Just for Fun No C&C will be given: Wa choo lookin at?

[Charles L Webster]

I found these heads on a trailer on Treasure Island in the middle of SF Bay last week. They once adorned the Doggie Diner hot dog restaurants, which closed in 1986. How they came to be here, I have no idea. More info about Diggie Diner and it's history and culture can be found at www.doggiediner.com.

Shot with Canon 50D w/ 17-40 f/4L at 17mm

 

[Asher Kelman]

Charles,

This is fun and a glimpse of part of america and love for comic book and cartoon characters especially animals. These are truly part of Americana like hot dogs, blue jeans, flea markets and folk who pacj their own bullets.

I wonder if I might get you to look at the picture that has not found favor with my wife nor anyone else, but I really feel shouldn't be ignored. It's this. Both are made with some care and craft, both cost money and required a well thought out plan to conceive and execute.

So what's their value as art. Are we snobs and the art of the plebeians does not rise to be considered art for us.

Asher

 

[Charles L Webster]

Charles,

This is fun and a glimpse of part of america and love for comic book and cartoon characters especially animals. These are truly part of Americana like hot dogs, blue jeans, flea markets and folk who pacj their own bullets.

I wonder if I might get you to look at the picture that has not found favor with my wife nor anyone else, but I really feel shouldn't be ignored. It's this. Both are made with some care and craft, both cost money and required a well thought out plan to conceive and execute.

So what's their value as art. Are we snobs and the art of the plebeians does not rise to be considered art for us.

Asher

Perhaps we OPFers are too concerned with "art." Or should that be capitalized not in quotes?

Much of photography is craft and commerce. Most of what I do is commerce, but it is as carefully visualized and conceived as any piece of Art. It is just as important to my commercial work that the "arc of intent" be completed successfuly as to any artist. My commercial work has communication objectives just as does any piece of Art.

These pictures are presented as neither Art nor commerce. I took them for the spirit of fun that they represented to me, and present them here in the same spirit. I like that we now have a category for "Fun" and suggest that more of our pictures should be here.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Charles,

I think you are correct. That one has an intent to externalize a vision and one does it to one's satisfaction, that intent has been expressed in something physical and that is then satisfying. What's special about art, as I see it is that it gets a life of its own, even if it's not beautiful or has no purpose except to exist.

What separates the toilet form the Duchamp art is that one is valued as art and the other only when it's function is needed.

Think about a stack of 100 urinals in everyone's back yard. No one would buy any you offered for sale, as there would be no market. One that was connected to plumbing would allow one to have relief. That would be valued. Otherwise to see the worth of this design, we'd need to go to a museum showing such a urinal that Duchamp signed and that, depsite the stock of urinals everyone owned, would be still be priceless.

So while the object is the same, it's the special relationship to an artist that makes it worthy.

That's why I asked folk to reconsider the photo by James yu of the 2 girls in the concrete recess, as really being the work of someone else, things change. Imagine authorship by a known street photographer, where it fitted into a series. That new information would immediately cause a stir, create an enigma, have new attention as both the meaning and value of that "obviously" insignificant image would have to be re-considered!

Asher