You are absolutely right and I am sorry for not considering it until you've mentioned it.
We can't think of everything all at once!
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Quote:
("It is hard to imagine a more perfect opposition than that of overblown heroics and happy workers ")
Growing up in Russia we never looked at that as ART we saw it as propaganda
You were a lot smarter than most of us. We saw social realism in the Soviet and Chinese art as propaganda, but couldn't see it in our own. I think it was cleverly done, but then, it is so hard to see ourselves. I started in Ab Ex myself, was hooked into f/64 - knew some of them - and believed in it, as did pretty much everyone. That is, in my circle - if you took a poll among grassroots America, I suspect they would appreciate social realism more; lots of Americans had no comprehension of Ab Ex and many, many hated it. I suspect that Mortensen was very appealing to the public, but I also know that Adams' vision had a lot of pull on the communal aesthetic; he fit into the tradition that advertised the west and pulled the wagon trains out here from the east. Americans, just as were the Europeans in the 19th C, were mad about the kind of realism that the romantic era presented, mad about adventure, grand landscapes, the sublime. This continued well into my lifetime. My grandmother took me to slide lectures of grand adventures in the late 1940's. It seems to me that AA pulled that particular vision into the public eye and his colleagues came along with him, and of course the visions of Lange and Cunningham were quite accessible, even compelling, for people who were art savvy as well as those who were not.
I still have a lot of fondness for it (Ab EX), and it shows in my own work (one of these days I'll actually subscribe and post some; now that I'm retiring [?] I might even start shooting again!).
Also, I think a lot of folks don't realize that many of the Ab Ex'ers started out doing social realist murals in public buildings for the WPA before they even thought of what they were going to be doing a short time in the future. It was a living in a very hard time. There is one of those murals by Kenneth Callahan in the post office here in Anacortes. They are all over the place. Even the FSA was a public funded works project, but I wouldn't think of it quite as "social realism" - it was TOO real. Minor White had a WPA job documenting the steel front buildings on the waterfront in Portland, OR. Many artists, writers, etc. in the 1930's worked at documenting AMERICA (caps deliberate) and the overall purpose of their commissions was to instill national pride. What is that but at least a close cousin of social realism?
Now, Mortensen was not funded by WPA! But really, isn't his work very much like the vision of the social realists?
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Quote:
What would you say to be today's art goal , what should be my social responsibility today to fight for ?
Drugs?, WAR? how does what we are talking about here is relevant to today?
....
[re: artists who participate here]
I think that political agenda is the furthest from their minds, maybe not.
I don't know how we went from art to politics here .
As they say, politics start in the home. I think about this a lot; when I think about how it was when I started, it was a lot different. I asked my friend Don Normark about it (he camped out at Weston's sometimes when he was about 19) and he said that when he started, the photographers knew one another personally. There weren't that many. Today, there are many hundreds of thousands all over the world, and each has his/her own particular influences, standards, perspectives etc. It is mind boggling. I don't think there is any possibility of assigning any blanket generalized motivation, purpose, etc. to today's artists any more than it would have been possible for Mortensen and AA to hang out and appreciate each others' aesthetics. Artists have always been at odds with each other, often rather vocally. I am always surprised when I see in communities like this how well most everyone seems to get along (most of the time!). In the greater art world, of which the photo community is just a part, there is a great deal of confusion, and it could be that new revolutions, new Salons des Refusés are just around the corner. Who knows? But what IS the "establishment" now? Well, some of us may think we know, but I don't think we're going to find much agreement even with that.
The fact that you even think of having responsibility as a part of your work sets you far apart from the greater mass of artists. I'm impressed, really. When it comes to "should" you will find, I think, that there isn't going to be a lot of agreement. That is something that must come from what is most likely, with you, a very informed vision of your own. Otherwise, who are you going to believe?
Were you aware of Sam Hamill's Poets Against the War? That came from his formulation of his own responsibility, his anger, and a lot of folks bought into it and contributed. Quite a big deal.
Quote:
This conversation is nothing new ,I suppose , EW was doing rocks right in the midst of WWII and was questioned for for his patriotism , but the man stood for what was important to him...The rest seem not to matter.
ILYA
But, you know, living on the California coast he was a spotter, watched for enemy planes. He actually was working for the war effort in his own way.
I appreciate your comments and questionings; you motivate me to think.
"But, you know, living on the California coast he was a spotter, watched for enemy planes. He actually was working for the war effort in his own way."
Yes, Kim Weston told me that when I visited Carmel couple of years ago.One has to read thru a lot of lines in his writtings ....
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"Now, Mortensen was not funded by WPA! But really, isn't his work very much like the vision of the social realists?"
I don't know , his work seem to be very sweet , it somehow does not have an edge to be called realistic , Rodchenko is an epitamy of that to me and even Modotti's work is. May be it's because their work was not done in the studio,but on the streets where the social revolution was happaning
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"In the greater art world, of which the photo community is just a part, there is a great deal of confusion, and it could be that new revolutions, new Salons des Refusés are just around the corner. Who knows? But what IS the "establishment" now? Well, some of us may think we know, but I don't think we're going to find much agreement even with that"
I found this quote, I thought that it was right on , so i am posting it here since I can not put any better:
Importance of interpretive contexts:
Abstract Expression-Pop Art-Minimalism
The artworks produced from the post-World War II era through around 1980 form an inter-referential system based on the accrual of meaning and value and a knowledge of the positions and relationships within the system.
Each genre, style, medium, and materials was presupposed in the making of the new work, and the new work was positioned to have meaning within the system.
It is important to see art works in a system of meaningful relationships, not as independent styles of types of visual content.
This means seeing works for what they are not doing--negating past ways of working--as well as what what new positive expressions are being made.
The naive concept of "influence" is inadequate for understanding the density or complexity of interdependent meaning in a cultural system.
What is always in play is a semiotic matrix, positions within a system that presuppose and cross-reference each other.
All three art movements of the 1950-1970s attempt to cancel the older, inherited "grand tradition" of European art (and prior American art based on European traditions) to clear the way for something modern, American, and a way of embodying a new concept or philosophy of art-making and even what art is or should be in the current moment.
Pop art assumes and negates both the inherited European system of High Art, the New York Abstract Expressionist movement and its corollary, Color Field Painting, and the emerging Minimalist movement.
The grand tradition of European high art and painterliness was a major "influence" on Pollock because he worked to cancel it with a new style and new philosophy of what art should be in America.
Pollock's work thus presupposes the history of painting to WWII, but it attempts to cancel its properties. So "influence" is mostly a useless term theoretically.
Pop and post-Pop art continues to intervene in the visual system, appropriating popular and commercial mass culture content, and compelling us to see and receive art objects, images, and materials in different, disruptive, ironic, and humorous ways.
Finding adequate theory: Dialogism, intertextuality/intermediality, network theory
New works proceed in a dialogue with prior and contemporary work. The dialogue presupposes other statements or expressions, subsumes them, and advances the dialogue by adding interpretations, commentaries, responses to what has already been stated.
The artworks have no meaning outside the ongoing system of meaning which is like a matrix of relationships or network.
A work by Judd is neither AbEx, Pop, or the inherited art system, but presupposes them all by intentionally rejecting them and reducing art to independent objects.
The relationships across traditions or prior art positions are not "influences" but grounds or preconditions for meaning or intelligibility in the new art per se."
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I doubt that Mortensen had any intention of producing realism any more than the commercial film industry did, but rather, a highly elaborated fantasy. I admire the work of Rodchenko greatly, and yes, there are strong realistic elements there, but he was also producing work that could be useful to the state in its public relations products. Had he not done so, we would not be likely to know about him at all today; he most likely would have been neutralized by death or isolation. I don't think it would have been possible, or wise, to be fully committed to realism in Stalin's world. To his great credit, Rodchenko was able to survive. Modotti had no such constraints. Even so, the ultimate constraint was applied to her "in the end".
So often, critical material takes a very generalized perspective. The quote you present is dealing with such a broad brush that I really can't place Adams, etc. in it without forcibly attaching them to one of the three major movements that are identified. I find that possible, though messy and difficult. Especially with Adams, who, in rejecting the pictorialist tradition and its parent traditions in painting, nonetheless embraced the vision of the romanticism of the 19th C. Yes, there was an obvious and successful effort to "cancel" Mortensen, who represented a previous tradition borrowed from painting. What is hard for me is fitting the Adams' attitudes into a neat box and harder still to see his colleagues that way. I can't even see the AbEx folks as a cleanly defined movement, and really can't see any reason to try. Nobody I know really fits the theory; I suppose M W might be the closest to it. It would require a major "shoe horn".
I live in a small local area that has produced quite a few major artists, including one who most likely did actually "influence" Pollack: Mark Tobey. If that is true, it would be a counter example; the theoretician presumes that "influences" would come down from the top, from history, so to speak, not from below, from a backwater isolated community out on the frontier as Seattle was then. I teach in a small college art department in a formerly and still rural valley (changing pretty fast now), and it isn't the first school I've been at or been to. I have known hundreds of artists. I have a lot of difficulty in thinking of anyone at all I've ever known who can be placed within any of these movements, though some, even many, even myself, have intersected these attitudes in various significant ways. But who do I know who hasn't done it all, not just one or another? I don't think anyone. The theoretician seems to believe that art movements progress through reaction. I see that as somewhat simplistic.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that we aren't chips on the surface of monoliths, but a vast collective of divergent individuals who share some very basic common interests. This doesn't preclude the possibility that we might hate each others' work, love it, be totally indifferent to it, agree or disagree with it, etc. It is very hard for any theory to do much when there are a million or maybe many more individual samples, each doing its own thing.
Now, yes there are "major movements" in the art world today. So often, it seems to me, the work produced by those who practice within their bounds is the most devoid of life. Well, that's my perception, and I don't expect yourself or anyone else to agree with it. I find the vast swarm of individuals far more interesting. Not to say that really neat stuff doesn't appear in the art mags. Sometimes it does. A lot of really boring stuff does, too.
I usually don't have much time to sit and write my thoughts down , I know that collage professor would have a lot of free time this time of year to spend it as they see fit As some here know I sell cars for a living , photography is very much a release for me ...We say stop talking and go take some pictures!!!
BUT
There are times when as a human being I have to put myself and my work into prospective and ask WHY?
May be a different thread should be started in respect of a social responsibility of an artist.
It seem like the divide between pictorial camp and realistic one is rooted very deeply into artist's reaction toward a social/economic changes that are such an integral part of everybody's lives.
Being sensitive to one's environment is how, in my mind, the work manifests itself , whether conscious of it or not an artist decides to escapes reality by producing abstracts work that is removed from what is an everyday realism
I find myself in a Dostoevsky's inner debate here.
In times of ugliness beautiful abstract dreamy work allows an escape.I stare for a longest time at one of Emil's photographs that he just posted , a nude with a flower in place of a face , is it real ?, is it a dream ? But I can not take my eyes off it , it makes me forget that one of my friends innocent, caring, honest and smiling 19 year old son that went to Iraq as a Marine came back a fully grown inner invalid , if he saw this photograph I think that he would forget his issues as well...
Gritty imperfections combined with beauty darkly printed with dark hues and shadows somehow hit the very core of my being. Those images feel different from what Bullock did combining old pealing walls or old rustic buildings with a smooth beautiful skin...or his daughter's white body laying in the midst of a deep forest and yet it is the same "uncertain reality", I got to say that just thinking out loud here makes me think that Adams was a pictorialist, his images are painterly beautiful , whether he wants to admit it or not , his reproduction of reality is rooted in the school of having every minute detail perfect which is a dream in it's own right...
All in all if you are sensitive to feel and you have an outlet to release that feeling , it has to come out in one form or the other, if it falls in one category or the other should not be a fore , but an aft...
I think I am done for a while with thinking out loud
Y'know, if I were going to do photography that would satisfy a need to be responsible, I would have to dedicate my whole act to promoting social justice or something like that. This would require shooting in dangerous places and running fast frequently while carrying gear. I've done a fair amount of that kind of work, though, granted, Sunset Magazine was hardly concerned with ideas that were of vital importance to the greater humanity, but it did a good job of helping people live more satisfying lives. Since I'm 65 years old now, I really don't think I would be wise to do that sort of work now; I'm sure it would kill me.
Since I've fought my battles even to the extent of initiating a legal battle with the State of Washington for whistleblower harrassment, which cost me dearly in time and income, I think I'd rather, at this point, do what I can to make others aware through whatever means I have available, and send what little money I can to organizations that are better situated to achieve results. So, why not just enjoy the practice of photography in ways that are personally satisfying? Perhaps, in that way, doing work that I myself can't take my eyes away from, I may bring some greater satisfaction, hopefully greater awareness as well, to some other person, or maybe even two or three. Perhaps I can show someone how to see better than they would have been able had I not made that effort.
Now, for a younger person, this might not be enough, and I would certainly support anyone's effort to use the medium in ways that seem appropriate and compelling.
I've already fought the Dostoyevskian battles, and have, most probably, lost! I fought them in and around photography, but not entirely there. For me, photography was something I had to do, and it was of supreme importance. I was called.
I find it hard, within the context of what this thread was when it started and adding this element of responsibility, to see Mort's work as responsible in any way, and have difficulty with AA, too, but St. Ansel's work did greatly help bring the environmental issues into the public eye, through glorifying nature (perhaps through means that fictionalized to some extent) and through his writings and teaching. That has been helpful, even though the work didn't show the whole picture, including the dark side. But it was most likely others' work to show that.
I have to admit that I think there are a lot of things that are far more important than photography. Human life. The environment. Social justice. Understanding between interest groups of various stripes, racial, ethnic, religious. And most of all, promoting the need for seeing one's self extra-contextually, from a point of view that is superior to ones own context and the contexts, perhaps competing, that others occupy. Only through that kind of awareness and understanding can the other important things be accomplished. Photography in itself is a worthy way to occupy one's self, but if that is all there is, life would be poor indeed.
Anybody still out there besides Ilya and me?
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I know that collage professor would have a lot of free time this time of year to spend it as they see fit
Not so. I wish. Some of us are not well paid, having that incredibly honorable title "Adjunct" and have to work through the summer.
But the truth is, I don't work much anymore anyway. I finally learned that the less I teach the better they like it and the more they learn. I just try to be real, which may have been hard at one time, until I quit caring about what others (like the administrators) think of me! It constantly amazes me they haven't kicked me out of there!
I was just reading Karsh's biography today and it reminded me of his trip to London in 1943 wherein he took the portraits of all the leaders of the war effort and Bill Brandt was taking the pictures of the East enders who were the ones paying the immediate price. Whose pictures were more valid?
I was just reading Karsh's biography today and it reminded me of his trip to London in 1943 wherein he took the portraits of all the leaders of the war effort and Bill Brandt was taking the pictures of the East enders who were the ones paying the immediate price. Whose pictures were more valid?
Both are equally valid. Either one on their own would have lost the war.
As some here know I sell cars for a living , photography is very much a release for me ...We say stop talking and go take some pictures!!!
Linear Mode
