Art

For such a small word, “art” causes a lot of discussion and seems to have vast meanings. I’ve no wish to prolong that discussion, but simply get an understanding, is what we do here art?

There are a great many examples of where painting, photography and art get confused. Perhaps the first one that comes to mind is portrait painter Hans Holbein (1497-1543). He was famous for painting portraits of prospective wife’s for Henry VIII. One wonders how many more wife’s Henry might have had if Holbein had had a camera! His life literally depended on accurate likenesses.

Today I know of quite a few painters that do most of their work from photographs for many reasons. The main one being convenience. But it’s now possible to paint a brief moment in time from a photograph, something that was impossible before the camera arrived. Just take a look at paintings of galloping horses before photography. No one understood how they moved before photography. As photographers we can capture amazing erotic moments that could never be painted.

We’re all taught to mimic painters, Rembrandt lighting is the classic example. That, to me at least is total tosh. Yes, Rembrandt created some amazing paintings, but his lighting was from necessity, not design. He had a small studio that’s only source of lighting was a sky light! Should we copy him? It’s accepted that he created amazing pictures and if we want to be anything like as good, we have to light our work the same way, because it’s accepted his pictures are “correct”.

At an early meeting of the Photographic Society of London, established in 1853, one of the members complained that the new technique was "too literal to compete with works of art" because it was unable to "elevate the imagination". This conception of photography nothing more than a mechanical recording medium never fully died away.

This is perhaps a good point to understand what a couple of other words that we regularly use mean. And that are frequently misunderstood.

Erotic: Relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement.

Pornographic: Material (such as books or photographs) that depict erotic behaviour and is intended to cause sexual excitement.

How often have you heard a model say that she’s happy doing erotic, but won’t do porn?

Looking at a lot of, to my eyes at least, the total junk in the Tate Modern I feel that there’s no case for us to answer!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who looks at the work of Helmut Newton with great admiration. The great man was famous for many sayings, but perhaps the one most applicable here is “There are two dirty words in photography, one is art, the other is good taste”

We are told that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To my mind so is art.