charleswood

<p>OP - "How might contemplating one's death if one couldn't engage in photography any longer inform his/her work?"</p> <p>I don't think Rilke was advising his young poet to ignore criticism, tips, critiques of his poems. Instead Rilke was telling the young poet that he was looking to others for an answer to the question "Are my versus good?" Rilke describes the young poet as having met rejection of his work by an editor, by journals, and that he had been asking others the same question he asked of Rilke. The young poet was asking if his own versus met the artistic standard for publication he worked to meet or exceed. Submitting versus for publication is the young poet asking "Are my versus good enough for publication?"</p> <p>Rilke then writes: stop asking others if your versus are good. Instead he implores the young poet to self-examine and not to test his versus on others for the limited purpose of wanting someone to tell him the versus are good. The test Rilke offers the young poet is to test himself. He begs the young poet to ask himself if he would die if writing poems were denied him. In other words, is the young poet more motivated by the reward of getting published than motivated by an inner necessity to write poems, that need's denial a death sentence because denying a need essential for life is a death sentence. At first blush that may seem a highly romanticized view of the artist.</p> <p>But Vivian Maier comes to mind as one who may have photographed solely motivated by inner necessity. Or an Emily Dickinson. There are those at the other end of the spectrum.</p> <p>So I consider that when I was photographing coyotes to get a good nature shot I hadn't really explored my own motivation. As I got to know the coyotes over several years I drifted toward documenting the various pieces of their behaviors and got a better understanding of their lives. I got an understanding of how all their behaviors knitted into a whole, their behaviors all working in concert. When I looked at my dogs, most canine behaviors are there, but they don't knit into their intended whole. At some point I wasn't thinking if my coyote pictures were 'good'. I was more interested in what I was learning from the experience of photographing them.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Rilke's young poet was troubled by rejections from certain editors, compared his own poems with the published work of other poets, asked of others and now of Rilke "Are my versus good?"</p> <p>I take that as a broad question from a young person feeling vulnerable about the worth of their best effort in poetry. It's a tough question to answer. I saw an interview with James Gardner who said of one of his first auditions that he received cutting criticism. He said that intentionally cruel criticism wounded him, he was extremely shy. Gardner said he was able to shake that criticism off, but could see where another young person might not have shaken it off. So I see Gardner as saying that some criticism can root down to the deepest places of the heart. I think Rilke was advising just such a young person in whom Rilke wouldn't want criticism to root that far down. In comparison to Rilke's poetic license, a retired literature professor answered the same question from a student by handing him a book of matches. Who knows? Maybe Rilke wanted to hand his young poet a book of matches, but from a different temperament went the extra mile.</p> <p>I find I'm less sensitive to criticism than I was as a youth. </p>

<p>I hate categories too. Seems I've been approaching art the way my neighbor deals with his back yard.</p>

<p>Fred: "But I think art runs the gamut from literal communication all the way to impressionism and expressionism not to mention abstraction, whose goals are neither clarity nor veracity."</p> <p>I agree and add that it still helps for there to be clarity in the artwork about whether it's impressionism, expressionism, abstraction, etc., or something entirely new, because the work can at least then be understood in context of the ongoing conversation, or as the start of a new conversation. What comes to mind in that regard is Stieglitz. Quoting from Wikipedia</p> <blockquote> <p>It was in the catalog for this show that Stieglitz made his famous declaration: "I was born in Hoboken. I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for Truth my obsession." What is less known is that he conditioned this statement by following it with these words:</p> <dl><dd>"PLEASE NOTE: In the above STATEMENT the following, fast becoming "obsolete", terms do not appear: ART, SCIENCE, BEAUTY, RELIGION, every ISM, ABSTRACTION, FORM, PLASTICITY, OBJECTIVITY, SUBJECTIVITY, OLD MASTERS, MODERN ART, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AESTHETICS, PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY, DEMOCRACY, CEZANNE, "291", PROHIBITION. The term TRUTH did creep in but it may be kicked out by any one." <sup id="cite_ref-DN_24-0"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Stieglitz#cite_note-DN-24">[24]</a></sup></dd></dl> <p>This statement symbolized the dichotomy that Stieglitz embodied. On one hand he was the absolute perfectionist who photographed the same scene over and over until he was satisfied and then used only the finest papers and printing techniques to bring in the image to completion; on the other he completely disdained any attempt to apply artistic terminology to his work, for it would always be that – "work" created from the heart and not "art" created by academicians and others who had to be "trained" to see the beauty in front of them.</p> </blockquote> <p>So I gather that to some extent training is dead weight, but more to the point, I can see where at times the term TRUTH can be seen as always trying to creep into a conversation and I suppose the term Truth SHOULD be kicked out! I hate truth. Why all this framing art in terms of truth? I'm not down with that.</p>

<p>Anyway I think communication of any kind is framed by clarity and veracity, and we combine those two elements in varying degrees when communicating.</p>

<p>Fred wrote:</p> <blockquote> <p>At the same time, the only confirmation that those things are "true" comes with knowledge, not just by looking at the photos.</p> </blockquote> <p>Interesting points. So again with my <em>The Hand of Man</em> photo as an example, I take it your sympathy as a viewer could fall to either side of the fence? At first blush let's say that photo bears equally either interpretation, sympathy on my side or sympathy on my neighbor's side. My bias is that it is on me the photographer to 'speak' clearly if I want sympathy; it's on me the photographer to speak clearly if I want sympathy for my neighbor. Had sufficient clarity been achieved: I think that the only fact discernible by a skeptical viewer would be that the photo was a plea for sympathy, a plea made by the photographer, a plea for sympathy for one side only, not for the other. It would have then been for the viewer to decide what to make of such a plea for sympathy beyond just enjoying it as such. The only truth expressed might be that neighbors can annoy each other at times despite how egregiously I could have portrayed one neighbor or the other. My attempt however was to present my neighbor's back yard as exemplifying what I think of as our species' collective effect on nature, we as bad a neighbor to nature as my neighbor is to me in some respects.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Allen, offhand I don't think yours and mine speak a similar message because yours is of a person and mine isn't of a person. I intentionally let the back yard attest to a person's character without picturing the actual person. It's like you came over to my house and I let you stand on a ladder to peer into the guys back yard, something I used to do with guests to show them how tall native CA weed species can grow without actually having to take them on a trip with me to the local park's nature center. (Weeds not a problem any longer because he got a gardener. I was instrumental in his obtaining a gardener.) So you can tell from looking over his fence a bit about my neighbor. And you can tell a little about me, that I'm the type to get a ladder to look at just how bad the neighbor's yard has gotten and to do it in broad daylight without any canopy to hide me from my neighbor's eyes. Had I used a wide enough lens to get the ladder I was standing on into the shot, it could have become a picture suggestive of neighbors being the topic. That the photographer was standing on a ladder in full view would have suggested that I don't care if my neighbor is antagonized by my taking a photographic survey of his yard. A ladder would have put a bit more of me into the photograph, the ladder would have become a prop just as the bird is a prop for my having baited it into the photograph.</p> <p>In yours, the person is pictured and speaks for herself.</p>

<p>Art doesn't demand meaning, nor does a cough or a sneeze demand meaning beyond whether a cough or sneeze be produced in interesting form or not. I suppose then I'm just making a value judgment.</p> <p>Fred - "Are our truths only things we know about ourselves?"</p> <p>No, sure, our truths includes things we don't know about ourselves. For example, my neighbor has no awareness that his back yard is a self-portrait of not only his relationship to nature, but of his relationship to his inner garden, a garden in which he allows some things to grow and with the other things there he's rude and controlling.</p> <p> </p>

<p>And as to art framed within a context of truth, I don't see how it can be otherwise framed. The truth of a Jackson Pollock is hard to sort out, maybe as incomprehensible and mysterious as are some examples of his art. Incomprehensible I don't value in dialog however, incomprehensibility in conversation, medium and no message of little value; and in truth if we look at Jackson Pollock we find he embraced the bottle, not his suffering. Though there may be intuitions and connections portrayed on a canvas that he rolled around on with paint, we don't know from his art product what exactly that inner life of his consisted of. Apparently he didn't either. Because he didn't embrace his suffering, he embraced the bottle and the bottle killed him and I don't see how that truth, or a truth, doesn't frame his art or the art of anyone else.</p> <p>Even mine. Here's my neighbor's backyard after the tree 'trimmers' came today. It is my expression about how I at times see man in relation to nature. Naturally my neighbor spends most of his time in his house. His idea of a yard is comprehensible as should be my antagonism toward that idea of his. I baited the bird with peanuts, the bird is nature, the backyard man's relationship to nature.</p> <p> </p><div></div>

<p>OK, but I would add that in that spiral, in the progress of human generations, children become their parents and what's reproduced along with new adults are the age-old, self-made problems that beset our species. That's a view of our species as in stasis, and the fossil record shows that once a species is physically stable, it is in stasis and that it's only geographical isolation that contributes change. If punctuated equilibrium describes the change mechanism for our mental constituents, and if our mental state even can evolve, then it follows that an individual working in isolation is the only hope for the emergence of an evolved mental state, an evolved mental state the only way out of our current congenital stasis that is our anthropogenic extinction, a physical product of our limited minds. Hail the tortured artist working in isolation on the problem of the human condition.</p>

<p>All good Fred.</p> <p>Going back to the earlier quote from the Peter Korn interview: "...if you look at art over the millennia, art just tend to portrait a place where they think truth resides and so you’ve got a Greek Art portrayed this ideal of humanity outside of space and time in other words truth lay outside of humanity." He then suggests that truth moved to heaven, to nature where truth was thought to be there e.g. the Hudson River School, and then to the present era with individual truths, generally speaking as he puts it. And he is speaking of Western art.</p> <p>But he began with Greek Art, not with the beginning, not with cave paintings. If I accept Korn's premise that art tends to portray the place where humans feel truth resides, then in the beginning, for the cave painter, truth was in the animals, it being animals that were portrayed. Will we come full circle? <a href="https://www.google.com/search?cat+selfies&rlz=1T4NDKB_enUS521US521&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMIsbSJ29LWxwIVRSuICh3DsAJj&biw=1464&bih=1178">https://www.google.com/search?cat+selfies&rlz=1T4NDKB_enUS521US521&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMIsbSJ29LWxwIVRSuICh3DsAJj&biw=1464&bih=1178</a></p> <p>Cat selfies? Will we at some future time find it hard to imagine that in our representational art humans ever pictured themselves at all? Will we then begin to care about all of nature as much as today we care so deeply about our cats? Are cat selfies the cutting edge of societal change, the quickening of a new dawn for our species?</p>

<p>For me, the antagonism or discomfort that gives rise to an era of selfie may be that life is harder for young people today than it was for me at that age, harder in the ways I'm glad you mentione, and in other ways too. If I consider the selfie in the context of the personal difficulties that are not pictured in a simple selfie, I feel I'm being fairer towards selfies. I'm at times tempted to be antagonized by selfies because selfies in popular culture can be presented as examples of excessive self-centeredness of the young. Self-centeredness in the young can be annoying, but it's nothing new or uniquely human, nothing really for me to be antagonized by.</p>

<p>Restated, if it's one of the few spaces a self can occupy unscripted.....</p> <p>But you've described more than a few such spaces where they are <em>comfortable</em>.</p>

<p>Well, a selfie includes 1) a self portrait and 2) can also consist of the photographer photo bombing every shot. In days gone by item 2 wouldn't have been acceptable. Not scripted.</p> <p>I'm just saying that one possible explanation for selfies is that society has become more confining and that selfies emerged in a compensatory way in response to that change. A self portrait we can understand. Having the photographer in every shot, landscapes, group portraits, well, that does seem a bit much. If it's the only space a self can occupy unscripted, then I feel sorry for what we have become. If it is a mere change in the script, what really has changed? It's still a script. I may have to look elsewhere for signs of a new dawn. The moral arc of the universe seems to bend toward scripts though.</p>

<p>oops I meant " I'm considering the idea that a selfie is a space for unscripted expression."</p> <p> </p>

<p><br />!</p> <p>What's behind that punctuation mark except a self expressing. Me! Punctuation makes a writing express more because of what written words without punctuation don't convey. What isn't conveyed is left to the imagination. If there's only an exclamation, it's for the imagination [viewers, viewers] to convey the rest. Evidence for the 'rest' in a selfie is scant, I grant you. However. I deem our culture as leaving little room or space for self, where expression is largely confined to script reading. So culturally, I'm considering the idea that a selfie is a space for scripted expression. Because in many places, the likes of which we all know, self-expression isn't exactly encouraged while scripted expressions are. Art is unscripted expression that is new, useful, intelligible (for being part of a conversation) with punctuation included, sure, sometimes excessive punctuation, sometimes sort of regrettable punctuation yet part of civil conversation nevertheless.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Fred - "It's kind of an older generation context, I think. Misplaced, IMO."</p> <p>Sure, not all selfies are art, but they nevertheless are examples self-expression in a world adapted to, that world at large one where it is only money that matters, where money is the only thing that truly exists, the only tangible measure of all things. So I suppose a selfie may be either a marker of a self yet consumed by antagonism OR, a testament that despite all, self still endures.</p>

<p>This is one of my favorite photos on Photo.net: <a href="/photo/12763154">http://www.photo.net/photo/12763154</a></p> <p>The photographer's commentary on his shot: "Now listen, I'm old and big enough to go on my own.............. Did you hear what he said?........ No, did you?........ No of course not, got my ear plugs in :-) Best regards, Harry"</p> <p>My take is that instead the bawler bird, the young child of the two mature parents, in fact wants to be fed by the parents. The bawler doesn't want to be on its own, it wants to be fed. At some critical point the parents abandon it, at that point where they have taught their child all that they themselves know.</p> <p>Here's one of mine of a young cooper's hawk where the tantrum lasted for a couple days because the parents had flown the coop, not the other way around: <a href="/photo/13722933">http://www.photo.net/photo/13722933</a></p> <p>Another species, young and fairly recently on its own: <a href="/photo/10281710">http://www.photo.net/photo/10281710</a> . it's being mobbed because it is a predator, uncomprehendingly, doesn't understand why it is a target.</p> <p>Young but self-sufficient cooper's hawk now worried that somebody will steal his latest catch: <a href="/photo/15199213">http://www.photo.net/photo/15199213</a></p> <p>At some point they are majestic, are completely settled into and absorbed by making their living: <a href="/photo/11159735">http://www.photo.net/photo/11159735</a> . The eggs are somewhere, or will be, and so it goes, a baby hawk becoming its parents.</p> <p>And so did we, and so did Hip Hop beating that age-old drum of surrender, a marker of a recognition of 'a problem' and nevertheless that problem's reemergence into yet another generation unresolved.</p> <p>Note that I'm interpreting other's, and my own, photographic artistic expression in the context of the human condition.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Alan - " I’ll fall into the bad humor of <em>everything</em> about the present generation looking grotesque – as was mine to the to the previous."</p> <p>As were the older grotesque to us when we were under 'age 30', as used to be said. We were right then. The generations now younger to us, in seeing we elders as grotesque are also right. Not as to any particular one of us, but as to the sum of our adaptations as a whole. Viewed as a whole, we are crazy. And those younger to us now seem as a whole crazy to us. And history will repeat itself, sadly. But the young with their selfies don't know that yet. That's how I try and process my own bad humor on intergenerational topics. So in your posted photo of Chicago manners and dress, there is to me as a viewer an element of constructive antagonism involved, intergenerational.</p> <p>So to say that in artistic words, I would paraphrase The Who:</p> <p>Things we do look awful cold<br> We didn't die before we got old.</p>

<p>Fred -</p> <blockquote> <p>Regarding the movie Whiplash, I took the conflict between the Miles Teller character and his teacher to be real and also to be a metaphor for Teller's own internal struggle. That struggle needn't ever end.</p> <p>and</p> <p>My favorite scene of such musical teacher-student antagonism is in Ken Russell's <em>The Music Lovers</em>, when Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky first performs his now-famous Piano Concerto for his teacher, Anton Rubinstein, who trashes the piece and accuses him of banging out a bunch of noise and even mimics his playing, to which Tchaikovsky responds brazenly and confidently, "I won't change a note."</p> </blockquote> <p>So Fred I wonder if Tchaikovsky composed within a lattice of internal antagonisms, his conflict with Rubinstein, like Teller's conflict with his teacher, a metaphor for Tchaikovsky's internal conflicts.</p> <p>Seymour: An Introduction is a movie that in part concentrates on showing Seymour Bernstein teach piano to students. Seymour didn't come off as contentious with his students, his style more in line with how David describes his teaching style. For me I can benefit from a thorough raking over the coals, but prefer the kind of methodical 'showing how' that I see in Bernstein. </p> <p>I think from the interview with Dr. Jung and Ms. Tippett that constructive antagonism was a kind of side point, where more emphasis was given to switching off, or attenuating, the 'narrative' part of one's brain to instead creatively meander.</p> <p>From Weekly Discussion 2.0 #3 it seems that portraiture can be a creative meandering between the photographer and the subject.</p>

<p>rajmohan - "Only a small minority of viewers of the image will even come close to understanding the goals or variables that went into the image."</p> <p>I agree and also think there's a related point here, quoting Fred, "Every action we take, not just art-making, can be considered to help build a portrait of ourselves." And if I take Fred's broad view of self-expression**, then I can take rajmohan's point too " Teasing out key influential factors with any degree of accuracy when there are so many variables is well nigh impossible (a lesson well known from large-scale epidemiological and scientific studies)." [** Fred "Getting back to mere mortals, the expressions come not only from the self but often simply through the self as a result of interactions with others, as a result of history, as a result of a dialogue with other artists, present and past, as well as other things."]</p> <p>Still, there's a self there that made an expression, without which there wouldn't be an expression. Seems an impossible hope to sort it all out.</p> <p>David "I have also heard from young classical musicians whose playing to my and most other people's ears was sublime that, on taking masterclasses with so-called "gurus", they have encountered a deliberately harsh and hypercritical attitude."</p> <p>Holy cow David I think you're describing what amounts to child abuse from a master, who if in turn was trained under similarly harsh methods becomes intergenerational child abuse and not wholly deliberate. David "... rip Robertson's prints to shreds and stamp on them." At least my woodshop instructor didn't take my beginner projects to the wood chipper.</p>

<p>One other thought. Let's say that in my accepting Dr. Jung's working definition of creativity, let's say that I was suspending disbelief so as to not quibble with questions about that definition that are much larger than I am. Does that have anything to do with what Dr. Jung terms transient hypofrontality? Did I shut down my reasoning to meander a bit? Probably. But that suspension of disbelief also I recognize in my viewing movies, theater, other forms of art. Transient hypofrontality in creative consumption of art products too? Well I'm getting sleepy for now.</p>

<p>David B. I agree with your post, appreciate the clarification of terminology and particularly fleshing out examples and the references to photographers. Agree, that is, up to the point where we do have somewhat different views of selfies.</p> <p>Question though, what about a Jackson Pollock who I portray as having produced some selfies in paint? I'm relying on Korn as having given an accurate description of some of that type of art as being an interior portrait, Korn quoted above, here in part: "... Every choice the artist makes is a response to whatever previous mark he or she has made on the canvas, and so what you get as [sic - bad transcript of the interview with Korn] people painting a portrait of their intuition, of their interior self,..."</p> <p>If the individual self and it's interiors are a proper subject, not necessarily narcissistic, then, well? But I think my points about selfies were more of what I am exploring as to their culture and/or historical significance, less so about them as art. Certainly self-portraiture is an art form though.</p>

<p>Albert - "The OP then appears to go on to apply the term by observing a conflict between prey and predator which he sees as antagonistic."</p> <p>No, I was trying to say that some dissatisfaction I had with bird photography, dissatisfied that emphasis on eating was unfair in some way. So I showed a shot where I had tried to exaggerate the drama of predatory/prey. I wasn't meaning to speak to the antagonism between the two birds.</p> <p>Albert - "I think we ought to suggest that the OP go back to his drawing board to find a way to reconcile the difference between a group dynamic demonstrated in a of people working together and a single individual working on whatever he finds in front of him."</p> <p>I'm not sure how to reconcile that difference. One attempt would be to say that no man is an island, no single individual is without influences of others. In a group dynamic, say the practice of brainstorming: from the interview that dynamic isn't conducive to creativity per Dr. Jung in the interview. Ms. Tippett offers a different group dynamic, like a dynamic in producing Seinfield or SNL. But neither offers that creativity is necessarily exhibited only in group work, collaborations which again seems a point that common sense favors. </p> <p>Wouter has suggested, if I understand him correctly, that an antagonism might be part of his process at times, can at times be "...a trigger for that need and want to express oneself creatively."</p> <p>And I do agree one can overthink anything, as I know from experience. What was also interesting in the neuroscientist's view is that he can measure the thinking, or intelligent, part of the brain turning off to some extent when a meandering creative brain process engages. But I don't think that means, or implies, that an antagonism must exist before a meandering.</p>

<p>One idea Dr. Jung expressed in the interview, when speaking to why social context is an element of the working definition of creativity he uses, is that a creative product needs to be intelligible. That makes sense if, as we say about Art, that Art is a dialog. So although I can't understand a Jackson Pollock without help, others can, he is intelligible to them and can explain it, etc. Which does get at a question Wouter raised earlier as to if art can be purely individual. I suppose it can if it is intelligible?</p>