Arthur, in the comments to this post, wrote
This is so, I think, because great (or even merely good) art is not primarily concerned with presenting literal truth. (This is more the role of science and philosophy). Rather, the role of art is to present compelling fictions. By “fiction”, I don’t mean necessarily a conventional narrative. I mean that works of art create their own worlds, with their own rules.
Robert Adams expressed some thoughts that I think are related to this in his book Beauty in Photography. First thought – “The job of the photographer, in my view, is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope.” And the second thought is “There is always a subjective aspect in landscape art, something in the picture that tells us as much about who is behind the camera as about what is in front of it.”
It seems to me that quite a lot of landscape art (painting, sketching, photography) is not so much about presenting a compelling fictional world, separate from reality. It’s about presenting a glimpse into how that reality is seen by the artist.
I’m not sure if that’s agreeing with Arthur or not. But I think Arthur’s got a fascinating insight, and I’d sure like to see more discussion along those lines.
(photograph above not particularly relevant to this discussion. I just think the blog looks nicer with images embedded in the stream of posts.)
It seems to me that quite a lot of landscape art (painting, sketching, photography) is not so much about presenting a compelling fictional world, separate from reality. It’s about presenting a glimpse into how that reality is seen by the artist.
It looks like we do agree, at least so far.
Works of art are part of a larger reality but they’re also self-contained to some extent. Even the most abstract piece of art relates to something outside through forms and colors. Landscape photography or painting isn’t the same as landscape, but it does relate to our experience of landscape. A totally self-contained piece of art would literally be impossible to understand, since we would have the cultural experience or the biological mechanisms to do so. That said, some works of art might be more self-contained than others.
Whether a work of art relates directly to something outside itself (like landscape photography), or seems more self-contained (like some abstract painting), I think “creating compelling fictions” still describes what an artist does. I’m referring to Arthur’s response to my earlier comment, where he says “By ‘fiction’, I don’t mean necessarily a conventional narrative. I mean that works of art create their own worlds, with their own rules.”
Even if what the artist shows us is a glimpse into how reality is seen by the artist, the image itself still has to stand on its own. It is its own world, and has its own rules, even if they are “this, but not that”, “framed this way”, “b&w, not color”, “from this point of view”, etc.
A question about the amazing photograph not particularly relevant to this discussion:
How did you create the panoramic view? Cropping, stitching?
I had a professor who once said “art is something that becomes something else.”
This still makes me feel like a dog chasing its own tail, but it also makes some sense given this conversation. Any thoughts?
Paul,
You can’t welsh out on us with that parenthetical remark! Surely your image is not uncharacteristic of “much of landscape art.” So how do I imagine a viewer sees it?
It seems to me you’re showing us (and implicitly inviting us to enter) a simple, peaceful, graceful world. The viewer (at least in my case) tries to imagine how it would feel standing in front of that landscape. We try it on for size and see how it fits and feels. In other words, we’re entering into our own imagined world which is at best an approximation to the real world (colored, by the way) of hills and clouds. Since the image is “realistic” we expect the usual conventions or “rules” (Arthur’s term) to apply. So the clouds will drift along, perhaps a light breeze would ruffle our hair, etc.
This is a first level, and how much further we go depends on inclination and sophistication. We might contemplate the musical curves in a purely aesthetic way, or think about what is implied about how humans have worked this land. I suspect many (depends on the audience) do not go so far as to think about who was behind the camera. If we do, we most likely assume you not only like and care about landscapes such as the one depicted, but probably experienced feelings like those we felt in our constructed world. Again, especially if we know your work, this could be carried much further.
I don’t think you and Arthur disagree. I think it would be naive to deny the fictional world and assume some kind of direct transmission to the viewer’s brain. And it would be a shame if no viewers tried to see beyond their own world to what another person has to say.
How did you create the panoramic view? Cropping, stitching?
Yes. That particular image is from a large format negative (4″x5″) cropped down to roughly 6cm x 12cm. The decision to compose the 2:1 aspect ratio image was made at exposure time. I could have used a 6×12 roll film back instead of cropping down a 4×5 sheet film negative, but as a pragmatic thing if I crop 4×5 film down when I want a 2:1 panoramic image, I only need to carry one kind of film, and I don’t have to carry the (heavy) roll film back.
Quoting both David and Walt Baltman from an earlier post:
Question: How would you say the mission of an artist is different from the mission of a scientist?
Answer: As Francis Bacon said, The importance of art is to deepen the mystery. I believe the scientist’s job is to attempt to explain the mystery..
As Francis Bacon said, The importance of art is to deepen the mystery.
I’m afraid I didn’t follow the Bacon quote in the Bartman post, and I don’t follow it here.
If all I want to do is deepen the mystery, I need do nothing creative – all I have to do is turn off part of my brain, either by physical trauma or chemical means. Bingo! Instant mystery. A question that used to have an answer (Q: Who is this woman who lives in my house? A: She’s my wife, I’ve been joyously married 24 years!) turns into a mystery (Q: Who is this woman who lives in my house? A: a file cabinet? two mismatched socks? A buttered crumpet!)
Maybe it’s just a matter of having spent far too much of my time studying philosophy in college, and then religion later in life. But I always feel mystery is stunningly abundant, and doesn’t need to be made more so.
If I had to pick a quote along those lines, I’d opt for the story about Mondrian, who explained why he repainted over older paintings by saying “I’m not trying to make paintings, I’m trying to figure things out.”
“I don’t want pictures, I just want to find things out.”
Subtly different from Paul’s version, but the same idea, and the same attribution. So out goes any deepening mystery, but also out goes creating any fictions. I mean, if the ‘finding things out’ idea has any traction, then why would we be creating fictions? I think a landscape artist might be creating compelling realities. At least for themselves.
However, before it sounds like I’m disagreeing with everybody, what the viewer may be doing is creating the fiction. The viewer can only take the new fact (the landscape art) and run with that. The landscape artwork becomes an opportunity to dream and wonder, and to create stories (there should be a verb ‘to fict’).
a landscape artist might be creating compelling realities
But isn’t any reality that’s created a fiction?
David,
You are getting all philosophical again…..what is real?
The distinction that I was having a go at making is that I can, with my camera, make a landscape photograph that I know to be false. This is called advertising photography, and the photos could reasonably be called ‘fictions’.
However, when I am not so motivated, I am taking a photo of the world which is real ‘to me’ (oh dear, that phrase again). It is my understanding of reality at that moment. It may be wrong of course (I may have missed something) or it may be more about my head than the land. But the defining characteristic seems to be realness, not fiction.
Which of these two statements is the closeer to what one (you, I, landscape artists in general) is doing?
‘How can I make an image that captures what I see here?’
‘How can I make an image that makes this place look attractive?’
I realise that these two questions do not capture the entire range of possible questions, but (a) it is one in the morning, and (b) I think that they serve to illustrate the pair of tendencies that I’m referring to as ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’.
But once the image is created (and, of course, the image just is), it can become the basis of fiction. Just like the rock and the hands opened up stories and ideas.
Summary:
Artist creates compelling reality
Art just is
Viewer uses art to explore a fiction.
The closer that the artwork binds the viewer, the less good an artwork it is.
That last sentence ought to keep the blog glowing for a few months.
Goodnight from Europe and handing the baton over….
What do you mean it’s one in the morning? Not here in California :)
Colin, let’s take your photo of the fake fish as an example. What you shot may have been exactly what you saw. But it was selected from an infinity of other things you saw, eliminating most of it. It was framed in a certain way, from a certain angle, and had all those layers of transparency and reflection. Even though what you captured was part of what was real, the picture itself only contains those particular elements in relation to each other. It is a self-contained world, even though it may have been taken from, and may refer to, a larger world.
As far as fiction, I’m using Arthur’s second definition, that the work of art is its own world w/ it’s own rules, as opposed to fiction as storytelling. “Created reality” is the same as “fiction” in that sense.
Hope you’re having a good sleep. I’m almost ready for dinner :)
Paul,
The first thing that comes to mind has nothing to do with the content of the post, but the style of the post itself.
You really pack a lot of communication into a very tight package, and yet you do it in such a fluid, beautiful way that the density is not noticeable.
Until it comes time to comment.
At which time I have to say what I said first. You give me a lot to think about. I don’t want to just rattle off some glib thing. I want to try to measure up to the quality of the post itself.
But I can’t. Not right now. I have too many irons in the fire of my life.
At the same time, I wanted to acknowledge the fuel you throw on that fire.
Thank you.
Providence, a 1977 movie with John Gielgud, had the opposite take on mystery with respect to a wife. The movie starts out as a nightmare showing a werewolf with blue and green colors. Very slowly, the scenes become more rational and the colors less foreboding. In one of the next scenes, a husband and wife are hysterically fighting with another, but at least now they are human. The final scene shows a picnic with mellow summer colors in which John Gielgud addresses his son’s wife, previously hysterical but now composed and relaxed. He says how mysterious he finds her. In other words, after she had evolved to be rational and relaxed, she had acquired a depth that he found appealing.
Birgit-
Interesting point – there’s more than one kind of mystery.
I’ll have to grab that movie and watch it, too.
Paul –
I saw Providence 30 years ago. The way that I read its message – evolving from chaos to a calm, mysterious depth – seemed a worthwhile way to live.
I posted this at photo-musings
I think there is great danger in lumping the arts together when making statements like Arthur’s. While they do share some common traits, they really are quite different.
Although both are visual in nature, Sculpture is 3D and can be touched and felt, painting is 2D and it’s rarely a good idea to touch and felt a painting. Big difference, not only in the object itself, but in the manner in which they can be experienced.
There is also a big difference – a defining difference – between photography and its most closely related art, painting. Although both are primarily 2D, photography is bound by its relationship to the “real/literal” in way that painting is not.
In photography’s infancy, most painters realized this and abandoned the domain of the “real/literal” to the medium of photography. Oddly enough, early photographers also abandoned this formal characteristic of the medium in order to be considered more like painters, that is to say, “artists” rather than mechanistic operators of recording “machines”.
In fact, except for photography that relies on heavy-handed (not necessarily bad) manipulation, all photography begins with much more than a passing sense of literal “truth”.
Photo theorists and academics have spent a great amount of intellectual coinage trying to convince that this just isn’t so. This seems to be driven, in large part, by their need for things to conform to a theory in order for it to be understood. Hence their near slavish devotion to concept-based photography that references their theory.
Because photography, even very “literal” photography, has the capacity to deal with “intuition and hope” – what some might label “compelling fictions”, ideas that are subjective, they seem to come to the conclusion that photography cannot be objective.
Well, how about the “theory” that photography can be both without abandoning it connection to the real/literal?
How about reveling in photography’s formal and defining character to portray to the “real/literal”?
Hell, forget photography, how about deciding as a culture to start dealing with the “real/literal” instead of being enthralled by the “compelling fictions” that are very often foisted off as “truthiness”?
Photography, apart from the other arts, is uniquely capable of dealing with and presenting the real/literal in a way that can change the way we see and deal with reality.
Mark,
I think there is great danger in lumping the arts together when making statements like Arthur’s. While they do share some common traits, they really are quite different.
You make some very good points about photography’s apparent ability to capture things as they are. Indeed, photography seems to unique in this regard. I’ll give this issue further consideration when I have the time to do so.
As for the distinction between two and three dimensional artworks, it is indeed an important one. I too become suspicious when philosophers and other writers pontificate about a generic ‘art’ without bothering to distinguish (for example) music from the visual arts–much less the finer distinctions you make. That said, I’m not sure how you think the difference between sculpture and painting effects my “compelling fictions” theory.
Photography, apart from the other arts, is uniquely capable of dealing with and presenting the real/literal in a way that can change the way we see and deal with reality.
I think that’s true, up to a point. But it also ignores the fact that what you choose to show, and in what context, influences the “objective” reality a viewer sees.
This is evident when looking at Paul’s photo above of the sand dunes in the Sahara. I mean the green hills of Montana. I mean the view from the parking lot of McDonald’s, looking away from the oil refinery.
Mark,
Very thoughtful and eloquent comment! You’re right, of course, that photography is rather special in its relationship to reality. But I think that the relationship is potentially far trickier than Joe Average Viewer assumes. I’m not talking about either Photoshop composites or the problems of interpreting totally “realistic” photos of people sitting around on 9/11/2001. I’m not talking about the layers of optical/chemical/electronic technology. I’m talking about your beautiful Adirondack photos (which I’ve admired for a couple years now). Though they could be called realistic in a certain sense, they have for me almost a feeling of idyllic dream worlds, places or moments captured that, I believe, most people would not have actively noticed if they had been there. It’s clear that there’s a closeness to reality, but it’s also clear that the photographer plays a significant role–at least with what I consider quality photography.
Maybe we’re just talking about degree of emphasis on the different aspects of what leads to a photograph. I personally incline to your perspective as I understand it. But almost any point you can pick on the objective-subjective spectrum, there are photographers practicing there. And regardless of where a particular photographer chooses to operate, eventual viewers are going to have to interpret for themselves.
Arthur
I encountered your “compelling fictions” theory on Paul Butzi’s photo-musings site and I considered and reacted to the theory in its relationship to photography. My reference to the difference(s) between sculpture and painting was strictly addressing the notion that photography is radically different from other visual arts and that, if it was necessary to lump photography into an all-inclusive generic art thing to for the theory to work with photography, then I wasn’t buying in.
Additionally, I really wasn’t paying enough attention to your use of the word “fiction”. Objectively, I subscribe to the medium of photography as a medium of truth. Subjectively, I subscribe to the medium of photography as equally capable of conducting business in the arena of Minor White/Alfred Stieiglitz’s Equivalence.
If my html for the Equivalence didn’t work, copy and paste this -http://www.jnevins.com/whitereading.htm