On May 11th, Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #96″ from 1981 passed all records for photography when it was sold at auction for $3.89 million. This is what it looks like:
What’s that you said, you philistine? Did I just hear you say, “meh?” Did you say you don’t see what all the fuss is about? Oh my. You should just pluck your eyes out now if you can’t appreciate High Art when you see it. Take a closer look. Notice the interplay of the monochromatic hues of orange and how the diffusion of light . . .
Ah, who I’m kidding. I can’t even pull off a parody of what a Pretentious Art Connoisseur would say in this case because I simply can’t fathom how anyone could justify paying the equivalent of the annual GNP of Haiti for a picture that would have earned a B+ if it had been taken for a community college photography class.
However, Sherman’s Kodak moment is a work of genius compared to the snapshot that previously held the title of World’s Most Expensive Photograph. That would be Andreas Gursky “99 Cent II Diptychon”:
No, I did not go down to the Dollar General and snap a random photograph. This is a real thing. In 2007, someone with too much money and too little sense paid $3.34 million for this Work of Art. Another auction in May 2006 fetched $2.25 million for a second print. Of this same photograph. (Seriously, they did.) A third print—yes, a third copy of this same photograph—sold for $2.48 million in November 2006. (I promise you I’m not making this up.)
You can now say that you have seen the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th most expensive photographs of all time. (This is #3.)
This sort of silliness gives realism a bad name. It’s almost enough to make those of us in the Tom Wolfe school of art criticism long for some good old fashioned, overrated abstract expressionism. (Almost.)
Update: In the comments section, FT’s deputy editor Matthew Schmitz says, “At the end of the day, it’s hard to tell if we’re doing art criticism of just criticizing the elites. The former, I think, is much harder to do well than the latter.”
That is certainly true, though, as I explain in the comments, I think it is there is a legitimate reason why such “pre-criticism” is required. But he does have a valid point. I mocked the piece without even attempting to do any actual art criticism. While I don’t believe its necessary or worth the time or effort to give a full-blown critique of the piece, I think I can easily explain one of its major flaws.
I’ll assume for the sake of time (and because I’m lazy) that our readers are familiar with golden proportions and how they apply to aesthetics. So let’s see what happens when we apply the rule of thirds (the theory that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along specific lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally) to the photo:
By adding the lines, it is easy to see that Sherman has attempted, but failed, to apply the concept. But notice what happens if we simply rotate the image 5 degrees counterclockwise:
The difference in symmetry is striking. The two main objects of interest in the photograph (the woman’s face and right hand (the one on the viewer’s left)) suddenly fall into a natural, aesthetically appealing alignment. Several other areas also fall into place. Notice the top of the left hand, the bottom collar of the shirt, the right breast, and the right wrist are now all on the same axis. You can also almost draw a golden spiral from the right wrist (the one on the left) to the woman’s face. Even the angle of her face makes it more appealing.
I could go on, but why belabor the point? Sherman isn’t competent enough to get the basics right, so there isn’t much point in discussing the more nuanced flaws in the piece.
May 19th, 2011 | 9:12 am
I can only posit money laundering of some kind. “Hello, Beloved, this is Ntube Bwardi, widow of the late Defense Minister of Nigeria. Please send me your bank account information and I will forward to you this beautiful photograph worth $3.89 million…”
May 19th, 2011 | 10:01 am
I fear that this line of attack reduces art criticism to a second-hand variety of class politics. Thomas Kinkade is championed because his works are loved by the masses and despised by some elites. Cindy Sherman is criticized because her work is loved by some elites and met with indifference or hostility by everyone else. At the end of the day, it’s hard to tell if we’re doing art criticism of just criticizing the elites. The former, I think, is much harder to do well than the latter.
May 19th, 2011 | 10:28 am
I am printing millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of these photographs as we speak.
May 19th, 2011 | 10:35 am
I fear that this line of attack reduces art criticism to a second-hand variety of class politics.
I prefer to think of it as “pre-criticism.” Before any art criticism even begins we must ask the question, “Is this work worth taking seriously?” Unfortunately, in our modern age the question is rarely based on aesthetic criteria and almost always predicated on class concerns.
For instance, imagine if I said that I had found this photo in a box of old pictures of my mother during the 1960s. While some people might say that they found it interesting, few people would think that it was “art” and no one would think that it was worth paying for. If I said I thought it was worth $3.8 million dollars people would think I was insane.
But if I say that is was taking by someone who has connections to the New York art scene, suddenly we have to take if very, very seriously.
I don’t disagree that there is a whiff of class politics in my criticism. However, I think that is unavoidable since we wouldn’t even be discussing the piece if it weren’t for class politics determining what gets considered “art” in America.
Thomas Kinkade is championed because his works are loved by the masses and despised by some elites.
That’s true, and should be condemned, as I did last year:
Cindy Sherman is criticized because her work is loved by some elites and met with indifference or hostility by everyone else.
The difference between Kinkade and Sherman is that he was once a competent artist who turned into a hack. Sherman is an incompetent photographer whose work was never even competent, much less worthy of serious criticism.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to tell if we’re doing art criticism of just criticizing the elites.
In this case, I’m criticizing the so-called elites absurd standard for what passes as art.
The former, I think, is much harder to do well than the latter.
Yes it is. But I think we really, really need to get to a place in America where we stop judging and praising art based on whether it passes the litmus test of the New York art scene. Unfortunately, too many people have been taught to distrust their own aesthetic sensibilities and defer to an elite that is not in any way truly elite.
Could I spend thousands of words criticizing Sherman’s photo based on its technical merits and explaining why it is so devoid of aesthetic merit that it shouldn’t be taken seriously? Sure I could. But why bother? Doing so would give the impression that the average FT reader is so insecure about their aesthetic judgment that they need someone to confirm that the photograph really is just a waste of film stock.
I’m not saying that all aesthetic taste are equal or that criticism is worthless because everyone can judge for themselves. But I do think there are times when people can discern for themselves that a piece of pop art is not worth treating as legitimate. I wouldn’t insult my readers by explaining to them why Lady Gaga’s album is junk so why do it for a photographer like Sherman?
May 19th, 2011 | 10:39 am
Well, I’ve heard orange is very popular this year…
May 19th, 2011 | 10:47 am
Mr. Schmitz makes an excellent point–one of the things that make the recovery of an adequate criticism so hard, is the difficulty of NOT dwelling on the nudity of the art-market emperors. It’s so tempting to take easy shots at bad art, that we never move on to elucidating good art, or we decide none of it’s worth elucidating.
Still, even though we can get stuck at the “criticizing the elites” stage, it’s a necessary first step to doing actual art, much less actual criticism. Some of the reasons that artists like Cindy Sherman are revered pose decisive barriers to actual artistic achievement or appreciation.
Just for example, take Greenberg’s famous analysis of kitsch, aversion to which now forms part of the art world’s DNA. However, it’s turned out that kitsch isn’t a tenth as corrosive to art as the fear of committing it (or even flirting with it) has proved. Any artist who wants to be taken seriously must suffuse his work with enough drabness (visual or spiritual), or enough aberrance, to avert any possible charges of kitsch. Not to please–this is the first commandment.
Undoing this–or even mitigating it–CANNOT happen without a determined refutation of its practitioners and theorists. To that extent, “criticizing the elites” is essential, a non-optional introduction to coherent art criticism.
May 19th, 2011 | 10:57 am
The problem is not the photograph itself as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t do much for me, but each to his own. My question is: can you imagine ANY photograph that would be worth millions of dollars–unless it were of historical value? (Maybe a pic of Lee Harvey Oswald pulling the trigger?)
I can’t even fathom paying that much money for a photograph or for a painting, and I never have been able to imagine it. Where is the intrinsic worth in a work of art that makes it that valuable? I don’t get gold either–or economics.
May 19th, 2011 | 12:07 pm
I added an update to address Matthew’s point about failing do apply a genuine critique of the work. I think Sherman is so incompetent as a photographer that there isn’t much that needs to be said (she failed her first college photography class and doesn’t seem to have learned much since) but I thought it might be worthwhile to point out at least one problem with the photo.
May 19th, 2011 | 12:26 pm
I’ve never liked Sherman, even when I took her seriously, and I have little use for conceptual art, but conceptual art is what we have here. The idea is the thing, and only secondarily is the work an aesthetic object. Sherman wants viewers to question the way we think about women and the way they’re represented in the media. (Groundbreaking, right?) Not that this invalidates Joe’s excellent criticisms, but I think her fans might say they’re beside the point.
May 19th, 2011 | 12:51 pm
Is it possible that today’s consensus of critical opinion in the visual arts could be totally wrong? Can such a thing happen? It is understood to have happened before: A founding idea of Modernism is that the critical consensus at the end of the 19th century was controlled by “corrupt” bourgeois taste and was so completely worthless as to require a total revolution in taste and practice. So could the art establishment of today likewise represent corrupted taste? If we do not feel free to entertain that possibility, how can we truly evaluate the merits of contemporary art?
May 19th, 2011 | 1:04 pm
I admit it bewilders me that anyone would pay millions of dollars for a photo, but I do think in order to do a valid critique of a photo, you have to look at the print that the buyer paid for. If you google some famous paintings on the web, or check them out in art books, one reproduction can look very different from another. I remember seeing some of the very controversial Mapplethorp photos in a gallery many years ago, and whatever one might have said about the subject matter, the prints were stunning in their crystal clarity, tones, and shades.
Also, the value of any work of art by a noted artist doesn’t depend on the piece as an isolated work. If something is authenticated (or de-authenticated) as a Rembrandt, it’s value and price will shoot up (or plummet). It is still exactly the same work, but it becomes more (or less) valuable because Rembrandt did (or didn’t) paint it.
Also, the price of art depends on supply and demand. There is no “objective” way to put a price on art. There is also no “objective” way to prove a work of art is good or bad. I wish I had a few of the van Gogh paintings that nobody in his lifetime considered worth buying.
May 19th, 2011 | 1:30 pm
for those of a certain theological persuasion who believe that all that exists is sacramental, nothing — no image, no piece of art, no matter how ugly or silly or perverse — can absolutely fail to inspire at least a modicum of comtemplation.
for example, c. s. lewis might remind us that the photograph is an icon on “one of the holiests things presented to our senses, next to the blessed sacrament.”
for what it’s worth, i spent two minutes looking at the photo and was led to self-forgetful wonder. i think i’m a better person for having looked at it. but i wouldn’t buy it for 50 cents, let alone 4 million dollars.
May 19th, 2011 | 1:43 pm
Yes, it defies parody. Poe’s law in action.
May 19th, 2011 | 3:34 pm
This is the “tech startup” school of art, where those in the know pay absurd amounts of money to finance hot projects that are hot based on relationship.
I’m reminded of how the photo sharing app Color got 41 million in funding with the only thing to show for it being an unintuitive mobile sharing app that didn’t work half the time on android. Or how Microsoft bought Skype for billions of dollars.
Money spent based on relationship and status while ignoring the item itself.
May 19th, 2011 | 3:52 pm
I never took a photography or art class, but I imagine it to be the same as the philosophy and religion classes I took. Basically everyone in these classes just decided for himself or herself what is true or beautiful. You can never say that a belief was idiotic, or else you would be “close-minded”. In terms of quality, if I hadn’t of read the headline first, I would have figured Joe’s very young child just bought him a cheap throw-away camera for his birthday and he went to the local dollar store and snapped a picture.
May 19th, 2011 | 4:05 pm
“Sherman wants viewers to question the way we think about women and the way they’re represented in the media.”
And this photo says that how??? Sigh. I am tired of the whole modern (last 100 years or so) presumption that all artists have “something to say” and that their art actually says it. That photo does not “say” anything to me, and even if it did, I don’t know that I think asking me to question what I think about women and the way they are represented in the media is necessarily a worthwhile thing for art to do. Much of modern art is cleverness dressed up as profundity. I used to enjoy it, now it just makes me sigh.
May 19th, 2011 | 4:30 pm
I personally have always liked Sherman’s work and I think much of it quite beautiful in a purely visual sense. I think the photograph in question does possess a certain pleasing order. I learned the rule of thumb about dividing a picture plane into thirds vertically and horizontally in my freshman photography class in high school, but I’m not sure I follow the criticism in the update. Also, I think the other photograph posted above is quite beautiful as well. This is all quite apart from what either of them “say.”
I think criticism of the hothouse world of elitist “art” is valid, and I have seen plenty of pretentious “emperor’s new clothes” art, but these, I think, are different.
May 19th, 2011 | 5:09 pm
Gail F, you’ll note that I’m not defending Sherman’s work. But you can’t judge the photograph correctly without judging it in the context of others she did at the time. It wasn’t meant to stand alone.
I don’t know that I think asking me to question what I think about women and the way they are represented in the media is necessarily a worthwhile thing for art to do.
Artists are thinking people, and art has often been political.
May 19th, 2011 | 5:19 pm
Michael, I don’t share your view on Sherman, but it’s refreshing to hear a contrary point of view on this thread.
May 19th, 2011 | 5:31 pm
I think a formal analysis of Sherman’s work (such as the one using golden proportions) misses the mark. Her work is not concerned so much with technical form but is about the object photographed. It is more psychological and can be quite evocative. If you view a large selection of her body of work this comes through better than a single image such as this. That is not to say that her psychological production cannot be aesthetically critiqued, only that her work should be judged in that context, not by formal criticism.
May 19th, 2011 | 5:54 pm
Is it possible that today’s consensus of critical opinion in the visual arts could be totally wrong?
I think no more possible than that it could be totally right. Critical opinion regarding art is neither right nor wrong, it seems to me. It is opinion. Some artists have enduring appeal. Some fade into oblivion. Some have reputations that fall and then rise again. Some of the stuff we consider great art today was almost universally scorned. Do you think if you went back in time to when van Gogh was alive, you could persuade people he was a great artist?
May 19th, 2011 | 8:02 pm
I like it. However, Joe is definitely correct: it is not technically balanced, and “doesn’t enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally”.
It seems to me that’s the point of the photo — it’s meant to be jarring. Your mileage may vary…
May 19th, 2011 | 8:20 pm
I collect coins. A piece of copper minted in the US in 1855 has a metallic value of about twelve cents. I could melt it down and sell it, probably more easily if I had a lot more of it and I knew someone who wanted to make copper stuff.
I purchased the coin from a dealer for $45 several years ago. I like the piece because it has few flaws, and while lightly circulated, has a pleasing brown color, not quite shiny, but lustrous. According to various publications, it is worth about $80 today. Lots of other collectors like copper, and the supply of large cents is limited. A dealer might pay me $70 for it. Maybe I could get $100 on eBay.
If my grandfather had given it to me, I might never sell it, as the value as a personal item would transcend the collector value. Later I would die, and perhaps the coin market would collapse because of Chinese counterfeits, and it would be worth ten cents to my grandkid.
I don’t have a problem with a photographic print being worth $4M. A few coins are worth more. Two things: I don’t have $4M to buy it, plus I don’t collect photography. Many people feel the same about baseball cards, cabbage patch dolls, autographs, or a flag flown over the Capitol.
I don’t know that posts like this really advance the conservative agenda so much as they provide a forum for the embittered. Why isn’t the shiny penny in my pocket change worth a lot of money? Why isn’t the wallet print of my daughter’s school picture a work of art? Who cares?
May 19th, 2011 | 9:16 pm
The penny is worth that, a penny. The wallet print is more of a work of art than this, but it’s still something you can make inexpensively. This is like taking a penny and selling it for $5000 because Snooki ran it over with a steamroller.
May 19th, 2011 | 11:08 pm
David Nikol: You really miss my point. There is right and wrong and good and bad in art in the realm of criticism. Modernism is valued because of its perceived positive achievements; the late 19th century Beaux Arts styles were judged an aesthetic (and moral) failure by leading 20th century critics. Right and wrong may not be good Postmodern words, but judgments about quality (good, bad, rightness, wrongness) remain. And I don’t understand why you are telling me about Van Gogh.Yes, his work would have been viewed as worthless by the consensus of the day. We now see that consensus as wrong. I am saying that today’s critical consensus that gives investors the confidence to pay multi-millions for Sherman prints maybe should not be taken as gospel either. There used to be fierce battles within the arts over this stuff–all that has mostly died down to a kind of smug anti-art conformity that is not good for art or artists. More debate is needed, not less.
Todd: This is not bitterness, but concern for the young artist trying to do good work in a moribund atmosphere. The relative market value of art work matters because it expresses judgment. Your example of the penny is a good one only if you think the fine arts are no more important than coin collecting.
May 20th, 2011 | 12:22 am
@Todd: What you’re pointing to is of course the basis of any free market system: some stuff is valuable because people think it is. Other stuff isn’t ’cause people don’t. People sometimes change their minds about which is which.
But I certainly didn’t read Mr. Carter’s post as attempting to advance any “conservative agenda,” nor as “embittered.” I’m not sure how “Hey, look at this ugly photograph—isn’t it crazy that people paid lots of money for it?” advances any agenda, actually.
May 20th, 2011 | 3:23 am
By adding the lines, it is easy to see that Sherman has attempted, but failed, to apply the concept [of golden proportiions].
Joe, I wonder if she was intentionally breaking that “rule” for a reason: perhaps to evoke a sense of unease in the viewer or to portray the subject as lacking a sense of balance?
May 20th, 2011 | 9:07 am
David Nikol: You really miss my point. There is right and wrong and good and bad in art in the realm of criticism.
T.B. Root,
How far are you willing to take that? Do you buy Joe Carter’s “golden mean” analysis of Untitled #96? Is this a principle by which we can analyze all photos and paintings? Are there objective criteria for what makes an image good art? Can we program those rules into a computer so that it can distinguish good art from bad? Or paint masterpieces?
It seems to me one of the things about art is that while you can make informed judgments about its worthiness, there will always be room for disagreement. I know in music there are “rules” (e.g., no parallel fifths) and I also know that great composers break them regularly.
I would be hesitant to say that good art is whatever the majority of art critics and connoisseurs say it is, but on the other hand, I would not want to say there are any eternally fixed rules by which to judge good art. I suspect, for example, if you could go back in a time machine and show Cezanne and Renoir masterpieces to da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, and Giotto, they would find them bizarre.
May 20th, 2011 | 9:13 am
Two more points.
No judgment you make of a photo or painting by looking at a reproduction (especially at 72 dots per inch on a computer monitor) can be entirely valid. You must see the original.
Based on the reproduction above and others I have seen, I really like “99 Cent II Diptychon.” I can only imagine the actual print is more impressive.
May 20th, 2011 | 9:34 am
JB in CA Joe, I wonder if she was intentionally breaking that “rule” for a reason: perhaps to evoke a sense of unease in the viewer or to portray the subject as lacking a sense of balance?
Perhaps. But that highlights a key problem with modern art. It’s become hard to tell if a work is simply lacking in technical competence or if they add an element of technical incompetence for effect.
In my opinion, if she can’t achieve a sense of imbalance (assuming that was her intention) without resorting to measures which are considered sloppy technique, then she probably isn’t all that skilled as a photographer.
David Nickol Are there objective criteria for what makes an image good art?
Yes, otherwise it would be impossible to distinguish between good art and bad art (or anything at all and art).
Can we program those rules into a computer so that it can distinguish good art from bad? Or paint masterpieces?
Probably, to some extent. But applying those rules is merely the first step, not the whole of art criticism.
It seems to me one of the things about art is that while you can make informed judgments about its worthiness, there will always be room for disagreement.
I agree with that.
No judgment you make of a photo or painting by looking at a reproduction (especially at 72 dots per inch on a computer monitor) can be entirely valid. You must see the original.
Maybe. But if an artwork loses all its value when reduced to 72 dots per inch then it probably wasn’t that good to begin with. There may be some elements in the original that would make this photograph slightly better. But I seriously doubt that it would make such a difference that people would say, “Oh, now I see why it is a great work.”
May 20th, 2011 | 10:01 am
David Nickol: I do not accept Joe’s compositional analysis of the piece. My comments were meant to be limited to what I commented on.
I do think that the Sherman piece is way overvalued–you could probably pick up a small van Dyck for about the same price. The overvaluing must be the result of a lack of intellectual ferment and turmoil inside the art world. (The only real conflict seems to be with the outside world over “censorship.”) The values of Sherman’s type of work could certainly be challenged, but it seems that no one bothers. Hilton Kramer made an effort from an old guard High Modernist point of view, but was not taken seriously.
About this good vs. bad stuff: The esteem in which we hold various works of art is based on positive and negative critical evaluations. There certainly is room for disagreement. Whatever it is you think I’m saying, I’m not.
May 20th, 2011 | 10:06 am
But if an artwork loses all its value when reduced to 72 dots per inch then it probably wasn’t that good to begin with.
Joe Carter,
I saw Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party “in person” once, and it was one of the most memorable experiences in my life. I was astonished that paint on canvas could have such a powerful effect on me. I have never seen a reproduction that comes close to having the impact of the original.
Is there a manual of some kind that lays out the criteria for good art and bad art? Suppose I want to become a better art critic. Where do I go to learn the rules that every critic must know and apply?
This is an odd disagreement, because you sound a bit like a materialist, when I would normally be the one taking that position. Will computers ever write great music, or compose great poetry, or generate great “paintings”? If there are objective, discoverable rules, it seems inevitable that they will. But won’t that reduce great art to something like mathematics, with the great artists of the past having had an intuitive grasp of some of what made great art that will inevitably be overshadowed when scientists uncover all the rules for making great art and program computers to be better artists than humans?
May 20th, 2011 | 10:37 am
David Nickol I have never seen a reproduction that comes close to having the impact of the original.
I agree. But the difference is usually marginal. I’ve never seen a copy of an artwork and thought it was terrible and then changed my mind upon seeing the original. A reproduction might be able to mask some of a work’s virtues but it tends to highlight it’s flaws.
Is there a manual of some kind that lays out the criteria for good art and bad art? Suppose I want to become a better art critic. Where do I go to learn the rules that every critic must know and apply?
That’s a tricky question. The problem is that while the criteria would be necessary for good art criticism they would not be sufficient to make a good art critic.
Let’s start with an assertion that I think we can both agree on: Opinions can be more or less informed. A skilled painter will have more knowledge about colors, forms, techniques, etc., and will generally be able to give a more informed opinion about a piece of work that I could. But that isn’t always true. While I think Thomas Kinkade can produce a more informed opinion than me, I think I can still judge better than he can why his paintings are atrocious.
So while objective criteria exist, there is room for subjective judgement.
This is an odd disagreement, because you sound a bit like a materialist, when I would normally be the one taking that position.
I don’t think so. In fact, I think the point is so obvious that it’s rather banal. Remember a few weeks ago when posted about the art students being able to distinguish between abstract paintings that were produced by monkeys and those that were produced by humans? Why are they able to (generally) tell the difference? One reason is intentionality in form. Even abstract painter tend to have a reason for why they put the paint on the canvas where they do. That intention is shaped by rules of aesthetics that are in many ways objective.
A computer could (and some have) be programmed to identify when such patterns occur in paintings. That doesn’t mean that they would always be able to tell a good from a bad painting. But they could certainly identify properties that occur in most all great works of visual art.
But won’t that reduce great art to something like mathematics, . . .
Almost all great art has elements of mathematics to them—balance, order, precision, etc. Those are necessary, but not sufficient to make great works of art. I think computers could be programmed to make decent music that rivals John Cage or could produce visual art that is equivalent to modern abstract painters (there are few things that Warhol produced that a computer couldn’t have done). But that just shows that most modern art has become mechanical. Truly great art requires a human element which cannot be reduced to lines of code running on a machine.
May 20th, 2011 | 11:33 am
Sorry, but anyone who would pay that kind of money for a photograph of anything or anyone -except maybe a verified photograph of Jesus Christ – is out of his freaking mind.
JAM
May 20th, 2011 | 12:12 pm
I have seen plenty of art work that looked pretty good as a slide, but terrible in person.
And I have seen plenty of good work that did not reproduce well.
There are many compositional rules that can be helpful to an artist: the rule against equal measures of light and dark, the rule against multiple points of equal interest, the rule against tangents of outline, the rule against repetition of equal intervals of space, etc. Such mistakes are like standing up in a canoe–they produce strong effects that can lead to disaster.
But a competent artist can use these strong effects to good purpose, and minimize the problems by shifts of emphasis. Many a great picture would not conform to these guidelines. So you can’t just throw a grid over a work of art to judge it. These are shop rules for artists, not judging criteria for critics.
It seems to me that the point of Cindy Sherman’s photo is precisely that weird sideways blurry ill-composed look to it. It’s a kind of anti-compositional anti-art. To throw it into a more balanced scheme would be to rob it of its intended qualities.
May 20th, 2011 | 1:15 pm
I think your scruples do you credit, T.B., but you’re on the verge of destroying your argument’s validity by making it unfalsifiable–absolutely any piece of dreck I can post on-line JUST MIGHT prove to be a solid work of art when seen in its original form, taken in a special context, or sifted for some compositional oddity that for all anyone knows, could’ve been intentional.
The sort of “grids” and “shop rules” that Joe Carter is citing are not sufficient to objectively qualify something as art, but are arguably necessary. Are compositional rules set in stone? No. Can they be broken? Sure they can, but not many can get away with it. Unless you’re a Durer, Turner, or Caravaggio, you’re less likely to produce “strong effects” than “poop on a canvas.”
And even by the most generous estimates, Cindy Sherman is no Durer/Turner/etc. Her foregoing of craftsmanship (even if deliberate, which I don’t buy) has earned no comparable benefit of the doubt.
May 20th, 2011 | 3:23 pm
I’m not saying all that, S.J.Hersey. I’m just trying to say that Joe goes too far by saying (or seeming to say) that certain simple design principles are essential to the success of any and all art work and that fidelity to those can be perceived at any size reproduction. I mean, that’s true, except for all the times when it isn’t.
I’m not really defending Cindy Sherman, you know. I’ll take Joel Sternfeld instead. Or William Eggleston.
May 20th, 2011 | 4:04 pm
That’s fair enough, Mr. (?) Root. Such principles can certainly be taken to self-destructive extremes. Still, even if that’s exactly what Carter’s saying, it’s far closer to the truth than contemporary art theory would have it. I’d replace “any and all” with “most.”
But even if such prescriptivism is a total mistake, it seems like the last vice that contemporary art is in danger of lapsing into. In fact, much of what’s wrong with current efforts stems from an inordinate aversion to it. At this point, even a little erring in Carter’s direction would be more salutary than our reflexive erring away from it.
May 20th, 2011 | 5:56 pm
I agree, S.J. Craft is very important and artists should be masters of it. But Joe is more confident in his technical prescriptions than were the excellent artists with whom I studied.
And there’s this caution: Frustrated lesser talents in the arts will often turn for relief to a quantifiable technical aspect of art at which they can excel. They become expert in a small corner–be it color and design or anatomy or materials, etc.–and then insist that it’s the whole game. As teachers, their natural enemy is the truly gifted. None of this raises art.
May 21st, 2011 | 4:13 am
I recently sold some photos to a collector for display in her personal office. She chose around a dozen out of maybe 200 that I showed her, and paid me more for them than I could have possibly imagined.
I thought the ones she chose ranged from decent at best to downright dreadful — and they certainly wouldn’t have met the “rule of thirds”! On top of that, a couple were technically challenged, to put it charitably.
But when she finally set about to arrange the final prints, I realized that she had found some commonalities between sets of 2-3 photos that brought out elements even I, nominally the photographer, hadn’t seen — probably because I could only see them in the context I had originally snapped them, whereas the collector saw them in the context of imperfect photos grouped according to some themes that only came out when you placed them side by side, but otherwise isolated.
Were my photographs “art”? Certainly not. But nevertheless she found something that spoke to her in them, and felt compelled enough to buy them. No accounting for taste.
May 21st, 2011 | 7:29 am
[...] However experts such as the one who first reported about this photo disagree. Read up on First Things for more details, especially if you believe you have a photographers eye. But if you believe [...]
May 22nd, 2011 | 5:52 am
On the role of mathematics in art, it is worth remembering that the treatises on perspective by Alberti, Leonardo, Piero della Francesca and Durer (embodying the insights of Brunelleschi and his school) inspired Desargues and Le Hire to develop Projective Geometry, which, in turn, inspired the Analytical Geometry of Descartes and Fermat.
It is no coincidence that Brunelleschi was a notable architect and civil engineer.
Or, in another medium, consider Pythagoras’s work on harmonics
May 28th, 2011 | 3:04 am
Sort of late in the game here, but I was curious that of the comments where “the woman” photographed is discussed, no one seems to get that the model is Sherman… or that she has consistently been that (the model for her own photographs).
Being orange in this case, or a “tart,” or pin-up, or a cheerleader, or a waitress, or a seemingly abandoned woman in a cheerless bar – are all set ups contrived by Sherman to explore the way we read “into” who SHE is, on the basis of what’s limited to the information constructed within her frame. My guess is that she works it pretty hard… from the inside as well… to match the projection she’s mimicking for the camera.
So I suppose y’all can go to town on pythagorean proportions and such, but my guess is that she’s jerking you around a little… and you’ve swallowed the bait. If one extremely devoted sucker wants to be drowned in his or her projections to the tune of $3.4 million or so – I’d personally prefer he (or she) to drop those bucks in Haiti… and not with those folks rebuilding their resort condos.
But the critique of this particular photo also seems to fall curiously often into the “So – is photography ART?” genre of geez, that much for a PHOTO!!!! Come on people. You’re talking about art on the marketplace here… driven by market factors. I don’t understand them – why pretend to?
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