Photography's influence on Painting?

[April Barrett]

Hello,

I am writing an essay on the influence of Photgraphy on Painting and was wondering if anyone had texts they could recommend for my research.

Thanks!

[Asher Kelman]

This is a great subject. I've sent you a PM!

For sure many artists work using photographs as the guide for portraits and landscapes. Saves paying models for long sessions or staying out in the elements, although there must be great losses of contact.

Good luck,

Asher

[Asher Kelman]

Hi April,

I don't know what level you are aiming for. This could be s small thing like Nikki Freeman's essay here (http://www.associatedcontent.com/pop_print.shtml?content_type=article&content_type_id=40428) or a major Graduate Student Essay for a serious grade!

The easiest thing I can do is provide a brief list of books as suggestions from a course by Beninger at USC some years ago:

PELFREY, Robert, with Mary Hall-Pelfrey. Art and Mass Media. New York: Harper and Row (1985), 348 pp.
BERGER, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books (1972), 166 pp.
McCLOUD, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisble Art. New York: Harper Perennial (1994), 216 pp.
SPIEGELMAN, Art. Maus I. New York: Pantheon (1986), 159 pp.

These should be in your library and you can start today with the following pages as the minimum. I take no credit for the choices!

1. BERGER: Ch. 3, pp. 45-64.
2. PELFREY: Ch. 5, pp. 119-142.
3. MITCHELL: Chs. 1 & 2, pp. 2-20

This should be an easy jump start.

Photography and lithography have made claims of realism and have pushed the boundries with imaginative transformations of colors shapes and become part of 3 dimensional creative work.

Think of examples of photography being used in partial or complete replacement of the model or the artist sitting in a chair for hours outdoors to paint a landscape.

Look at photography for exploring the nature of realism and fantasy. Truth and distortion.

Photography as the basis for Andy Warhals work and to the complex derivations of modern multimedia artists.

These books should give you a start.

Kind wishes,

Asher

[April Barrett]

Asher,

I am sorry I missed this. Thank you so much for your help. I will hunt down those books tomorrow. You are the best. ^_^

Kindest Regards,
April

[Cheyenne Oorebeek]

Hello,
I am writing something like this also, and I would like to know if I can use your essay for that?

[doug anderson]

Good subject. I'd look at anything that argues that painting was freed by photography to abandon perspective and illustrative representation. I don't think it's any accident that modernist painters like Braque and Picasso began painting just as cameras became available.

I don't know if that argument's been done, but it seems hard to avoid the connection.

I would also look at Cartier-Bresson's paintings and drawings vs. his photography as a case in point.

And of course, it's ironic that photo realism became a style of painting.

D

[Michael Fontana]

Good subject. I'd look at anything that argues that painting was freed by photography to abandon perspective and illustrative representation.
D

Good point, doug.
So painiting become abstract. With that the early, °painterly° photographers, that means, those who tried to imitate paintings gave up pretty fast, and did photography as photography.

[Wendy Thurman]

I completely agree with Doug. The camera did more for painting than the brush did for the camera. Photography freed painting from the purely representative, and ushered in Impressionism- the first radical departure from "the thing as it is" (and this is an important concept to remember with regard to photography). Prior to photography, artistic license was limited to believable yet impossible constructs such as Ingre's "The Source". Vermeer, probably the greatest depicter of light in painting, impossibly distorted architecture in his work "The Little Street" and yet the subtlety of Vermeer's bending of the rules is lost on 99% of the observers. It's there, but most will never apprehend it.

I think it is important to note that Man Ray was a painter long before he was a photographer; his photography was initially a way to make ends meet and not an artistic means in itself. His lasting importance is founded on his ability to understand and exploit the relationship between art and photography.

Ansel Adams, that Dean of American Photography, was to my mind a techical genius, but not an aesthetic one. That award goes to Edward Weston.

I can't- and wouldn't given the space requirements here- get into this much deeper here but would be happy to do so off-line. In summary, I do think that in order to become competent as a fine art photographer one needs to understand the art of painting.

Wendy

edit here- in the early 90's I shot film underwater every day for a couple of years. I left that and went to work in a used camera shop and got interested in medium and large format photography. As my interest in fine art grew, I moved away from cameras and focused on works on paper, attending the Glassell School in Houston. What I became was a very good copyist and so left that behind. Now I just make camera images.

[Colin Dow]

Hi,


I am really, really stuck with an essay topic I need to write:

"analyse the aesthetic impact of photography on the art world of the 19th century"

I really dont know where to start, I thought about writing a little each about

-19th century art before photography (talk about artistic styles?)
-the emerence of photography itself - what the new medium was
-what effect it had on artists, either them using it as aid or surrendering to it completely
-focusing on perhaps manet and the execution of maximillian as a case study of photographic use -
- perhaps using hill and adamson as example of artist who turned to photography but used painting and aesthetic (constructions such as hill and adamson)
-talking about impressionist movement away from realism.

someone reccommended talking about the pre-raphaelites, but i am not sure how they were affected by the aesthetics of photography and why??

Also I was recommended I should talk about institutions such as the royal academy and french salons who curated art, does that mean to study when photography became apparent in exhibitions or when institutions such as these curated the art that was influenced by photography..

I am really stuck and I haven't brought myself to write anything yet.The assesment is due in under a week and I've been going round in circles in anxiety, wondering if I am on the right track..
Its 2500 words, I don't know what to do or where to start.

If anyone can offer any help AT ALL I would really, really appreciate it.


Many thanks,

Colin