Re: What is art? ...and a reply (at last???)

[kovenn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Neil Koven)]

Work has prevented me from checking in too often, and I now have 358 emails
to read and catch up on before I leave for a week's vacation in New
Orleans, and accumulate another 358 or so...




>>Is "art" the attempt/realization of communication?  I guess that depends
>>what is being communicated.
>
>Why does this matter?  If the visual arts are imployed and an idea is
>communicated, whether it be ugly or mean or objectionable if the idea is
>communicated it is successful.

Yeah, but is it art?  A couple of years ago I went to San Francisco, and
toured Alcatraz.  I found it to be a very strong emotional experience,
("...Oh, the humanity.  The humanity...") I took a lot of pix there, and
they're good solid images, and portray the seclusion and loneliness and
emptiness that still abounds there.  But is it art?  Beats me.  By my
definition, it would be.

I don't have any of them hanging on my wall, but I HAVE them.

Don't get hung up on beauty even if that
>is your choice.

It may be my PREFERENCE (or not), but it's not necessarily my choice.  All
emotions aren't beautiful.  Shindler's List was on TV the other night.  An
INCREDIBLE work of art that is extremely emotional, regardless of one's
background.  But is it beauty?  Hardly.  Is it art?  UNQUESTIONABLY!

>Yes, and more.  It is an extension of emotion and inner feeling into the
>physical realm as a manifestation of that emotion and inner feeling.
>Without art we are no better than the beasts of the field.  It's a >metaphor
>for wearing our heart on our sleeve.

Well, Neil, I went to your home page and had a gander at some of you
photo work.  Now I understand a great deal more about you.

Good.  perhaps you can explain me to me.

Art is a
communicator.  If you want to communicate emotion it can do it if you
find the right audience for your work especially.  Not every one will
"get it" though.  You know this I am sure.  Your work reminds me of the
19th century pictorialists work, Emerson, was it? (Not Ralph Waldo.) You
are definitly a romantic and from a different age.

Sigh........  I should have been born about 1900 or so

And I'm not familiar with that Emerson, so I can't comment.



Do you know the work of Louis Baltz?

Nope.

He has been called (I believe) a
"new landscape" photographer and is a very educated intellectual.  He is
broadly collected internationally and lectures regularly.  When asked
how one of his photographs made him feel he responded "Feel? I don't
feel anything, if a photograph made me feel something I would throw-up."

The man is an artistic Philistine (apologies to all you Philistines out
there)!!!  What the hell is he taking pictures for, if not to feel
SOMETHING!  Even the memories of a trip to Niagara Falls, or your wedding,
or your kids, or...

Just as paintings, or dance, or music, or whatever, elicit emotions of some
sort, our photos are memories of what we were and what we did and what we
felt at any given time.

A photograph might make him want to throw up?  I simply cannot believe such
a crass unthinking unfeeling individual might exist.

Then again maybe they do.  One of them led Germany to defeat and ruin half
a century ago.



The point is not everyone is interested in emotion, especially today.
In art schools today you will find a lot of artists who think art is
about ideas and concepts and may or may not have anything what so ever
to do with feelings.

And photojournalism fills that bill quite nicely.  And that's OK.  But it
may not be art.

Personally I am not that kind of artist.  Though I
try to dig into my subjects darker side, their desires and fantasies.  I
definitly want people to feel something, though I want them to think
about that feeling too, to analyse themselves and their own desires.

Good stuff!

But I appreciate all kinds of art and love the "inner world" I inhabit
when I find a piece that takes me their.

Again, good stuff!

            ///\\\***///\\\***///\\\***///\\\***///\\\***///\\\
        NEIL KOVEN, CPA, ARPS                Eleventh Hour Images &
        31 Moncton Road N.E.                 Neil Koven Photography
        Calgary, Alberta, T2E 5P9            bus/res:(403) 276-6335
        email: kovenn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx          fax:    (403) 276-2152
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