This first post has a "soft" deadline of Thursday, Sept. 1. That's because it will take a while for everyone to get on the blog, learn to use it, etc. After that, the deadlines will be firm. You should have your responses posted by noon on the day they're due at the very latest so that everyone has a chance to read them before class. Each post should be at least 250 words, which is about the length of a one-page, typed, double-spaced paper.
Directions: go to the Smithsonian Photography Initiative web site (link to the right), and click of the "Photography Changes What We Do" section. Read the first entry by artist John Baldessari. What do you think of the way Baldessari uses photography in his art? What would you call his work--photography, painting, drawing, or what? Does it matter? Next, refer to a photographer that you've seen in class and discuss how s/he crosses boundaries between photography and painting.
The class Power Points are on Blackboard, in one folder under "Content."
Baldessari’s article was very interesting; his experience with photography in a way parallels the transformation of photography from a simple tool to an art form in and of itself. In the beginning of his career as an artist Baldessari used photography as a simple tool to transfer images with the intent of painting them later. However, he like the original photographers soon realized the potential that the medium had as an art form. It could not only capture an image of the real world but also capture a bit of the artist imagination, thus a simple photo could become art. The photographers that Baldessari’s work most reminds me of are those of Henry Peach Robinson and Lady Filmer. In their respective work they sought to go beyond the rectangle of the traditional photo and create a new style out of a combination of photography and painting. Like them Beldessari seeks to go beyond the tradition of a single medium. In the mixed medium of these artists the two styles are presented as equals, they are both integral parts of the piece. I think that Beldessari’s, like Filmer’s and Robinson’s, work is neither painting nor photograph. If we call it only a painting or a photograph then we are limiting its potential as a complete and unique work of art. Consider the work entitled “Frames and Ribbon”, it’s a combination of both mediums, neither of which is dominant. Instead they complement each other. It is similar to the Lady Filmer’s “Untitled” found on page 93 of the book. It is like “Frames and Ribbon” in that neither the painting nor the photograph is the focus; instead together they created a whole piece of art out of disparate images. In these pieces they challenge the conventions of both mediums and create a new piece that cannot be neatly sorted into any category.
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ReplyDeleteThe article by Baldessari was interesting because he describes how he fit photography into his own idea of what art was instead of trying to fit it into others ideas of what art was. He also took it a step further by imagining art in a nonconventional sense like when he talks about how the shape of the canvas does not have to necessarily be uniform. Though it is common practice to have rectangular canvases using something else does not make it any less art, in fact it does quite the opposite. I would call his work photography however it is important to note that there are many different types of photography and what Baldessari does is artistic photography in which he alters the photos as opposed to commercial photography or some other kind. However I don’t think that it makes much sense to try and sort the work that he does by painting drawing or photography because it is art and one of the most important parts of art is that it is not necessarily confined to one particular category. One photographer that we saw in class that crosses boundaries between photography and painting is Henry Peach Robinson because he creates photographs that are meant to elicit the same reactions that paintings do. Robinson creates a scene exactly as a painter would arrange a painting and creates art in a traditional context but with a revolutionary technology. Also in the book it has some of Robinsons work that is a mixture of drawing and photography where he uses the two in conjunction.