| Photography Forum: Philosophy Of Photography Forum: |
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Q. Accessability of art
Asked by Russell Edwards
(K=329) on 1/22/1999
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I'm interested to hear people's ideas on accessability of art. I mean physically speaking, that is providing the opportunity for people to experience art -- especially that of the most influential artists, historical or contemporary. It seems to me that knowing what other people have done is very important for virtually anyone trying to produce works of art, yet doing so is difficult. In the case of photography, you have to shell out a lot of money or live near a very good library to have access to monographs. Getting to see original prints of the greats is next to impossible unless you live near an exceptional public gallery, or again have the money to go travelling around to exhibitions. I just wish it didn't have to be this way. Then again, I don't know how to remedy the situation, and art is more accessible now than even before (especially music)...
Not really a question, I'm just interested to hear any thoughts people have.
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Alan Gibson
(K=2734) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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[The software that runs this forum talks about 'questions' and 'answers'. Sorry, I can't change that, but don't feel you have to ask or answer questions as such.]
We are fortunate to have CDs, which reproduce sound that is indistinguishable from the original, well, not very far off. Book printing technology has also improved and become cheaper over the last few decades, but there is a long way to go. Real Soon Now screen and internet technology will also become good, and I'll be technically be able to download an Edward Weston negative and fool around with it.
When it was in London, I used to live near the Royal Photographic Society, and it provided me with much inspiration. Overall, though, I have always preferred books, with all their faults, to originals in an gallery. I can see pictures in the morning, in bed at night, and generally get to know the work.
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Y. Dobon
(K=302) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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Since I enjoy art forms other than photography as well, it is pretty imperative for me to physically go to art galleries and museums to look at the real works. No book, web site, monograph, etc. can successfully duplicate the three dimensional aspects of sculpture, painting, and architecture. Contextually, the location of the original is important. There is something about seeing Lorenzo Ghiberti's Baptistry reliefs presented in the Museo delle Opere del Duomo di Santa Maria del Fiore (the Italians love long titles), Michelangelo's Pieta in the Vatican, or Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows in Amsterdam. Art is typically located where a large number of people have access to it. There are 7+ million residents (a population large than all of Switzerland) in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and everyone has opportunity to see good art. It's pretty much up to the individual to decide whether it is worth making a pilgrimmage to see a work of art. I think it is.
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Dan Lyke
(K=122) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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Unfortunately, one of the side-effects of cheap reproduction technology is that we're reduced to seeing the work of the people who know how to work the press and the critics and who may very well be better at promotion than they are at the art itself. This is especially pronounced in music, but we certainly see the effects in photography.
Rather than trying to funnel everything down to "the greats", as both a collector and a viewer I'd like to see more guerrilla art and more amateurs. As a culture we're way too hung up on traveling to some far off city to see some overhyped self-promoter in an incongruous building run by self-proclaimed experts.
Beyond photography, I think that the attitude that art belongs in museums and galleries hurts our experiences of it. In the past year I've seen brilliant sculpture and installation art that might make it into the museums as a novelty in 30 years, but the creators aren't creating for collectors, they're creating it for themselves and for those who are willing to share it with them. Quite often the sculpture and installations will be destroyed as a part of the performance.
Photography wise, the Flying Pig Awards show that there's a good chance that the guy from the local paper with the 35mm slapping down pictures of the latest human interest story probably has a creative streak that his editor filters out. I'll bet your local commercial photographers didn't get into the business to do yet another product shot and probably have a pretty spectacular portfolio stashed away in the backroom somewhere.
Yes, this means that you've got to dig through a lot of crap to find the good stuff, but when you find the good stuff it'll be made by people who are approachable and open to collaboration, in my experience it'll quite often be better than the "museum quality" mass appeal pablum, and you'll be helping to make artistic thinking a regular part of your life rather than something you do occasionally on weekends.
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Russell Edwards
(K=329) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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Alan, I tend to think of CDs/HiFis as being a bit like photo books -- they can make an excellent reproduction of the sound that gives a feeling of total fidelity .. until one experiences the real thing (live performance or fine print) and often notices the differences. Regarding computers, I don't know, TV/monitor technology is improving very slowly compared to scanning, printing, processing power etc. We could be waiting a while. Although even crappy 72dpi (ie current technology) renditions of the works of the masters, freely available on the web, would be much better than what we have now (ie one or two scans of some posters that are 40% the artist's name in big letters). Is this because no-one has got around to it, or because greedy family members are milking their dead forebears for every last drop (ie copyright)?
Sean, if you can afford it, it is worth making a pilgrimage to see a work of art... but for many of us, it is a choice between seeing the Louvre or eating for the next few months. :( But I can't really find a scapegoat...
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Russell Edwards
(K=329) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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By the way, thanks for the thoughtful replies, including Dan's interesting reply which I didn't respond to as I think he hit 'submit' about 2 seconds before I did. You make some good points, Dan. Although, it is still probably important to get an idea of the main movements and happenings in art in the past to fully appreciate what's going on now.
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Jeff Spirer
(K=2523) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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I would certainly agree with Dan's comments that "great art" is created every day by people who are not "famous artists." Some of the famous artists are better marketeers than some of the less-famous artists.
However, I have sometimes found original work by well-known photographers in places that I didn't expect to see it, although I don't know if this can happen in Australia. Local galleries, small museums, etc. often have work that I didn't expect to see. I was in Oaxaca in Mexico last fall (photographing) and found a small museum of photography that wasn't listed in any of the guidebooks. All original prints by one very famous photographer, and a few others by some known, but not as famous, photographers. The moral is that it pays to look everywhere, and, as Dan said so well, to look for things other than the best marketed work.
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Y. Dobon
(K=302) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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Russell, I am not unsympathetic to your travel dilemma, but what can anyone here do about where you live? I really can't help it if some kid in Bangladesh is reading these words right now and would rather be flying to New York City to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Art doesn't necessarily belong in museums and galleries, but economics and basic human behavior has steered it that direction. People who have money buy art. The more money you have, the more art you can buy. Really rich people have so much art that they can't fit in into their homes so they loan it to museums or built their own (e.g., Isabelle Stewart Gardner) to reduce the clutter. For you, I'm sure you'd like it if they built a museum close to where you live, but most of the museums are located so lots of people have access to them: cities. As a matter of fact, Bill Gates happens to be purchasing electronic reproduction rights to many artworks. That said, the WebLouvre site won Best of the Web (maybe in 1994) and nothing prevents you from surfing to www.metmuseum.org and downloading JPEGs of canopic jar lids. I personally find it unsatisfying, but that doesn't mean I have enough money to fly to NYC right now either. Even if you want to look at unknowns, you still need to go to a city. It would be nice if vibrant art communities could thrive in tiny towns, but it simply doesn't happen; there isn't the critical mass. There is no scapegoat, Russell.
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Ed Buffaloe
(K=235) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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I think it is important to get art, in this case photography, into the hands of the people, which means we need to find some way to make it affordable for the masses. The new digital technology may be just the thing. It is arguable that photography's repeatability is its most important attribute, but most people simply can't afford original prints no matter how much they love art. Now it is possible to mass-produce prints very cheaply, so why not? Most pros realize that they have to have a product in every price range: post cards, calendars, posters, prints by assistants, fine prints, murals, etc.($5 to $5000). People should not just be able to go to the local museum and see great work, they should be able to own it as well. I can make dye-sub prints on an Alps printer that will knock your socks off, and I can sell them for 1/10 the cost of my hand-made fine prints. Yes, there is a difference in quality, but the gap continues to narrow, and there are some things I can do with the printer that I can't do in the darkroom. Computer technology continues to explode all our old media (print, telephone, telegraph, photography, film, video, etc.) into electronic form, giving them all an audience never before possible. Marshall McLuhan was dead-on accurate in his assessment of the impact of electronics on the media. But it is true that seeing it on the computer screen is not the same as seeing the originals. I went to New York last year and saw some original prints at MOMA and the Metropolitan Museum, with mixed reactions. Robert Frank is a much better printer than I would have imagined from seeing his prints in books. Harry Callahan was a perfectionist printer--everything I've ever seen of his is magnificent and eye-catching. In regard to Stieglitz--I always wondered why his prints in the books were so dark--now I know his originals were that dark too, so dark I have to say I didn't like them much. Many of Ansel's prints are technically perfect, but unfortunately rather boring. Weston holds his own due to the purity of his vision.
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Dan Lyke
(K=122) - Comment Date 1/22/1999
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Sean Yamamoto said that the critical mass for good art doesn't happen in small towns.
I disagree.
I recently went to a gallery to see the results of 30 years of a vibrant artistic community in a town that's at least a 5 or 6 hour drive from San Francisco, just south of Eureka. The annual human powered vehicle race there has produced tremendously cool art. Similarly, on the back side of the Sierra many nature photographers thrive. Much of the sculpture and installation art I rave about was put up at Burning Man; yes, the impetus started in San Francisco, but the art cannot be done there and plenty of it comes from elsewhere. I never got to Finster's house before it was sold and disassembled, I've only seen chunks of the remains in museums, I wish I'd gotten there.
When I go seeking art, I may go into San Francisco to see what establishment has grasped, but more likely I'm going to go elsewhere, into the occasional gallery in the small towns, tracking down the sculptors who've been welding in their back yard for years or making whirligigs for their mailboxes. Some of that is fueled by traffic from the cities, but the stuff that makes me go "I wish I'd thought of that", the art I enjoy, doesn't happen in the city. From there comes mainly the pseudo-intellectual college angst pieces that there's too damned much of already.
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mark lindsey
(K=1720) - Comment Date 1/26/1999
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Many of Ansel's prints are technically perfect, but unfortunately rather boring
wow, you have seen enough of his 40,000+ images to have this opinion?
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tom meyer
(K=2752) - Comment Date 1/27/1999
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back on the topic...
Even if you live in a big ol' town, with lots of fancy museums, do you have any idea how much art is locked away in museums' dark storage and never...and I mean never, brought out for ANYONE to see?
That's what I thought this thread was about, from the title: accessibility of art.
Here in Atlanta we just got a new curator of photography at the High Museum, and one of the first things he (Tom Southall) did was to invite members of the photo departments support group (called PhotoForum) to veiw the collection in the storage room of the museum. What Fun!!! I made it to two 3 hour sessions and saw some really arcane stuff that will never be hung on the walls and other work (Atgets albumen print of Paris!!! whoa!!!) that also will probably never be exhibited. It was a weird mix of emotions, to be glad to see this amazing work, and then to realize that perhaps no one will see it again for decades...t
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