This is my first post on A&P so hopefully I don’t make too many mistakes. Below is a post that I made earlier this year at Art News Blog. It’s an issue that all painters have to have an opinion on sooner or later, so I thought I would see what people here thought about using photographs.
Here’s the post..
The ARTnews magazine has asked a question that has been around for a while now.. “Why should a painting based on a photograph be considered a less legitimate work of art than one painted from observation or one that is simply abstract?”
Everyone from Edgar Degas through to David Hockney does it, so why do artists sometimes hide the fact that they paint from photographs?
I think it’s because of the romantic idea of an artist sitting in the landscape or in front of the model, trying to capture the life of the subject before them.
It’s like replacing wine corks with screw caps. Easily twisting a new cap off a wine bottle is just not as romantic as using a corkscrew to to get the old cork out of the bottle of fine wine. Even though the new screw caps prevent the wine from ever going bad, they’re just not as cool as a cork.
That analogy probably isn’t the best one, but the fact is that photographs are a great tool for artists. I know I don’t advertise the fact that I use photographs to paint, but I also don’t hide it. It just makes sense. Especially if you work in oils and build your paintings up over several weeks or months. It’s not going to be very practical to plonk your giant canvas on the sidewalk in a big city everyday for two months if you paint cityscapes.
The thing that I can’t understand is artists using projectors to trace a photograph onto the canvas. Not because the finished work would look like a photograph, but because it takes all the fun out of creating the work in the first place. I can’t see why someone would waste their time on such an activity.
Slides and Prejudice
Over the last few years, artists have made increasing use of Photoshop. Eric Fischl, for example, who is best known for his voyeuristic, psychologically charged paintings of amorous couples, employs it to collage together different images until they register as something he wants to paint. “I am part of a generation that was schooled in the belief that discovery and execution should occur simultaneously on the canvas,” he says. “For nearly 25 years I had held on to that belief, feeling that were I to know what I wanted to paint before I discovered it, the painting would lose its vitality. When I began working in Photoshop, essentially separating the discovery process from the execution, I feared it would kill the painting. What I discovered instead was that it freed me to explore painting itself.” ARTnews
The conversation at artnewsblog started here and continued on here.
Julie,
I, too, had a plant experience many years ago when I tried my hands at Reiki. Coming home from my Reiki workshop in the evening, I felt a sadness in a plant reminding me of the tearful eyes of my son’s girl friend when he broke up with her. I succeeded in dissipating that sadness. For the following years, the plant has not ‘talked’ to me again about sadness. It now shields my living room from the curiosity of passersby.
Sitting here in my dining room, typing, I realize that my daughter’s Yucca tree, grown tall again after one of its repeating trimmings, forms a green curtain shielding me in here. The other window serves as light source for a bunch of wild growing Aloe veras. During the winter months, my geraniums shield my kitchen window, fun to see the red blossoms from the outside snowy street. I am living here in Michigan ‘Dutch’ style without curtains on the downstairs windows.
I could not find your flower on your website.
i really need help finding someone to paint a pic using ndividual pics to make one. i know this seems crazy but its for a good cause. my hubby’s mom passed before she had a chance to meet all but my hubby’s duaghter. she only has three children and i would love to give them all a family painting with their mom holding the baby and the rest of them surrounding her. just as if it really happen that way. she died young and suddenly. All children were under the age of thirty and never experienced anyone close to them to pass. let alone lose ur mom who was their mom dad bestfriend. please help make this possible for me. thanks. if this helps i live in the ny/nj area. thanks.
Take a look at this:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=154578&id=769973725&l=2eff6cc81e
I love paintings and I consider myself into the art as well. Using photographs are really convenient and I don’t think it matters much as long as I can express my creativity and do justice from that photograph. Perhaps some people perceive the “how” as a means of judging the work created but there are also more people who appreciate the beauty of the creation based on the results.
Well photographs or paintings, they are both artworks. A good photographer makes a good photograph and a good painter makes a good piece of art even if he only uses a photograph. This approach is helpful for newbie painters who haven’t mastered the conversion of their illusion and concepts into art.
Painters are both creative and realistic so they can actually paint things, persons or events not only out of their imagination but also from what they can see in photographs. This is not something about copying works because painting is a different art. I don’t agree with people who say that a painting taken from a photograph will become less legitimate because the result of a painter’s work will become totally his and made out of his own materials.
I really appreciate this post because I am a believer of the famous passage, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” We always want our artwork to be protected from people who have bad intent especially that the internet is so broad and everything is possible here. (especially stealing artwork)