But what's the finction of art? Is it in fact to celebrate life?
The idea is that the public is too stupid to understand what good art is or to recognize it when they see it. Henri's response to this:
Robert Henri: "Perhaps the public is dull, but there is just a possibility that we are also dull, and that if there were more motive, wit, human philosophy, or other evidences of interesting personality in our work the call might be stronger. A public that likes to hear something worthwhile when you talk would like to understand something worthwhile when it sees pictures. If they find little more than technical performances, they wander out into the streets where there are faces and gestures which bear evidence of the life we are living, where the buildings are a sign of the effort and aspiration of a people. When the motives of artists are profound, when they are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their work creates a stir in the world."
Henri was writing about painting 85 years ago, but his observations are timeless
Maybe not.
His views may well be a holdback to Victorian English Art Critics who felt art needed a purpose, especially a moral one! With a purpose, it better be understood or the purpose would be defeated! That school of thought took us back for 50 years perhaps, but by the end of the 19th Century, we were pretty well past that. Maybe not the people in the street, but artists and photographers.
Art for Art's Sake is another approach. (Politics for politics sake, music for music sake, morality for moralities sake and religion for religion only. When we mix up activities and purposes, then the very of nature of art changes.
Not that one cannot have good art with purpose, message or honor to some idea or creed, (and, yes, easy for anyone in the street to appreciate). Of course, these do not prevent any artist doing a great job. However
none of these elements:
- are required.
- are part of some "higher" form of art.
- give rise to the most original art forms.
and of course apply equally well to photography.
You can take your pick.
- Photography can be for no purpose, just for love of that pursuit! Or is can be directed to some need.
- One can make a perfect representation so it seems as if one is actually there, (i.e. factive images ). It could be for memories (weddings) or art and in these uses one might make an "even more perfect or idealized version" that has really departed from what we could experience if we were also there (the fictive image).
- Then one can make derivatives that have idealized or romantic simplifications, distortions, layers of other matter and so forth to present some idea beyond what was seen in the fashion that painters might do. We use the tools: imagination consideration, creativity and skill. Some of us may be also lucky enough to reach inwards, a measure of genius perhaps, to draw on esthetic secrets from within. When it all works, and that's very rare, we progress from a good picture to a moving work of technical and or esthetic merit that we'll cherish according to our taste.
Taste? Just like food, one needs cultural exposure and that's another subject.
What is missing in much of postmodern art, for me, is the "profound motive" and the "deep consideration" that Henri outlines as prerequisites of important work. So much of what I see today is based on a clever idea or hollow aesthetic trend, rather than an authentic, personal response to life.
So, Chris, not to be confrontative, it is merely still an opinion, an argument, (not a tested assertion) that we should be making pictures with "profound motive" or even with "deep consideration".
If you come across a beautiful child, butterfly or cloud. Your camera may go up to your eye, frame the beauty and the camera would do the rest. For sure, people with a reasonable workflow with then have a great picture to show. If it were David Goldfarb, we'd also have a technically perfect albumin print. Someone else would produce a 3 ft poster on an inkjet, pretty well perfect each time. There need be no "profound motive", just reflex response and certainly no "deep consideration".
That "lifting the camera to the eye" is from trained esthetic awareness and cultural values. The skill is in the approach. That's where most pictures are ruined but the others have it and can succeed. However, it's the extensive application of genius that gets us, on a very rare occasion from a competent photographic picture to great art. In any case, the observer may not "get it" and so that can be no objective criterion for saying photography is good or not.
Unless one has to sell the stuff, so what? It's just the artist who has to like his/her work in the first instance. Reference to higher purpose has nothing to do with art, although it would not disqualify any photography for such dependence or utility.
I'm not rejecting the value of great consideration and profound motive. However, these may be just utilitarian tools in putting together a fashion shoot with a whole team of 20 assistant or simply planning a picture carefully with the sun going down by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence in