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Let's start with definitions

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ben Lifson said:
If a beautiful subject is the guranatee of a beautiful picture. every issue of every fashion magazine would be full of masterpieces.

But the best are! Not every page. But today there are masterpieces everywhere if one looks.

Still, I have "The Book" from SAKS and many other similar works that contain what would be masterpieces if not for their massive appearance for so little money, These are so easily available that they are not commercial currency. They no longer have a personal collectable uniqueness that often goes with art. I cannot say I have one of the 15 signed copies of the print. Then I cannot have the same additional personal identification with the work, the artist and his thoughts.

Still, art as a whole, with all its subforms, is more complex than that. The pages of fashion magazines are designed to provide an escape for women from the limitations of what they see in the mirror to a world of fantasy. Buying the fashions gives them some identity more than what they fear is insufficient and closer to the magic of glamor. It thus enhances sense of self-worth. It also is very efficient in increasing one's social and mating potential.

Neither beauty nor truth are necessities of art. Maybe art needs beauty or truth or their jeopardy in a compelling form.

I'll add that to "What art means to me"!

Asher
 

Ben Lifson

New member
How's This for a Definition of Art?

Ezra Pound said that poetry "Is that which gets lost in translation."

How about:

Art is that which gets lost in reproduction.

??
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Ben,

Funnily enough, I had just this minute finished looking at this site http://www.dirtycarart.com, then saw your post. I see a link, but can't quite get my finger on it. I think its something to do with separating the artistry from the subject, and the medium.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Ray West

New member
An answer is found.... (at least for now)

Dragging up this old thread, but something Asher recently said


Unless one is doing police, documentation or commercial work that require or accept "as is from the camera" files, we, photographers, should probably be working on our images to optimize their own personal vision.
in this thread http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3500

(it was so important, he repeated himself ;-)

To me , and possibly my dictionary definition
Unless one is doing police, documentation or commercial work that require or accept "as is from the camera" files,
is 'photography',

whereas
working on our images to optimize their own personal vision.
is where the 'art' comes in.

I'm just pleased that I've found a sort of summary on my view of the subject.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

doug anderson

New member
And what point are you trying to make exactly?

If art is an expression of intention, what better analogy? I guess I'm disagreeing that art is merely an expression of intention. Washing the dishes is an expression of wanting to wash the dishes. Shooting someone is an expression of intending to shoot someone.

There is no room in this definition for the complexity of human consciousness required to make a work of art.
 

doug anderson

New member
I've always liked this one.


See Walter Benjamin's fine essay "The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction." He talks about a work of art "losing it's aura" when it is reproduce. I disagree, however. You could give me 100 copies of a great Cartier-Bresson and it would still be a great photo.

I think his statement has to do with the technological alienation around World War II.

An interesting spin on your version would be "art is what is fragile when it collides with technique."
 
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