I get sick of lousy work being called art. “Look ma I’m an artist”
So what is art, and what is trash? I’m not just talking photography here,I’m talking about all art. Some will say I’m being harsh here, but sometimes a little crankinesses helps us be more realistic. The above image took me longer to save an upload than it did to convert it from photo to funky! Am I a better artist now?
Ever looked at a piece that was touted as art and said “That’s Really Stupid”? If not stop by a gallery some time. You’ve probably also seen other so called artists gather round and say “WOW that’s so moving” All this time guys like us look on and think… “Am I Missing Something Here”
Anyone can say their an artist, but that doesn’t make them one. There is some truth to the statement that “Beauty in is the eye of the beholder” but it can easily be noted that art is sometimes an excuse for shotty workmanship.
VIEWER… “what’s with this pictures where half the guys head is out of the frame, and he’s sucking on his big toe, or is that a coke bottle! PHOTOGRAPHER/PAINTER… That’s my artistic interpretation.
No, it’s not artistic! It’s cruddy work that you didn’t want to admit was bad so you called it art! Do you fall in this arena? I hope not, but I’m sure you’ve seen some piece touted as something great when really it belonged in the garbage can. I know I have.
In my opinion you can’t just say something art is it suddenly enters the realm of beauty and imagination. For example in photography a blur can be used creatively. On the other hand a lousy photographer who was a good PR guy might take really crummy blurry pictures, say it was his style of art, and people would fall all over it.
So what’s this all about? Well as professional photographers trying to make a living we need to be realistic. A very few people will look at poorly crafted junk and see beauty. The average consumer will not! That does not mean we shouldn’t be creative, develop our style, and shoot what interests us. It means we should be realistic and not use art as an excuse to be lazy. Taking an image that came out lousy, playing around with it and then saying “This is my creative style” is stupid. If you take good pictures be proud of it! If not, then learn to take better ones so you can be proud of those.
Artists sometimes think their better than others and that they have this amazing creativity the nobody else has. Sure you may have tons of talent, but a good tile setter can be just as talented and artistic as you are! Have you tried it doing it? We all have our abilities in various areas.
If someone has to tout themself as an artist to let people know they are, then they probably have a streak of arrogance, or a quality control problem. I have a passion for photography, and I love to be artistic and try new things, but I want my work to stand in it’s own merits and be loved for it’s beauty and quality, not because I say it’s good, or because I have yes men to call it art.
Let the comments begin!
Interestingly enough Photography is looked at by the traditional art community as a lesser medium and some debate it is not art at all.
next time you go to a museum look at the ratio of photography to other medium and you will see what I mean.
Visual art is defined as the arrangement of colors, forms, or other elements “in a manner that affects the sense of beauty.
Art is the final product that one produces after he PROOF READS HIS WEB POST! You consistently produce topical paragraphs that are FULL of typos, misspelled words, punctuation errors, etc. Is it possible to look at your text before you post it!???? I am sure you do this with your photos…. why not YOUR TEXT?????? GAVIN, GAVIN, GAVIN… let’s get professional here, please!
:cry::cry::cry:
Firetoole I’m not just talking about photography. Also I understand theirs no way to make a guide that says this is art, but if I have to convince people it’s art it’s not much.
Barts I proofed this multiple times. I confess I lack at proofing, but I do do it, and fix mistakes as I see them. I think I still got my point across, but if you want to send me an email correcting my grammar that’s cool 🙂
gavin
Then I guess I would say
if you have to tell people something is art then it probably isn’t, but it might be or it could be to you or might be in the future.
I agree with the typo comment. I can’t imagine that any of that was proofed. No one can be perfect, but if you are posting a professional blog I have a hard time taking it seriously when I read sentences like this;
Not because I say it’s good myself, or because other yes men to call it art. ????? What the heck does that mean?
Anyhow, I have never walked through a gallery and viewed something that was not art or could be considered crap. Artists have different views and everyone has different likes and dislikes. There have been art works that I think are less touching to me than they may be to someone else. But these people who put their work in galleries are ARTISTS, people that take a photo and play around with photo shop for 10 seconds aren’t, and yes I have seen people do that type of thing and I don’t consider it art, but not because of the outcome but because of the process! Art is a concentration that takes time and talent. I personally LOVE Jackson Pollock and I wonder how many people have viewed his art and not “gotten” it. But he was an artist no matter what anyone says about his art work. I think that it is really hard to judge other people’s art in general.
“not because I say it’s good myself, or because other yes men to call it art”
Sorry you don’t understand it crystal but it’s not a typo it means exactly what it says. I did rephrase it a touch to try and make it fit better.
I don’t claim to be an English teacher. I do work to improve my writing all the time, but my first priority is to get out content that informative and challenging.
Gav
Gavin –
Seriously? You proofed it many times? Here’s a novel idea… try spell or grammar checking it Once and see what the checker says. They are very helpful tools and have the uncanny ability to keep us from looking unprofessional when we make even the smallest of very common mistakes. I am sure that “fixing mistakes as I see them” as you said is not working for you. You don’ see them the first time, so why do you think you’d see them the second?
I second what Crystal mentioned regarding this topic. The way I see it, that’s the beauty (and in my opinion, the best part) of art: It is 100% subjective. There is no right or wrong when it comes to art in my opinion. Yes it may take way more skill and a longer time to create an oil painting masterpiece than it does to run a handful of Photoshop filters but you are still going to find people who will like the crazy looking Photoshop creation over the oil painting. That’s just what the viewer prefers.
Even though I am a photographer, I still don’t refer to myself as an artist. I reserve that title for those highly skilled individuals who can take raw materials and turn it into something. Whether it be a block of granite turned into a statue, lumber made into a beautiful bookcase, or even paint and canvas to create a painting; those are true artists. Lets face it, we photographers are really just editors and modifiers of objects and scenes that already exist. Not a bad thing in the slightest, just don’t be too hasty when adding “artist” to your title. 😀
USENET RULE #7: “When your response consists primarily of a spelling or grammar flame, you just lost the argument.”
This is an interesting subject and one that has baffled me for a long time. However, I think I am just now starting to understand it to some degree. In the past, I have tossed tons of photos that I thought were trash, things with motion blur, things with uneven lighting, and so on.
When I got married, as we went through our proofs (this was back in the film days), I was somewhere between baffled and annoyed. As I looked at them, I commented that “every other photograph was blurry.” I was corrected and told that they were in fact (as I am sure you have guessed by now) “soft focus.”
I suspect many things have become “art” by accident.
P.S. I suspect Barts big problem was with their vs. they’re, which you got wrong, but no spell checker is going to find.