethical about it. A 'higher force' that keeps it in check.</p>

<p>Now ecstacy - that takes it all another step further. Ecstacy is energy, abundance, total and complete immersion - much more so than passion. I offered Piss Christ earlier. It's ecstatic to me. It's radiating, it does not hold back in any way. The Fukase photo Fred linked to earlier has it (to a lesser extend, though) - these photos go beyond passion. It's more than high energy, it's more than happiness or visibly freedom. If there were rules and lines, we just completely forgot about them. It's a subconscious urge. It has no ethics, no rules. It is where Dionysos really rules alone.<br>

______<br>

Does a photo like <a href="../photo/10456658">this one</a> depict a passion, or even a certain ecstacy? I really don't know, but I'm asking to see reactions (after trying to explain my take on the two terms), and better grasp what has been said.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Alan, you're not close enough; you're looking at the whole engine. The passion is the ignition chamber >> BLAMMO! >> the burn. Heat, power (and waste), whether mechanical, biological or creative.</p>

<p>That the combusion eventually turns the wheels or moves the muscle, or shapes, conforms, is tamed, domesticated, you've <em>used</em> the passion but that's not what I think of AS passion. In fact, all of your intention is being used <em>against</em> the passion to conform and direct it. It's by de-passioning it that something subsequent gets done or made.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>Wouter, I hadn't begun to address ecstasy, because ideas about passion are proving to be more diverse than I expected in this thread. I'm in agreement with you on it so far, and am beginning to think that perhaps we should save that for dessert after this banquet of the er... senses.<br>

__________________________________________________________</p>

<p>"The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal." --- William James</p>

<p>Hmmm...leaning a lot towards the Apollonian, but agree with the mix idea.<br>

__________________________________________________________</p>

<p>In a Ferrari (and other extreme cars I have driven) the entire car is passion. When taken to its limits, there lies ecstasy. The passion does not lie in the combustion chamber any more than it lies in one's sex organs. It does not have distinct clear borders nor a passport to be on either side.<br>

__________________________________________________________</p>

 

[Julie H]

<p>The people who <em>make</em> Ferraris; who design and build them -- will be happy to hear that.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Perhaps we are too much equating the passion of the photographer with that of the image. I quite like Mondetti's power lines and her passion about Mexico's leap into the industrial/communications age. Often when I think about a computer or information science I cannot forget the passion of a (Claude) Shannon or a Turing (those two passionate mathematicians actually worked together, cracking world war 2 secret codes, it must have been something) or a Lepage (or other similar artist) creating his Met Ring cycle scenes. But the passion of the artist and that of the work are not necessarily connected very strongly, at least for the viewer to see, as one who may not be also delving into the artist's modus operandi or his or her life. The power lines can therefore simply be construed as a composition/design rather than something passionately outreaching to the viewer, but that is just my interpretation of them, as powerful image elements as they may be in the way Mondetti captured them. </p>

<p>The Bacchus of Caravaggio exudes Epicurean passion, but I am more impressed by his chiaroscuro rendition of biblical scenes. The Boubat little girl speaks to me of the passion and ecstasy of the magical world of a four year old, the Capa falling soldier of the passion of life at the point of its extinguishing (and of the struggle of the Spanish Republicans versus a dictator), the Boubat Lella image of the passion of a proud human character, independent and beautiful in that simple strength. I agree that Boubat was a romantic (we see it also in his London Hyde Park assembly images), but what he is showing I think goes beyond that simple and quiet personality.</p>

[alan_zinn]

<blockquote>

<p> When taken to its limits, there lies ecstasy. The passion does not lie in the combustion chamber any more than it lies in one's sex organs.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>OK let me fling this Ralph Gibson at you from afore mentioned book, (The Black Kiss chapter). He laments, perhaps, that there was little good porn art (sorry Dionysians) so he gave up trying: <br>

<br />"… . However, I soon discovered that sex doesn't look the way it feels."</p>

<p>Ha! And that coming from a man who's shot a fair number of beavers. As a fervent Ferrari fancier I too can attest to the special class of passions of the hormonal (testosterone/petrol) variety. To be erotically confused by women AND cars or other objects that must be manipulated to work to our satisfaction, at least in our gear shifting hands, if ya know what I mean, shows the immense breadth and intensity, differentiated by gender and culture, of possible passionate responses to virtually anything.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>"Expression is not a matter of passion mirrored on the human face or revealed by a violent gesture. When I paint a picture, its every detail is expressive." Henri Matisse<br>

__________________________________________</p>

<p>Julie, everyone, well, almost everyone, has a both Apollonian and Dionysian qualities, just as men have feminine ones, and women masculine ones. And it doesn't take a genius to see that both have the seeds of their opposites at their core.</p>

<p>BTW, Dionysus get the credit for the making of whoopee and wine. Where would any of us be without <em>that? </em><em><br /></em></p>

<p>You're stripping systemic totalities into objectified parts, and appear shocked that the sum of the dismemberment is less than the whole. Oh, wait...Dionysus is the God of that, too...and epiphanies as well, but that's for yet another thread.<br /> <em>__________________________________________</em></p>

<p><strong>Alan Z.</strong><em>"</em>...shows the immense breadth and intensity, differentiated by gender and culture, of possible passionate responses to virtually anything."</p>

<p>Yes...'tis a many-splendored thing. This not a bad by any means. It may look like we're Union card-carrying members at the Tower of Babel site, but I'm seeing it as diversive strength.<br /> __________________________________________</p>

<p>Wouter, I don't think that procession picture came across to me a something I would term passionate, but it did have a hint of urgency.<br /> _________________________________________</p>

<p>Arthur, don't get me wrong, I love Boubat's work, and it was indeed judged passionate for its time. Not what I would call strongly passionate. The leafy 4 yr old lost in her reverie is a wonderful picture, but does it show or evoke passion for me? Some, but that's it. In the interest of being fair and balanced, I showed it to two women photographers today, whose work I was looking at, and both thought it was good -- and passionate.<br /> _________________________________________</p>