The word "facture" (faktura) is widely used in Russian art terminology. At least in my time being there. Boris Shoshensky To: [email protected] Subject: dead photos- alive paintings Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2009 11:06:05 -0700 (PDT)
When Miller writes that photos are dead, what does he mean? Clearly a photograph can't be dead because it was never alive. Only living things can become dead things. This is another example of Miller's habit to add fiction to fact in order to transfer what is factual to the fictional and then to translate that as a new fact, hence, a fact, photo, is added to its fictional state, dead, and presto, a photo is therefore a dead thing. If I recall properly, and I may not, the philosopher Sibley, made a career of just this sort of confusion as it pertains to aesthetics. The implied but never recognized term in hiding here is "facture", a word rarely used anymore but relevant to our perception of artworks. It refers to the process in making art. Of course the facture of a photograph is different from that of painting. In addition to the camera settings, an ordinary photo print, is "made" in the developing tray, where facture entailed the printer's activity and judgment. Automatic type developing still used the printer's judgment which pre-set the controls. In digital, analogous facture is utilized. Painting, through its visible brushstrokes or modes of paint application reveals facture. No matter how refined, any paint mark obscures some information that is "filled in" by the viewer (merely an exaggerated form of the same thing in photography). Looser paint applications make facture much more obvious and invite the viewer to project subjective information (what I call make believe) to the work, making it seem to embody the viewer's "aliveness". Thus to the extent that an artwork reveals its facture, in one way or another, is what enables us to imagine projecting our own sense of "aliveness" to it, as if we experience ourselves anew in the 'mirror' of the artwork. This can be true, I think, in all the arts. Even in writing, when the arrangement of words, as words and sounds, their facture, invites us to make-believe our experience as re-made by those words. I'm for reviving facture as a fit topic for aesthetic discussion. It is also a plea for some return to logical and intellectual acuity, steering us away from such foolish constructions as photos are dead because they are not paintings. Ugh! WC ____________________________________________________________ Can't pay your bills on time?? Click for quick cash with a payday loan. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2241/fc/BLSrjpYVyFc4koS6nEJGegPYZZNEoC cqhbLFEY2n8WdF9MpjykJLgFgDKhS/
