Went to NYC for the weekend.
Couldn’t get tickets for the opening night at Alice Tully Hall
and instead visited the Pierre Bonnard exhibit at the Met – Late Interiors.
The book accompanying the exhibit told us that, unlike the paintings of his friend Matisse, Bonnard’s paintings are very difficult to reproduce. Thus, there seemed to be no point buying the book or showing his paintings in this post.
The question is does the internet now, half a century later, promote art to be generally more photogenic or isn’t it that simple?
Next time, I go to Manhattan, I must remember to bring my Faux Leopard coat.
Birgit,
Your second picture is much fun to peruse, with the vertical, diagonal, and horizontal stretches of the tree finding nice echoes in the architectural elements. And the face and hair of the boy at the base of the tree are also repeated in the flesh-colored reflection at the right end of the branch.
The Internet gets blamed for a whole lot of things, but I don’t think it’s significantly changing the way painting is done. It might be having greater effect in photography, but I don’t think it is at the higher levels.
And though viewing a jpeg on a computer screen may be a far cry from experiencing a painting directly, I’m extremely grateful for the ability to view art that I would never see without the web. And one can view incredible detail you could not see even in museums (see here and here for posts on it).
Steve,
I had a lot of fun photographing the bldg and then pasting the child in front. The building reminded me of Janet Fish’s glittering shapes. But when I looked at her paintings later, I realized that she prefers curvy shapes. Would you consider picture 2 a masculine version of the reflections and glitter that JF likes?
Thanks for the links. Fabulous what details in paintings Google Earth can show us.
I heard that an animal rights group is encouraging its members to pretend to spit on people wearing faux fur coats.
The question is does the internet now, half a century later, promote art to be generally more photogenic or isn’t it that simple?
I don’t know about the internet, but digital photography has an important impact on the way some artists look at their work. For example, Dan Bodner likes to look at digital photos of his paintings each day before getting to work. The photograph gives him a new view of the work in progress.
Karl, tomorrow, I will photograph my most recent work in progress, very different in its colors from what I have done before.
Dan Bodner likes to look at digital photos of his paintings each day before getting to work. The photograph gives him a new view of the work in progress.”
Are digital photos the new mirrors?
I’m writing from near Death Valley, where the vistas are huge and the landscapes change color, albeit in subtle ways, every few minutes. I am painting and of course, photographing with my digital camera every scene I paint.
What continually astonishes me is how poorly these landscapes show in the photographs. My paintings, however flawed, are far more like what I can see than what the camera can capture.
I suppose a wide angle zoom lens (is there such a thing?) might capture the closeness of the mountains (which are in fact far away, but to the human eye in the clarity of this air, loom large and near). Has anyone either captured a decent vista of some scope, range, size, width, and felt that what the camera captured was what they saw?
It’s an age old question, one which I get faced with in small towns with people with little art education. The other day a woman who chatted me up while I was painting the Sourdough Saloon told me of another “fantastic” artist who painted things that were so good they looked like photographs. I smiled and said something smilingly about getting jealous of this woman, whose work I had heard was so admirable.
But I started to thinking that indeed, some subjects, particularly close-ups and portraits, can be done by cameras as well as painters can do them; differently, perhaps, but equally attractive. But wide landscapes at a distance simply, in my limited experience, can’t be captured by the camera as the eye sees them. Am I wrong?
My knowledge of optics is seriously minute and my knowledge of professional photography equally so. But this afternoon, I photographed and painted a scene about a half a mile away that I could see clearly but that the camera simply lost. Either the zoom lens cropped out too much or any detail that my eye could see was lost to the wider angle lens.
And David, I fear you are right — mirrors changed the way we saw ourselves as well as the way we see the world. I’m beginning to believe that camera images are now believed to be the way we see, even when it isn’t the case. Rackstraw Downes and David Hockney territory……….
However, photographs of paintings are a whole different matter and work just like mirrors, sideways glances, and putting your work up in front of people. Hard lessons sometimes, says she, who is now putting her work up where she has to look at it every day.
June,
Likewise, my first experience when I tried photographing the dunes was the impossibility of capturing their 3D view. I contented myself with the thought that I was capturing their colors, textures and transient illuminations for future painting. And then, how would I capture children playing?
One of my goals is to learn to sketch lands/seascapes and then paint them later at a place that gives me greater comfort than their broiling sun or sharp winds. I started sketching using pencil but next weekend, I will try out pastels taking a workshop with a local pastel artist.
To my delight, I learned last week, that Pierre Bonnard did not do pleine air paintings. Rather, he did a pencil sketches of a scene and then colored it in, if I got it right, embellishing freely what his eyes had seen out there.
A couple of weeks ago, we discussed what technology can do to our visual system. As Jay (comment#11) told us, kids glued to the TV set ‘couldn’t see a a dog in a tapestry for all one’s pointing’. Thus, adapting the visual system to moving stimuli made it difficult to see stationary objects.
What crossed my mind is that technology – texting, TV, digital photography – will adapt our visual system to 2-D views. Perhaps, artists rendering 3-D views, using painting, sculpting and creating 3-D images for movies, can help us.
Is it a coincidence that abstract art, promoting flat views, coincided with the increase of visual technology?
I, of course, forgot Ansel Adams’ Landscapes. Maybe it’s the dummied down versions in our digitals that are at fault for our dummied down visions.
I shall ponder your notion about flat views, abstract art, and visual technology. It seems like a plausible hypothesis.
I also am having dialogues with myself about color — my desert scenes are far too colorfully painted compared to “reality” (as the camera, unphotoshopped) might see it, And yet, and yet — the color is there. I learned that long ago, when I spent those formative years (ages 23 — 29) in Laramie Wyoming. The desert has fantastic color and it’s just that sometimes people only see the grossest version of color — billboards and flat mat graphic design. And that’s not even accounting for the changes that occur with the time of day and the angle of the sun…..
Oh dear, I must be on my second cuppa…
By the way, I am maundering my way in a Journal about the residency — lots of photos, some turgid text. I am not making it available to search engines but if anyone reading this would like to check out the pretty pictures (and even make comments, but not too snarky ones), write me at june at juneunderwood dot com and I’ll send you the link.
Birgit:
It is so rewarding to peruse your photographs for the stories they tell. My eyes first bounced off image #1, but a second look began to reveal a weaved tale. Golden Touch, the big shiny bus, is leaving an older version of New York, while reflected in its big windshield is a sinuous vision as Gehry would have it,
I can imagine that the bus driver is, in actuality, a real estate developer. Reading to the right, we find an oriental representing a more sustainable path up the boulevard of dreams. Who will make it first to the next intersection?
Image #2 had me confused as the child was lit differently from the tree – but, hey, there are a lot of reasons how that might happen. But what appears to be an acoustic ceiling atop a seeming outdoor scene – now that got me going (It feels like I’m channeling Columbo here.). And the overall composition is bright and fun. Now for the schlepper in her leopard skins: leopards will schlepp their prey up trees for safekeeping. But the leopards I know don’t tend to do a heads-down trudge – and in boots moreover. But what do I know of the urban jungle cat?
June:
I took in your painting while eating my corn flakes this morning. The work touches on your comments in that it is a synthesis of your memories and a record shot of the gorge. As I remember, a fellow named Bierley took it and it comes across as something anybody would capture at a scenic turnoff. Perhaps the pedestrian nature of the photo worked to your benefit as it doesn’t impose a heat and serve sensibility that you would needs confront, thus allowing you to adjust the spices to taste.
As for the desert vista, I wonder how it relates to that savanna sense that I sometimes bring up. Something primate in me becomes alert in open situations. I want to take in and register the furthest things in my field of view. I’m out of the trees and on my knuckles these days and it sure pays to know what out there is heading my way. The camera doesn’t care and is likely to take an indifferent attitude to one’s all important relic concerns. One thing that seems to matter is the sheer size of the image. Take your desert shot and splash it across an entire wall and something of that feeling may be returned to you.
Finally, the name Mueck came up in my readings. “Ron” maybe? He does the big figures and it seems we had a discussion along those lines.
Thanks, Jay,
I’ll check out Mueck — never heard of him. I will be moving on to bigger paintings here in the desert (the “Back Wall” canvas roll that I brought with me); I always need to have that first sketch, in my case a painting, before I can face the intricacies of weaving memory and scene, idea and vision, color and scheme. So your thought of working big is in my head.
On the other hand, I still have a lot of downtown Beatty to deal with — wacky street scenes and all. And there are the touted sights to see — Scotty’s Castle, the Amargosa Opera House and Performance, Gold Point where George (don’t ask) wants me to paint the vista. So I’m not really holding out a lot of hope for the back wall. But you never know. And there’s stilll the foolish Rhyolite take-off to be worked until it works or dies. Ah, so many paintings, so little time.
June:
Isn’t Scottie’s Castle over in Death Valley proper?
Jay, re Scotty’s Castle,
Yep it is in Death Valley, but I’m 5 miles from Death Valley Park, and just over the Funeral Mountains from Scotty’s Castle. “Just over” is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration. But we really are almost on the California border and the topo map of the Beatty area includes part of Death Valley. Yesterday, I painted mountains that are in the park.
Birgit,
I need to comment on your first photo — it is gloriously intricate, imaginative, and full of information and intelligent confirmation of the human condition as we (or some of us, anyway) know it.
Your photo gives an incredible sense of place; the bicycle riders and the truckers, the buildings and the reflections of buildings, the stoic nature of the humans, small against the rest of the info, and the final coup, the name of the truck: “Golden Touch.” What a great photo in exactly the way Karl describes. It’s got rhythm and a Big Bass boombox throbbing from every corner.
Jay,
I quite agree with you and June about the stories in photo #1, not to mention the irony in the name “Golden Touch.”
June,
One problem photographing far desert vistas is the usually blank sky, which tends to dominate the picture at the expense of the small, distant mountains. Large prints help out the far desert and mountains, but there’s still the balance problem. Hockney would (II think) say that you look at the mountains and experience them as nearer, because that’s where your attention goes. With a single camera viewpoint and focal length, you can’t make the image area balance reflect the attention balance. That is (in part) what he was attempting with his photocollages. Did you know Lawrence Wechsler has published 25 years of conversations with him, much like his book on Irwin? It’s called “True to life”; I’m reading it at the moment.
Even Ansel Adams has few vistas quite so wide, and only when there are dramatic (or at least interesting) clouds to relieve the sky. If you can’t arrange clouds, standard procedure is to find interesting foreground that leads to the background. I’ve always found this much harder to do than it sounds. But along those lines, I really like how, in your photograph, the white sculptures of The Last Supper find an echo in the snowy peaks far beyond.