Message Engraved in Art in art versus "Imaginorium" provided for us by the artist.
Jerome and Maris,
So here's where we are. Are Dan Simans' soft, gentle, dreamy but admittedly
empty seascapes "art with no bite", so to speak: nothing to grab or take home, no subject, sort of incomplete, waiting for that bird or boat to come? Or else, are these works mature, completed, just despite what seems to be missing?
Let me point you to Cem Usakilgil's useful compendium to previous OPF discussions on
what might be covered by "Art" including my development for my self here of the concepts "Arc of communication" and "Arc of Intent" that seem to be required for much art, and eventually a case for something I call "The Imaginorium", a place for "sensotic" experience for some of the rest. The "Imaginorium", then is a conceptual gymnasium of the mind built into to an artist work where we a freely allowed and even encouraged to imagine what we wish or need at that time.
I have been sticking my neck out this way for years in a personal struggle, trying to grasp and formulate hypotheses, at least for myself, as to what might constitute art that humanity values so much. After all, art is collected, treasured, celebrated and stored for posterity. At first I thought "Art" was merely the successful export to physical form of ideas created by the imagination that were driven to be shared with the world. Art is born and occurs then, by completing an "Arc of Intent" at that moment when the artist experiences eruptive feelings, emotions and consequential ideas sufficiently close to his/her intent. From then on becoming
publicly acclaimed depends on the work's drawing power to pull folks attention in and interest them beyond that moment and more so to return and spread that story to others. Those works that are well received are then saved for posterity, folk competing for the opportunity to save, store, display or even profit by it. That's how I thought of "Art". Always, I thought, there was some key idea engraved, so therefore some defined subject was needed.
However, things turned on their head for me and my simple ideas, when I proceeded to return to the major galleries of Munich, Paris, London and New york and come face to face with abstract and even to me emptiness in art. My ideas excluded much of the great works I saw. So how was as my concept so wrong?
Hiroshi Sugimoto I know about and I've had the privilege of seeing several of his original pictures up-close. The first (and only?) thing about them one notices is that they are huge. The thought that follows for me is that Sugimoto is exploring the irony of making a picture very large but at the same time virtually free of content. It could be a grand private joke (not unknown in the art-world) and Sugimoto could be laughing behind his hand at our rapture.
Sugimoto delivers aura, the aura of a internationally praised artist exhibiting important work but pound for pound Dan Siman's water pictures are much more lookable.
I have never seen Sugimoto's prints and I did not know they were huge. Yet they have a profound effect on me. I believe I am not the only one in that case.
For me, they have a hypnotic effect because the landscape is so empty. The "irony of making a picture very large but at the same time virtually free of content" was lost on me.
For me, they have a hypnotic effect because the landscape is so empty. The "irony of making a picture very large but at the same time virtually free of content" was lost on me.
Maris,
You look for concrete evidence of design and craft that shows that the photographer thought about his/her imagined work, refined it and then materialized it through skill and craft to a presentable form that evokes something like the ideas that needed so much to be expressed therein. You are correct that most of the very best pictures of the past century or so are defined thus. Moreover, those who fail, do so by not having a driving formed intent nor the care or craft to make a complete picture fully happen in their hands.
Jerome,
You, no doubt, already know about the great works that support our appreciation of expressed ideas. Here, however, perhaps we are celebrating something more open ended and not tightly controlled by the artist, just
facilitated. I propose that we're given a space, real or imagined, into which we can wander. We can bring with us whatever needs, fantasies and dependencies we might happen to choose to at that moment. Our wanderings need not be purposeful, but they are safe, hardly limited, yet private, discrete and protected. In a way, these open-ended works could serve as opportunities for contemplation and exercise of our imaginary options, but
without cost or risk. Such open-ended art could have important evolutionary value for humans, where new ideas are always needed and conflicting ones need to be resolved.
Such open ended works I've coined as the "Imaginorium", an artisitic physical structure which requires no dominant subject, just sufficient room or pathways to allow the players of the "Cathedral of our mind" to populate, if it were, a new playground or gymnasium, as if on some outing. This then is the other part of much of our art, where the intent is not to engrave an idea, but the intent is to provide places for ideas to grow without the limits we normally place on them. Carried to the extreme, one might imagine that the greatest art then frees us from all constraints to free thought.
Maybe, these two facets of art help explain the divergence between the ideas of something lacking in giant "empty" soft landscapes and the praise of them as great works of art.
Asher