Another one from our series "Mommy look, I'm doing arts!", or how to convert each and every ridiculous shot into "artistic work". ;-)
I attach the original image too for a small demonstration of how miserable it was. Yes, the altered image may be interesting and may be making some tricks with perspective, and this and that, but it is not photography. It is photoshopography. And it is not artistic at all since there has been no vision of that at the moment of the shot and even later. It is a product of incidental using this and that in PS.
So, I could also start now telling about the "symbolism" and the "meaning", and "what it wants to say", but the truth is: The original was absolutely laughable and therefore it was "saved" by "doing arts". Much like all naive "artists" have to do after seeing that the original shot was terrible. Big deal, really!
Thanks a lot for the reply and also for... supporting what I say, Andre, since this is exactly what I said. Justin compared, more or less, apples and oranges here, since I never said anything about mimicking other styles. But I did say something about the own vision, the idea behind it, the "picture in mind priorly to the picture on paper".
On his example, Justin refers to Shakespeare who (undoubtfully) found much of his inspiration in other, older poets and artists, even in ancient Greek ones (!), which then Justin introduces as... a counter-proof against what I said about the necessity of that "honest intention" that *has* to be present as *the* quintessence of any artistic work. This is logically completely radio-gugu. It is false. You don't "disproove" the necessity of that intention by referring to (almost all??) artists that did look at other artist's work, since they also *did* have an intention, an idea, something definite in mind *before* writing or painting or even photographing. The usage, or if you wish the "lending" of stylistic elements from other people way doesn't exclude the necessity of the primordial empowerment of artistic work - quite the contrary! It confirms it! For nobody would "lend" exactly "this and that" stylistic element from others without having some certain notion of what has to be done. Even if this notion is just a vague idea, it is there.
And this is exactly what most of us never took care to understand. And this is also why I am very greatful to you for mentioning that to Justin. Too many think that arts is "just smudging around without any certain idea in mind", and this is also what I did here. It would be pretending that I had "something in mind" if I would present this as "my artistic work". It was not! Because, as you put it so nicely... even of I had the best possible skills in photoshop, I didn't have any intention.
So you see, it goes both ways. Little skills can produce artistic work provided there is a honest intention. But also, even big skills can produce garbage, when there is no intention.
And since intention is directly connected to consciousness, artistic work has to be conscious work. It is not hully-gully, it is translation of the innermost "view" into real existing images, objects, photos, whatever.
Excuse me, please, all guys in UF, but I am *not* going to take any dillentantic pseudo-artistic artefacts anymore.
And here is where I definitely revolt and say: All you comfortable little "wannabe artists" can do whatever you want and name it "arts" at the end, but the thing is: Shakespeare, copying or not, didn't just sit and scribbled "letters" and "words", ey? And exactly this is what I see from the majority of ignorant wannabes. It could have to do with the fact that the wannabes fancy some kind of "soooooft, nice" hollywoodian-affected public where everybody is soooo curious to know their diletantic results and says "oooh, great poem!".
Now, transform that to photography, here in UF. Most "aristic" ignorants here just press a button and.. woooooow, that's arts. They have not the single idea about how the sight that they were confronted with can be translated to settings of a camera for reconstructing what they saw... nooooo, that's not necessary, of course! We all know of course what it takes right out of the birth. Or am I wrong with all that "artistic" garbage? Am I wrong, ey?
And what I think of that? Well, the first thing is: I am sick and tired of all that half-knowlege (which is worse that no knowledge at all), with which we discuss by comparing apples and oranges. I say that very very clear, for this is exactly what your arguments show, Justin! I spoke about the absence of directed intention for "artistic creation", as it is presented here in UF, and you tell me that "even the best do find their sources of inspiration in copying, sometimes". Is the one the opposite of the other?
Please, if you want to discuss with me about such matters, you will apply strict mathematical logic and not neo-american nonsense. If you don't like it... OK, I don't mind, and that was it. It takes much more than comparing apples with oranges.
I will not even reply to any such dilletantic "argumentations" any more.
No, no, no, and again no, Justin. You didn't get it. You brought good arguments... but no arguments that attack what I am saying. For I didn't exclude the possibility of "accidental cognition", not at all!
This can be seen best in your reference to Shakespeare. Do my conclusions logically exclude the possibility of "copying" or "mimicking" others? We follow this by strict logic and not by "feeling", since too much has been mixed up for too long in these matters.
First of all, I mentioned the main difference between arts and... "accident" as the conscious brain that wishes to do something. In this sense you can't call "arts" something that would as well happen without the presence of the artist him/herself. Or else, you could sit down and wait for "artistic work" from the sides of.. mere necessity of natural phenomena. So, fter you drank your milkshake... the trails of rmainders on the inner side of the glass are... by themselves art, arn't they? Even if you wern't there, as a conscious thinking being that can find "something" in all those trails - is that what you want to tell me?
Continuing on the example of Shakespeare, did I say that getting some "ideals", some "prototypes" from others is "not arts"??? Or did I say that you have to get the conscious intellectual kick that makes you first *wanting* to "match" the "ideals" (or even surpass) them in order to be right in the heart of the matters?
But I make it much more "analytical" (brrrrrrrr! ;-)) in order to make it more understandable, perhaps. My point is that nobody, even Shakespeare, wouldn't have delivered such a real value to humanity, if he/she would just have written... letters in accidental order. This is what I mean when I say "accidental" - the total ignorance of any grammatical dependence of signs that at the end result into speach, or a poem, a song, anything.
To make it even clearer, I could just take my guitar, hit the strings at any possible diletantic knowledge-less way... and expect it to be the "artistic chords that define a new era". And for all those who believe that Zappa just "strummed the way ot came", do me the favor and get on the scene just once, OK? (Yes, I *am* really angry with all that conglomerate of "opinions" from those who never had played a single chord in rhythm and still think they can tell what it's all about - "feeling", "harmony", "experimenting" on music.)
I really thing the key to the whole definition of whether something is art or not lies in whether there exists a personal, creative vision. The skill levels vary and are subjective. So, we might have a perfectly honest bad job of painting or photography with a creative vision that is still art. Or, on the other hand we might have a beautiful, skillful reproduction that lacks a personal creative vision. Andre
I see what you mean Justin. I suppose a simple way to put it is, as long as there is a creative vision ahead of the work. (whether it is painting, sculpture, writing or photography) we can call it art. Copying another artist exactly means there is no personal creative vision, even if the skill level is high. However using another artist's style with your own vision is fine? I think one of the things that we all tend to overlook is that the skill levels used in painting, photography, sculpture and so on vary greatly from one person to the next. However, no matter what the skill level, as long as the intent is honest, it is still art. Andre
by this definition, shakespeare was a non-artist, since he devoted himself to the imitation of seneca, marlowe, and ovid? strength of artistic character can dare imitation--and great artists, the strongest of the strong, invariably imitate (who was it said that "good poets imitate, great ones steal"?). moderns are so thoroughly imbued with the "self-impelling authenticity" nonsense (democrats do not feel the need to aspire, so their aesthetic is always fixated in the self-as-it-is, not how it might be, so they eschew means beyond themselves) that they have lost the ability to attune their ears to anything like an artistic verity. moderns do not produce art, they produce declarative sentences, in stone, or image, or literature, and call it art.
im not comfortable with any definition of 'art' that excludes the accidental, incidental, or unintended. In fact, i don't believe we (as a species) are sufficiently developed to say what 'art' is, except by way of provisional reference to 'artists'. After all, Michael Angelo discovered his images resident in the stone, he says; on the other hand, he was an unqualified expert at draftsmanship, and chiaroscuro, and color/pigmentation; so there's a synthetic, symbiotic interplay between conscious, experienced, knowledge and direct perception.
i would be one to argue, but not too forcefully, that photography is merely artistic, and not art at all, since so much of it is pure mechanics.
This is exactly the difference since such results of imitation are bare of any *own* intention to do something (that could never happen by itself otherwise), except of course to imitate something. There is of course a big "educational" value to such tries but they are for learning - not for generating arts. They are useful for augmenting the knowledge about "handling the tools" on order to be able some time to convert the intention to real existing work.
Hi Nick, What I enjoy doing sometimes is to look at some established photographer's work. People who I would believe had some kind of "vision" and have developed unique style over the years. It's fun to try and copy their style. But, even if you end up with a decent job of paying homage to another person, you really can't call it "art". At least not your own art. Andre
So, we come to this image. I could be dishonest too, and lie like so many "natural born artists" who camouflage incompetence with randomness. I could say that it was my intention, and so you could like it or not and make your comment. But as we saw, sincerity and honesty are absolutely necessary! And so I must say, it was not my intention. You can like it or not, and I am glad of you like it but this was not the result of my mental perticipation and intention. It is a random, natural result without a conscious mind of conception. It is in this sense not dofferent from the result of some storm, or other unconscious physical phenomenon. I didn't have this vision in mind, I just "played and smudged around".
Last note about Eno's statement on errors. Well, this is as logical as to state that being unable to turn vision into an image because of too little skill is an intention. Are we serious? Eno refered to something else, namely to the capability of doing the "right errors" *after* gaving reached some certain level of skill. For example good guitarists can insert "errors" in their playing, errors that sound right, as the result of a long and tedious dealing with their instrument. But this doesn't stop there. After hearing the "error" they start dealing with that, using it, trying to find out where it leads to. This mastering level allows you to actually "know" what the "error" will produce, much like adding a sept on a minor chord of heavy metal and letting it sound (along with the bass lines) like a "twisted" power chord. This is exactly what the "feeling" means in music performance and not the naive fuzzy imprfession of those who speak about that without having stood a single time on the scene. This is what Eno meant. For that, again, one needs dedicated work first, until that mastering level has been reached. This is not a matter of some months of quick and dirty "artistic work".
Some more of this kind of image will follow. I really hope for a tight and struggling debate, since we really, really, really have a complete false impression about what hard consequences for mental work the dealing with arts brings. Arts is not "easy-busy" for flat minds.
It is only this definition that saves artistic work from being dependent on the "liking" or "disliking" of the spectator. If it is the result as the artist wanted it, then we can like it or not, but it was artistic work. If it was the result of randomly mixing things around without a trace of consious mental activity then we can like it ot not but it was a natural, ramdom phenomenon. And nature doesn't do arts per definition in this case - you see how logical, how tight the definition is.
All this is not merely "opinion" or "how I feel about that". It is the acaxemic definition, and I don't have any intention at all, to sit and listen to the many different "opinions" of those who think that the world of arts can be redefined in such a way that it fits their own lazyness to deal seriously with such subjects. Such "opinions" don't count. Period.
Which no way means that for example some image has to always be photo-realistic. It just has to be the corresponding result of the will, vision, fantasy, decision of the artist. So, how do we know if some presented image was *really* what the maker intended to do? How can we separate the artificial from the natural? The answer is: We can't. The only thing that we have in order to know that is: The *sincerity*, the *honesty* of the maker. Provided the maker says honestly and directly that this was exactly his/her intention, we can say that it was artistic work, and we can *then* (!!!) say of we like it or not. But the definition of the artistic work is no more dependend on our personal judgement. All those who "estimate" the result as artistic or not according to their "feeling" endanger the world of arts extremely! It was exactly this kind of estimation at free will that resulted into the stigmatisation of "degenerated arts" in nazi times. Those dilettants, those analphabetic m*o*r*o*n*s of the nazi regime thought that they could go for a classification of arts without a single consideration of its academic definition. (Remember that, oh dilettants, when you bubble about arts! This is your contribution! This is what you do with your unwillingness for honesty and seriosity!)
How nice to have you too in the debate, Gustavo! So let's debate.
First of all there is nothing "extreme" in your images. They are well done photoshopografic pictures and most of the time not at all extreme in their look and feel. They are rather somewhere between naive platonism, naive symbolism and neo-romanticism. Extreme is something else.
Having said that and considering what you said about Warhol, you don't seem to really study such things very deeply, do you? Listen Gustavo, Warhol (and all artists) didn't just do things in an incidental way like I did here. They had some intention in mind *before* proceeding to the making, whatever that "making" could ever be. Warhol didn't just take an image of Monroe and started doing this and that under the signs of randomness. He had a vision that he implemented in a very distinct way. And he, like all other artists too, discarded a whole lot of results, until he got exactly what corresponded to his intention. Much like you do, I assume, when you try to generate exactly the image that you somehow carry in mind.
But what I did was not that. I just imitated the dilettantism of those who intend to shot an image, see that it is horrible, then sit in front of the PC, smudge around without a trace of understanding about what they do, then at the end getting something that they like but never intented to do, and selling it as "artistic work". It is not artistic work then, since it doesn't differ at all from the results of, say, a storm which swirls things around and generates some random arrangement. The difference is that in the process of the storm there was no *consiousness* that knows about the own activity and vision. The word arts itself makes the difference clear. It is what is generated *artificially* as opposed to natural or random. The concept of randomness in this case is directly connected to "without a will", as in natural phenomena only the necessity plays a role to comply with laws of nature. Artificial results are in this case the results that come into existence under the "being driven" by conscious choise, decision, will, vision, etc.
Oh yes, I do have my fun, especially when I see that even my own "confession" about the mediocre way of the making is still not enough for many too many to re-think their quick and dirty assignment of the label "art" to... something, anything. ;-)
So I am glad that there are also people like our good old Andre who don't break into enthousiastic (and blind) "hallelhjah!". Indeed, the word "artisan" fits well here, in two ways. The normal way and also as a wished reference to a... (p)artisan who joyfully sabotages that ridiculous attitude of those who would sing songs about arts when looking at the result of the monkey's "painting". ;-) I really have my fun when I read about "meanings" on such images, and so I thought, let them find out what even I didn't know. ;-)
BTW, what do you say, honorable colleague, about the high meaning of the next one in my extraordinary artistic series? ;-) (I try to imitate their attitude here. Do I get it right? ;-))
Thanks a lot for this comment, Andre! You just made me regain my trust that there are also reasonable minds on this world. Thank you!
Me sumo a la discusión, ya sabes que yo soy un defensor a ultranza del photoshopography, ja...ja...
Yo creo que es perfectamente válido que vos tomes una o varias fotos que por si solas sean incluso muy malas, pero que sumadas o modificada produzcan una imagen nueva, original, novedosa; y qué fundamentalmente guste e incluso provoque y emocione a los demás, al espectador. No te olvides que el collage, o el arte pop, (con Andy Warholl como mejor ejemplo), utilizaron en definitiva idénticos principios, por supuesto sin las ventajas del software y la tecnología digital, pero pese a las limitaciones hicieron exitosas y famosas obras artísticas... Arte!
Yo coincido con una frase que le recuerdo a Brian Eno: "Honra a tu error como intención oculta", y creo que muchas veces tus mejores trabajos pueden surgir en forma absolutamente accidental...
Bueno, es tarde y estoy ya cansado, pero mañana la seguimos!...:-)
Ahhh, la foto me encanta, y el resultando obviamente no tiene nada que ver con la foto original que sirvió de base, son cosas distintas y que una no sea buena no implica que la otra tampoco tenga que serlo.
Hi Nick, I can see you are having fun in the comments with this one. ;) At the very least, you have created an attractive image using some photoshop manipulation skills. But "art", not really. Maybe some degree of "artisan"? I tend to agree with you that many people get carried away with the levels bars and adjustments in all their various combinations when using photo softwares. Sometimes it can be very much like letting a monkey lose with a canvas and ten buckets of paint. Frame the result and put it up in a gallery, and people will find meaning in it. :) Andre
Thanks a lot, Marcio, but take a look at my reply to Stan's message here. The image is neither "creative" nor any good. It is a bad excuse for a failed shot, just the way most of the self named "photo-artists" here present. ;-)
As already said to Stan, it is not artistic at all, Mohammed. The sense of all those "artistic" images I post is just to show how cheap, how cheating all that overload of false artists is. There was no "creativity" involved here since it was only the result of trying this and that, and not the result of *aiming* at some result that was available as a vision in my mind priorly.
I knew what I was doing only in terms of what the many different tools of PS do, Stan. I only knew what the perpective distortion too does, or what the copy/paste does, and similar things. But, and this is a very important "but", I dodn't knew what it will result into, simply because I didn't have this look and feel in mind when I started applying this and that to the image. There has been no mental idea of what it should be at the end. The result was not something I aimed for but something that was constructed little by little in an incidental way.
So, this is definitely not the implementation of some idea. This is not the real existing image of something that was in mind priorly to generating the artificial product. This is what it is about in arts, and this is why we use the word "art" for that. The distinction between what happens by incidense (like for example natural phenomena that result into random things) and what happens iut of a lucid awareness of what *should* happen. The latter is not incidental but in full awareness and generates not random thungs but exactly what the vision dictates. It is *artificially* (= *with* intentional awareness) driven toward a strictly defined result as opposed to natural random results. This is why the word "art" is used for that. The patterns of ripples of sand in sime desert are *not* art by themselves. They can be used as artistic element for example on sime intentionally shot image.
So, this one is definitely not artistic work. I could of course pretend that I was the master of the whole process, taking it to exactly the place where I wanted to end up. But this is another important thing in arts: Absolite sincerity! You don't sell some result as "artistic work", no matter how good it looks, when you don't had the vision for it. This is why real dedicated artists have absolutely no "easy life" but struggle and search sometimes for years and years in order to translate the envisioned to the real existing.
Those who just "play around" and display what they achieved as "artistic work" are doing exactly what you say. They generate the *illusion* of artistic work. But this illision never lasts for a long time simply because at some time the cheat is obvious. This is the merciless sieve that separates artists from dilettants. And this was also the reason for this image as a demonstration of what is going on.
Perfect abstract? How can an abstract be "perfect" when the vision for it, its quintessence itself, was not part of the process of making it? It may look good, but that's all. Perfection would be present if and only if it was the real existing result of something that was envisioned, Vehbi.
But as I guessed we took a very very false way considering such things. Thanks a lot, nonetheless.
Actually Nick, I like the tones and repeating lines in this. It creates the illusion you knew what you were doing. I think that the world has room for more experimentation to create the illusion of art in our own ways. Many ways to see the same thing.. Keep having fun. Be well, stan
And here is the original. We can all see what the real reason of most of the "artists" is for taking PS and telling the world what great "artusts" they are. ;-)
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