Monday, March 3, 2008
Marks of Indifference
Jeff Wall's piece was extremely hard for me to understand, mainly because there were a lot of ideas/words that meant nothing to me. I'm going to try to pick a part that I could connect with and make a response for because the over-all piece was very hard for me. Photojournalism, on page 70, is defined as a collaboration between a writer and a photographer. Wall states that (directly after his definition of photojournalism), "Conceptual art's intellectualism was engendered by young, aspiring artists for whom critical writing was an important practice for self-definition." In my mind, I imagine artists who make a piece and then, using self-reflection and self-criticism, write a short or long narrative explaining, elaborating, criticizing, etc. that piece of art. It is important for them to step back and think about what they have done and by writing it out they may discover something new about that work, or maybe just be satisfied with what they have created. For me, putting stuff into words is not always easy (as seen by this response), and most of the time I realize I don't even know how I really feel about something because I can't get it out of my head, onto paper. It is one thing to believe something internally, it is another to externalize it. It really is a difficult thing, and perhaps for artists it really helps them learn more fully what they have created and why. It's like what was in their head is now externalized by the physical work of art, and also by this piece of writing--but the piece of art may still just be a physical interpretation of that confusing mess inside their head, so the writing further clarifies what that means. I hope some of that made sense
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This was a pretty hard read for me. But once I wrapped my mind around what he was saying, I really thought that it gave me more clarity on the role that photography played during the twentieth century. The main thing I found interesting about the modernist form of photography was its "evolving explicitly through the dynamics of its auto-critique." The fact that the art photograph was critiquing itself, instead of acclaimed art critiques (for example, all of the essays on photography that we have been reading), gives the modernist photo an organic and unique quality. That gave room for younger artists to, "disturb that, to uproot and radicalize the medium." Therefore they were able to detach themselves from the notion of a pictorial art. Also, I thought that Wall's argument brought forth the two contrasting opinions we have dealt with during our class. He states that, "The master picture-maker prepares everything in advance, yet trusts that all the planning in the world will lead only to something fresh, mobile, light, and fascinating." Here we see that the photographer is an artist. But he prepares, he has an artistic eye. Yet, he has to let his preparation be, therefore capturing nature as well. This oxymoron, of photographs being both intentional and natural helps encompass both Talbot's idea of the pencil of nature, and that of the photographer creating intentional art. The concept of the "amateur" was also very intriguing in this piece. The modernist movement moved artists to focus on the amateur, questioning why are was art. Therefore, this self questioning of artistic value, in turn, produces modernism...(or that's how I understood it). From this reading, I now view Modernist art as some what of a bacteria, that breeds from itself, yet can transform itself to mold to different situations and places. It is like this self mutilation of its body, only to create a different body. Like suicide almost. But then again, I could have misinterpreted the argument.
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