What I have noticed about western photographers is that they approach photography as if they are painting. Carefully thinking about the composition and techniques. Make sure everything is perfect according to a vision.
Japanese photographers are more spontaneous. Pictures look more like snap shots of everyday life. Often imperfect. Out of focus, crooked and blurry. They often just use a point and shoot on automode.
I just want to say that there are different ways to think about photography. I find the Japanese approach very interesting, because it uses unique properties of photography that is different from painting. Unlike painting you can take as many pictures as you want. You can take a camera everywhere. There are unique moments in everyday life that are beyond your imagination.
I enjoy the photographers you've linked to Japanese photographers are great but I think you are wrong with the generalisation about Western photographers.
There's definitely people that work on prearranged scenes but there's also people like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Kappa that pushed the idea of "the decisive moment".
They worked with pre-set Leica range finders and usually a single lens (50mm).
Their idea was to just see perfect moments, be in the right place and just take the photo.
Or Weegee The Famous. He was a New York press photographer turned artist who when once asked what the secret to good photograph was answered "f8 and be there". i.e. just take the photo and don't worry about the imperfections.
...or William Klein. He made his name initially taking blurry street photographs as he walked about.
These are all well known big names but you get the point. Western photography is too broad a term to jump to conclusions about a dominant style.
I don’t think this difference is as culturally bound as you suggest when you are talking about photography as art. You can absolutely find photographers who make choices differently in either country.
Photography with light leaks, distorted color from expired film, imperfections, composition from the hip, abstractions, etc. is easily found around the world. Remember that editing is as critical a part of the artistic process as the construction of the photo.
I'd wager there is a technical component that plays a bit here: During the economic "boom" phase, Japanese had plenty access to money and Japanese cameras, film etc.
Hiromix for instance started photography pretty early, and focus a lot on catching youth as its happening to her and her surroundings. She was taking a very large number of photos (as anyone should) from a relatively young age, on film. There must be people who have taken the same trajectory in the west, but thinking about the costs at the time I wouldn't expect it to happen at the same scale, and consequently the talent pool would be smaller in the end.
Japan and photography is a true love affair, I see the diversity of the photographers coming out of Japan as a testament to how they were free to put photography in their everyday life when in the west it looked to me more like a special occasions thing (reminds me of the Olympus "Pen" philosophy, of having a camera in everyone's bag, the same way we carry pens)
> What I have noticed about western photographers is that they approach photography as if they are painting.
Actually, photography have many schools and these schools are not limited to any geography one may say. Photography is a very personal thing and unlike painting, you generally work with what you have.
I personally like spontaneous photography a lot, because I like to "archive" or "make permanent" what I see and like.
I'm interested in your "east vs. west" hypothesis, but how did you arrive at it considering the enormous number of western street/snapshot/grunge/etc. photographers?
I'm aware of western snapshot photographers like Nan Goldin. All countries have photographers of all styles. My impression of east vs west mostly comes from visiting photo exhibitions and I do notice a difference between styles and what each culture appreciates most. I don't have the artistic background to truly articulate what is different. But I do notice many photographers in the west, like the person in this article, approach photography like painting.
It sounds to me like you are confusing technical quality with composition.
The images you gave as example have lower technical quality, but there's nothing imperfect about their composition. They're really well made photographs!
There is (was!) a set of photographers around the North Atlantic who also made fantastic photographs of low technical quality. Do an image search for "pictorialism". If you are like me and don't give a crap about technical quality, you might like it!
Of course all kinds of people exist on both sides of that (arbitrary) line. Hiroshi Sugimoto has exceptionally composed works: https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/artworks
I've found this series of articles about art and photography very interesting, thanks to whoever has been posting them here on HN.
They helped me nail down some intuitions I had about photography, and clear some misconceptions. As someone who knows nothing about photography, I found it fascinating to learn about the process good photographers go through in order to get what they want out of a "plain" photo.
Photography is accepted as forensic evidence. Painting is not. This makes photography quite objective.
By photography I mean the act of merely taking a picture, not setting up the scene, setting the lights, directing the model or postprocessing.
As a photographer I don't even regard photography as art since you can't photograph whatever you want as opposed to painting or literature where you can depict whatever you want in any way you want.
> Photography is accepted as forensic evidence. Painting is not. This makes photography quite objective.
You've got the causality the wrong way around. Painting is not accepted as evidence because it is not considered objective. Photography is accepted. Whether that's always the right decision though should really be called in question by the OP. Not saying it should be outright refused, but this can be a case-by-case decision to make. You can change photos a lot by framing.
Edit
Found that classic example I wanted to post earlier. First picture here:
Good question. I would consider processing either by old methods or digital means as something separate from the act of taking a photograph. Processing is more digital art.
I worked and did photography for quite a few years.
When working low end commercially you need to take the photo that the customer
is expecting.
That can mean making it very plain.
You take a photo of a sprocket that is evenly lit with a white background.
Snap. Usually this works out quite well and the client is happy.
I figure the vision is shared.
It can also mean that a woman wants a photo of herself as she sees herself
(Photoshop) Which is primarily a psychological challenge to understand how
she sees herself. (With a timer running).
The vision here is hers, and that is what I had to create.
I once had a client who wanted me to take photos of tufts of hair she was selling.
(not her own hair, she harvested it from human subjects)
That was a huge creative challenge.
It was all black hair.
A tuft of hair evenly lit does not look at all appealing.
A tuft of hair does not ever look appealing to begin with.
How do you get someone to look at a photo at some hair and go "yeah that".
The immediate thought was to find a find a model or mannequin to pose the
hair in context. Nope. Didn't want that.
That project became quite expensive for me before I figured out a way to make
her happy.
I think being a stubborn git I would probably have proceeded to find my own
tufts of black hair and continue shooting it until I got it right since
it became a real challenge.
When I worked for myself, and I work creatively, I can shape what I capture.
This is where the passion was for me.
If you are a top 1% photographer, clients hire you for your vision and creative style.
They give you big budgets, crews, etc.
I never got anywhere near that commercially.
At least one famous 1% photographer has such a well-oiled machine set up,
that they only have to show up and press the trigger.
But they have initial meetings with the client, give them a taste of celebrity.
> When working low end commercially you need to take the photo that the customer is expecting.
I found that when a client has a very specific idea of the image they want, the best thing is to take the shot as they requested, but then also take a few shots that I like.
Most of the time the client will pick one of my versions.
(It helps if you can somehow make them think the idea came from them.)
> I think being a stubborn git I would probably have proceeded to find my own tufts of black hair and continue shooting it until I got it right since it became a real challenge.
I feel this.
I am a web developer but I'm sort of at semi-pro level as a photographer (albeit not a generalist.) I once had a web development job where I did some of the photography and so did the graphic designer. The product was literally a set of different grades of white marble powder.
Not only is it nearly impossible to differentiate these, it's also probably pointless, because the differentiation is more in the material properties than the visual properties. Nobody cares for the photos and yet they were fairly complex to get right.
We did eventually settle on "use in practice" photos for the products but even then, the uses are overlapping, not wholly distinct. Quite a challenging job.
When I started learning photography years ago, my genre was street photography. It was practical, no fancy equipment needed, don't have to go far away. You just go out and start shooting. I was interested in documentary work, trying to capture truth "as objective as possible"
Then I found the works of Ansel Adams, the Westons (Edward, Brett), Aaron Siskind, Hiroshi Sugimoto, etc. Painters like René Magritte and Mark Rothko are also big inspirations. I conclude "making images" for me is far more interesting than "taking images".
Yes to this whole thing. I’ve been working on serializing some similar ideas about photography, and it’s very heartening to see someone else on a similar page. I never say it, because I know it would make me insufferable, but I always mentally object when someone talks about a photo ‘capturing’ something other than a pattern of light.
I am not sure I agree with this original hypothesis - does anyone really believe a photograph is a perfect recreation of truth? From most people I talk to they understand that it is somewhere in between art and documentation.
I am big into photography myself and it would take a lot of conscious effort to actually take photographs that were as close as possible to what the average human brain is perceiving from their own eyes. It is certainly possible with the right tools and mindset but would require careful lens selection and conscious choice of angles/perspective.
I think it’s an interesting topic for aspiring/developing artists (whether photographers or otherwise). Behind the lens, there may be a temptation to portray “what is” (whatever your perspective) rather than “what you want to show”. It’s the same for other visual arts, and even for developing musical or writing style. I’m definitely not a particularly artistic photographer, but learning to focus on what I want to convey rather than the actual content that’s conveying it has helped me immensely as a musician and (more pronounced on a smaller scale) as a poet.
> does anyone really believe a photograph is a perfect recreation of truth?
While people might be aware at some level that photography isn't truth, photography is certainly used a heck of a lot to present "truth", even when it's not.
News media is assumed to at least try to stay closed to the truth and is full of photographs, and more often than not, it's completely fake. Be it due to framing, subject selection or just plain use of stock photos that have nothing to do with the subject of the article.
What I find frustrating is that you absolutely can use photos to present truth or at least try to get close to it, but that means using lots of them, different angles, time lapse, tagging them with date and time and so on. No news media ever does that. They all use singular photos. They don't show you video of the same event even when it exists. They don't show you multiple angles. And they don't even show you all the other photos the photographer made at the event, only the prettiest ones, all the rest goes into the archive or trash bin. Given that we are no longer limited by the space on a paper newspaper it's frustrating how little we actually use what modern technology offers.
This goes of course beyond just news, even product photos could use a few more camera angles. They never show you the full thing you are actually buying (packaging, accessories, backside, etc.), but only some very limited view on it.
To me a photograph is far from the truth. It's a fascimile of the world through a mechanical / chemical / digital process. The camera is not comparable to human vision and the trend on smartphones with their post-processing gets it even farther away.
Photos can try to document a partial truth. But as soon as you compare a photo with the real world where it was taken, you might realize subtle or not so subtle differences.
For example, I always wonder what was behind the photographer who took an image of a beach for a hotel. Maybe a four lane road? Or a construction site? ;-0
Or without such obvious attempts to "photoshop" reality: when I take photos of funghi, for example, I often remove stuff like leaves or grass which would detract the viewers eye from the subject I want to portrait. Is this art? No. Is this truth? It's a facet of reality.
I think photographs can make an effort to convey the perceived, visual reality of a moment. It is still not real, and it is still not "objective" -- there is no absolute objective. But it is a particular purpose that is more unique to photography and videography than most media. And it is very different from most art, where conveying visual reality is rarely considered important.
Of course this is not the only valid use for photographs, but it is a genre of photography that is a not insignificant part of the whole discipline, both in terms of production and consumption.
Famously, cubism as an art form arose in part as a response to photography, as well as what seemed like the creative dead-end involved with traditional lifelike representational art. The cubists thought "realistic" painting and conventional photography can both be thought of as deceptions. After all, the world is comprised of three dimensional objects that subtend through time, yet the canvas or the photographic image are 2D representations of a fixed moment in time that trick our eyes into interpreting the forms within as 3D. Picasso, Braque and others thought, let's embrace the fact that we are working on a 2D medium yet find a way to honestly convey the dimensionality of the world. Thus cubist works often depict subjects from various angles, such as the front and side of the face of Dora Maar in Picasso's well-known work [0]. Ironically in the 1980's painter David Hockney took the method full circle with his "joiner" photomontage style of photography[1].
I'm also reminded of how often when beautifully rich deep space photos are posted, particularly if a bright colorful image is shown [2], a common response is, "that's not a 'real' image, it's digitally processed 'false color,' right?" But all color is false color in a sense. It's a combination of the property of the object we're looking at, the processing limitations of our eyes, and our brain's subjective experience of color as a "qualia."[3] A set of choices made by our biology, you might say. The algorithms in digital cameras are designed to create images that roughly correspond to those biological choices, but that doesn't make them any more real than "false color" photos. In years past, conventional film emulsions attempted the same, and failed. In the 1950's and 1960's the newly emergent popular color emulsions were designed to make human skin look attractive in the developed snapshot. But of course not all human skin is the same color, so needless to say, mistakes were made. [4]
I spent YEARS being sad and disappointed that the deep space photos colours were "fake", like a child that just found out there is no santa.
Until someone pointed out to me exactly what you said. Light is just a specific range on a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. So are Gamma rays, X-rays, Ultraviolet, and Infrared. It just so happens that our biological eyes interpret one very (frankly narrow) range of those wavelengths as colour.
But on an inter-gallactic scale, why should the biological quirk of one random primate on a random single planet matter when it comes to representing the full grandure of a celestial object that is light years in size.
The data is real - it's data we received about this image. It arrived to our telescopes, and we stored it. And now we're trying to present the awesome range of everything we captured to our silly little primate eyes.
I'm giving you an up vote as I think your opinion deserves to be heard...
However, I think you are wrong and haven't justified your point.
When I look at the work of someone like Gregory Crewdson[1] who has an idea, builds a set, lights a set, posses models and then processes multiple negatives into a final finished image, I see something.
I think it's art because it's a deliberate, complex thing. I see no purpose in it other than to be pleasing. I don't know where his vison comes from but it's much copied but, to my mind, so far not equalled.
Which is a long way round to saying, I like it. :P
If David Lynch films are art then Gergory Crewdson photographs are the same kind of art.
1. He actually uses a whole team to make his images but I'll just talk about him to save on confusion.
It isn’t really much of a discussion if low effort contrarianness doesn’t have a chance to surface thoughtful disagreements which otherwise get buried in more combative threads. The comment itself might not have taken much effort, but it can easily spawn a more interesting discussion by being so bare of nuance.
Good! Now the less quick trick is finding a way to affect discussion not just prompt it. It’s very similar but requires a lot more anticipation of other people’s emotional state.
Sure great points. But in my view, it remains just that, a photograph. A photograph can be deliberate, complex, and evoke many emotions. It can be pleasing, utterly horrific, or anything in between.
But when I take art classes, I'm not taking photos. I do that in photography class. So as a matter of definition, a photo for me qualifies not as art.
Yeah, I mean, that pretty much sums it up. Of course, you're free to think differently. I think that's pretty fair. You don't tell me what's art, and neither I, you.
Does your art class perhaps only cover “fine art”? Or does it also include the performing arts like music, theatre, even cinema? In my experience in the UK, “art” in school commonly only means fine art, and other forms of art are different enough that they’re broken out into other “subjects”.
Yeah I think that's pretty fair. Music, theatre, cinema are performing arts. Not art. You qualify it with "performing".
And that's my point really. It's a distinction based on definition. Collectively, institutions recognize this and inherently add qualifiers to distinguish between these varying disciplines.
So am I right in understanding you aren’t saying photography isn’t “an art”; just that it isn’t “fine art”? In which case I think you’d see much less disagreement here.
Who are you agreeing with? This is certainly not what the article states.
A closer summary would be (selectively quoting from TFA):
> Photography is not objective truth. Photography and painting both result from deliberate choices of depiction, and there is no clear dividing line between them.
> [...] I argue that pictures are like stories that people tell with pictures. In short, perception is interpretation, and visual art is a construction made for perception.
That's consistent with my claim that I "agree, photography is not art". Feel free believe to the contrary.
Also, my original post takes no stance on the objective reality of the universe and the cosmos as experienced by the finite existence of the mind and self, inherent in the physical limitations imposed upon our feeble bodies by our finite sensory organs.
Kind of. I like to quantify a certain threshold of skill and effort before I qualify something as art. For instance, a 4 year old drawing scribbles, I would consider art. There was skill, however minimal involved. It might not be very good, and a photo that you take would certainly be more aesthetically appealing, but one required deliberate craft to create and bring to reality.
I simply find it distasteful to call something created with the click of a button art. Yes it can be beautiful, yes it can capture the highs and lows of humanity. And yes it can be thought provoking, represent artistic intention, years of learning lighting, composition, framing, etc, etc, etc. But at the end, I'd call it a photo, not art.
If photography can be made with the click of a button, drawing can be made with the flick of a pencil. Good photography, like good drawing, does require both effort and skill—usually, if not always, quite a lot more than that of a toddler drawing scribbles.
In fact, a single photograph may require a great deal of time and careful planning to execute (perhaps with a series of concept sketches, lighting plans, and so on to work out the compositional and logistical details).
That's great. And yeah you're right, a drawing with a flick of the pencil probably sucks. But it's still a drawing. It took some level of effort - the less effort, the more it sucks. But in the end, I make art.
For a photo, there might have been effort, but it was taken with a camera. I don't take art using a camera. I take photos.
Ie: I go into Minecraft and build something. That's art. vs. I go into Minecraft and take a photo of something that someone else made. That's a screenshot.
Well, I was responding to your argument that photos are not art because art requires skill and effort. It sounds like you are conceding my point that some photographs take more skill and effort than some drawings that you would consider art—so based on that it seems we are on the same page that your "skill and effort" criterion, by itself, doesn't seem to be able to tell us what is and isn't art.
At this point it sounds like you are simply asserting, without providing an argument, that your position is correct. But I am unclear on what exactly your claim is: is it that (1) no photography is art or that (2) the photographs that you yourself take, as a rule, tend not to be art?
Sure, I can make it more clear. Yes, you're right, it's not just about skill and effort. But I am claiming that for me, no photography is art. I concede that it can be artistic, but not art.
I have seen some people make beautiful screenshots of games in artificially created environments where basically the only reason for the existence of the feature is to make screenshots. Oh and by the way, they were all screenshots of something the game developers made.
Stop motion animation can't be art either because it is just a chain of photos of objects someone else made.
They can be great screenshots, no doubt! Stop motion animation can be great too. I've heard great things about Isle of Dogs, and other stop motion movies from studio Laika. And yeah, they can certainly be artistic.
People who believe that "art = figurative painting" think that anything else isn't art.
In reality all painting is distorted, abstracted, and stylised. That's what makes it interesting.
So when people believe this, it just means they aren't aware that all painting is abstracted.
Even if you change nothing else, composing something inside a frame requires creative choices.
And the point of both painting and photography is to manipulate composition, colour, tone, use of lighting, choice of subject, pose, narrative, and so on, to create an experience for the viewer.
There's also those who believe art requires skill, talent and/or craft. There are photographers who believe that Adams is art because of these factors and down play the 'decisive moment' photographers. There are painters who say that only highly realistic portraits are "art".
In Art School we had a big debate whether a random 4x6 photograph pulled from their parent's photo drawer was 'art'. What we came to agree was, that if someone put that photo into a gallery and framed it, it would be perceived as art. Figuring out what changed, it was the inferred semiotic sign that an artist has bestowed on the object that changed it into art.
Yes, I think though in your matrix where an Artist has intended a thing to be art, but its not perceived to be it, is mostly a form of communication breakdown. An artist has tried to send a signal, but it hasn't been received. A famous artist may decide to leave a can of soda on a picnic table in a park. You observe it, not knowing who placed it, and it looks like litter. Later, you see a photo that the artist took, with a statement about their artistic intent. You now will see that object in your mind as an art piece to be considered, it might not just be considered well. Certainly every artistic statement does not require appreciation from the public as a quality statement, anyone who's gone through art school knows that.
However, it most likely is the case that if an Artist intends something to be art, and no-one perceives it as such, its not 'good art'.
It occurred to me that in the case where someone created a thing and didn't intend to create art, but you received it as art, that is indeed art. Was the famous urinal 'art' to Duchamp, before Duchamp exhibited it as 'art'?
You may have misinterpreted certain aspects of my blog post. If someone created something that they didn't intend as art, no matter what my reception is, it's not art. So before Duchamp exhibited it as art, it is certainly not art.
My point is, Duchamp saw it as art, where the creator of the thing did not. So what was the matrix like for Duchamp? I argue he saw something was art, that was not created to be it.
Ah okay apologies, thought Duchamp made it. But yeah, I'd agree with you, they saw something as art that was not created to be. So they're just wrong.
It's like if someone couldn't find a toilet so they just took a dump on a display toilet at Home Depot. Someone comes along and calls it art. They're wrong. That's just fecal matter.
Per "Graham's hierarchy of disagreement" this is contradiction without evidence - the midpoint between three good and three bad forms of disagreement. I think HN could formally forbid the bottom 4 forms, for they don't anything to discussion.
Keep execution, remove intent: you get bathroom decoration, which definitely isn't art.
Remove execution, keep intent: you get modern art, which is still art.
Edit: this comment seems to be interpreted as being against modern art. It really isn't. It also doesn't try to imply that all of modern art is without execution (which would be a ridiculous proposition). The point is that there is still art when we remove execution. Some modern art has very elaborate execution, but sometimes modern art is pure idea, and then it is still art.
Yeah, that's not my point, but it's my fault for not being clear enough. I added a line to the comment you're replying to, to try to make it more explicit.
In your addition to that comment, you write: "The point is that there is still art when we remove execution. Some modern art has very elaborate execution, but sometimes modern art is pure idea, and then it is still art."
You seem to be describing some people's broadened view of art rather than modern art itself.
Modern art was made by many artists with many different views. Some of whom might have found execution more or less important than the concept behind their art -- if they even thought about it that way.
Speaking of which, it'd be interesting to see some examples of artists for whom execution (in some sense) was not at all important.
> In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his Readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice."
> The money was supposed to be used to create modern art. And it was — but not in the way a Danish museum expected when it gave an artist the equivalent of $84,000. In return, it received two empty canvases. The artist, Jens Haaning, says the blank canvases make up a new work of art — titled "Take the Money and Run" — that he calls a commentary on poor wages. One thing it's not, he says, is a theft. "It is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work," he said, according to Danish public broadcaster DR. "The work is that I have taken their money," Haaning stated.
(I've been upvoting you because this is an interesting point of view).
At this point, one must ask: what is not art with such a broad definition? And is a definition that excludes nothing useful?
Is it enough for something to be art that some person, living or dead, at some point thought it was art? I know a lot of people think it is, but I really struggle with accepting this definition. Mainly because it's used to let things in that I -- subjectively, in my own opinion -- absolutely dislike as lazy crap. And no, I don't consider being lazy an art form.
The only thing everybody agrees upon is that everybody wants their definition to be the one. There are definitions of art almost as many as there are critics of art and artists taken together, and each and every one will defend their definition to the bitter end. I know I'm not helping the discussion here but the debates go almost religiously and you simply can't debate faith (nor should you). Maybe some even have some beef in calling something particular "art". Anyway. Easier is: if they call something art I let them call it art, and just don't buy it or ignore the discussion if I don't like it. So basically my take is: art is if I enjoy it - mostly as a sensorial pleasure or even as a metaphorial challenge.
> Easier is: if they call something art I let them call it art, and just don't buy it or ignore the discussion if I don't like it. So basically my take is: art is if I enjoy it - mostly as a sensorial pleasure or even as a metaphorial challenge.
Sounds healthy. I can live with that rule of thumb.
In Duchamp's case the execution of the art would be Duchamp's choice of which object to dignify as art. He did make a choice, so execution would be involved.
In Haaning's case maybe the execution is in the choice of blank canvas and coming up with the concept... would you buy that?
Execution is making something. Decisions and speeches and choice and "coming up with the concept" don't constitute execution. But they show intent, and therefore, IMHO, art.
Art is like crime. It's a bigger crime to think of something bad, and then do it. But in lots of cases, planning to do a crime is a crime, even without implementation.
So I guess for you that "something" has to be tangible.
How would you characterize a musical composition.. could that be art?
After all, a musical composition is nothing without being performed -- either on real instruments or in a sheet music reader's imagination. But that performance is not in the composition, so one could argue the composition itself has no execution and therefore by your definition of art a musical composition is modern art. Yet there are plenty of pre-modern compositions, arguably without execution either.
It looks like in some modern art and the artists behind it are lacking , I'd say, skill/labor not execution because the execution exists in some shape or form. But many of these artists are trained classically and could perform in a classical way if they really wanted to (though some can't), but choose to express themselves in novel ways. And that does get pushed a bit too far, sometimes up to the point that we wonder what could NOT be considered art. But even if you don't like most modern art, at some point you will find something that stirs something in you, something that would not be possible if we had very rigid/conservative standards. I find that modern art is more about processes, abstractions and ideas.
Modern art is art! I said as much. It doesn't so much lack in execution as it lacks execution: it's often not executed at all.
But that's good! In many ways modern art is pure intent: put something where it doesn't belong, or think of putting it where it doesn't belong, and you're done.
My point is not against modern art, or even about modern art; what I meant to say was actually quite the opposite: that intent is what matters, and if you remove execution but still keep the intent, then there is still art, whereas if you do the opposite, then there is no art.
I'll extent that widely: bathroom decoration is art.
Marcel Duchamp famously made scandal with his "Fountain", which is precisely a bathroom element.
What he meant is that the gesture of declaring that a readymade object is art is art by itself.
So pure intent is art.
Some may find it ridiculous, but please try and reconsider: the scandal it provoked and the questioning about what art is - that was the intent of Duchamp when he declared that urinal (that he put upsidedown and signed) a piece of art.
And truly that gesture is still considered today as an important moment of the History of Art.
Paradoxically, some crafts by non-artists are considered ad art, despite being without any intent of art.
It's called "art brut" which translated from French would mean something like "raw art". Some guys do their thing for their own but their artistic value is difficult to miss.
So what about bathroom decoration? Well, some people can turn their bathroom into a piece of art. They may be artists or common people.
But saying that doesn't mean that everything is art, just that we should pay attention and notice art when it appears to you, even in an unexpected place.
When you wrote "execution", you meant the material result produced. But the act of making art ... is also art.
Jackson Pollock is a famous painter but he's mainly remembered for the videos of him painting. Watching him is fascinating. The paintings themselves, well, not much so (some will disagree, and they are right to, more on this later).
I never saw a Pollock's painting in a museum without a video next to him showing him painting. He never asked that. But it's no mystery that he wanted to be filmed.
So the act of creation is art by itself.
But many disagree on the artistic value of most of modern and contemporary art, usually saying that their infant or a monkey could do it, or themselves.
So what is the place of judgment in art? In fact, it's a non-question. A piece of art doesn't exist if nobody look at it and/or experience it.
A book exists not because it's written but because someone reads it. The vast majority of the production of artists, writers, painters, sculptors is forgotten. Most of books that receive literary prizes are considered piece of xxx 50 years later. To the point where it's difficult to apprehend why it was considered as art... So we are right back at the beginning, right?
Well, no: experiencing a piece of art is not passive. The watcher or the reader is active. Phenomenology as well as scientific experiences have demonstrated that our senses are not passive. We build what we see and what we read. For example, when reading a novel, we build in our imagination a representation of the characters, the places etc. That's why watching a movie based on a novel is almost always disappointed. What we see on-screen doesn't match with our representation.
So the audience is a co-creator of a piece of art. Artists are absolutely divided on this: some consider that the audience is passive and the art is totally theirs. But that's just untrue, it's nothing but an ego issue. And nobody care about their opinion on this. If a writer dislike how a character is understood by its readers, well, what can he do about it? Once produced, a piece of art totally escapes from the artist's hands. Other artists go totally on the opposite side, saying plainly: 100% of what you feel and understand from my work is yours.
So the question if something is art or not is ... a non-question. In the end, what matters is what you, as someone of the audience, experience from it, in an active way since each if us - actively even if often unconsciously, co-creates the art.
What you feel, what your emotions are, the questions that arise in you, that is the only thing that matters. Art doesn't need validation. Nor fom any authorities like museums, neither a social consensus.
A proof of that? Go to a museum and look at paintings from, let's say, the XVIIIth century. The craft is often amazing. It's obvious that all those guys were super skilled. But do you feel something?
Well, some do, but I rarely. I appreciate the craft but most of the time I'm bored. Quite often I go to an exhibition and ... I'm disappointed. Because I didn't feel anything.
That's also true for super famous artists. The Sixtine Chapel from Michaelangelo? I stayed quite a while but couldn't see it. So it's not art? Obviously it is, but my art education is insufficient to apprehend it. It's like classical music. You need to learn it. And once again learning is not gulling data. It's an active process where you train your mind to see the world differently. It's also having the basic keys to decrypt what's in front of you.
I was raised in Brazil and frankly, classical music is hard. I have started my own modest education, just by listening the whole symphonies of the melodies everybody knows and likes. Little by little, I learn to appreciate. I haven't go far but well, it's getting enjoyable while I'm still totally uninterested by the Sixtine Chapel.
Too bad for me, and who cares if I consider art or not. I could say it's just a church "decoration".
So the whole debate of deciding if it's art or not is ... pointless. The only one interested are of 2 kinds:
- those making money with art. It's art if it has a financial value. As if a book was judged by the $21 you pay for it. Ridiculous but price depends from rarity, so it's important to them to build a totally arbitrary wall between what is art and what is not. Most of the museums are also in the same logic, hence their incapacity in general to display the art of our time.
- those who need social validation to make their own judgment. The mastery in painting reality as it appears to us, as if it was the true thing, is a socially constructed norm to design art. Why? Because it only reveals the mastery of crafting. As if being able to write verses that rhymes makes you a poet. It doesn't, does it? :-)
Consider music. When you dislike it, do you question it as being music? 99% of the time I don't. I just don't feel anything or I plainly dislike it.
So finally, art is a continuum, with no segmentation. From the intent (Duchamp) to the execution (Pollock painting) to the "piece of art" (which can be anything, like a graffiti or the soup cans of Warhol, e.g. simple industrial reproduction of a picture) to the active work from the audience grasping what they are able to from it.
Sometimes, it's easy to experience it: a great song, or the melting watches of Dali - which is a weird case because it's difficult to put the right words onto them (for me at least) but absolutely everybody remembers that picture once they have seen it. Many people don't know it's by Dali but somehow they can't help not remembering it.
Art is where you feel it. I remember some bathrooms. Many people decorate them without any limit, as if everything was permitted just in that place because it's for poo anyway, right? You can let your inner craziness express itself because this is a place where nobody is supposed to judge you on. It's for poo! The decoration of your living room is the exact opposite, the place where you display were you belong in the social hierarchy. It has a view on the skyline or not. It's leather or a basic fabric. It's a basic stuff from IKEA or an stylish leather couch.
Bathrooms are definitely the place where there is "art brut" to discover, and to discover that your friend has an artistic sense that he refrains to express elsewhere. Maybe they paint but they are reluctant to show you. Well, it's too soon, my production is shitty still... And back to the bathroom we are!
Japanese photographers are more spontaneous. Pictures look more like snap shots of everyday life. Often imperfect. Out of focus, crooked and blurry. They often just use a point and shoot on automode.
I just want to say that there are different ways to think about photography. I find the Japanese approach very interesting, because it uses unique properties of photography that is different from painting. Unlike painting you can take as many pictures as you want. You can take a camera everywhere. There are unique moments in everyday life that are beyond your imagination.
http://www.artnet.com/artists/daido-moriyama/
https://sabukaru.online/articles/hiromix-shaping-the-identit...
https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2014/05/26/the-snapshot-photogr...
https://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artists/162-masahisa-fu...