h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I ask this question for two resons: First i wan't some specific info on Photographic history, and secondly i want to know if other researchers find the same divisions between the art world and the photographic world, particularly in histories and academically.

So:

Does any body out there know any details of a key photographic exhibition around the turn of the 19th / 20th century called something like the Death of Painting or the End of Painting, which attempted to show that photography was capable of achieving the art's traditional aims much better than painting and that not only was photography a new artform, but that it made painting redundant.

It was of course a very good point and one which prompted post-impressionism, cubism, dada, etc to look for new ways of seeing, and new forms and directions for art other than straight representation - or rather to realise that straight representation had never actually been it's aim. And so, in reaction to photography's supremicy in representation, the modern art movement was born. However such is the snobbery (still) in the art world, about photography, there is hardly any mention in art histories of the influence of photography on art (other than on the compositional changes during the impressionist period).

I have long since known about this exhibition, but now can't find any references to it at all, and i need them for a class next week (oh dear). Any information (ie exactly where, when and who) or references to it (web or books) would be much appreciated.

Well, to me it seems photography is considered photography. Unless you take a picture on an obscure motive on b/w film. Then it suddenly becomes art. The same with nudity, if you take picture of a woman naked it´s pornography. Take a picture of her nude striking a weird pose on b/w film and you got an artistic photo. Seems stupid to me.

i work with an entire department of photographers that would argue it is.

i would have thought it was, is there much difference between an David Fredrich landscape (painter) and a ansel adams landscape (photographer) i'm sure someone with more knowledge than me, will point out the difference.

its the same arguement that goes on about whether the new media of computer graphics, fast prototyping, CAD etc are or can be developed into art forms. which is all tied in with your philosphical definition of art (bit of a biggy)

Well, I would also claim photography is art I have to admit. But it´s true we would need a definition of art first. Here in Denmark there were a lot of people who got mad when a guy sowed together the bodies of two dead pigs and claimed it was art. Or when a guy put goldfish in blenders, where everybody could go and push the ON button.

and some people did!

i don't know all the ins and outs, but it seems to me that art is a construction (or whatever the proper term is) designed to evoke an emotion from the viewer. its a pretty wide definition, i grant you, but if someone says its a piece of art, i'm quite willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it is, even if the emotion it provokes in me is indifference. if by painting a squggily line on a blank canvas the artist is trying to convey a sense of loneliness or seperation or something like that then it is art.

Problem arises when they´re trying to get goverment grants.

As seen on window of galleria: "Art doesn´t make sense!"

Art is like poetry. It is not for the creator to say it is, but for an appreciative audience to elevate it and proclaim it as such.

Sorry I can't be helpful at all in locating the 'exhibition' in question but it has an American-outrageous quality to its assertion (considering the date) so perhaps a search of turn-of-the-last-century American photographers might lead you to it.

~jwf~

I've always thought that art should be a verb. It's something you do, if you want to approach something as art, then it is. Art happens when you choose to interpret something you've done, or something someone else has made, or even something you've just come across in a certain way.

But there's no debate with painting, you make a decision to represent the world in a certian way, either because of your ability, or your persective on the subject; and you make a picture which in some way represents the subject, and your relationship to the subject. And no matter how concious of unconcious these processes are, it's art.

With photography, you're making pictures using just the same creative processes and decisions, but because the technology (cameras, chemichals, lamps or computers) is recent (Photography was invented around 1839) and not old like the technology of painting (though pigments,dyes, paints and canvases are very different matirials to those used even a hundred years ago) it's not art. At the end of the day it's all just making pictures surely.

But what about those people that can make a painting so good it looks like a photograph? And surely photography can be just as subjective as a painting in the way the motive is arranged.

If I make a negative impression of my hand by placing it against the cave wall and spitting soot or berry juices at it until the area aound it is covered, I am creating an image.
Just like a photographer. But is cave art, Art.
Later, paintings and carvings (on wood or rock) or assemblies of feathers and skins and skulls, also conveyed a sense of property rights and borders and told histories of those rights.

So picture making is first purely recreational and self indulgent but inevitably leads to someone later interpreting it as a message of some kind. And subsequently developing a code of images that send messages. Glyphs, sculpture... This eventually evolves into 'writing'.

See:http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A499656

If I carve my name into a tree trunk, am I making art or leaving a message?

I still say the final determination of what is Art, is up to the audience, the viewer, the reader, or the archeologist to decide. And like all things the interpretation is subject to passing fashion.

Golly, next we'll be asking if TV is Art! And the answer is the same as a cave painting, Egyptian glyphs, skulls on pikes or photography.
The thing is first done for its own sake, later someone realises it carries a message. And a new breed comes along and specialises in 'messaging'. Personally, I produce TV commercials. And I use the devices of images, symbols, photography, words and music to manipulate emotions to create a demand for products and services. It's not Art, it's a science, a communications science.

John Phillip Sousa and Mozart both created great music. But people will fight over calling Sousa's marches Art. On the other hand if Mozart wrote it, they'll say it has to be Art.
So my observation, that only the public can decide what is truly art (or Poetry), is not only subject to fashion but prejudice (and other forms of ignorance) as well.
peace
~jwf~

>>But is cave art, Art.<<

Yes.


>>So picture making is first purely recreational and self indulgent but inevitably leads to someone later interpreting it as a message of some kind.<<

I think that it's your motives to choose that kind of recreation that is the art bit, it's a creative recreation, it takes energy and thought, and so is a contemplative exercise.


>>I still say the final determination of what is Art, is up to the audience, the viewer, the reader, or the archeologist to decide.<<

Absolutely this is what i meant by art happening when you decide to use it as art.


>>And like all things the interpretation is subject to passing fashion.<<

By interpretation do you mean of meaning or quality? Which ever i think it's nice to quote T.S. Eliot here who said that "meaning lies between writer and reader" - there is no one absolute interpretation because everyone brings their own personal view and cultural capital with them to the piece and the relevance therefore varies from individual to individual.


>>Golly, next we'll be asking if TV is Art!<<

Of course TV is art, you're creating something completely artificial to be viewed and interpreted by others. That's what art is surely.


>>The thing is first done for its own sake, later someone realises it carries a message.<<

So you can create art for yourself (or for arts sake - as people like to say) or create it for an audience, it depends on whether your trying to describe the world so that you understand it better, or so that others understand how you see it.


>>It's not Art, it's a science, a communications science.<<

If it's a science what do you investigate and what new results do you discover? The technology might be science, the psychological and sociological strategies which you employ to put your points across make be scientific, but what your doing is art. A creative, communicative art.

To answer your question:

A) Yes--after all, the very definition of art is subjective and chimerical.

B) The photographer/organizer of the particular show (I don't know the exact name but it *is* something like "The Death of Painting") you are looking for is Alfred Stieglitz. Any books/films/programs on the subject of Mr. Stieglitz should give you plenty of info on this subject.

Good luck!

Stieglitz that makes sense, though i thought it was a London or Paris show for some reason.

Was the show in New York then? I had a feeling it was in 1900 - Did the show lead to the foundation of the Photo-Sucession (in 1902)? Was it held at >291<

The current National Geograohic has an interesting distinction between the sort of holiday photos I take and the sort they do, with an "explanation" of why they take hundreds of shots to my one. This seems to suggest that theirs is art and mine isn't. I reckon if it goes on the wall and other people talk about it, it's art (thus including a shot of Dunx covered in Guinness froth) and if it goes into a drawer and rarely sees the light of day again it's personal history.

I doubt that Stieglitz would have been associated with an exhibition suggesting the death of painting. He was an avid art collector - paintings, that is - and was married to Georgia O'Keeffe.

I think 'Death of Painting' may be associated with Russian artist Rodchenko (?spelling?). He was a Russian painter and graphic artist who became a photographer. As a painter he produced three canvasses in single colours, one red, one blue and one yellow. I think these or the exhibition where they were displayed (Moscow perhaps) were titled Death of Painting. That would have been in the 1920s I think.

176645

>>they take hundreds of shots to my one. This seems to suggest that theirs is art and mine isn't.<<

Now that's not art - that's luck!!


if it goes into a drawer and rarely sees the light of day again it's personal history<<

So Bach wasn't art when all his manuscripts were still stuffed in the back of the organ cabinet, because no-one was looking at it? It's a kind of Schrodinger's Art then!

I think I agree with that, on the analogy of "if a tree falls in the forest......

IMHO, a photograph *can* be art, whether it's colour or b/w. It depends on the photograph. Having said that, there are very few photographs I would want to hang as art / for decorative purposes. The only one I can think of quickly is one my husband's company has a copy of. It's a picture of a train that crashed through some shops above the Gare Montparnasse in 1895. (Richard is an insurance broker, hence the picture being in the office.) I would *love* a copy of that picture, and I'd love to know the story behind it.

"The Accident at the Gare Monparnasse" is a terrifically famous picture, certainly very arresting, but possibly a victim of it's own ubiquity. It was taken in 1897 by Levy and Sons, a Parisian studio, and was unusual even at the time as photojournalism was not a dynamic practice at all, relying on plenty of advance notice in order to get cameras plates and photographer in position for the event. So news pictures of the time tend to be very much pictures of the aftermath. It continued to be a popular symbol of the insanity of modern life for many years and was a popular image amongst the surrealist movement (1920's).

Even early war photography was after the event, Roger Fenton was the first official war photographer with the British army in the Crimean War (1855), and his pictures tend to be of aftermath even though he was there at the time of the action, because of the limitations of the equipment it was too dangerous and impractical to get anywhere near the action while it was happening.

So to get a photo of such a dynamic event was a scoop at the time, but i think that the timeless nature of it owes much more to its comedy value than anything else. A quality which would often get it disregarded as art because of it's lack of 'serious' content. A charge often levelled at the surrealists who so admired it, and who were further inspired by, directed by and used all kinds of photography.

A photograph is a photograph. Like many other things, an image may have some artistic qualities, but I don't think there's any kind of all-or-nothing definition of what makes art art.

If I scan in a slide of one of my sister's oil paintings, tweak it in Photoshop, and then print out the image, there's certainly *some* art in the print from an aesthetic point of view, but is all the art due to the original painting.

If my sister based her painting on a photograph that she took herself, and referred to other photographs of the animal while painting, is all her artistic input into the final painting purely in the form of painting, or does her original photography contain some art as well?