[Leica] Is photography art?

[steve.barbour at gmail.com (Steve Barbour)]

> On Apr 5, 2015, at 4:42 PM, George Lottermoser <george.imagist at 
> icloud.com> wrote:
> 
> Of course blue chip artists like James Rosenquist, Jasper Johns, and 
> hundreds of others fly in the face of many of your "claims" to a hierarchy 
> of Fine Art. Not to mention the fact that Rembrandt, Durer and hundreds of 
> other "Classical Masters" were print makers as well as painters and 
> draftsmen; who earned their keep as portraitists to royalty; and 
> illustrators for the church. And our most renowned sculptors also cast 
> multiple bronze sculptures as well as totally utilitarian doors, gates, 
> portrait busts, etc.. And the exceptions to your formulaic assessment go 
> on and on and on through the history of "Fine Art" going all the way back 
> to the cave illustrations and the Venus of Willendorf. 
> 
> We can off our gratitude to the Fine Artists who make the Fine Art, using 
> any and all media available to them, in every conceivable combination.
> 
> Even as the critics and curators attempt to categorize, pigeon hole and 
> understand what they're looking at, reading, and listening to.
> 
> a note off the iPad, George
> 
> On Mar 23, 2015, at 9:32 AM, Larry Zeitlin via LUG <lug at 
> leica-users.org> wrote:
> 
>>   Is photography art? I depends on whom you ask. I serve as an art critic 
>> for several New York state regional newspapers and have plenty of 
>> opportunity to visit art and photo shows. Artists, critics and show 
>> curators have an implicit hierarchy of visual art roughly arranged in 
>> inverse relationship to the utility of the effort. Fine art is art with 
>> no apparent purpose except its own being. It is nice to look at but no 
>> one NEEDS fine art. At the top of the list are the painters who work in 
>> oils, next are the watercolorists followed by those who work in collage. 
>> Near the bottom of the list are etchers, printmakers and photographers. 
>> Indeed some curators refuse to let photographs be exhibited in art shows 
>> at all, consigning them to the purdah of photo shows.
>>   Lower on the list, in a separate category, are the applied arts. This 
>> is "art" with some functional use. The work of most photographic 
>> professionals, especially those whose pictures adorn magazines, 
>> advertisements, newspapers, etc. fall into this category. Architects are 
>> applied artists too, differentiated from sculptors because buildings have 
>> a use apart from being merely decorative. Commercial artists are clearly 
>> applied artists no matter how good their work. I know whereof I speak. I 
>> live in Westchester near the border of Connecticuit and advertising and 
>> commercial painters and photographers are as common as dust mites.
>>   At the bottom of the list are craftsmen. Crafts are artistic creations 
>> with a utilitarian purpose. It takes just as much skill to design a 
>> Barcelona chair or fabricate a fine pair of shoes as it does to make a 
>> painting except it is not considered "art." Most art venues will simply 
>> not exhibit crafts except during the holiday season where they hope to 
>> make a lot of sales.?
>>   For the last 50 years I have had a grasshopper weathervane fastened to 
>> the chimney of my house. It is a beautifully crafted sculpture of 
>> hammered copper made by the descendants of the very craftsmen who made 
>> the similar weathervane that adorns Faneuil Hall in Boston. If polished 
>> and exhibited as art it would be accepted by almost any art show but as a 
>> weathervane it has a function. It is not considered art but craft. I.e 
>> not acceptable as "art."
>>   The curse of photography (and etching and printmaking) is its 
>> reproducibility. Copies of the work can be made virtually identical to 
>> the original except not bearing the fingerprint of the artist. This caps 
>> the appreciation value of the original. There is a financial virtue in 
>> destroying the plates or negatives. While some photos can sell for a lot 
>> of money, the highest price paid for a painting is 60 times the highest 
>> price paid for a photograph. See Wikipedia for comparative pricing.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_photographs
>>   Those of you that consider photographs fine art remember that amongst 
>> artists it is considered a pretend art. A pseudo mechanical (OK digital) 
>> process of capturiing an image. At best it is an applied art.
>>   All of which reminds me of that old joke:?A young man buys himself a 
>> boat and a Captain's hat. He says to his mother, "Now I'm a Captain."
>>   His mother responds "You call yourself a Captain and I call you a 
>> Captain. But do real Captains call you a Captain??


what is a ?real Captain??


we taught a course here at the U called ?Photography as Art, it was terrific.


We came up with the notion, the conclusion that Art is whatever the maker ie 
the artist,  refers to as Art.


n?est-ce pas?


steve


>> 
>> 
>>   Larry Z (a highly educated and reasonable photographer)
>> 
>> 
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