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#11
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Is photography art?
NJH wrote in message news "William Graham" wrote in message news:Kb5db.437471$cF.139775@rwcrnsc53... NJH wrote in message ... "William Graham" wrote in message news:b4Ocb.580196$Ho3.109288@sccrnsc03... NJH wrote in message ... "William Graham" wrote in message et... John Stafford wrote in message ... William Graham wrote: I spent my working life operating a very complicated high energy physics research machine. I was part of a crew of 15 or 20 people who did this around the clock for a living. No two of us operated the machine the same way, with the same finesse and ultimate results. It was a complex, and primarily decision making process. There is no question in my mind as to its being an art. Oh fer Gawd's sake... It's not up to you whether it was Art. So it was complex! Big deal! Is everything that is complex and done in a unique, demanding way Art? I think not! Get over it. Anything that two people do differently, and it can be said that one does it better than the other, is art. [ . . . ] What utter gibberish. If you keep pounding the word "art" into some sort of shapeless mush such that it no longer has any meaning, what word will you invent to mean what "art" used to mean? Or are you so insensible to the concept of real art that you just don't think it's important to have a word for it? Neil Answer the question I posed above about the end product being the lone consideration in the definition, or is the process important....... The process is important. Also the question about the four or five common disciplines....(Painting, sculpture, music, dance, and literature) Does art have to be restricted to these five? No. Neil Ah....Then where do you draw the line? - I don't draw any line. Operating a high-energy physics machine can't be art, in your opinion, I've said this repeatedly: ANY activity requiring a modicum of skill may be an art in some sense, but not in the sense of fine art. but art can stray from the above mentioned five disciplines......So what makes any particular activity art, in your opinion? Art in any sense at all, or fine art? Neil OK....I'll bite....fine art, if you insist. Somewhere, presumably at some level of difficulty to learn, you separate fine art from the other arts, or crafts, if you prefer......I'd just like to know where you draw the line. How difficult does the medium have to be to learn, before you will give it the distinction of, "fine art"? There are people who, (for example) build 1/100 scale ships like the Queen Mary out of toothpicks......Not glued together, mind you....But interlocked together by carving little hooks on the ends, or sides.....Is this fine art? Or, how about Iranian families who spend a whole year weaving one carpet, which they sell for several thousand dollars, (amounting to their annual income). Or the mathematician at Duke who spent over 5 years proving that it only takes 4 colors to color any map in existence. (there can exist no arrangement of country borders that require more than 4 colors to separate on a map) And there are many other examples of projects/disciplines that take years and years of practice and study to learn. Can you quantify the difficulty of the medium that is required before you are willing to give it the distinction of, "a fine art"? |
#12
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Is photography art?
"William Graham" wrote in message news:Ocndb.600021$YN5.443639@sccrnsc01... NJH wrote in message news "William Graham" wrote in message news:Kb5db.437471$cF.139775@rwcrnsc53... NJH wrote in message ... "William Graham" wrote in message news:b4Ocb.580196$Ho3.109288@sccrnsc03... NJH wrote in message ... "William Graham" wrote in message et... John Stafford wrote in message ... William Graham wrote: I spent my working life operating a very complicated high energy physics research machine. I was part of a crew of 15 or 20 people who did this around the clock for a living. No two of us operated the machine the same way, with the same finesse and ultimate results. It was a complex, and primarily decision making process. There is no question in my mind as to its being an art. Oh fer Gawd's sake... It's not up to you whether it was Art. So it was complex! Big deal! Is everything that is complex and done in a unique, demanding way Art? I think not! Get over it. Anything that two people do differently, and it can be said that one does it better than the other, is art. [ . . . ] What utter gibberish. If you keep pounding the word "art" into some sort of shapeless mush such that it no longer has any meaning, what word will you invent to mean what "art" used to mean? Or are you so insensible to the concept of real art that you just don't think it's important to have a word for it? Neil Answer the question I posed above about the end product being the lone consideration in the definition, or is the process important....... The process is important. Also the question about the four or five common disciplines....(Painting, sculpture, music, dance, and literature) Does art have to be restricted to these five? No. Neil Ah....Then where do you draw the line? - I don't draw any line. Operating a high-energy physics machine can't be art, in your opinion, I've said this repeatedly: ANY activity requiring a modicum of skill may be an art in some sense, but not in the sense of fine art. but art can stray from the above mentioned five disciplines......So what makes any particular activity art, in your opinion? Art in any sense at all, or fine art? Neil OK....I'll bite....fine art, if you insist. Somewhere, presumably at some level of difficulty to learn, you separate fine art from the other arts, or crafts, if you prefer......I'd just like to know where you draw the line. How difficult does the medium have to be to learn, before you will give it the distinction of, "fine art"? There are people who, (for example) build 1/100 scale ships like the Queen Mary out of toothpicks......Not glued together, mind you....But interlocked together by carving little hooks on the ends, or sides.....Is this fine art? Or, how about Iranian families who spend a whole year weaving one carpet, which they sell for several thousand dollars, (amounting to their annual income). Or the mathematician at Duke who spent over 5 years proving that it only takes 4 colors to color any map in existence. (there can exist no arrangement of country borders that require more than 4 colors to separate on a map) And there are many other examples of projects/disciplines that take years and years of practice and study to learn. Can you quantify the difficulty of the medium that is required before you are willing to give it the distinction of, "a fine art"? The fine arts as far as I'm concerned are pretty much limited to the traditional ones: painting, drawing, sculpture and related procedures as far as image-producing stuff is concerned. Cinematography can surely be an art, and a very important one, but I can't see it as a fine art. "Art photography" makes pretensions to being a fine art and to some degree is accepted as such, which makes its categorization more difficult. But Westons and Adamses will never be regarded as Rembrandts and Michelangelos, and will never even come close. Other photos, including lovely images of sunsets, pretty flowers, etc. that are sometimes presented as "art" by the people who took them, are not art, fine or otherwise. Neil |
#13
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Is photography art?
"NJH" wrote in
m: "Art photography" makes pretensions to being a fine art and to some degree is accepted as such, which makes its categorization more difficult. But Westons and Adamses will never be regarded as Rembrandts and Michelangelos, and will never even come close. I avoid the use of the art/not art categorization and I don't find the concept of "fine" art to help matters, but I would agree with you on this point: that Rembrandt and Michelangelo achieved more, and are justly more famous. And the reason a photographer doing straight photography like Ansel Adams, even with great craft and care (the zone system), cannot achieve as much, is that they do not have the same degree of control over their medium - specifically, the point-by-point control exercised by a painter with his brush and a sculptor with his chisel. At the same time, this very limitation is what makes photography worthwhile. Not because it lets us be lazy. But because a photograph is a mechanical reproduction rather than a point-by-point-painted (or chiselled) work. Its mechanization is what limits the photographer's control. (The photographer can, of course, choose to exercise point by point control, but the more control he exercises the less we can trust the image as "a photograph".) This same mechanization is what makes the image "a photograph", and we value photographs over paintings in certain contexts, because their mechanization makes them a more direct, unfiltered impression of reality. History, at least in my own mind, is divided into two periods: those times before photography, and those times after photography. We in a sense can really see how things were in any period that had photography; but we can only infer, from paintings, how things were in pre-photographic times. I have in a sense looked upon Lincoln with my own eyes, because I saw his photograph; but I have never seen Washington, because I have seen only painted impressions of him. |
#14
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Is photography art?
NJH wrote in message m... "William Graham" wrote in message news:Ocndb.600021$YN5.443639@sccrnsc01... NJH wrote in message news "William Graham" wrote in message news:Kb5db.437471$cF.139775@rwcrnsc53... NJH wrote in message ... "William Graham" wrote in message news:b4Ocb.580196$Ho3.109288@sccrnsc03... NJH wrote in message ... "William Graham" wrote in message et... John Stafford wrote in message ... William Graham wrote: I spent my working life operating a very complicated high energy physics research machine. I was part of a crew of 15 or 20 people who did this around the clock for a living. No two of us operated the machine the same way, with the same finesse and ultimate results. It was a complex, and primarily decision making process. There is no question in my mind as to its being an art. Oh fer Gawd's sake... It's not up to you whether it was Art. So it was complex! Big deal! Is everything that is complex and done in a unique, demanding way Art? I think not! Get over it. Anything that two people do differently, and it can be said that one does it better than the other, is art. [ . . . ] What utter gibberish. If you keep pounding the word "art" into some sort of shapeless mush such that it no longer has any meaning, what word will you invent to mean what "art" used to mean? Or are you so insensible to the concept of real art that you just don't think it's important to have a word for it? Neil Answer the question I posed above about the end product being the lone consideration in the definition, or is the process important....... The process is important. Also the question about the four or five common disciplines....(Painting, sculpture, music, dance, and literature) Does art have to be restricted to these five? No. Neil Ah....Then where do you draw the line? - I don't draw any line. Operating a high-energy physics machine can't be art, in your opinion, I've said this repeatedly: ANY activity requiring a modicum of skill may be an art in some sense, but not in the sense of fine art. but art can stray from the above mentioned five disciplines......So what makes any particular activity art, in your opinion? Art in any sense at all, or fine art? Neil OK....I'll bite....fine art, if you insist. Somewhere, presumably at some level of difficulty to learn, you separate fine art from the other arts, or crafts, if you prefer......I'd just like to know where you draw the line. How difficult does the medium have to be to learn, before you will give it the distinction of, "fine art"? There are people who, (for example) build 1/100 scale ships like the Queen Mary out of toothpicks......Not glued together, mind you....But interlocked together by carving little hooks on the ends, or sides.....Is this fine art? Or, how about Iranian families who spend a whole year weaving one carpet, which they sell for several thousand dollars, (amounting to their annual income). Or the mathematician at Duke who spent over 5 years proving that it only takes 4 colors to color any map in existence. (there can exist no arrangement of country borders that require more than 4 colors to separate on a map) And there are many other examples of projects/disciplines that take years and years of practice and study to learn. Can you quantify the difficulty of the medium that is required before you are willing to give it the distinction of, "a fine art"? The fine arts as far as I'm concerned are pretty much limited to the traditional ones: painting, drawing, sculpture and related procedures as far as image-producing stuff is concerned. Cinematography can surely be an art, and a very important one, but I can't see it as a fine art. "Art photography" makes pretensions to being a fine art and to some degree is accepted as such, which makes its categorization more difficult. But Westons and Adamses will never be regarded as Rembrandts and Michelangelos, and will never even come close. Other photos, including lovely images of sunsets, pretty flowers, etc. that are sometimes presented as "art" by the people who took them, are not art, fine or otherwise. Neil Well, then. at best, you have to admit that the definition is, "fuzzy"......As a mathematician (my degree) I tend to think in absolutes....I don't like fuzzy definitions, although I have to admit that they exist....But I always try to bring any discussion to its obvious extremes.....Sort of, (in mathematical terms) investigate the end points, or inflections of the equation.....I instinctively reject the idea that there are only five fine arts, for example......I think that the neurosurgeon that you mentioned above, will sometimes create wonderful artistic work inside of the heads of some of his patients.....It's just a pity that we can't see it, or know about it, because we weren't there to see it done, and/or haven't got the capacity to understand it if we were......I guess what I am trying to say is that the world is too complex a place to be able to pin the definition of "fine art" on only 5 or 6 disciplines...... |
#15
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Is photography art?
Constantinople wrote in message ... "NJH" wrote in m: "Art photography" makes pretensions to being a fine art and to some degree is accepted as such, which makes its categorization more difficult. But Westons and Adamses will never be regarded as Rembrandts and Michelangelos, and will never even come close. I avoid the use of the art/not art categorization and I don't find the concept of "fine" art to help matters, but I would agree with you on this point: that Rembrandt and Michelangelo achieved more, and are justly more famous. And the reason a photographer doing straight photography like Ansel Adams, even with great craft and care (the zone system), cannot achieve as much, is that they do not have the same degree of control over their medium - specifically, the point-by-point control exercised by a painter with his brush and a sculptor with his chisel. At the same time, this very limitation is what makes photography worthwhile. Not because it lets us be lazy. But because a photograph is a mechanical reproduction rather than a point-by-point-painted (or chiselled) work. Its mechanization is what limits the photographer's control. (The photographer can, of course, choose to exercise point by point control, but the more control he exercises the less we can trust the image as "a photograph".) This same mechanization is what makes the image "a photograph", and we value photographs over paintings in certain contexts, because their mechanization makes them a more direct, unfiltered impression of reality. History, at least in my own mind, is divided into two periods: those times before photography, and those times after photography. We in a sense can really see how things were in any period that had photography; but we can only infer, from paintings, how things were in pre-photographic times. I have in a sense looked upon Lincoln with my own eyes, because I saw his photograph; but I have never seen Washington, because I have seen only painted impressions of him. This is what makes painters like Van Eyke so valuable....The guy painted like a camera, so you can really see what people and things looked like back in those days....(1600's) |
#16
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Is photography art?
"William Graham" wrote in message
news:Kb5db.437471$cF.139775@rwcrnsc53... Ah....Then where do you draw the line? - Operating a high-energy physics machine can't be art, in your opinion, but art can stray from the above mentioned five disciplines......So what makes any particular activity art, in your opinion? You can express anything you like and call it art, but whether is is, in fact art will be decided by historians, society, the marketplace of ideas. |
#17
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Is photography art?
"jjs" wrote in message ... "William Graham" wrote in message news:Kb5db.437471$cF.139775@rwcrnsc53... Ah....Then where do you draw the line? - Operating a high-energy physics machine can't be art, in your opinion, but art can stray from the above mentioned five disciplines......So what makes any particular activity art, in your opinion? You can express anything you like and call it art, but whether is is, in fact art will be decided by historians, society, the marketplace of ideas. You can debate this topic forever but the Encyclopedia Brittanica does consider photography an art. Here is the link: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article...&query=art&ct= |
#18
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Is photography art?
"William Graham" wrote in message news:AlKdb.621662$o%2.289165@sccrnsc02...
This is what makes painters like Van Eyke so valuable....The guy painted like a camera, so you can really see what people and things looked like back in those days....(1600's) I saw an interesting book by David Hockney some time ago. His argument is that many of the famous "photo-like" painters used semi-photographic means to paint, spefically, camera obscura. Even though they painted by hand, they were assisted by mechanisms like the camera obscura. While we have some evidence of some painters doing this, Hockney's assertion, if I understand correctly, was that the use of mechanical assists was more widespread than had been previously thought. So in a way, photography dates back to the 16th century, when the camera obscura was invented (so I read). Here's the Amazon.com link (hope it works; otherwise search for Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters by David Hockney) : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...648166-7732642 However, Van Eyck, while he had a great eye for detail (an example of this being the reflection in the convex mirror of the Arnolfini Marriage), was 15th century and so comes before the camera obscura. |
#19
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Is photography art?
"Raymond Kasprzak" wrote in message ... You can debate this topic forever but the Encyclopedia Brittanica does consider photography an art. Here is the link: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article...&query=art&ct= Citing the Encyclopedia or Dictionary is the last resort of a desperado. |
#20
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Is photography art?
"Constantinople" wrote in message m... "William Graham" wrote in message news:AlKdb.621662$o%2.289165@sccrnsc02... This is what makes painters like Van Eyke so valuable....The guy painted like a camera, so you can really see what people and things looked like back in those days....(1600's) I saw an interesting book by David Hockney some time ago. His argument is that many of the famous "photo-like" painters used semi-photographic means to paint, spefically, camera obscura. Even though they painted by hand, they were assisted by mechanisms like the camera obscura. While we have some evidence of some painters doing this, Hockney's assertion, if I understand correctly, was that the use of mechanical assists was more widespread than had been previously thought. So in a way, photography dates back to the 16th century, when the camera obscura was invented (so I read). Affirmed as well by Beumont Newhall as quoted: "In The History of Photography, Beumont Newhall notes that Giovanni Battista della Porta mentioned the camera obscura in his book Natural Magic as early as 1553 (9). " |
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