a multi-disciplinary dialog
Last week, on my way to somewhere else, I spent a little time wandering in a park and happened on the scene you see above. As you may guess, it is a reflection of trees in a slow-moving stream, which I inverted to present to you as a painterly dreamscape.
A moment later, from the same position, I made the following photograph of the same subject. If the first conjures a dreamy impression, the second may make you rather think nightmare. Why are they so different?
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
An issue that has affected the plastic arts of virtually every culture over time is that of visibility, as art has a persistent tendency to be seen. Many attempts have been made to deal with this without any real measure of success. For example, glass as a medium was heralded as a remedy until it was pointed out that, while one could see through the glass, one could usually see the glass as well.
Other initiatives have been undertaken, including a number of experiments with fabric. The extinguishing of lamps has long been employed, as has the closing of doors and windows. These practices have often been criticized as effectively throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but continue to be widely employed. In the mid twentieth century, however, a paradigm shift resulted in at least one person puncturing a balloon in a museum and then declared the helium thus released to be a work of art. The event in question was greeted with the sound of one duck clapping
I’m just back from a pleine aire, oil painting workshop and it seems that my topic — to paint in the middle in the muddle or to recollect in tranquility — has arisen again on A&P. Hi Sunil…..
Obviously I’m fascinated with the immediate ambiance as much as I am with the final product. The milieu from which I just returned, however, had its problems. The big one was the lack of focus within the landscapes we were asked to paint. So the topic of the day is — how do you find your viewpoints and hold them? more… »
Karl recently mentioned here that he prefers (and revels) painting in the context of his reaction to his surroundings. He averred to say that a photo of the landscape would not do justice because
“Photographs record what a place looked like at a particular moment. They don’t record what it felt like to be there”
My personal experience is a little different. more… »
I’ve been working on a series of photographs of the homes in my neighborhood. This project started after about three years of walks with my dog at different times of the day and encompasses a whole gamut of thoughts and feelings that I’ve had towards my home.
The more I saw the same things every day, the more meaning all of it took on for me until I had to get my camera and take photos. I suppose there’s a lot I could write about but I want to focus on two ideas regarding this project:
Now for something completely different from my usual inanimate landscapes. Probably almost every photographer in Montana has done horses at some point. They were actually a major subject of my first photos when I started up with digital photography, and starred in my first self-assigned project (not on the web site; I guess it’s still in progress). But they were eventually neglected as I mostly pursued my long-term interest in landscape and abstraction. Then I saw some postcards of the Horse Nudes portfolio of Kathe Lesage and realized what I’d been missing. Last weekend I had a chance to do something about it.
