A friend recently put it to me that it was very hard to show paintings and photographs in close proximity to each other without it being to the detriment of both. I hadn’t really considered this before, but I could see the problem. Further, it seems to be a problem with those two specific media. Photos and sculpture, for example, don’t fight in the same way.
I’m not sure that I’ve got to the bottom of this yet, but my working hypothesis is that they are too alike, yet not so similar that they complement each other. By which I mean that you are very unlikely to walk up to a statue and think that you are looking at a photograph, but it is possible to confuse photos and paintings.
If I have been looking at paintings and turn to look at a photo, then the surface of the object seems dull and lifeless. I’m looking for texture that isn’t there. And in the other direction, if I look at a painting expecting it to be be a photo, then I can be disappointed by the lack of detail.
There is also a problem of scale. There are large photos and there are small paintings, but generally photos want to be smaller than paintings do. This means walking up to them more closely, and in a mixed display I’m not sure where to stand. Obviously, I resolve the problem picture by picture, but it is unsettling.
I don’t think the same confusions apply to drawings and photos. These are alike enough that the texture and scale differences are reduced and don’t grate.
I don’t think we were making this up.
Also posted in photostream.
I’m no expert on this, as a one time gallery manager, I often got the impression that folks thought photographs were too easy to take; therefore, they could just go take their own. On the otherhand, paintings required creation from the ground up,(even if they looked at a photo to produce it). It is my belief, that because of their ignorance of the difficulties involved in fine art photography (process’,equipment, luck,etc.), they often could not appreciate what they were seeing, or (why it was of value), as though the image was not enough to sell them.
Interestingly, when a photo gallery opened down the street, they garnered brisk sales in their “photo only” environment. It always had me thinking that successful galleries focused their inventory to very few, (usually one), genre of work, they became known for it, and their collectors sought them out for their forte’.
Lastly, photographers are a different bunch of folks than painters, their focus is different, their language, and their end product. This difference might be the whole issue they do not do well together in the same confines. Like selling jets and boats.
Jon: I agree that galleries selling art are probably best focussed on a single art form. That is a slightly different proposition though.
My friend is someone with both paintings and photographs on display in his home. In discussing the issue with him, I had a recent exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in mind. The V&A (apart from being a superb institution) is one place where they display all forms of art. The exhibition was themed on the idea of gardening and was done in conjunction with the Royal Horticultural Society. It contained exhibits from many media. Despite the best efforts of some very experience gallery folk I found it very difficult to switch between the paintings and the photographs as I went around the exhibition.
There’s an easy solution to this of course. Paint on the photos, and paste photos into the paintings. Now that’s mixing them.
Colin, without diminishing the importance of your own observations, it seems to me that photos and paintings mixed will in the interview with Dan Bodner where we show one of the photos that Dan worked with to produce a drawing and painting.
This raises the possibility that the problem of combining photos and paintings is not a problem of the media, but of what the pictures are of. Dan’s example suggests that if you chose the right photos and paintings to go together, they should complement (not compliment, Birgit!) one another.
If you chose paintings that did not go together and tried to hang them in the same room, you would find the result disappointing.
Colin, you do not provide any data or examples to back up your point. I say, show us the pictures and let us decide what is going on. I’m not taking this conclusion on faith.
David, I saw some work this weekend where an artist and photographer teamed up to do just what you suggest. It worked quite well.
Karl: the immediate problem with showing examples is that by the time the examples are on the web both types are photographs, and, furthermore, they are the same size.
You may also be shocked (!) to learn that I don’t have a painting in the house.
I think that the question of whether one form can develop out of the other (or whether one can inspire the other, to put it the other way around) is a different question.
My question is not an artist’s question, but an owner’s (or curator’s) one.
Colin, I understand the nature of your question. It is an exhibitor’s question.
You may be shocked, but I don’t have a photograph in the house. That is, one that I would consider artistic and might consider putting on the wall next to a painting. The one thing I recall is on the old A&P site, there was a day when the photograph of Hanneke van den Bergh’s sculpture was next to Hanneke van Oosterhout’s strawberry still life. I found the combination wonderful. So now I have given you two counter examples.
It seems that neither of us has adequate data here. But this is your post. Maybe you should visit that friend of yours and get some images.
A little beside the point but amusing is the what they do and what happens in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The photos have a large section divided into several rooms. They are always packed, and the people act differently. They TALK. Complete strangers will get involved in discussions. It’s a noisier area.
In the main rooms, there’s usually that horrible tomblike silence so characteristic of contemporary exhibits. The great majority of people are silent because they don’t want to express their true feelings; i.e., “What the hell is this s**t?.”
I know this because I ask them.
One time, with one of my brothers quietly asked what I thought in a particular exhibit, I said, quite loudly, “This is just the usual art school no skill realism. The only reason it’s here is because the boys in Speedos are seen as somehow avant garde.”
The whole room full of people burst into spontaneous laughter. And that was San Francisco, mind you.
So it’s no surprise that they keep the photos separate. The other stuff can’t compete.
The last time I was up at SFMOMA I saw a sign that said “NO FOOD, DRINKS or REX ALLOWED.” I had no idea what it meant.
Karl:
You said: “The one thing I recall is on the old A&P site, there was a day when the photograph of Hanneke van den Bergh’s sculpture was next to Hanneke van Oosterhout’s strawberry still life.”
Unless I’m misunderstanding you, these were both photographs.
Rex:
Generally there is a lot less reverence to be found in a photo exhibition. That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen, or that The Tate can’t suck the life out of anything.
Colin,
Are you suggesting that if your friend took a photograph of his paintings that don’t fix next to the photographs, then all would look well, because it would all be in a photograph then?
Are you suggesting that if your friend took a photograph of his paintings that don’t fit next to the photographs, then all would look well, because it would all be in a photograph then?
I actually think it would.
An even more drastic equalizer than photography is television. One time I saw a talk show that had a number of guests, including Salman Rushdie and Ben Affleck. They were discussing various political and social issues, and what struck me was the extent to which they seemed to be equals. They were just 2 celebrities talking. If tv can even out the differences between Salman Rushdie and Ben Affleck, that’s a powerful medium!
David,
ROTFLMAO! Really. That was very funny.
Colin,
Yeah. That reverent attitude needs some healthy iconoclasm.
Karl:
You said “Are you suggesting that if your friend took a photograph of his paintings that don’t fix next to the photographs, then all would look well, because it would all be in a photograph then?”
The difficulties that I expressed were to do with size, texture, and detail. By taking a photo or scan of the painting and displaying it photo sized (or even more so, web sized) you remove two of the three differences.