Dogmatism

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Sartre wouldn't deny biology and science, heredity and culture. What he would say is that we're still responsible for the choices we make, <em>given</em> our circumstance. I'm not an advocate of his view, just an appreciator of it. As to the free will vs. determinism debate, it's a fascinating one that is worthy of study. My studies don't indicate a winner or an answer, but rather an awe of the problem and a willingness not to try to solve it. I tend to think I adopt different stances toward my own freedom and my own prior-determined states depending on the situation and what's needed or relevant at the time. An ultimate answer is less important to me than continuing to make the choices I want and need and recognizing choices I'm not always given or don't always have.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>I ascribe to him the view that we are born without essence, the tabula rasa idea of human nature . . .</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Sartre wasn't a proponent of human nature beginning as a tabula rasa. His <em>"existence precedes essence"</em> is in opposition to how he thinks about all other objects. Humans are the only entity for which <em>existence precedes essence</em>, because we get to choose. Just like a ball is round and so it rolls on the floor, we are born with genetic predispositions, etc. But unlike the ball, we get to determine for ourselves what we will do with those genetic predispositions or the cultural underpinnings of our existence. Existence already entails a lot of stuff, but it's our choice above and beyond that which creates our essence. If I am tall, I might make a good basketball player, but I don't have to, because I can choose to do something else (or something in addition). The tabula rasa was, as I understand it, more a matter of being a blank slate in terms of our gaining knowledge. I think Sartre would say that our essence is not a matter of what we know but of what we do. Our essence is comprised of the purposes we give our actions and our life. Sartre was a pretty political animal and recognized the power that regimes, particularly totalitarian ones, could have. He understood oppression. So he knew that we could be put in dire circumstances not of our choosing. But he believed we still had a choice, to struggle, to fight, ultimately if only to say "NO!"</p>

<p>It's interesting to come back to art with this. Purpose! Does your photography have a purpose? Or are you posing as a photographer or artist? Do your photos follow a formula of what you think photos should be or are you creating, acting, choosing what to do?</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with a recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand.</em><br /> <em>. . .</em><br /> <em>"All his behavior seems to us a game. He applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his gestures and even his voice seem to be mechanisms; he gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café. There is nothing there to surprise us." </em>—Sartre</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Do you have a sense when a photographer is playing at being a photographer?</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Hey, there's an art to the infinitely self referential irony in doing a thing while playing the role of a performer doing that thing ironically. Few do it well. Frank Zappa was the musician's equivalent to Sartre's waiter, a brilliant man and talented musician, but more comfortable playing the role of a musical performer mocking the tropes of serious music rather than risking an investment in actually being a serious musician. Performing with sincerity and integrity leaves one vulnerable to cutting personal criticism. It's safer to brilliantly mock the tropes, with the deftness possessed only by a truly skilled artist, because then any criticism can be deflected by dismissing the critic as simply too dense to understand what we're doing.</p>

<p>Or perhaps Sartre believed the waiter really wasn't a good waiter or actor playing the role of a bad waiter being an actor playing the role of a good waiter. I dunno, something gets lost in the Fibonacci spiral.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Fred, yeah, I've had a sense of myself playing at being a photographer. I haven't been photographing much lately, but I'm sure that when I return to it I will go through a period where it feels like I'm awkwardly going through the motions before I get comfortable again and find a subject matter I can connect with and learn from.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Lex/Charles, Something Warhol said seems <em>apropos</em>:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art."</p>

</blockquote>

[clive_murray_white]

<p>Fred - here's an online version of the Berenson: Seeing and Knowing essay</p>

<p> https://archive.org/stream/seeingknowing00bere#page/22/mode/2up</p>

<p>I don't know if he went into his theories at length in any other writings, in a way this essay was a little out of his area of expertise in that he uses his renaissance knowledge to try to beat up on modernism, beautifully argued though! especially delightful observations like you can't have abstract painting because abstract means "idea" not a thing. Of course he wouldn't tolerate the misuse of words, abstracted art is what is actually meant when people say abstract. </p>

<p>What Berenson's way of arguing does for me is give the me the right to think a little outside the main stream art propaganda - people love to call Tony Smith's 6'x6' steel cube the ultimate reduction in form - perfect minimalism/abstract sculpture - but there's a wicked way of interpreting it - it could easily be a traditional realistic sculpture of a box and therefore not a reduction of anything.</p>

<p>I do respond as a sculptor to textural and surface qualities a great deal (they can impart a whole extra dimension to expression, sadly often denied to people these days), even in photography the surface quality of prints seem to have a major bearing on how we perceive the total image and digital hasn't caught up on that quite yet.</p>

<p> </p>

[clive_murray_white]

<p>Charles - your video is most informative and right on the money, though its a little bit of an exaggeration to say that he was self-taught as he'd really done a long and traditional apprenticeship with his original employer and he's continuing the tradition with his son.</p>

<p>The Warhol quote falls into the "All Artists Lie" category.</p>

<p>Better go and get my Domke photo vest, pop the 45 TC-E on the D800, throw the Manfrotto in the Jeep, ooops nearly forgot 10 stop ND filter before I go off my favourite landscape spot where I know people will see me at work :-)</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Clive, thanks for the link to the Berenson. I'll check it out.</p>

<p>In terms of photography, in addition to the surface texture of a print, I also think about the textures within the photo (textures of fabric, of hair, of skin, of walls), and I also think about visual texture as I would the texture of orchestral music.</p>

<p>The Warhol quote: Not having to be real is not necessarily lying. Fantasy can be not real but not be a lie. In terms of photography, I might loosely translate Warhol to mean that if you're not trying to "represent" something or "accurately" portray something, then you may not be able to be judged right or wrong. </p>

<p>As to lying, I'm OK with all artists lying especially when it leads to deeper truths, which I think it often does. By not necessarily accurately portraying a scene (isolating a subject from context and therefore putting a spin on it, exposing and composing so shadows appear mysterious or even grave), one is in at least some sense lying but may be portraying an emotional truth that's more significant than a representational one.</p>

<p>Anyway, Warhol is neither right nor wrong, IMO. It's just another idea to consider.</p>

[spanky]

<p>"Art is what you can get away with." -Andy Warhol</p>

<p>I saw this quote by A.W. the day before yesterday at MOCA. Regardless if it's a stack of Brillo boxes, or a urinal singed "R.Mutt" (but of course really by none other then Marcel Duchamp) being called an artist in ones lifetime by the art establishment comes with some amazing privileges which we mere mortals can only dream about.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Or . . . maybe . . . doing stuff like painting Campbell Soup cans and stacking boxes of Brillo and placing urinals in a museum gets the art world to notice you. Probably a little bit of both, chicken and egg.</p>

[Brad_]

I'd characterize it (along with other aspects) as taking risks.

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Marc, also important is not to reduce these artists to their most well-known work.</p>

<p>7 years before the urinal, Duchamp painted <a href="http://www.dailyartfixx.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Father-Marcel-Duchamp.jpg">THIS PORTRAIT</a> of his father and 5 years before it, he painted <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/Duchamp_-_Nude_Descending_a_Staircase.jpg">NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE</a>, which was a seminal work helping the transition from Cubism to Modernism. In his self-described "retinal" period, he was really into exploring transitions and movement. He would then, of course, depart from that, but he'd already been noticed.</p>

<p>And in fairness to Warhol, his work goes much beyond the soup cans and soap pad boxes. An exhibit of his work here in San Francisco a few years back included his album covers, many of his early <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/image/iT0sZ0TH.XCg.jpg">DRAWINGS</a>, and some important <a href="http://hellosinki.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/andy-warhol-jackie-blue-1964.jpg">SILKSCREENS</a>. As he was a pop artist, and exploring the relationship among art, pop culture, celebrities, and advertisement, sure, becoming a pop icon was almost eponymously necessary. His life, lifestyle, and art are pretty inextricably linked.</p>

[spanky]

<p>You are absolutely correct Fred and that is the point I was after. Both Warhol and Duchamp had by this time become well known in the art establishment. They could "get way" as Warhol describes with just about anything, even picking up a urinal at a nearby hardware store and declaring it art simply because Duchamp, being an artists says it is. Could I do a similar thing today? I doubt it. If Warhol didn't become Warhol and instead stayed Andrew Warhola, a talented graphic designer, then what would anyone make of his Brillo boxes? Would they call it art? Would they call him a genius or a crackpot?</p>

<p>There is a belief among some that an artists best work is at the beginning of their careers, when they are doing the kind of work that is important to them without the pressures of having to repeat past successes. Their work is still of a higher caliber then similar work being done by other artists and that's what gets them noticed. Then, as success arrives, some simply rest on their laurels and produce safe, crowd pleasing work according to the formula that has worked in the past.</p>

<p>I have great admiration for Duchamp and Warhol. Warhol in particular is growing on me as they years fly by, although as you mention I'm just as interested in his history (a sickly kid from a poor working class immigrant family becomes a huge success. Classic American success story.) as well as his art. The issue I have with Warhol however is that so much of his work was produced by others in his "Factory." Sure, he may have originated the concept for a particular piece, but just like I feel photographs printed by the actual photographer carry more weight then those printed by others, when I look at a Warhol, I know I'm most likely looking at a work by Warhol and any number of unknown other individuals.</p>

<p>For this reason, whenever I now send a photographic print of mine out into the world, I sign and date it (one year for the exposure and the other year for the making of the print.) I never used to do this because I used to feel that by doing so, I would be making the final statement for that particular negative. Who's to say that years from now I might want to print that same negative a different way? Could happen, people change, their tastes and their views change. Now I sign it because of how I feel about ownership of a creative work. Besides, every negative I print I do so to the best of my abilities so for that particular print at that particular time in my life, it is as good as it's going to get. Who knows about the future? I feel that art is a very personal and private undertaking despite that art may not be able to exist in a vacuum, it has to be seen and experienced by others. So I sign my prints as a sort of seal that I am the sole creator of that photograph both in the mental/emotional sense that made me take the photograph and in the physical sense in that I printed the picture myself by hand. When I sent a photograph of mine last spring to a friend in NY I mentioned to her that the print would be signed and dated on the reverse. She was delighted that I would be signing the print and I told her that was because "it's the only way I know how to authenticate my work. Accept no substitutes."</p>

[clive_murray_white]

<p>There are a couple of things that keep cropping up about artists which everybody seems to believe to be true, I know this is a bit OT but related to this discussion.</p>

<p>The idea that artists get discovered after their death, is one of them, it may have been vaguely true 100 years ago when communication was very much slower but not so these days. What actually happens is that the artworld of the time knows who's hot and who's not, artworld mainly being comprised of the artists of the day. So if we look at Van Gogh, often used as an example of being discovered after his death. He was well known to the hot artists of his time and his brother worked for a top dealer, the public knew nothing about him. He died young so in a sense his career developed just as if he was still alive - or put another way had he lived to a ripe old age he would have reaped the benefits.</p>

<p>The number of artists that get discovered after death is so few that it would hardly rate a percentage.</p>

<p>In fact the opposite more likely to occur, artists usually make their names for something they do fairly young, if they don't become superstars they are progressively forgotten, and what is worse as time goes on more and more artists get forgotten<br>

By far the most usual way for an artist to be "discovered" late in life or after death, is that they had at least one memorable period of activity and works from that time wound up in reasonably significant collections, reviews of their work exist in archives and there are a substantial number of people who believe that history hasn't given them a fair go.</p>

<p>Sadly the media loves to perpetuate this myth by getting very exited by the very rare cases of "discovery", along with many others, especially the "tortured soul - outcast crazy person" stereotype </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Marc, I appreciate the observations about Warhol and Duchamp and their history and how it leads to them being able to be seen and heard in a certain way. I think there's more to the story. And, yes, I think if you came up with something as significant as the Campbell Soup cans or the urinal, you might very well be paid attention to. But it might not be easy. Duchamp's urinal, after all, was rejected by his fellow Dadaists as well as the committee of the museum to whom he submitted it. It wasn't accepted just because of who he was. It was Stieglitz, himself a risk-taker, who originally showcased the urinal in his studio after its initial rejection. Furthermore, Duchamp did quite a bit of writing explaining his more conceptual art. It was more than just coming up with "art objects" that was important. It was giving these objects a context and a place in art history that Duchamp was accomplishing. So, if you or I want to accomplish something similar, we might get started putting our thoughts together about it and communicating about it.</p>

<p>I think of a lot of this kind of art like I do a performance. So there's more to the soup cans than what they represent and what they are. IMO, it's not just the soup cans that are the art. It's how Warhol got us there and how we allowed him to get there. I believe culture, in part, conspires to allow or to create art.</p>

<p>I also appreciate hearing about the importance of ownership to you. I'm quite different in that respect, and love the fact that Warhol and his Factory people collaborated. I think that communal sense was an important aspect of that art.</p>

<p>Me, I'm not terribly possessive about my photos. I consider most, if not all, of my portraits to be collaborations and love giving credit to the subjects. Sometimes they are passive participants but important contributors nonetheless. Sometimes they are more active, coming up with gestures, poses, expressions, suggesting locations, ideas, offering themselves in sometimes very creative ways. Sometimes, a subject doesn't do much other than be very photogenic, but I'm not going to take the credit for that, so I'm happy to let go of any idea that my photos are all mine.</p>

<p>For me, a photo printed by the photographer doesn't necessarily carry any more weight, though I will of course give the photographer his due for being able to print well. What carries weight for me is the photo and my response to it. Some photos that are seen through by one person are marvelous and some photos that have a set designer, lighting director, make-up artist, photographer, and printer are just as marvelous. I don't give any more weight to a piano sonata written and performed by a single composer/musician than I do to a symphony written by a composer and played by an orchestra under the auspices of a conductor and in a music hall designed by an attuned architect. Sure, there are differences among all these possibilities and I recognize and embrace the differences, but I don't really prioritize them into a hierarchy.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Clive, of the master finisher "...though its a little bit of an exaggeration to say that he was self-taught [because of his apprenticeship]". A little bit of an exaggeration, but then too, Michelangelo also was an apprentice better than (and marveling) his teachers from the beginning. Michelangelo also had assistants later on and I wonder the extent to which Michelangelo did all of his own 'printing'? Briefly I did read where Michelangelo would fire his assistants at times?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Berenson . . .</p>

<p>Just finished reading <em>Seeing and Knowing</em>. Informative, well researched, heartfelt, and much of interest to me. Fleshing out his seeing and knowing divisions and combinations is well worth the effort. Interesting to consider Kant, here, who thought we know first and only then see. In a sense, for Kant, we KNOW how to SEE and that affects our seeing. Berenson seems to emphasize, and appropriately so, how our knowing can often mislead or fill in the gaps of our seeing, or even prevent us from actually seeing or observing. Something to watch out for . . . or play with. His foray into convention seems very significant to me. I've always been intrigued by the dialogs, both implied and overt, artists have had with each other throughout the centuries, through influence, response, homage, etc. Using convention as part of the thread that binds artists and their expressions and communications is an enlightening way to see it.</p>

<p>All that being said, ultimately, I'll dogmatically state that he's an old fuddy duddy, a hardened reactionary who longs for, as he calls it, "sobriety" and "sanity" in art.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Some quotes from Berenson.</p>

<p>page 61 "The most remarkable draughtsman still alive has taken every advantage of his skill to hide his true gifts (35, 36)....[Picasso] composes and paints and illustrates in a way to survive the tossings and nauseas of seasonal fashions, feels obliged to obscure his purpose with puerile malpractices. Anything to get away from the sane-asylum which for thousands of years art has been trying to erect in the mad-house welter of chaos."</p>

<p>And he traces this trend back. page 52-3 "The idolized poets, painters, sculptors and critics after the first world war gave vent to the feeling of despair regarding the future by expressing their contempt for everything in the social order, in politics, and in all the arts that had brought them to pass....It is in our own day that for the first time in history a long-accepted classical tradition with all its invaluable conventions has been wantonly, jeeringly, thrown away."</p>

<p>Well describing Western civilization as a 'sane-asylum' after WWII is at best a stretch. I think what Berenson missed was that it is also reality being represented by those idolized whomevers, the reality of "the mad-house welter of chaos" that culminated over those thousand years of art with the barbarity of humanity as unmasked in 20th century world wars. Picasso was representational in the final analysis, and in the final analysis not a great enough artist to birth for the world that reality's recompense. Picasso instead birthed cruelty toward women in his personal life, rather than offering failed men a proper image of feminine hope, clarity, and charity, all that is lacking in our overly masculinized world. I believe it was Anton Chekov who said that we can't be better until we are shown how bad we are.</p>

[clive_murray_white]

<p>I'm with you on the old "fuddy duddy" Charles, but he does get our brains working and the general concept of "Seeing and Knowing" seems to have enough in it for me to ignore his reactionary rantings and sort of apply the ideas to contemporary art and photography. In a sense I see it as a wasted opportunity because the good ideas get lost in his blind anger, when, if he was a little more open minded, he could have noticed that great contemporary art, even abstract art, can be neatly placed in his theories.</p>

<p>Most notably Picasso and Matisse - I think the overplaying of misogyny in Pablo has reached epidemic proportions, I seem to remember that the "get Picasso at any cost campaign" started in the 50s with rise of the New York School and by the time the feminists came along it was well entrenched as a critical system to denigrate European modernism and exalt the US version.</p>

<p>The trick these days is to find ways to look at images free from their accrued propagandas.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Ah, you mean feminists as grudge bearers Clive, grounded in vendetta against the man Picasso at any cost, following in the footsteps of '50's grudge bearers who before them had made it all personal, same as New York School self-aggrandizement at the expense of European flavors of modernism? A dastardly plot all that, I take you to mean? I guess we know art is good when feminists don't like it!???</p>

[clive_murray_white]

<p><em> A dastardly plot all that, I take you to mean? I guess we know art is good when feminists don't like it!???</em><br>

<br>

No Charles I don't mean that at all, but it is nice to get back into dogma - one of the greatest films ever made documenting an art of a time is Emile de Antonio's Painters Painting (1972) - series of interviews with the leading American artists, many of which are now household names - the session with Frank Stella is most instructive as he talks quite freely about knocking Picasso off his pedestal and the idea that art is brutally competitive dog eat dog etc.<br>

<br>

I'm always suspicious of anything in art that relies on denigrating the obvious achievements of an artist or school with an argument that conveniently promotes the values of a "new bunch" on the block. To me its a cheap trick. Of course its rife these days. Anything that relies on "its good because style arguments" (dogmas) has me looking very carefully at it.<br>

<br>

</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Clive, the way I see it is that <em>Weeping Woman</em> is unpleasant <em>and</em> that Picasso was also unpleasant to women.</p>

<p>The infighting in art I suppose is to be expected.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Clive - "I'm always suspicious of anything in art that relies on denigrating the obvious achievements of an artist or school with an argument that conveniently promotes the values of a "new bunch" on the block."</p>

<p>Yes, that was Berenson's suspicion with post wwi schools, wasn't it? Who needs composition and all those negating sorts of new values.</p>

[clive_murray_white]

<p>I think most of the Picasso was unpleasant to women stuff is an over-exaggeration and a pretty lopsided beat-up, because in truth we could apply the same blow torch to just about any male artist of the times. If we are going to do shock horror at affairs, playing up and general selfishness we should do it evenly, we could pop Ansel Adams under the spotlight and make more of his relationship with Patsy English than we do. Cartier-Bresson wasn't an angel either.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Clive - "...because in truth we could apply the same blow torch to just about any male artist of the times."</p>

<p>Right, could and should, because I am trying to assess our culture by the art it produces and also to consider how well art responds to crisis, e.g. the crisis of world war. </p>