How to write about one particular picture

Julie H · December 1, 2016

From poet Marianne Moore:

After [a reading of her poems], a strikingly well-dressed member of the audience, with equally positive manner, inquired, "What is metaphysical newmown hay?"

I said, "Oh, something like a sudden whiff of fragrance in contrast with the doggedly continuous opposition to spontaneous conversation that had gone before." "They why don't you say so?" the impressive lady rejoined.

</blockquote>

More soberly from Moore:

Feeling at its deepest — as we all have reason to know — tends to be inarticulate. If it does manage to be articulate, it is likely to seem overcondensed, so that the author is resisted as being enigmatic or disobliging or arrogant.

</blockquote>

Julie H · December 1, 2016

Here is Salamish Tillet writing about the Bronx Underground series by Elle Pérez:

... Her close-up shots, a few staged, mostly improvised, capture the offscreen rather than the nightclub's main attraction. Those moments before the moment. A stairwell before going in or leaving the party. Backstage pageant prep. Peering from behind the curtain. A Selina catsuit hanging midair. A slow inhale. A tight embrace.

... That her photographs refuse their geographical specificity is the point. These images flatten space, giving us a sense that we are watching both the entertainers and their spectators in media res and waiting for each other. Even more poignantly, Pérez's black-and-white portraits dislodge these scenes from their respective years ...

... Pérez's counterarchive then becomes an alternative to erasure. Taken together, these photographs create their own imagined community, to use the phrase coined by historian Benedict Anderson, in which people are joined by shared experiences or collective memories rather than by the more traditional borders of the nation-state.

</blockquote>

I like the idea of "imagined community." See some of Elle Peréz's Bronx Underground pictures via the following links: <a href="http://payload361.cargocollective.com/1/4/155940/9521164/Website_201506_1200.JPG">one</a>, <a href="http://payload361.cargocollective.com/1/4/155940/9521164/16_Dollar-Thrust-From-Reinas__2015_Digital-Inkjet-Print_1250.JPG">two</a>, <a href="http://payload361.cargocollective.com/1/4/155940/9521164/18_Tamia-From-Reinas__2015_Digital-Inkjet-Print_1250.JPG">three</a>, <a href="http://payload361.cargocollective.com/1/4/155940/9521164/14_Pit-From-Reinas__2016_Digital-Inkjet-Print_1250.JPG">four</a>, <a href="http://payload361.cargocollective.com/1/4/155940/9521164/jamesdeandream_1250.jpg">five</a>, <a href="http://payload361.cargocollective.com/1/4/155940/9521164/15_Sophia-From-Reinas__2015_Digital-Inkjet-Print_1250.JPG">six</a>.

Julie H · December 1, 2016

Since none of our anti-writers seem to want to argue their side anymore, I will don my Devil's Advocate hat and argue with myself. By quoting, as usual. Here is print-meister Richard Benson putting some serious hate on art writing:

There is a war in art today between the work and the word. The word is in ascendency, sustained by flows of written criticism and hours of heated discussion in classrooms and seminars, while the work is almost beside the point ...

... If you ask any biologist what is more miraculous — the mind or the hand — you will undoubtedly be told the mind takes the prize. This remarkable wet thing we carry around in our heads is the most complicated known object that we are aware of; it is the force behind all the great stuff we have made.

[line break added] The hand does its work in response to the directives of mind and the senses, and in the realm of art, the result is some physical object that can be accessed by all of us and that — when cared for — can outlive its maker. Then, even though a mind once stood behind it, the physical thing is all that remains.

[line break added] The mind dies, the talking stops, and even the best-written pieces about art go thankfully unread outside of academic circles. In the end the word loses and the work wins. We don't know what Rembrandt or Mozart thought or said, and we really don't care. The pictures and the music are what transfix us, and immortality rests in them rather than in the mind that produced them.

</blockquote>

[ / removing my Devil's Advocate hat so I can argue against Benson]

Richard, why do you think Rembrandt and Mozart and all of the artist we can still see long after they are dead are still seen long after they are dead? BECAUSE somebody, many somebodys wrote and talked and discussed them at some point. Things that aren't talked or written about go away. They are not here. Love it or hate it, the public discussion is what makes the work be preserved, makes it endure and be kept, treasured, kept "alive," what allows you to see the picture without public discussion somewhere, sometime long after the origin of the piece.

If nobody talks/writes about it, if WE don't talk or write about it, it vanishes. Talking sorts value. Not talking/writing lets it go.

"In the end the word loses and the work wins." Not at all. Completely wrong. In the end, the word decides which work wins into the future.

As to "We don't know what Rembrandt or Mozart thought or said, and we really don't care," who said we should? It's the art we write about, not the artist.

Norman 202 · December 1, 2016

In the end the word loses and the work wins." Not at all. Completely wrong. In the end, the word decides which work

wins into the future

nonsense. no-one is paid, nor pays, millions for their, or someone else's <blockquote>opinion </blockquote> of a picasso.

Julie H · December 2, 2016

Ack. He doesn't actually ever address the question he leads with. It's sort of a random quote dump of famous photographers well-known written bits.

As to Robert Adams's "something that would just keep out of the way of the pictures" -- why pick on words? What about what you had for breakfast? What about the room you're in while viewing? What about every damn thing in your life up to and including that moment? What is it about the sounds from the mouth or the text on the page that makes it so specially offensive to the "pure" viewing of a picture?

Words work from the inside out: pictures work from the outside in. They don't compete: they work from different angles or dimensions or "kinds" of ways of grasping or gearing into.

This bit from the end of one of Robert Fitzgerald's poems:

Evening came, will come with lucid stillness

printed by the distinct cricket

and, far off, by the freight cars' coupling clank.

A warm full moon will rise

out of the mothering dust, out of the dry corn land.

</blockquote>

... gets me as much of a picture as any picture ever will of a hot summer night after harvesting the corn. It springs from one man's putting what he sees into words. Different ways; not competing ways.

Norma Desmond · December 2, 2016

We don't know what Rembrandt or Mozart thought or said, . . .

</blockquote>

Sure we do.

<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5307/5307-h/5307-h.htm">MOZART'S LETTERS</a>

. . . and we really don't care.

</blockquote>

I do.

So does Barbara Isenberg of the LA Times, who includes many quotes of what Hockney said in <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-ca-david-hockney-20150308-story.html">THIS PIECE</a> about his work.

Julie H · December 3, 2016

A work of art is a defined thing: this [drawing metaphorical black boundary] and not that.

Whatever response is prompted by the this: whatever (and I do mean whatever: all and anything I may find or feel or be led to think about) that is within that limit, that carefully defined boundary, is what I care about when discussing a work of art. But whatever is prompted by the not that, whatever is the about the 'form' from which the thing was cast, I don't care about when discussing a work of art.

I do very much care about the 'form' from which it was cast when talking about anything and everything supportive or generative of the work of art, such as the artist and the technique and the history of it, etc. I'm a documentary junkie, and I love learning how things are done or made or the lives of anybody creative. But that is part of the not that of art, it is not the art itself. It's obviously necessary, but in the end, the art is, and to my mind, needs to be, set free, and experienced free of it's support or training or formative means. Child from parent.

Julie H · December 3, 2016

... and being a documentary junkie, I can't help mentioning that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Joiner-Photographs-David-Hockney-Featherstone/dp/B007BKDEYQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1480765088&sr=1-1&keywords=joiner+photographs+hockney">David Hockney's Joiner Photographs documentary</a> is really good, IMO. Hockney is a great interview, and I think this DVD does a better-than-usual job of showing his ideas in progress. On the other hand, it is, as are so many documentaries, not a polished work, so don't expect Hollywood quality.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2016

"Carefully defined boundaries" indeed.

As you said in this week's POTW thread, this is YOUR way of trying to or thinking you can look at "works of art." It's not my way and not a critical way or a way many critics do it. So, Benson is likely talking to a fairly limited and, IMO, somewhat naive or idealistic audience.

My point was simply that Benson made some factually incorrect statements. We do have the words of Mozart. NOT "We don't have the words of Mozart." And some of us, many of us, do care. NOT "We don't care." If you or he thinks, once we have those words, we can put the genie back in the bottle, though I'd suggest you can't, I know it would be pointless for me to stop you from thinking you can.

For me, it's not just the words of an artist I'm aware of influencing me beyond what I see as the non-existing "boundaries of a work of art," but so very many things. A painting, a photo, a sculpture can never be for me a sacrosanct and discrete entity. Though I may want to forget some things for a moment or three, I have an awareness that those things are still affecting me even if I choose to ignore them. Criticism (being critical) sort of demands that I recognize what's real about art and what artificial impositions or limitations I may exercise at a given time because I want to try to experience some sort of fantastical purity. Culture, presentation, lighting, years of color fading in paintings, glass frames, color and texture of mat, size of wall, what photo is hanging next to it or on the accompanying page, what the title of the exhibit is, hell what I ate for breakfast or what a loved one or the tv set said to me that morning can't just be denied or wished away. Or at least that's my own limitation, and I'm proud and feel . . . well . . . human . . . to have those influences at play and to at least be able to recognize if not completely dismiss some of them.

Julie H · December 3, 2016

I don't dismiss anything that comes to mind because of what I'm seeing in the picture. Whatever that may be.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2016

You said "a work of art is a defined thing." You said "whatever is within that limit . . . that carefully defined boundary." I'm saying a work of art is not a defined thing and there can be no "carefully defined boundary." Benson is saying the words Mozart spoke don't matter to the work when we see it as "carefully defined." I'm saying the words, once we've heard them, become part of the work, which was never carefully bounded to begin with. Once I've heard the words, they're part of my experience of the work. I don't unhear them because I can re-hermetically seal the work back into these supposedly defined boundaries.

The work of art, for me, is about possibilities, not carefully defined boundaries. The critics I like to read are those who explore possibilities, not those who want to limit the work by arbitrary boundaries they don't realize they are drawing and which aren't, in fact, something actually bounding the work they're looking at.

Julie H · December 3, 2016

It's not about limitation. It's about where and with what you start with on particular piece: I make no limit on what you bring to that start.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2016

I don't need a critic to tell me what's literally "in" the photo or painting. I can see that for myself. What I like to get from a critic is context, cultural associations, historical place, insight into the artist herself, knowledge of tropes that may have influenced the artist, goals I may not know about that the artist may have expressed, and all of those things can then help deepen what I am actually seeing when I look. I may, at times, try to look more blindly, more abstractly, at a photo or painting, free myself of all those associations, but that's not any more the work of art than when I attend to it in other ways. And, like I said, I can never free myself completely of those things as long as I remain human. For me, criticism adds perspective or perspectives, it doesn't try to wipe the slate clean. It deepens my experience. It doesn't purify it.

Julie H · December 3, 2016

Putting it another way, given a chess layout (game in progress; arrangement of moved pieces), a chess master will play it one way, an amateur another, a different chess master yet another. But all begin from the same layout of the pieces in the same game.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2016

It's not about limitation.

</blockquote>

You can't sensibly say art is a bounded thing and then claim it's not about limitation. You can't reasonably say you're making no limit on what is brought to the start and then tell me Mozart's words "DON'T" matter, let alone exist.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2016

Art is not chess. A knight is a piece that has a defined usage within a game. A brushstroke is not such an animal. A brushstroke depends on association, representation, symbolism for its meaning and effect, it's not part of some agreed upon rules of play.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2016

In any case, this doesn't have to be made complicated by chess analogies and the like. Benson said something fairly plain. He said Mozart's words don't matter. He didn't say Mozart's words aren't part of the bounded work of art. He didn't say Mozart's words aren't part of the musical notes heard in the symphony hall. He said they don't matter. As far as I'm concerned, he's wrong. What he meant by saying we don't even know what Mozart said or thought, I'll never know, because we do. We don't know all of what ANYONE says or thinks, but we know some things Mozart said and thought.

Julie H · December 3, 2016

"What I like to get from a critic is ... "

... not to be bored into a coma.

What I like is to be made to be interested. And having been made interested, to therefore want more. This can be done by beautiful insight leading into discussion of rich context; or equally well by withering contempt subsequently supported by close description and analysis.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2016

Well, I'll tell you honestly that there's plenty of bad writing that can sometimes be interesting for how bad it is. There's plenty of good writing about bad art, where the writing is interesting but it doesn't make the particular work or body of art more interesting. And there's some boring writing that's actually quite insightful when you allow yourself to address the ideas and not simply the writing. And, as is evidenced in this thread, there's a lot of overwriting. I'd say about 90% of the quotes you've included come under the category of writing that's trying way too hard to be interesting and failing, Benson's among that 90%.

Your own writing is often passionate, a little too flowery and self conscious for my taste a lot of the time, and can be ill-advised, even though the basic ideas when you cut through it all are often quite interesting and insightful. If anything, I'd say your own writing would improve by being just a tad more boring! You say above that art is still seen today BECAUSE (you capitalize because, I can only assume to emphasize it, emphasizing cause and effect) somebody (and then you add for effect "many somebodys", one of many superfluous clauses you add throughout your writing). Mozart lasts to this day for many reasons. Saying it is still listened to today BECAUSE people wrote about is, as Norman suggests, nonsense. But it's definitive and sounds passionate and on topic, all ringing hollow in the face of the bigger picture which is that you're saying it wrong. Mozart is still around today because it's such good music, and I could describe at length its many virtues and a good critic good describe those virtues and make it compelling and teach me a few new things to listen for. It doesn't survive BECAUSE it's written about. That's just an empty provocation. You say, "in the end the word decides which work wins into the future." No, it doesn't. This is just confusing the mechanism and means by which something survives with the cause or reason something survives. The writing helps bring Mozart into the future, helps communicate about Mozart's music, but the music survives and is written about to begin with BECAUSE it touches so many people in so many significant ways, BECAUSE it's art for the ages, because of its combination of lyricism and formality, of drama and intellect, of math and heart.

Julie H · December 3, 2016

I'm a terrible writer. I hate to write, thus my endless quoting. I find it exquisitely unpleasant. <<

************************

Here is how Benson described Lee Friedlander's early photographic series on Monuments:

Only then [when a picture was developed] would an idea creep into the work, but usually just a simple, basic one, perhaps about how many other pictures he had made of the same subject, or how often he had visited and worked at the same place. Lots of monuments led to his understanding that he was interested in monuments, and so a book resulted.

</blockquote>

Do you believe that? And even if you do, would you have wanted to see a book of pictures of monuments given that enticing description (and no word from Friedlander himself)? Gee, let's go wait in line to be the first to buy a book of pictures of monuments by a guy who has no idea why he took them.

Compare that to what Marvin Heiferman wrote about the same series on monuments [see examples <a href="https://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/friedlander_fatherduffy.jpg">here</a> and <a href="https://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/friedlander_spokanewa.jpg">here</a>]:

... With neither chronology nor geographic organization to guide us, we glide from one image to the next. The majority are simply close-ups, pictures that appear serene in the absence of the expected contextual mess. But, with a certain frequency and daring, Friedlander dense-packs images. Backgrounds overpower foregrounds, and foregrounds consume the subject matter.

[line break added] To find the monuments, we look over balustrades, peek around telephone poles, peer through the foliage, look up from below. Friedlander does not construct distraction, he pays homage to it. He never presents himself as an explicator, but he is a brilliant bighearted observer. Friedlander is not your standard tour guide, he is more like a director who sets up the establishing shots and leaves you alone to improvise.

We search for the subject matter but first come across an inventory of bizarre sculptural props: cannonballs, plinths, wheels, fountains, togas, garlands, spears, orbs, boats, bells, boots, centaurs, drapery, buffalo, hammers, hats, yokes, flags, and arrows. Then we recognize the figures -- dancers, athletes, actors, madonnas, saints, Dutchmen, preachers, governors, mechanics, tycoons, nurses, admirals, volunteers, merchandizers, children, newsboys, tap dancers, musicians, explorers, soldiers, sailors, farmers, teachers, presidents, philosophers, writers, religious leaders, composers, puritans, and generals.

These historic characters appear to be inattentive photographic subjects. These idealized men (and, on rare occasions, women) sit on horses, lean against columns, and rest in easy chairs. They point. They crouch. Some stand at ease, some at attention. They read books. They lean on canes. They bear arms. They lead steeds or smoke cigars. And their heads, whether attached or detached from their bodies, stare off into the distance, toward hope or goodness or God or the unknown.

As with Atget, people are hardly represented. But, we know them, because we are them. We know what they might wear, where they might be going next. This is our all-familiar world; there is nothing to get misty-eyed about. The monuments are surrounded by shrubbery, gas stations, hotels, government buildings, skyscrapers, beaches, museums, apartment buildings, churches, parks, cars, highways, promenades, and litter. There are many signs or our presence in our absence.

We can, in fact, speculate about what the pictures refuse to reveal. Each day, these monuments are probably visited by mothers pushing strollers. Brown baggers eat their lunches, sharing benches with senior citizens and the homeless. People rest, read, think and strike up conversations with strangers. At any hour of the day, tourists encircle monuments, as do rats, squirrels, and insects. Runners lope by. Drug dealers set up shop in the shadows of greatness. Alcoholics sober up. Addicts nod out. Pigeons soar overhead and defecate. Dogs circle foundations and urinate. At night, couples press amorous embrace against these cold reminders of mortality, as others have furtive sex in the surrounding landscaping.

</blockquote>

.

Furtive sex! From monuments? That's good writing! Seriously, doesn't that at least begin to pique your interest in what was, on the face of it, a totally boring topic for a photo book?

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2016

would you have wanted to see a book of pictures of monuments given that enticing description

</blockquote>

I probably wouldn't have that description before looking at the pictures. It's generally not a critic's or reviewer's writing that entices me to look at art. Much art I discover happens accidentally when I go to museums and discover it, often not knowing anything about it to begin with. I will go to a Matisse exhibit and discover another painter or photographer who's on display at the museum while I'm there. Another way I am enticed to look at art is from friends' recommendations. A third way is seeing an article or poster that has an image or two that entices me. Rarely do I read a review or critique before exposing myself visually to the art. Once exposed, I love reading about it by reviewers or critics who can then deepen the experience. In museums, I often go through an exhibit twice, first looking at the work, then reading the curator's intros and description plaques and looking again.

Actually, the furtive sex in the surrounding landscaping was my least favorite part of the piece, way too much fantasy and flourish for my taste. I prefer Chopin's flourishes, which seem graceful. This one seems a bit clunky.

I've seen one pretty excellent and exhaustive exhibit of Friedlander's work which, after a while, I found too gimmicky, being too conscious of the cleverness of his foreground peek-arounds. I like the way Heiferman puts it, that he doesn't "construct" distraction but rather "pays homage" to it. I think often good criticism, like good philosophy, makes insightful distinctions like that which capture a lot in just a few opposing words. But while I agree with that distinction and it suggests a way of looking at Friedlander's work worth testing out, I find those visual homages a little too self conscious and clever after a while.

Allen Herbert · December 3, 2016

" writing helps bring Mozart into the future, helps communicate about Mozart's music " Fred.

Does it need help? And how does the help, help? Nice to hear someone's thoughts about how the music feels for them and the journey it takes them on...

But help?

Allen Herbert · December 3, 2016

"And taking them into the future?" Fred.

what future might that be?

Allen Herbert · December 3, 2016

I can understand Julie cloaking herself in quotes, to feel more powerful, like wonder women..

But the works of Mozart needs help? Surely, the music speaks....without err help.

Allen Herbert · December 3, 2016

Only sweet voiced birds are imprisoned

Owls are not kept in cages

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