Does a photo need to say something?

[WillCAD]

Wow, I go away for a few days and other people join in the debate!

Lots to talk about here. Okay, first of all, not to be picky or anything, but ronnoco, my name is not "Wildcard", it's WillCAD. That's Will with two L's, capital-C, Capital-A, and capital-D, all one word.

First of all, being picky, that is Ronnoco with 2 ns. and no I am not confusing commercial with 2 ms success and winning contests with whether a photo is art or not. You weren't reading carefully. I indicated several times that commercial success and winning contests were just two examples of recognition that suggested quality work and possibly art. Other examples include getting published in a quality magazine or newspaper with a large readership, being asked to present at a conference of professionals, being asked to teach a course in photography, winning a photo contract based on your portfolio versus several others who present theirs, etc. There are all kinds of examples, that recognize quality photo work as a possible art form on a less subjective basis than personal delusion.

Once again you are passing off subjective criteria as being an objective measure of what is or is not art. What if someone is published in a magazine of mediocre quality? Or a newspaper with only a small readership? What if you are asked to present at a conference of serious amateurs? What if people constantly ask you informally for photographic advice (isn't that a form of teaching, just not in an accredited classroom with tenure and a reserved parking space)? What if your portfolio is just as good as the winner of the contract but he underbid you?

All of these things are subjective criteria, not objective, because circumstances and personal preferences can easily change the outcomes of any of them.

Oh, "the conscious use of skill" and skill in a creative media is a combination of talent and learned technique. Creative imagination is where composition, centre of interest and impact come into a work. "Aesthetic" is a judgement based on technique and composition but a judgement in photography based on more objective criteria than simply personal delusion.

My point is that the best in painting, sculpture, design, photography, computer animation etc. is recognized as art by almost everyone. Therefore there must be certain criteria that most people would seem to agree on that make a work art, whether they understand and can express those criteria or not.

Everyone for example would agree that Leonardo Da Vinci had skill and creative imagination and used it to create aesthetic works. His work also withstood the test of time. He is therefore an artist. The same is certainly not true for certain modern "artists" whose works were not recognized by almost everyone and have not survived. Therefore they were not artists.

Time for another dictionary definition: aesthetic
1 a : of, relating to, or dealing with aesthetics or the beautiful <aesthetic theories> b : ARTISTIC aesthetic value> c : pleasing in appearance : ATTRACTIVE aesthetic features -- Mark Mehler>
2 : appreciative of, responsive to, or zealous about the beautiful; also : responsive to or appreciative of what is pleasurable to the senses

So "aesthetic" is all about the beautiful - and beauty is one of the most subjective concepts in all of Human history. Every individual has his or her own personal conception of beauty, making it a completely unquantifiable quality - which throws your idea of "objective criteria" right out the window. There can be no objective criteria defining something that is inherently subjective.

And the argument that work which "survives" is art, and anything that is lost is not art is also hooey. You know as well as I do that there have been great and powerful works of art created by every Human civilization from the day that a guy first smeared charcoal and blood on a cave wall, yet the vast majority of those works is destroyed by changing tastes, shifting cultural mores, and plain old time. Works of art which are today considered some of the greatest in history only date back 1000 years or less, while Humanity has been producing art in one form or another for at least 30,000 years.

Well, Wildcard, you asked for a quoted definition. As a Canadian I work in French as much as English.

To quote from Larousse:

"art...manière de faire une chose selon les règles. Communication de l'expression d'un idéal de beauté dans les oeuvres humaines, habilité."

Salut!

Gracias. Yo no habla la Frances. Could you provide a translation into English for us poor Americans (we speak English and Spanish in the US, instead of English and French as you do in Canada).

Key words: "I don't believe"

While I agree with a lot of what Ronnoco has to say on art, I also think it's a very - ahemm - subjective subject. To some extent, I believe you're all correct. And I also think you're all speaking at cross-purposes. Art can be percieved and defined in many ways. I usually consider there to be "ART" and art. "ART," communicates more broadly and at a deeper level. However, art, is something we can all do. When your art starts to speak to more people and on a more profound level, it starts moving up the ladder towards being ART. I won't presume to say where the line is. But I do believe there is higher art and lower art.

Your humble mediator...

That's sort of what I have been saying all along, John. I also believe that there are many levels of art (more than just the two you mentioned). I believe that something can still be art even if it's crappy art by my standards, and work becomes better and better by the subjective and shifting standards of society it becomes higher and higher art, with works at the pinnacle of a form like DaVinci and Monet and Shakespeare becoming what you termed "ART" (which I would simply call "high art.")

Ronnoco's contention is that anything that doesn’t' qualify as high art is simply not art, a argument that I find absurd, because the idea of what constitutes high art changes as Human society evolves, cultures rise and fall, and fashions and fads come and go.