DIGITAL is not ART !
DarkRoom ForEver
imbsysop
"DarkRoom ForEver" <sp...@nothanks.ugo> wrote in message
news:kfN9d.23903$B06....@news.edisontel.com...
besides this being just flame bait .. Art being dependent on the
(intermediate) equipment used is plain raving BS .. :-)
the end product is the only valid criterion, not the way to it..
al-Farrob
Imho, the fast spreading of compact digital cameras will have the same evil
effects on photo art as the spreading of ball-point pens had on
literature:))
--
al-Farrob
--
"16 photographs by al-Farrob"
http://www.al-farrob.com
Bob Williams
Henry Stop better embrace change or he will go the way of the dinosaur.
It may already be too late.
Apparently, he has not even advanced to Color Photography.
Bob Williams
David J. Littleboy
"Bob Williams" <mytbob...@cox.net> wrote:
> DarkRoom ForEver wrote:
> > I'm not the only one thinking this...
> >
> > http://henrystop.port5.com
> >
>
> It may already be too late.
> Apparently, he has not even advanced to Color Photography.
From the image on that page, it appears he hasn't even made it to black and
white yet.
David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
Mark B.
news:kfN9d.23903$B06....@news.edisontel.com...
>
What you mean is, you're not the only troll here.
Howard McCollister
"DarkRoom ForEver" <sp...@nothanks.ugo> wrote in message
news:kfN9d.23903$B06....@news.edisontel.com...
>
An art troll...wow.
Grant Wood said that photography is not art.
HMc
Skip M
news:4167c8af$0$32242$45be...@newscene.com...
--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com
~Darrell Larose~
The photographers were just a bunch of bad painters??? The same arguement
arouse out of colour photography. His sample looks like a Holga image with
the statement "Can you do this with a digital camera?" The image is soft,
flat low contrast. It could easily be produced with a digital P&S, dSLR,
Sigma SD* or a Holga...
"DarkRoom ForEver" <sp...@nothanks.ugo> wrote in message
news:kfN9d.23903$B06....@news.edisontel.com...
>
Nostrobino
Photography is photography. It doesn't have to pretend to be something it is
not, and such pretense is important only to poseurs.
N.
Roland Karlsson
news:GVQ9d.8056$Rf1...@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
> Very little photography, whether digital or chemistry-based, is art.
>
> Photography is photography. It doesn't have to pretend to be something
> it is not, and such pretense is important only to poseurs.
Very litle is art IMHO. Oil on a canvas does not make art either.
/Roland
Roland Karlsson
> Very little photography, whether digital or chemistry-based, is art.
Just do clearify - to me art is an artefact that moves me.
Something that starts emotions and/or thoughts that I did
not know was there. Thats the main thing. Of course - there
also needs to be some kind of skill involved, either technical
and/or creative.
/Roland
Nostrobino
"Roland Karlsson" <roland_do...@bonetmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns957D95925...@130.133.1.4...
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in
> news:GVQ9d.8056$Rf1...@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>
>> Very little photography, whether digital or chemistry-based, is art.
>
> Just do clearify - to me art is an artefact that moves me.
> Something that starts emotions and/or thoughts that I did
> not know was there. Thats the main thing.
Art does not require anything of that kind, though of course it is nice when
it does that. There's a lot of art that doesn't move me in the least, but is
still art.
> Of course - there
> also needs to be some kind of skill involved, either technical
> and/or creative.
It requires some kind of serious human effort. There doesn't have to be much
if anything in the way of skill. When a kiddie in kindergarten makes a
crayon drawing, it's art. The poorest art ever produced by the hand of man
is still art.
On the other hand, a photograph of some beautiful subject may "move you" but
is not art because of that. If the subject existed in a form that we would
regard as beautiful before the photo was taken, merely recording that
subject is not by any stretch of the imagination a work of art.
To call the successful recording of something by pressing a button "art" is
both pretentious and foolish.
N.
Mick Brown
I immediately thought, god I hope not!!
"David J. Littleboy" <dav...@gol.com> wrote in message
news:ck8gf3$2u9$2...@nnrp.gol.com...
bob
news:TzR9d.8062$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
> It requires some kind of serious human effort. There doesn't have to
> be much if anything in the way of skill. When a kiddie in kindergarten
> makes a crayon drawing, it's art. The poorest art ever produced by the
> hand of man is still art.
>
Curiously, my dictionary says that art is "the conscious use of skill nad
creative imagination esp. in the production of aesthetic objects."
I think the kindergarten kid uses 100% of the skill he has in the
production of his art. And in a very conscious and typically creative way,
too.
It's interesting that the definition that relates to aesthetic objects in
fourth. The first three relate to acquired skills (The art of making
friends, etc.)
Bob
--
Delete the inverse SPAM to reply
J...@no.komm
Bob Williams <mytbob...@cox.net> wrote:
>Henry Stop better embrace change or he will go the way of the dinosaur.
>It may already be too late.
>Apparently, he has not even advanced to Color Photography.
Is this guy really serious? The photo that says, "can you do this with
digital" looks like crap, and nothing I can't do with digital. Even
though Bayer cameras don't record exact, perfect greyscale at every
pixel, an image shrunk that much is extremely accurate, as it contains
many pixels' witness.
--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
John P Sheehy <J...@no.komm>
><<> <>>< <>>< ><<> <>>< ><<> ><<> <>><
Nostrobino
"bob" <usene...@2fiddles.com> wrote in message
news:Xns957D633DE9F...@207.69.189.191...
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in
> news:TzR9d.8062$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>
>> It requires some kind of serious human effort. There doesn't have to
>> be much if anything in the way of skill. When a kiddie in kindergarten
>> makes a crayon drawing, it's art. The poorest art ever produced by the
>> hand of man is still art.
>>
>
> Curiously, my dictionary says that art is "the conscious use of skill nad
> creative imagination esp. in the production of aesthetic objects."
>
> I think the kindergarten kid uses 100% of the skill he has in the
> production of his art. And in a very conscious and typically creative way,
> too.
Exactly. The skill involved may be great or small, but art presumes that
whatever skill and creativity exists, is used. The artist MAKES the thing,
he doesn't merely record it. That's the important part. It's pretentious to
say that one has created "art" simply by taking a pretty photo, but there
are photographers who for some reason like to believe they have done exactly
that.
N.
Dave Martindale
>> Curiously, my dictionary says that art is "the conscious use of skill nad
>> creative imagination esp. in the production of aesthetic objects."
>Exactly. The skill involved may be great or small, but art presumes that
>whatever skill and creativity exists, is used. The artist MAKES the thing,
>he doesn't merely record it. That's the important part. It's pretentious to
>say that one has created "art" simply by taking a pretty photo, but there
>are photographers who for some reason like to believe they have done exactly
>that.
That seems like a silly argument. The photographer *makes* the
photograph, even if the camera is recording something that already
exists. Landscape photographers don't "arrange" their subject, but the
process of recording and then printing it involves many decisions about
camera placement, lens focal length, cropping, exposure, tone and colour
adjustments, and so on.
Even if the photographer shoots on Auto and gets their prints from the
local drugstore with no input into the processing, they are still
deciding what subject to shoot, and under what lighting conditions.
This can still involve skill and creativity, and it can still be art.
Dave
Tony
whether you exist or not. I take the commercial view - anything purchased as
art is art. This is nicely self serving as it makes me (de facto) an artist,
since I've sold stuff as art. I'm sure that we can all come up with many
many self serving definitions of art - but most of us would know they are
self serving. Perhaps you should look into your definition further, Ace.
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/links/mlinks00.html
A sample chapter from "Haight-Ashbury" is at
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"Roland Karlsson" <roland_do...@bonetmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns957D95925...@130.133.1.4...
Tony
I think more people will agree with me than with you.
If you rely on numbers to determine truth, you are in for a very sad life,
Ace. Take a course in logic. I'm sure you can find one aimed at your nine
year old mentality.
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
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"DarkRoom ForEver" <sp...@nothanks.ugo> wrote in message
news:kfN9d.23903$B06....@news.edisontel.com...
>
Nostrobino
"Dave Martindale" <da...@cs.ubc.ca> wrote in message
news:ck91rq$915$1...@mughi.cs.ubc.ca...
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> writes:
>
>>> Curiously, my dictionary says that art is "the conscious use of skill
>>> nad
>>> creative imagination esp. in the production of aesthetic objects."
>
>>Exactly. The skill involved may be great or small, but art presumes that
>>whatever skill and creativity exists, is used. The artist MAKES the thing,
>>he doesn't merely record it. That's the important part. It's pretentious
>>to
>>say that one has created "art" simply by taking a pretty photo, but there
>>are photographers who for some reason like to believe they have done
>>exactly
>>that.
>
> That seems like a silly argument. The photographer *makes* the
> photograph, even if the camera is recording something that already
> exists.
Sure. The photographer (or his camera) makes the photograph; he didn't make
the thing he's photographing. Similarly, someone using a copy machine makes
a copy of something made by someone else, and the original may well be a
work of art--a pen and ink drawing, for example. The original drawing is a
work of art. The copy is not.
> Landscape photographers don't "arrange" their subject, but the
> process of recording and then printing it involves many decisions about
> camera placement, lens focal length, cropping, exposure, tone and colour
> adjustments, and so on.
Of course. Many technicians make comparable decisions. Some may make better
decisions than others, but making choices is not producing art.
>
> Even if the photographer shoots on Auto and gets their prints from the
> local drugstore with no input into the processing, they are still
> deciding what subject to shoot, and under what lighting conditions.
Of course. Similarly, one may choose to hang a painting in a certain place,
in a certain frame, where there will be certain conditions of light to
enhance the painting, and so on. Making such choices may show a keen
appreciation of art and the conditions under which it is best seen, but is
not itself producing art.
> This can still involve skill and creativity, and it can still be art.
Not if it's a straight, unmanipulated record. ANYONE who takes photos makes
such choices and decisions, though some obviously will put more thought into
it than others. Do you think that makes anyone with a camera an artist?
Why do some people with cameras consider it so important to puff themselves
up into "artists" anyway? What's wrong with just being a good photographer?
To call any nice-looking photo "art" is to make the word meaningless.
N.
Roland Karlsson
news:QWU9d.54987$ci3.3...@twister.southeast.rr.com:
> Then a MACK truck is art by your definition. Art is art - no matter
> whether you exist or not. I take the commercial view - anything
> purchased as art is art.
So - if you sell a MACK truck as art - then it is art.
/Roland
Ron Hunter
such obscene displays.
Charles Schuler
Excellent troll! You have already netted two dozen fish.
Tony
you with it. Get it?
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
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A sample chapter from "Haight-Ashbury" is at
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/writ/hait/hatitl.html
"Roland Karlsson" <roland_do...@bonetmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns957DDA986...@130.133.1.4...
ECM
Well said!
ECM
Steve Hix
"DarkRoom ForEver" <sp...@nothanks.ugo> wrote:
> I'm not the only one thinking this...
>
> http://henrystop.port5.com
>
> DarkRoom ForEver.
The same sorts of arguments came up during the early days of
photography, "proving" that photography was not an art, it being, at
best, nothing more than a pale imitation of painting.
Use whatever tools you like; don't waste your time, not to mention
everyone else's, with silly penny ante stuff like this.
YoYo
lol..
"Mick Brown" <nm...@bigpond.net.au> wrote
in message
news:1BR9d.19756$5O5....@news-server.bi
gpond.net.au...
Prometheus
<tspa...@nc.rr.com> writes
>Never have but by your definition I wouldn't have to sell it, merely impact
>you with it. Get it?
Sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about, now if you were to
leave the original text instead of blocking it we might.
--
Ian G8ILZ
ka...@sonic.net
<al001...@al-farrob.com> wrote:
>DarkRoom ForEver wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm not the only one thinking this...
>>
>> http://henrystop.port5.com
>>
>> DarkRoom ForEver.
>
>Imho, the fast spreading of compact digital cameras will have the same evil
>effects on photo art as the spreading of ball-point pens had on
>literature:))
Nowhere near as deleterious an effect as they had on
penmanship. :-)
Mick Brown
front of you, then neither is painting, drawing and sculpting.
--
Michael Brown
Melbourne Australia
www.photo.net/photos/mlbrown
"schuetzen - RKBA!" <ch...@texas.net> wrote in message
news:a3vgm0la4jcaho2n9...@4ax.com...
> if digital is not art, then neither is any form of photography.
> logic dictates that.
> is this just another TROLL started controversy???
> chas
> --
> chas
> The new Canon DSLR elist. no trolls, etc
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/canon-dslr/join
>
> ...
Matt Ion
> Didn't they say in the 1800's and early 1900's that Photography wasn't art?
> The photographers were just a bunch of bad painters??? The same arguement
> arouse out of colour photography. His sample looks like a Holga image with
> the statement "Can you do this with a digital camera?" The image is soft,
> flat low contrast. It could easily be produced with a digital P&S, dSLR,
> Sigma SD* or a Holga...
Heck, I could do that with a good set of pencils. Obviously B&W
photography isn't art either.
Matt Ion
> Even if the photographer shoots on Auto and gets their prints from the
> local drugstore with no input into the processing, they are still
> deciding what subject to shoot, and under what lighting conditions.
> This can still involve skill and creativity, and it can still be art.
Not to mention, the simple decision of whether to stand, crouch, kneel
or sit while recording an image can change perspective and thus the
outcome... and can sometimes make the difference between a good picture
and "art".
This is no different for other image artists, whether using paints or
pencils - the angle from which you look at something can make ALL the
difference.
Matt Ion
To some people, the mechanical form IS art...
Matt Ion
Not to mention the effect that the proliferation of computers with
spelling and grammar checkers have had on written communications...
Tony
here to cater to your weaknesses.
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
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A sample chapter from "Haight-Ashbury" is at
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/writ/hait/hatitl.html
"Prometheus" <Prome...@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:iJ4NYmTy...@newbrain.demon.co.uk...
bob
@chupacabra:
> So to sum it up, you're denying the possibility of accidental art?
Going back to my dictonary definition, if it doesn't involve skill, then it
isn't "art". I'm not 100% sure I agree.
Is a sunset art? Is a waterfall art? I have a few photos I took before I
had any skill at all, and I particularly enjoy them. Art, or beginner's
luck? Probably more luck than anything.
If you go out and shoot 10,000 random photographs, and then choose the best
3, perhaps your real art is the art of editing, rather than the art of
photography./
I would rather shoot one good photograph than shoot 100 random photographs
and spend hours choosing one good one.
Dave Martindale
>Sure. The photographer (or his camera) makes the photograph; he didn't make
>the thing he's photographing. Similarly, someone using a copy machine makes
>a copy of something made by someone else, and the original may well be a
>work of art--a pen and ink drawing, for example. The original drawing is a
>work of art. The copy is not.
That's also a silly distinction. What if the original is a photograph
instead of a drawing, and the copy is very carefully done using a
drum scanner and printer, so the copy looks every bit as good as the
original. If the original is art, then so is the copy. (I'm not saying
that the person who did the copying is an artist, just that the final
result is just as much art as the original).
Suppose a photographer creates a wonderful image that all critics agree
is art. If he decides to release a limited edition of 10 prints, is
only one of them art? What if he releases an unlimited-edition
mass-market poster of the image - are these not art? Suppose someone
makes a copy (with or without permission) - is the copy suddenly not
art?
I don't think you can come up with any definition that sanely
distinguishes between these case - either all of the photos are art, or
none of them are. I think any reasonable definition of art has to be
based in how the viewer reacts to it, not how it was made.
>Of course. Many technicians make comparable decisions. Some may make better
>decisions than others, but making choices is not producing art.
Making choices doesn't guarantee that the result is art, but neither
does it prevent the result being art.
>Of course. Similarly, one may choose to hang a painting in a certain place,
>in a certain frame, where there will be certain conditions of light to
>enhance the painting, and so on. Making such choices may show a keen
>appreciation of art and the conditions under which it is best seen, but is
>not itself producing art.
Why not? Interior design is an art, and it involves the aesthetic
placement of paintings (or photographs). Or do you think that this too
cannot be art?
>> This can still involve skill and creativity, and it can still be art.
>Not if it's a straight, unmanipulated record. ANYONE who takes photos makes
>such choices and decisions, though some obviously will put more thought into
>it than others. Do you think that makes anyone with a camera an artist?
No, nor did I say anything like that. On the other hand, you seem to be
saying that anyone who shoots unmanipulated photographs *cannot* be
producing art. That's what I disagree with.
>Why do some people with cameras consider it so important to puff themselves
>up into "artists" anyway? What's wrong with just being a good photographer?
I don't consider myself an artist. But I think it's silly for you to
attempt to prescribe what "art" is or is not.
>To call any nice-looking photo "art" is to make the word meaningless.
What meaning would you ascribe to it? Can you define it in any
objective way that makes sense? If a photograph moves me, I'm entitled
to call it art. I don't need to check whether you think it is, or
whether it satisfies your definition (assuming you can generate one).
Dave
Skip M
news:TzR9d.8062$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com...> news:Xns957D95925...@130.133.1.4...
>> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in
>> news:GVQ9d.8056$Rf1...@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>>
>>> Very little photography, whether digital or chemistry-based, is art.
>>
>> Something that starts emotions and/or thoughts that I did
>> not know was there. Thats the main thing.
>
> when it does that. There's a lot of art that doesn't move me in the least,
> but is still art.
>
>
>
>> Of course - there
>> also needs to be some kind of skill involved, either technical
>> and/or creative.
>
> much if anything in the way of skill. When a kiddie in kindergarten makes
> a crayon drawing, it's art. The poorest art ever produced by the hand of
> man is still art.
>
> but is not art because of that. If the subject existed in a form that we
> would regard as beautiful before the photo was taken, merely recording
> that subject is not by any stretch of the imagination a work of art.
>
<Snipped silliness about photography merely amounting to pressing a button>
> N.
>
>
By that definition, most of the paintings and sculptures that were created
before the advent and popularity of photography are not art, either.
Including the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Odalisque, The Thinker, and so on.
All of those existed before the artist captured them. Any representational
piece would be disqualified if you had your way.
--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com
Skip M
>
> "Dave Martindale" <da...@cs.ubc.ca> wrote in message
> news:ck91rq$915$1...@mughi.cs.ubc.ca...
>> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> writes:
>>
>>>> Curiously, my dictionary says that art is "the conscious use of skill
>>>> nad
>>>> creative imagination esp. in the production of aesthetic objects."
>>
>>>Exactly. The skill involved may be great or small, but art presumes that
>>>whatever skill and creativity exists, is used. The artist MAKES the
>>>thing,
>>>he doesn't merely record it. That's the important part. It's pretentious
>>>to
>>>say that one has created "art" simply by taking a pretty photo, but there
>>>are photographers who for some reason like to believe they have done
>>>exactly
>>>that.
>>
>> That seems like a silly argument. The photographer *makes* the
>> photograph, even if the camera is recording something that already
>> exists.
> <More snipped silliness>
> Sure. The photographer (or his camera) makes the photograph; he didn't
> make the thing he's photographing. Similarly, someone using a copy machine
> makes a copy of something made by someone else, and the original may well
> be a work of art--a pen and ink drawing, for example. The original drawing
> is a work of art. The copy is not.
>
>
> N.
>
>
Do you think that DaVinci "made" the woman who posed for the Mona Lisa?
bob
news:tI2ad.5611$hj.3754@fed1read07:
Absolutely.
Many have made a good case that the Mona Lisa is a self portrait.
Blb
ka...@sonic.net
wrote:
But at least that has the saving grace of the hilarity caused
by letting words through, "because it's a real word", even if only in
a different context.
ka...@sonic.net
>> Lisa?
Unlikely -- he wasn't that kind of guy.
Prometheus
Nostrobino <not....@ultranet.com> writes
>Sure. The photographer (or his camera) makes the photograph; he didn't
>make the thing he's photographing. Similarly, someone using a copy
>machine makes a copy of something made by someone else, and the
>original may well be a work of art--a pen and ink drawing, for example.
>The original drawing is a work of art. The copy is not.
Does that mean a print from a Lino cut or engraved plate is not art?
--
Ian G8ILZ
Prometheus
In article <Lj1ad.55185$ci3.3...@twister.southeast.rr.com>, Tony
<tspa...@nc.rr.com> writes
>I DID leave the original text - not my fault if you can't read it. I'm not
>here to cater to your weaknesses.
You put it below your signature separator thus it is automatically
excluded from replies, it is why the signature separator is used, and it
is why the comments of mine that you are replying to are not here. We
can leave top posting and the unnecessary quoting of my signature for
later (my signature separator is there to prevent that, so you must have
deliberately included it for a reason, yet you did not comment on it).
--
Ian G8ILZ
GT40
wrote:
>~Darrell Larose~ wrote:
Art is when the end result is, in the mind of the person looking at
it. It doesn't make any difference how it got there.
Tony
internet with your own rules and play Kop there. Killfiled with the rest of
the yo-yos
--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
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A sample chapter from "Haight-Ashbury" is at
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/writ/hait/hatitl.html
"Prometheus" <Prome...@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:Iia3yCX4...@newbrain.demon.co.uk...
Prometheus
that? Why do you have to make postings difficult to read, is the only
way you can be (in)significant?
--
Ian G8ILZ
Nostrobino
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> writes:
>
>>Sure. The photographer (or his camera) makes the photograph; he didn't
>>make
>>the thing he's photographing. Similarly, someone using a copy machine
>>makes
>>a copy of something made by someone else, and the original may well be a
>>work of art--a pen and ink drawing, for example. The original drawing is a
>>work of art. The copy is not.
>
> That's also a silly distinction. What if the original is a photograph
> instead of a drawing, and the copy is very carefully done using a
> drum scanner and printer, so the copy looks every bit as good as the
> original.
Doesn't matter.
> If the original is art, then so is the copy.
No, the copy is a copy. It is not a WORK of art.
> (I'm not saying
> that the person who did the copying is an artist,
There you are, then. A work of art requires an artist.
> just that the final
> result is just as much art as the original).
It is not a WORK of art. Putting something on a scanner and pressing a
button is not art work.
>
> Suppose a photographer creates a wonderful image that all critics agree
> is art.
Too hypothetical. "All critics" rarely if ever agree on anything. How was
this "wonderful image" created? By pointing a camera at something and
pressing a button? That's not art. That's making a record of whatever was in
front of the camera--which may have been beautiful and well worth
photographing, but that doesn't make the photo art.
> If he decides to release a limited edition of 10 prints, is
> only one of them art?
What work was involved? If the photographer produced the first photograph
with a great deal of manual manipulation, that might be art. (Or not.) If he
did the same thing exactly, nine more times, that's more like a production
line. Art does not come from production lines.
> What if he releases an unlimited-edition
> mass-market poster of the image - are these not art?
They are not WORKS of art. All are copies of the original. The original may
have been art, or not.
> Suppose someone
> makes a copy (with or without permission) - is the copy suddenly not
> art?
It's a copy. Copies are not works of art.
>
> I don't think you can come up with any definition that sanely
> distinguishes between these case - either all of the photos are art, or
> none of them are. I think any reasonable definition of art has to be
> based in how the viewer reacts to it, not how it was made.
>
>>Of course. Many technicians make comparable decisions. Some may make
>>better
>>decisions than others, but making choices is not producing art.
>
> Making choices doesn't guarantee that the result is art, but neither
> does it prevent the result being art.
Again: What WORK was involved? That's the question. Choices do not in
themselves make something art.
>
>>Of course. Similarly, one may choose to hang a painting in a certain
>>place,
>>in a certain frame, where there will be certain conditions of light to
>>enhance the painting, and so on. Making such choices may show a keen
>>appreciation of art and the conditions under which it is best seen, but is
>>not itself producing art.
>
> Why not? Interior design is an art,
The term "an art" is used--quite properly--to reference many things that
have nothing to do with art in the sense I think we are talking about.
Someone who polishes floors with a machine may say that floor polishing is
an art, and in the sense he is using the term he's probably right. But floor
polishing is not "art" in the sense of painting and sculpture, etc. Now if
you want to say that photography is an art in the same sense as floor
polishing, I have no quarrel with that. But pointing a camera at something
and pressing a button does not produce a WORK of art, any more than a nicely
polished floor is a work of art.
> and it involves the aesthetic
> placement of paintings (or photographs). Or do you think that this too
> cannot be art?
Aesthetic placement of paintings etc. is not a work of art in the sense of
fine art, no. There are many things that people do (some better than others)
to make attractive arrangements of things. Arrangement of pictures is
analogous to the arrangement of furniture--it may produce a very pleasing
effect but is not itself a work of art.
>
>>> This can still involve skill and creativity, and it can still be art.
>
>>Not if it's a straight, unmanipulated record. ANYONE who takes photos
>>makes
>>such choices and decisions, though some obviously will put more thought
>>into
>>it than others. Do you think that makes anyone with a camera an artist?
>
> No, nor did I say anything like that. On the other hand, you seem to be
> saying that anyone who shoots unmanipulated photographs *cannot* be
> producing art. That's what I disagree with.
That's what I'm saying, yes. I have seen some very lovely photos of sunsets,
taken with point-and-shoot 35s and machine-processed automatically. That's
not art. It doesn't matter how pretty the picture is, it's not art.
>
>>Why do some people with cameras consider it so important to puff
>>themselves
>>up into "artists" anyway? What's wrong with just being a good
>>photographer?
>
> I don't consider myself an artist. But I think it's silly for you to
> attempt to prescribe what "art" is or is not.
>
>>To call any nice-looking photo "art" is to make the word meaningless.
>
> What meaning would you ascribe to it? Can you define it in any
> objective way that makes sense? If a photograph moves me, I'm entitled
> to call it art.
Oh, you're entitled to call it a symphony if you like. You can call it
anything you want to call it, but you are doing violence to the language.
> I don't need to check whether you think it is, or
> whether it satisfies your definition (assuming you can generate one).
First of all, if we could just get rid of the silly notion that something
must "move" you in order to be art, or that the ability to "move" you makes
it so, or that some "aesthetic" makes a thing art. There are many natural
settings, for example, that move me and have an aesthetic appeal for me, and
I presume for other people too. They are not art. NATURE is not art.
Photographing such settings does not produce works of art either, unless
there is some serious input from the photographer--and by serious input I
don't mean just choosing the viewpoint, focal length, aperture or shutter
speed. I mean the photographer directly influencing the image in some way
that the camera alone cannot do.
Art does not have to "move" you or even be pretty. Some art is moving but
downright ugly and nasty--Goya's Caprices, for example, or the work of
George Grosz. Much art is not moving at all, but is still art. I don't find
anything in the least moving in pre-Columbian art or prehistoric cave
paintings, or most Egyptian paintings and statuary from the time of the
Pharaohs (though the idea of their antiquity is intriguing of course), but
all those things are decidedly art.
N.
Nostrobino
"Skip M" <shadow...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:tI2ad.5611$hj.3754@fed1read07...
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in message
> news:t4W9d.12383$ds6....@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
>> Sure. The photographer (or his camera) makes the photograph; he didn't
>> make the thing he's photographing. Similarly, someone using a copy
>> machine makes a copy of something made by someone else, and the original
>> may well be a work of art--a pen and ink drawing, for example. The
>> original drawing is a work of art. The copy is not.
>>
>
>>
>> N.
>>
>>
> Do you think that DaVinci "made" the woman who posed for the Mona Lisa?
He made the painting. Whether that painting was an accurate representation
of that (or any) woman, I have no idea.
N.
Nostrobino
Oh, it's art all right. The real work of art in such a case was the original
carving or engraving, which was done by human hand--not by pressing a
button.
N.
Nostrobino
----- Original Message -----
From: "bob" <usene...@2fiddles.com>
Newsgroups: rec.photo.digital
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2004 11:25 PM
Subject: Re: DIGITAL is not ART !
> Justín Käse <chupa...@operamail.com> wrote in news:41683998.1858461
> @chupacabra:
>
>> So to sum it up, you're denying the possibility of accidental art?
>
> Going back to my dictonary definition, if it doesn't involve skill, then
> it
> isn't "art". I'm not 100% sure I agree.
>
> Is a sunset art? Is a waterfall art?
No and no. Those are (presuming the waterfall is not manmade of course)
natural occurrences and therefore not art.
> I have a few photos I took before I
> had any skill at all, and I particularly enjoy them. Art, or beginner's
> luck? Probably more luck than anything.
We enjoy old photographs for all sorts of reasons--pleasant memories, or
just recollections of a more youthful time. This is enjoying the visual
record of something from the past, which is something many people do I'm
sure. But it's not art and has nothing to do with art.
In fact, art in such a case would be an impediment. The value of old photos
(I have and enjoy many of them myself) lies in the fact that they ARE just a
straight, true, unvarnished record. For this reason alone, old photos have
an appeal that no artwork such as a drawing, sketch or painting is likely to
have.
>
> If you go out and shoot 10,000 random photographs, and then choose the
> best
> 3, perhaps your real art is the art of editing, rather than the art of
> photography./
Editing is "an art" of sorts, but it does not make any of the photos art.
>
> I would rather shoot one good photograph than shoot 100 random photographs
> and spend hours choosing one good one.
Shooting 100 truly random photos would probably not even produce one really
good one.
N.
Nostrobino
The artist didn't "capture" any of them. He created them with his mind and
his hands.
N.
Roland Karlsson
news:e6gad.8414$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>> What if he releases an unlimited-edition
>> mass-market poster of the image - are these not art?
>
> They are not WORKS of art. All are copies of the original. The
> original may have been art, or not.
>
That is common practice among artists. If you make a piece of
art that involves printing - then you print a limited edition
and then destroy the lithographic stone or whatever.
/Roland
Roland Karlsson
news:tdgad.8418$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>> Does that mean a print from a Lino cut or engraved plate is not art?
>
> Oh, it's art all right. The real work of art in such a case was the
> original carving or engraving, which was done by human hand--not by
> pressing a button.
>
I know a man. He makes art. He also have used lots of time
and effort to get the best possible processes for printing.
I would say that the actual printing method is a part
of the art making for him.
Now - this is the definition of art according to webster:
" the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially
in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced "
This is the definition according to "www.artlex.com" and also
"www.artcyclopedia.com".
" art - For numerous reasons, the most difficult word to define
without starting endless argument! Many definitions have been
proposed. At least art involves a degree of human involvemen
-- through manual skills or thought -- as with the word "artificial,"
meaning made by humans instead of by nature. Definitions vary in how
they divide all that is artificial into what is and isn't art. The
most common means is to rely upon the estimations of art experts
and institutions. "
So - I would say that you have a rather weak case proving that
photography not is art. Of course - most is not. Just as most
drawings are not art. I would say that many artefacts made by
famous photographers are art.
/Roland
Jer
>
> The artist didn't "capture" any of them. He created them with his mind and
> his hands.
I've been following this thread and I tend to agree with your overall
point(s). I've often thought a lot of what is has passed as art is more
an insult to true artists than anything.
Just curious though... if a person uses a photograph as a base starting
point, but then, with artistic intent, digitally morphs it into a new
image which could not have existed naturally by radically changing it's
appearance with new colours or shapes, like changing a sunset to a
cobalt blue instead of orange (I've never seen a naturally blue sunset)
or embedding a volcano in downtown Manhattan (individually they both
exist, just not together) - could that be considered art? or at least
artistic to some extent? Somehow I think it could.
--
jer email reply - I am not a 'ten'
Prometheus
<not....@ultranet.com> writes
So if a photographer sees a scene and decides it is pleasing and makes
an accurate photograph of it is not creating art whereas when a painter
looking at the same scene and makes an accurate copy of it is creating
art. Don't forget that "artistes" in fifteenth Florence (for example)
were called painters and considered to be nothing more than tradesmen
working in workshops with assistants and apprentices doing much of the
work, c.f. Botticelli.
--
Ian G8ILZ
Matt Ion
ka...@sonic.net
wrote:
>ka...@sonic.net wrote:
Google did.
Skip M
he photographed her. He did not create the object, therefore the Mona Lisa,
by your own definition, is not art.
Skip M
the paintings and sculptures.
Bruce Murphy
> Very little photography, whether digital or chemistry-based, is art.
>
> Photography is photography. It doesn't have to pretend to be something it is
> not, and such pretense is important only to poseurs.
Surely digital is even more "art" than film based photography becasue
of all the pain and suffering inherent in doing it?
:)
B>
bob
news:Iqgad.8421$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>> I have a few photos I took before I
>> had any skill at all, and I particularly enjoy them. Art, or
>> beginner's luck? Probably more luck than anything.
>
> We enjoy old photographs for all sorts of reasons--pleasant memories,
> or just recollections of a more youthful time. This is enjoying the
> visual record of something from the past, which is something many
> people do I'm sure. But it's not art and has nothing to do with art.
>
> In fact, art in such a case would be an impediment. The value of old
> photos (I have and enjoy many of them myself) lies in the fact that
> they ARE just a straight, true, unvarnished record. For this reason
> alone, old photos have an appeal that no artwork such as a drawing,
> sketch or painting is likely to have.
Actually, I made them in a darkroom, using my hands, and quite a bit of
time. They are neither straight, nor unvarnished. And they certainly are
not 'true' -- the camera *always* lies.
The fact that I produced them in a darkroom does not particularly set
them apart from the photos I make in the computer now -- where I used to
spend hours working through things with my hands, I still spend hours
working through things with my hands, only now I don't get chemicals on
them.
>
>>
>> If you go out and shoot 10,000 random photographs, and then choose
>> the best
>> 3, perhaps your real art is the art of editing, rather than the art
>> of photography./
>
> Editing is "an art" of sorts, but it does not make any of the photos
> art.
In your opinion, what *does* make art? In a previous post you alluded to
effort, but if that is your main criteria, then a football match is art.
Is the work of Beethoven art, while the work of Mozart is not, simply
because the former labored over his while the later exerted no real
effort at all, but simply wrote out what was in his head (Mozart never
made a correction to a score like any other composer who has ever lived).
So if I carry 50 pounds of large format gear into the woods and make the
effort to calculate exposure and make the effort to frame and focus and
compose the shot, and make the effort to properly develop the negative
and spend hours of effort making the print, and if the resulting image is
more pleasant to behold than the scribblings of a child you described in
that earlier post, even to the childs mother, then do you say that the
child has produced art, but I have not?
And if I spend twice as much effort to produce a good digital photograph
than a painter spends producing a painting, then it cannot be art either,
just because I used a device to create the actual print?
>>
>> I would rather shoot one good photograph than shoot 100 random
>> photographs and spend hours choosing one good one.
>
> Shooting 100 truly random photos would probably not even produce one
> really good one.
I meant "random photographs" as in the way many photographers approach
photography.
Bob
Nostrobino
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in message
> news:B8gad.8415$Rf1...@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com...
>>
>> "Skip M" <shadow...@cox.net> wrote in message
>> news:tI2ad.5611$hj.3754@fed1read07...
>>> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in message
>>> news:t4W9d.12383$ds6....@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
>> [ . . . ]
>>>> Sure. The photographer (or his camera) makes the photograph; he didn't
>>>> make the thing he's photographing. Similarly, someone using a copy
>>>> machine makes a copy of something made by someone else, and the
>>>> original may well be a work of art--a pen and ink drawing, for example.
>>>> The original drawing is a work of art. The copy is not.
>>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> N.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Do you think that DaVinci "made" the woman who posed for the Mona Lisa?
>>
>> He made the painting. Whether that painting was an accurate
>> representation of that (or any) woman, I have no idea.
>>
>> N.
>>
>>
> If he made the painting, not the woman, then that is exactly the same as
> if he photographed her.
Nowhere near the same. If he made the painting by pressing the button on a
machine, you would be correct, and that would not be a work of art.
> He did not create the object,
You don't know that. No one really knows who the subject was, or even if she
really existed. I can draw or paint a woman without having an actual
subject, and I presume Da Vinci could too.
> therefore the Mona Lisa, by your own definition, is not art.
Incorrect, as explained. But again--whether the subject existed or not, Da
Vinci MADE the painting.
N.
Nostrobino
"Bruce Murphy" <pack...@rattus.net> wrote in message
news:m2mzyts...@greybat.rattus.net...
Indeed, it may well be. (I acknowledge the smiley, but seriously, you are
undoubtedly correct in many cases.) Someone who labors long and hard over
Photoshop may be producing a work of art. There are large gray areas in
which one may reasonably argue whether a thing is or is not art.
N.
John Doe
of his ass and take a breath.
John
"DarkRoom ForEver" <sp...@nothanks.ugo> wrote in message
news:kfN9d.23903$B06....@news.edisontel.com...
Siddhartha Jain
>
> Very litle is art IMHO. Oil on a canvas does not make art either.
Heheh ... let me throw in my hat too. I read or heard somewhere - A
rock is as much the truth as is an idol carved from it, its the journey
that is art.
Nostrobino
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in
> news:tdgad.8418$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>
>>> Does that mean a print from a Lino cut or engraved plate is not art?
>>
>> Oh, it's art all right. The real work of art in such a case was the
>> original carving or engraving, which was done by human hand--not by
>> pressing a button.
>>
>
> I know a man. He makes art. He also have used lots of time
> and effort to get the best possible processes for printing.
> I would say that the actual printing method is a part
> of the art making for him.
It may well be. Dodging and burning in I would say is an art. I used to know
a fellow who put his hands on parts of the print while it was developing, in
order to darken them (the heat of his hands increased the developer
activity). I would say that such technigues are getting into the realm of
art.
>
> Now - this is the definition of art according to webster:
>
> " the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially
> in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced "
Agreed, as far as that goes.
>
> This is the definition according to "www.artlex.com" and also
> "www.artcyclopedia.com".
>
> " art - For numerous reasons, the most difficult word to define
> without starting endless argument!
No kidding. :-)
> Many definitions have been
> proposed. At least art involves a degree of human involvemen
> -- through manual skills or thought -- as with the word "artificial,"
> meaning made by humans instead of by nature.
AT THE LEAST is correct.
> Definitions vary in how
> they divide all that is artificial into what is and isn't art. The
> most common means is to rely upon the estimations of art experts
> and institutions. "
Who, however, cannot be relied upon to agree.
>
> So - I would say that you have a rather weak case proving that
> photography not is art.
That isn't what I said. What I said is that a picture made by merely
pointing a machine at something and pressing a button is not art.
> Of course - most is not. Just as most
> drawings are not art.
Nearly all drawings ARE art. Mechanical drawings might be regarded as an
exception, but that is getting into one of the many gray areas.
> I would say that many artefacts made by
> famous photographers are art.
Depends on how they were made. Many famous photographs are fine examples of
photojournalism, but not art.
N.
Nostrobino
> In article <tdgad.8418$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>, Nostrobino
> <not....@ultranet.com> writes
>>
>>"Prometheus" <Prome...@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
>>news:0iY4SqVw...@newbrain.demon.co.uk...
>>> In article <t4W9d.12383$ds6....@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>,
>>> Nostrobino
>>> <not....@ultranet.com> writes
>>>>Sure. The photographer (or his camera) makes the photograph; he didn't
>>>>make the thing he's photographing. Similarly, someone using a copy
>>>>machine
>>>>makes a copy of something made by someone else, and the original may
>>>>well
>>>>be a work of art--a pen and ink drawing, for example. The original
>>>>drawing
>>>>is a work of art. The copy is not.
>>>
>>> Does that mean a print from a Lino cut or engraved plate is not art?
>>
>>Oh, it's art all right. The real work of art in such a case was the
>>original
>>carving or engraving, which was done by human hand--not by pressing a
>>button.
>
> So if a photographer sees a scene and decides it is pleasing and makes an
> accurate photograph of it is not creating art
Correct. The photographer isn't "making" anything. The making is all done by
the camera.
> whereas when a painter looking at the same scene and makes an accurate
> copy of it is creating
The painter doesn't "make an accurate copy" of anything, unless he is
copying a painting. Copying a painting is not art (it may be "an art" in the
sense that any good craftsman's work is "an art"), but painting a picture of
a real subject is art.
> art. Don't forget that "artistes" in fifteenth Florence (for example) were
> called painters
They are still called painters, if painting is what they did.
> and considered to be nothing more than tradesmen working in workshops with
> assistants and apprentices doing much of the work, c.f. Botticelli.
Doesn't matter. Those "assistants and apprentices" were extensions of the
artist's mind and hand.
N.
Nostrobino
"bob" <usene...@2fiddles.com> wrote in message
news:Xns957F52F2FD0...@207.69.189.191...
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in
> news:Iqgad.8421$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>
>>> I have a few photos I took before I
>>> had any skill at all, and I particularly enjoy them. Art, or
>>> beginner's luck? Probably more luck than anything.
>>
>> We enjoy old photographs for all sorts of reasons--pleasant memories,
>> or just recollections of a more youthful time. This is enjoying the
>> visual record of something from the past, which is something many
>> people do I'm sure. But it's not art and has nothing to do with art.
>>
>> In fact, art in such a case would be an impediment. The value of old
>> photos (I have and enjoy many of them myself) lies in the fact that
>> they ARE just a straight, true, unvarnished record. For this reason
>> alone, old photos have an appeal that no artwork such as a drawing,
>> sketch or painting is likely to have.
>
>
> Actually, I made them in a darkroom, using my hands, and quite a bit of
> time. They are neither straight, nor unvarnished. And they certainly are
> not 'true' -- the camera *always* lies.
No, the camera doesn't always lie. It can be made to lie, that is true.
>
> The fact that I produced them in a darkroom does not particularly set
> them apart from the photos I make in the computer now -- where I used to
> spend hours working through things with my hands, I still spend hours
> working through things with my hands, only now I don't get chemicals on
> them.
Fair enough. So what's the argument?
>
>>
>>>
>>> If you go out and shoot 10,000 random photographs, and then choose
>>> the best
>>> 3, perhaps your real art is the art of editing, rather than the art
>>> of photography./
>>
>> Editing is "an art" of sorts, but it does not make any of the photos
>> art.
>
> In your opinion, what *does* make art? In a previous post you alluded to
> effort, but if that is your main criteria, then a football match is art.
> Is the work of Beethoven art, while the work of Mozart is not, simply
> because the former labored over his while the later exerted no real
> effort at all, but simply wrote out what was in his head (Mozart never
> made a correction to a score like any other composer who has ever lived).
Both were artists. Some artists agonize over their work more than others,
but corrections or rewriting or repainting do not by their sheer weight of
numbers make something art or not art.
>
> So if I carry 50 pounds of large format gear into the woods and make the
> effort to calculate exposure and make the effort to frame and focus and
> compose the shot, and make the effort to properly develop the negative
> and spend hours of effort making the print, and if the resulting image is
> more pleasant to behold than the scribblings of a child you described in
> that earlier post, even to the childs mother, then do you say that the
> child has produced art, but I have not?
It sounds to me as though you have. What's the argument?
The "scribblings of a child" are art if there was an intent to produce
something worthwhile looking at. I think I probably started drawing at age
four or five. My early attempts could reasonably be described as the
scribblings of a child, but they were the best I could do at that time, and
they were the product of my mind and hand. That's art.
I don't know where the notion came from that art must be beautiful or
otherwise successful in order to really be art. There's a lot of lousy art.
Look at Cathy Guisewite's comic strip. Her drawing does not even rise to the
level of "lousy"--but it's still art. It happens to be commercially
successful, but that doesn't make a thing art or not art either. If she
never sold a comic strip in her life, her drawing would still be terrible
and it would still be art.
>
> And if I spend twice as much effort to produce a good digital photograph
> than a painter spends producing a painting, then it cannot be art either,
> just because I used a device to create the actual print?
Who said so? It matters not whether the tool used is a brush or a mouse, if
the result is the product of WORK with mind and hand, WORK that expresses
itself in the final image, then I would probably say it is art. There are
(as I mentioned some hours ago), many gray areas in which people may
reasonably argue over whether a thing is or is not art. I have simply been
saying that merely pointing a camera at an appealing subject and pressing a
button does not in itself produce art, nor do choices or decisions about
camera position or details of exposure, etc. make it art.
N.
Nostrobino
"Jer" <gd...@airmail.ten> wrote in message
news:ckcd9e$2...@library2.airnews.net...
Definitely, I agree with you. To the extent that any pre-existing image is
manipulated significantly to present a different (or even just enhanced)
statement about the original subject, it becomes art.
One example (sort of): You are probably familiar with some of Norman
Rockwell's paintings, since they are still pretty well known even after 50
or 60 years. Fifty years ago I was an art student. My drawing instructor
absolutely despised Rockwell because (he said) Rockwell painted over
"bleached prints"--photographs--which is how he got his accuracy of detail,
spontaneous expressions, and so on. That instructor believed that drawings
should be made without any artificial aid whatever, and that by using
photographs to guide his hand he was in effect cheating.
Now I have no idea whether that instructor was right about Rockwell's
methods or not (some of his other stories I thought rather dubious), but as
far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter. Rockwell's illustrations were great,
and they always had a style and character of their own. At least I have
never seen any other painting that looked like a Rockwell. If he really did
paint over photographs, that doesn't make his work any the less art.
N.
Big Bill
wrote:
I'm not an artist, and certainly don't claim to be, but...
The photographer does more than simply press a button to take the
picture he takes.
At the very least, he decides what part of the overal world he can see
to include in the photo. Since this takes, at the least, some
judgement and application (hopefully) of some 'rules' of composition,
it's really unfair to say such a photo can't be art.
Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"
Roland Karlsson
news:TECad.12663$UE6....@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com:
> I have simply been
> saying that merely pointing a camera at an appealing subject and
> pressing a button does not in itself produce art, nor do choices or
> decisions about camera position or details of exposure, etc. make it
> art.
Fair enough - pointing here and there and just recording
what is in front of the camera is not art in it self.
It might be art if I take all those random pictures and
arrange them in a collage though. Or do you think I have to
throw some vinyl colors all over the collage before it is art?
It might also be art if I have some kind of conscious
plan with my photographing. Lets say that I have been
studying a certain part of a nearby wood - a place that
I like and want to photograph. I search for good lightning,
I search for good angles for taking the photos, I go nearer
and take macro photos of the vegetation. I am rather
successful in catching the feel of the place in a set
of pictures. It is a damp and fresh place and the pictures
gives a damp and fresh feeling.
Another issue is photo guided paintings. Some artists uses
photos as a help for painting. Some are so skilled that the
result looks just like photographs. Is this art?
/Roland
Prometheus
>
>"Prometheus" <Prome...@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
>news:A1QFXwNQ...@newbrain.demon.co.uk...
>> In article <tdgad.8418$Rf1....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>, Nostrobino
>> <not....@ultranet.com> writes
>>>Oh, it's art all right. The real work of art in such a case was the
>>>original
>>>carving or engraving, which was done by human hand--not by pressing a
>>>button.
>>
>> So if a photographer sees a scene and decides it is pleasing and makes an
>> accurate photograph of it is not creating art
>
>Correct. The photographer isn't "making" anything. The making is all done by
>the camera.
>
>
>> whereas when a painter looking at the same scene and makes an accurate
>> copy of it is creating
>
>The painter doesn't "make an accurate copy" of anything, unless he is
>copying a painting. Copying a painting is not art (it may be "an art" in the
>sense that any good craftsman's work is "an art"), but painting a picture of
>a real subject is art.
Are you saying that a painter can not make an accurate copy of a scene
yet has to have a real subject and be inaccurate before it can be art?
Clearly being inaccurate can not be a definition of art, nor is having a
real subject a requirement for art (consider The Garden of Earthly
Delights by Hieronymus Bosch). Is a painting by Constable which put a
church spire in the wrong place art because it is inaccurate, arguably
if the spire could not be seen from the place where the painting was set
it could not be called a real subject. Did Canaletto who could not draw
water and probably used camera obscure to get the architecture accurate
produce art.
The broad definition of art is any human product (c.f. artefact), but I
will attempt to define the narrower meaning we are considering here: for
an object to be art it must be aesthetically pleasing to people (I think
this might be a fundamental skill of an artist), it does not have to be
a real subject, it need not be accurate. I am not sure that is much
help, it might be better to try and define what is not art. Perhaps if
it is quick it is not art, but where does that place the "lightning
portraitist"? Maybe it should be unique, that should exclude photographs
since anyone can stand in the same place but so can painters, then again
they might have different ideas as to from where to view the scene (I
think this might be a fundamental skill of an artist), the time of day,
season etc. Staying with unique, what of prints from a Lino cut or
engraved plate, how many prints does it take to stop being art, is ten,
a hundred, a million, if it is ten and an eleventh is made do the first
ten cease to be art.
--
Ian G8ILZ
bob
news:TECad.12663$UE6....@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com:
>> Actually, I made them in a darkroom, using my hands, and quite a bit
>> of time. They are neither straight, nor unvarnished. And they
>> certainly are not 'true' -- the camera *always* lies.
>
> No, the camera doesn't always lie. It can be made to lie, that is
> true.
Perhaps we have a difference of opinion, but I have *never* seen a
photograph which looked the same way my eyes saw the scene, just as I
have never heard an audio recording that sounded just like the event. The
camera focuses and frames, distorts and compressses, in ways the eye
cannot. Never.
>> The fact that I produced them in a darkroom does not particularly set
>> them apart from the photos I make in the computer now -- where I used
>> to spend hours working through things with my hands, I still spend
>> hours working through things with my hands, only now I don't get
>> chemicals on them.
>
> Fair enough. So what's the argument?
In your post, you said that my photograph was not art, but merely a
sentimental record.
>
> It sounds to me as though you have. What's the argument?
It wasn't an argument, but you seem to be simply disagreeing with
everything that everyone puts forth regarding what is art and what is not
regarding digital photography. Looking over your various posts, the only
statements of opinion I could find from you indicate that art requires
effort.
So again, how do *you* define art?
>> And if I spend twice as much effort to produce a good digital
>> photograph than a painter spends producing a painting, then it cannot
>> be art either, just because I used a device to create the actual
>> print?
>
> Who said so? It matters not whether the tool used is a brush or a
> mouse, if the result is the product of WORK with mind and hand, WORK
> that expresses itself in the final image, then I would probably say it
> is art. There are (as I mentioned some hours ago), many gray areas in
> which people may reasonably argue over whether a thing is or is not
> art. I have simply been saying that merely pointing a camera at an
> appealing subject and pressing a button does not in itself produce
> art, nor do choices or decisions about camera position or details of
> exposure, etc. make it art.
Your statement is contradictory. To "point and press a button" requires
both the "mind and the hand" to "work." "Choices and decisions" clearly
indicate the mind to work.
bob
news:l9JMFCc2...@newbrain.demon.co.uk:
> portraitist"? Maybe it should be unique, that should exclude photographs
> since anyone can stand in the same place but so can painters, then again
>
When I first started dating my wife, we went to a waterfall. I took a
picture of the falls. It is clearly a unique negative, in that only I stood
where I stood on the day I made the exposure, and the area was different
immediately afterwards.
I made one print (an edition of 1) and destroyed both the working prints
and the negative.
Even if someone else stood in exactly the same spot at nearly the same
time, the grain pattern on my negative would have been different than his.
J...@no.komm
"Skip M" <shadow...@cox.net> wrote:
>By that definition, most of the paintings and sculptures that were created
>before the advent and popularity of photography are not art, either.
>Including the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Odalisque, The Thinker, and so on.
>All of those existed before the artist captured them.
Plato is alive and well in certain minds!
--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
John P Sheehy <J...@no.komm>
><<> <>>< <>>< ><<> <>>< ><<> ><<> <>><
Skip M
possibly be that obtuse.
Prometheus
<usene...@2fiddles.com> writes
I think that the uniqueness would need to be more distinctive than the
incidental grain pattern, unless you deliberately used grainy film, even
if not I would not consider duplication of a scene to prevent it being
art.
--
Ian G8ILZ
Nostrobino
WHAT photograph, and how did you "make" it? If you pointed a camera at
something and pressed a button, the camera made the photograph.
N.
Nostrobino
Of course not.
> Clearly being inaccurate can not be a definition of art, nor is having a
> real subject a requirement for art (consider The Garden of Earthly
> Delights by Hieronymus Bosch).
Exactly.
> Is a painting by Constable which put a church spire in the wrong place art
> because it is inaccurate, arguably if the spire could not be seen from the
> place where the painting was set it could not be called a real subject.
> Did Canaletto who could not draw water and probably used camera obscure to
> get the architecture accurate produce art.
You mean camera obscura. That's getting into one of the gray areas, of which
(as I have mentioned several times) there are many. Using a camera obscura
is essentially tracing. Tracing in and of itself is not art, not even
particularly demanding craftsmanship. What is SUBSEQUENTLY done over the
tracing is something else entirely.
>
> The broad definition of art is any human product (c.f. artefact), but I
> will attempt to define the narrower meaning we are considering here: for
> an object to be art it must be aesthetically pleasing to people
Not necessarily. Art does not have to be beautiful or "aesthetically
pleasing," and there's a great deal of art that is not. I have already
mentioned Grosz and Goya, for two examples.
> (I think this might be a fundamental skill of an artist), it does not have
> to be a real subject, it need not be accurate. I am not sure that is much
> help, it might be better to try and define what is not art. Perhaps if it
> is quick it is not art, but where does that place the "lightning
> portraitist"?
There are degrees of art, of course. The fellow who cuts a silhouette in a
minute is doing art work, but not in the same class as Michelangelo or
Rembrandt.
> Maybe it should be unique, that should exclude photographs since anyone
> can stand in the same place but so can painters, then again they might
> have different ideas as to from where to view the scene (I think this
> might be a fundamental skill of an artist), the time of day, season etc.
> Staying with unique, what of prints from a Lino cut or engraved plate, how
> many prints does it take to stop being art, is ten, a hundred, a million,
> if it is ten and an eleventh is made do the first ten cease to be art.
Another gray area. Making the cut or engraving was the work of art, and that
was done only once. Prints made from either (which are the finished works)
are equally original and equally art, no matter how many are made. But put
on a macro lens and make a virtually perfect copy of the print, or copy it
by any other machine procedure, and it isn't art, it's a copy of art.
N.
Nostrobino
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in
> news:TECad.12663$UE6....@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com:
>
>> I have simply been
>> saying that merely pointing a camera at an appealing subject and
>> pressing a button does not in itself produce art, nor do choices or
>> decisions about camera position or details of exposure, etc. make it
>> art.
>
> Fair enough - pointing here and there and just recording
> what is in front of the camera is not art in it self.
>
> It might be art if I take all those random pictures and
> arrange them in a collage though. Or do you think I have to
> throw some vinyl colors all over the collage before it is art?
No, you don't have to do that. A few years ago Pop Photo published a (vastly
reduced, of course) picture made up of about 3,000 individual photographs.
The photographer had taken them all from the same position, which as I
recall was across the street from the Museum of Modern Art but from a
somewhat elevated position. These were photos of the entire front of the
building and also up the street and down the street, so that when assembled
they looked like an almost pixellated photo taken by some immense
swinging-lens panoramic camera. I would certainly call that a work of art,
though none of the individual photos (or all of them together) were works of
art.
>
> It might also be art if I have some kind of conscious
> plan with my photographing. Lets say that I have been
> studying a certain part of a nearby wood - a place that
> I like and want to photograph. I search for good lightning,
> I search for good angles for taking the photos, I go nearer
> and take macro photos of the vegetation. I am rather
> successful in catching the feel of the place in a set
> of pictures. It is a damp and fresh place and the pictures
> gives a damp and fresh feeling.
Good technical work, good photography perhaps. Not art.
>
> Another issue is photo guided paintings. Some artists uses
> photos as a help for painting. Some are so skilled that the
> result looks just like photographs. Is this art?
Sure.
N.
Frank ess
I guess that means if Michelangelo/daVinci pointed a paint-laden brush
at a canvas, or a pencil or pen at a scrap of parchment, it was the
brush or pencil that made the painting? Or the canvas/paper? Maybe it
was gravity and adhesion? Or any combination of physics, intelligence,
and intuition? Sounds a lot like photography, in those terms, doesn't
it?
You are demonstrably obtuse: I'd be interested in what your therapist
calls the condition that results in consistent contrariness and
recalcitrance in the face of logic and common sense.
--
Frank ess
Prometheus
<bi...@pipping.com> writes
>>an accurate photograph of it is not creating art whereas when a painter
>>looking at the same scene and makes an accurate copy of it is creating
>>art. Don't forget that "artistes" in fifteenth Florence (for example)
>>were called painters and considered to be nothing more than tradesmen
>>working in workshops with assistants and apprentices doing much of the
>>work, c.f. Botticelli.
>
>I'm not an artist, and certainly don't claim to be, but...
>The photographer does more than simply press a button to take the
>picture he takes.
>At the very least, he decides what part of the overal world he can see
>to include in the photo. Since this takes, at the least, some
>judgement and application (hopefully) of some 'rules' of composition,
>it's really unfair to say such a photo can't be art.
This is why I am inclined to the interpretation that photography can be
art where interpretative and selective skills have been applied, but I
would be reluctant to apply the term to a snap shot which had no more
planing than, e.g. shooting Johnny playing on the beach, even if it
fortuitously shows the qualities of "interpretative and selective
skills". This now leads to the question of 'can art be accidental?', I
do not believe that knowledge of the production process should make a
difference to an objects artistic merit. We now have another question,
is art by a disabled person more than identical art be a fully able
bodied person?
--
Ian G8ILZ
Nostrobino
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in
> news:TECad.12663$UE6....@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com:
>
>
>>> Actually, I made them in a darkroom, using my hands, and quite a bit
>>> of time. They are neither straight, nor unvarnished. And they
>>> certainly are not 'true' -- the camera *always* lies.
>>
>> No, the camera doesn't always lie. It can be made to lie, that is
>> true.
>
> Perhaps we have a difference of opinion, but I have *never* seen a
> photograph which looked the same way my eyes saw the scene, just as I
> have never heard an audio recording that sounded just like the event. The
> camera focuses and frames, distorts and compressses, in ways the eye
> cannot. Never.
That's not lying, though. The camera makes a two-dimensional representation
of a three-dimensional world, and it does this reasonably accurately. There
are all sorts of differences between the way your eye sees things and the
way a camera sees things. For one, the film or sensor of a camera is a flat
plane; the retina of your eye is essentially a hemisphere, and there is just
no way of PERFECTLY making a representation of a spherical image on a flat
plane. Why do you say the camera lies? You might say with equal
justification that it's your eye that lies.
>
>>> The fact that I produced them in a darkroom does not particularly set
>>> them apart from the photos I make in the computer now -- where I used
>>> to spend hours working through things with my hands, I still spend
>>> hours working through things with my hands, only now I don't get
>>> chemicals on them.
>>
>> Fair enough. So what's the argument?
>
> In your post, you said that my photograph was not art, but merely a
> sentimental record.
It might be either, depending on whether and how much you yourself created
the image. If it's a straight, unmanipulated and unmodified photograph, it's
a record.
>
>>
>> It sounds to me as though you have. What's the argument?
>
> It wasn't an argument, but you seem to be simply disagreeing with
> everything that everyone puts forth regarding what is art and what is not
> regarding digital photography. Looking over your various posts, the only
> statements of opinion I could find from you indicate that art requires
> effort.
Effort and some degree of creativity; some intent to produce, by one's own
skill, an image with some purpose or meaning. (This of course refers to
those arts which are visual in nature.)
>
> So again, how do *you* define art?
See above.
>
>
>>> And if I spend twice as much effort to produce a good digital
>>> photograph than a painter spends producing a painting, then it cannot
>>> be art either, just because I used a device to create the actual
>>> print?
>>
>> Who said so? It matters not whether the tool used is a brush or a
>> mouse, if the result is the product of WORK with mind and hand, WORK
>> that expresses itself in the final image, then I would probably say it
>> is art. There are (as I mentioned some hours ago), many gray areas in
>> which people may reasonably argue over whether a thing is or is not
>> art. I have simply been saying that merely pointing a camera at an
>> appealing subject and pressing a button does not in itself produce
>> art, nor do choices or decisions about camera position or details of
>> exposure, etc. make it art.
>
> Your statement is contradictory. To "point and press a button" requires
> both the "mind and the hand" to "work." "Choices and decisions" clearly
> indicate the mind to work.
If you really don't see the difference between pressing a button to make a
machine deliver an image, and creating and/or personally intervening in the
final form of the image, then there is probably nothing left about that
difference to discuss.
However, I am still curious as to why on earth some photographers so
ardently desire to think of themselves (or be thought of by others) as
artists. What's wrong with just being a good photographer? I have seen a lot
of artwork, good, bad, mediocre and terrible. A good photograph is a thing
of far greater value than a piece of poor art, as far as I'm concerned.
The same applies to digital photographs heavily manipulated by software. I
have seen some photos on which a great deal of work has been done with
Photoshop, and were on that account what I would call art, which would have
been much better left alone and just printed as straight photographs.
Whence comes the notion that "art" must necessarily be some higher form?
This is the idea that has led to just this kind of pretentiousness, I think.
N.
Roland Karlsson
@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com:
>> It might also be art if I have some kind of conscious
>> plan with my photographing. Lets say that I have been
>> studying a certain part of a nearby wood - a place that
>> I like and want to photograph. I search for good lightning,
>> I search for good angles for taking the photos, I go nearer
>> and take macro photos of the vegetation. I am rather
>> successful in catching the feel of the place in a set
>> of pictures. It is a damp and fresh place and the pictures
>> gives a damp and fresh feeling.
>
> Good technical work, good photography perhaps. Not art.
But if I am a known artist and I say it is art?
Or a known art critics says it is art?
Seriously - you already said that a collage of the pictures
is art. So - what about making a book with the pictures?
Is that considered a collage?
Or - what if I take the best picture, make 7 copies, mounts
them in a 3 by 3 patterns where two picturs are missing?
And what if I mount the whole thing on a giant kite and
let it flew at a mile above NY, and then take a photo of
it through a telescope?
/Roland
Nostrobino
No brush ever made a painting. A brush is a tool absolutely useless without
the skill and intent of the artist holding it. A camera on the other hand
you can give to a monkey and it will take pictures.
> I composed it, made sure the lighting was appropriate, exposed it
> properly, decided to shoot in color or black and white, worked the print
> in the darkroom, cropped it, any number of things.
So you're a technician. A technician is not an artist. (In no way does this
denigrate the work of the technician, which can be very valuable in
photography as in other fields.)
> All the camera did was hold the film still and expose it to light at the
> correct time, for the correct period of time, which I chose.
If that's all it did, all you'd have to show for it would be a nice 18% gray
piece of paper. You need either a better understanding of what your camera
does, or a better camera.
> Like I said, you can't possibly be that obtuse.
Repetition does not make the comment less puerile.
N.
Prometheus
<shadow...@cox.net> writes>news:lUMcfnqn...@newbrain.demon.co.uk...
>> In article <eeWad.14533$rx6....@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com>, Nostrobino
>> <not....@ultranet.com> writes>> -Cut----------
>>>> No more than the brush made a painting.
>>>
>>>No brush ever made a painting. A brush is a tool absolutely useless
>>>without
>>>the skill and intent of the artist holding it. A camera on the other hand
>>>you can give to a monkey and it will take pictures.
>>
>
>I think our little troll has hit on a truism. If a monkey could have done
>it with a camera, then it isn't art. If a monkey could not have done it
>with a camera, then it must be art.
What if 'art' is achieved accidentally, whether by pan paniscus, or
homo troglodytes, or even homo narrans; is it still art?
--
Ian G8ILZ
Skip M
Hmmm, interesting side light. In that case, the art is in the eye of the
beholder, isn't it?
bob
news:7klbDlhH...@newbrain.demon.co.uk:
So when Monet painted his Giverny River series, which of the works weren't
art (because they depict the same scene)?
Of course his paintings are all slightly different, just as any other
photographers work would be slightly different from mine, given the
circumstances involved.
Prometheus
Perhaps you did not understand my use of the phrase "I would not
consider duplication of a scene to prevent it being art"
>Of course his paintings are all slightly different, just as any other
>photographers work would be slightly different from mine, given the
>circumstances involved.
A point I feel I have already made.
--
Ian G8ILZ
Skip M
>>>>>
>>>> And I MADE the photograph, just what the heck is the difference? You
>>>> can't possibly be that obtuse.
>>>
>>> WHAT photograph, and how did you "make" it? If you pointed a camera at
>>> something and pressed a button, the camera made the photograph.
>>>
>>> N.
>>>
>>>
>> No more than the brush made a painting.
>
> No brush ever made a painting. A brush is a tool absolutely useless
> without the skill and intent of the artist holding it. A camera on the
> other hand you can give to a monkey and it will take pictures.
>
>
>> I composed it, made sure the lighting was appropriate, exposed it
>> properly, decided to shoot in color or black and white, worked the print
>> in the darkroom, cropped it, any number of things.
>
> So you're a technician. A technician is not an artist. (In no way does
> this denigrate the work of the technician, which can be very valuable in
> photography as in other fields.)
>
>
>
>> All the camera did was hold the film still and expose it to light at the
>> correct time, for the correct period of time, which I chose.
>
> If that's all it did, all you'd have to show for it would be a nice 18%
> gray piece of paper. You need either a better understanding of what your
> camera does, or a better camera.
>
>
>> Like I said, you can't possibly be that obtuse.
>
> Repetition does not make the comment less puerile.
>
> N.
>
>
Neither does it make you any less obtuse. What else did the camera do, oh
wise one? Since, of course, I need a better understanding of what my camera
does... I mean, it didn't choose the object photographed, it didn't choose
the way in which it was composed, lighted, cropped, printed, or any other of
the myriad of actions that go into creating a photograph.
Nostrobino
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in news:RGSad.12756$aV.4882
> @newssvr15.news.prodigy.com:
>
>>> It might also be art if I have some kind of conscious
>>> plan with my photographing. Lets say that I have been
>>> studying a certain part of a nearby wood - a place that
>>> I like and want to photograph. I search for good lightning,
>>> I search for good angles for taking the photos, I go nearer
>>> and take macro photos of the vegetation. I am rather
>>> successful in catching the feel of the place in a set
>>> of pictures. It is a damp and fresh place and the pictures
>>> gives a damp and fresh feeling.
>>
>> Good technical work, good photography perhaps. Not art.
>
> But if I am a known artist and I say it is art?
> Or a known art critics says it is art?
There is a lot of foolishness from "known artists" and "known art critics."
A few years ago I saw on TV an interview of a Manhattan couple who collected
art, much of it by famous artists. Near the end of the interview the camera
showed a length of what appeared to be clothesline, about a foot long,
tacked to the wall of their apartment. The couple said that was done by a
famous artist (I have long since forgotten the name) and had a value of
$7,000. I'm sure a "known art critic" could be found to agree that that was
art.
>
>
> Seriously - you already said that a collage of the pictures
> is art. So - what about making a book with the pictures?
> Is that considered a collage?
A reproduction of art is still not anything but a reproduction of art.
>
> Or - what if I take the best picture, make 7 copies, mounts
> them in a 3 by 3 patterns where two picturs are missing?
>
> And what if I mount the whole thing on a giant kite and
> let it flew at a mile above NY, and then take a photo of
> it through a telescope?
Let me know how that turns out. It sounds more like kite aviation than art,
but I may be missing something.
N.
Prometheus
>beholder, isn't it?
I think it needs the opinion of more than the creator of an "art" object
to qualify it as art, I can not say how many, nor can a few detractors
negate it being art.
I think we still have not provided a definition of what art is, we seem
to be reaching a consensus of what it is not, perhaps that is all we can
hope for.
--
Ian G8ILZ
bob
news:yqy5w0tc...@newbrain.demon.co.uk:
>>So when Monet painted his Giverny River series, which of the works
>>weren't art (because they depict the same scene)?
>
> Perhaps you did not understand my use of the phrase "I would not
> consider duplication of a scene to prevent it being art"
>
>
My mistake -- I read your sentence several times without seeing the word
"not."
Nostrobino
> "Nostrobino" <not....@ultranet.com> wrote in
> news:vy8bd.7641$5b1....@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com:
>
>>
>>> I mean, it didn't choose the object photographed, it didn't choose
>>> the way in which it was composed, lighted, cropped, printed, or any
>>> other of the myriad of actions that go into creating a photograph.
>>
>> and *all* of them with DVDs I watch on my computers. So fiddling with
>> the controls while watching movies makes me an artist?
>>
>
> If you ask a director, he would probably call you a vandal ;-)
Probably. But I wouldn't colorize The Maltese Falcon, at least. :-)
>
> You still haven't said what you think makes something art, or not.
I did yesterday, I think. Dunno where in the thread it is, exactly.
N.
Skip M
> say*,
> "All the camera did was hold the film still and expose it to light at the
> its lens removed. I would get that attended to right away, and it will
> clear up that problem of imagelessness you've been having.
>
>
>> I mean, it didn't choose the object photographed, it didn't choose the
>> way in which it was composed, lighted, cropped, printed, or any other of
>> the myriad of actions that go into creating a photograph.
>
> *all* of them with DVDs I watch on my computers. So fiddling with the
> controls while watching movies makes me an artist?
>
>
>
Ok, you got me there, but the focus was chosen by me, or allowed to
autofocus, so that still doesn't change the statement. You are picking
nits.
You cannot change the way the image was cropped, composed or lighted on your
DVD player, you can only change the way you see what the cinematographer
actually did. His is the art, yours is the fooling with it.
Nostrobino
"Prometheus" <Prome...@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:lUMcfnqn...@newbrain.demon.co.uk...
> In article <eeWad.14533$rx6....@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com>, Nostrobino
> <not....@ultranet.com> writes
>>
>>> No more than the brush made a painting.
>>
>>No brush ever made a painting. A brush is a tool absolutely useless
>>without
>>the skill and intent of the artist holding it. A camera on the other hand
>>you can give to a monkey and it will take pictures.
>
All the more "art," then! <GUFFAW!>
> a person can.
Some can, some can't, many don't bother--and some of 'em even win prizes.
N.