Painting From Life vs. From Photos
I first posted this interview a year ago. Dan Bodner has continued with this work. A follow-up interview will appear soon.
To paint from a photograph is inherently different than painting from life. Some artists avoid photos, others use them, perhaps covertly, for practical reasons. But to American artist Dan Bodner, painting from photos is not merely a technique, but a way to focus on his role as an artist. I interviewed Bodner at his studio in Amsterdam.
Question: When you work from photographs, do you ever ask yourself, what is the point of making the painting, when the image already exists in the photo?
Bodner: No. A photo is a record of a moment that has passed, a dead moment. I don’t feel that I own the image as a photograph until I paint it as a painting. The photo itself always refers to the past. But a painting of the photo is a creation, which goes on living. The painting defines its own continuing moment in time.
Question: Does painting go beyond the goal of simply making an image?
Bodner: What painting is for me is part of human desire. Every kid smears his food, or shit, and that is really connected to what painting is. A kid makes a mark and has the satisfaction of knowing “I made this and it will stay there.” For an adult I think it is connected to fear of death, which is innate. And it is connected to the desire to procreate. As you get older it gets existential, of course. To take things out of you and put them into the world, there is an absolute satisfaction in that. To do this from a photo emphasizes the act of creation, bringing life to something dead.
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In the next post more about how Dan Bodner uses photos, his subjects and his methods
Karl,
There’s too much in the Bodner quote for a quick response, but I was reminded instantly of James Elkins book, On Painting. He talks about shit and smearing and paint in exactly this way, at length.
Bodner’s take on photos — a frozen, past moment — and on paintings — continuing for artist and viewer in the present and on through and beyond death — is one to ponder. Is it absolutely true for photos? Is that why we feel nostalgia looking at photos from the 1880’s or 1930’s? Do Tree’s houses represent a moment that is already past? What if I painted them — would they continue?
Just pondering — I’m on my second cup of coffee.
Bodner may rightfully care more about his painting than the photograph. But for anyone else, or as an independent object, the painting, once created, is no more and no less dead — or record of a dead moment — than the photograph.
To take a photo oneself and then paint from it or even to find a photo and work from it in some way– esp. by abstracting — is one thing, esp. if the artist is frank about working that way. A case occurred a few years ago when a “Western” artist who works from photos bought a box of glass negatives from very early reservation photography by a professional woman and then painted close reproductions of them while not letting on the source of his images. The son of the woman, an old man with little money, recognized the images and challenged the artist about where he got the photos. The artist’s reaction was to try to shut the old man up, to have his lawyers threaten him. A book of the woman’s photos was in the works and the artist tried to abort it. This artist, Terpening, is famous for the huge amounts of money his paintings sell for. (More than a million.) The glass negatives had been lost or stolen and then evidently found their way into the market, so Terpening didn’t steal them. But it wouldn’t have hurt him to have acknowledged the woman and even to have written a check to her son. It appears he felt guilty and handled it with denial.
Prairie Mary
Tried to comment on this yesterday and then felt the old saying, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” was the best course of action. Then I shut off the computer and went out and captured about thirty dead moments.
The dishonesty Mary describes is not only unfortunate, but perhaps tarnishes the fully legitimate method of painting from photographs, which can be used in many different ways, including more original ones than transcribing from one medium to another — not that there’s anything illegitimate about that. I’m sorry to say there’s probably as much or more deception going on with photographs as with paintings.
I like Bodner’s painting probably more than I would like the original photograph, though I can’t know without seeing the latter. I can certainly imagine photographs of that scene that I would find more creative and alive than the painting.
Are painter’s subconsciously jealous that photography forever stole their prime real estate?
Tree,
How did the thirty dead moments look?
Sunil,
No doubt there’s some jealousy on the part of painters, but I can assure you it goes the other way, too. I think the peaceful coexistence has actually become more or less assured, it’s just that criticism is constant, and accusing someone of being too photographic or dependent on photogoraphy, or not photographic enough, is still an easy move. And it still seems to be a problem for the market, which hasn’t fully learnt to deal with the reproducibility of photography. It may never be as simple as that people will pay for the value they see in what the image itself will do for them.
Sunil, they look very dead. Oh the horror ;-)
It’s hard to type while wagging my finger, but I must say…
Dead moments? Bodner must live in a sea of them. I tend to see photography as keeping moments alive. Furthermore, the entire question of the nature of past, present and future keeps an entire phalanx of philosophers up at night.
These distinctions like photography versus painting can be arbitrary. The old tinted portrait – paintography, phointing? Everyone on this site seems to do well when in photography mode, and as well when using another medium. I’d like to see what Steve might do with a brush in his hand as I feel that visual sense is fungible.
Was carrying my coffee cup around this morning, and it reminded me of this topic. To draw a parallel, one might see a photograph as a cup or canteen, holding water drawn from a wellspring and to be imbibed when needed.
Aside from the fatuous and self-serving comments about photography that Bodner makes, what do you think about his notion that painting “is a creation, which goes on living. The painting defines its own continuing moment in time.”
When I read further in the interview, it seems he is saying that he paints for immortality (and that everyone smears whatever to be immortal), that is, painters and smearers act from a desire to take something inside oneself (that will die with oneself) and put it outside, on the canvas, where it will continue to live.
Karl, do you feel this as your reason for painting? (I know, this requires serious inward looking, but….) And if that’s so, then does photography also come from the “inside?” And further, what’s the connection with immortality?
I was just reading about the Gees Bend quilts, which are mostly handmade. I found myself sighing once again over the old cliche that stitching by hand makes the art more precious. That might be the case because handstitched is more rare, but that leaves out the question of the quality of the image making. There are wonderful Gees Bend quilts but the wonder is in the color and line and shape (I’ve never seen them in person, so can’t speak to the lines made by hand stitching).
In other words, I think there’s a personal satisfaction, perhaps deeply universal and psychological, about taking something from inside and posting it outside oneself and imagining it to be a bit of immortality — hand stitching is a great example as is smearing color on canvas. But that begs all the questions of true immortality (not necessarily determined by oneself) or even the quality of the art.
June,
I feel that Dan is on to something about photos capturing a lost moment, something with a death feel about it. Old photos always have a tint of sadness to them that I don’t feel about old oil portraits. An old photo represents someone dead, an old painting is somehow still alive, I think.
Steve,
The painting is not linked to a particular moment, in Dan’s view, the way the photograph is. Obviously a painting is no more alive than any other inanimate object. It makes me wonder, how to make a timeless photograph, one without this death-quality?
Mary,
What I like in particular about Bodner’s approach is how he is frank, even enthusiastic about the importance of the photograph in his work.
Tree,
Dan is not against photography, he is very fond of it.
Are painter’s subconsciously jealous that photography forever stole their prime real estate?
Sunil,
I don’t think it’s such a subconscious thing. Each painter needs to come to terms with technology.
tend to see photography as keeping moments alive.
Jay,
That’s positive thinking for you. This raises interesting questions of memory. Photographs can trigger memories of moments past that would otherwise be forgotten. One thing that I find disturbing about photographs is the way they take over memory. If I think of past experiences that were recorded in photographs, I find it difficult sometimes to visualize that past without having the photographs popping into my mind.
June,
I recall the interview experience clearly and I remember thinking, “I never think about making a mark or immortality when painting” — not that that makes any difference with respect to Dan, of course.
As for “is a creation, which goes on living. The painting defines its own continuing moment in time,” I think Dan is onto a special insight here. Perhaps the point is that a painting is not only about a moment in time, but about painting itself. Imagine an abstract painting, it is not linked to a particular moment. I think the magic of what Dan is doing is to connect something of that timelessness to a photographic moment. In this sense, he connects a very characteristic feature of photography with something very different. It is a poetic juxtaposition.
Ah, Karl, you said,
“Dan is doing is to connect something of that timelessness to a photographic moment. In this sense, he connects a very characteristic feature of photography with something very different. It is a poetic juxtaposition.”
That’s an interesting thought that I hadn’t had. Does he exhibit the two (his painting of his photograph) together?
And there is something to your other comment about looking at old photographs and looking at old paintings. I never think, when I look at old paintings, about the life that is lost and gone, the child that has grown up and become a prostitute or CEO. But I often wonder about the people in old photos.
As for photos fixing moments in time in unfortunate ways (taking over the real as it were), well, lots of things do that. The stories we tell finally become versions of ourselves and the story becomes all we remember about the time we were lost and got found or “how I met your mother.” Photographs act in the same way, although the narrative is more skimpy.
I wonder if we look at paintings differently today because of photography and its aftermath — that is, after abstract painting became part of our psyches, we tend to view all painting as abstract, not about the boy who drowned or became a traveler to India in 1840. But perhaps earlier folks looked at paintings as we do photographs. Simon Schama says that in 17th century Holland people commissioned paintings in exactly the way we might get family photos done in a studio or high school seniors get their pictures taken — a matter of course in the middle class milieu.
“But perhaps earlier folks looked at paintings as we do photographs.”
June, you probably know this but early American portraiture was used the same way as photos. They ranged in size from pieces one could hold in one’s hand to something to hang on the wall. Many itinerant painters traveled around with half done works and would paint in the heads/faces of their subjects when hired.
Also, early America was really into funerary art, a way to remember the people who had passed on.
Are you familiar with Jan Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Wedding? That’s one of the titles for it anyway. It’s a great portrait of a young couple and it’s believed the artist was a witness to their marriage (he’s seen in the mirror). It’s a fantastic painting. And it wasn’t unusual to use these paintings as a marriage certificate.
I see that this is rather an old post but I have only just discovered this site!! Wonderful!!
To me, I have only begun to delve into the magic of photography and art, a photograph is capturing a moment in time for ever and a painting of that photograph is one persons interpretation.
Glad you like the post Carol. Stay tuned, there is a lot more to come.