--- Ann Sanfedele <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sigh... > In the middle of the night I was wakeful and > turned on my bedside radio to > NPR - the replay of Leonard Lopate's inerview with > Clifford Ross was on. > This morning, a friend sends me the link to the > site showing the photo. > > It pisses me off. > This guy took a year to make this kinda pretty but > rather ordinary postcard photo > a 5 x 10 foot print? > (1) Looks better to me with a good chunk trimmed > off the bottom > (2) surely the mountain has a name. Couldn't he > tell us what it is and where > the photo was taken? (my first guess, not > doing and research really > was Mt. Shasta. > (3) Ross stresses that he is doing this for art's > sake - yet to me it is > mainly a technical tour de force. > > Anyone else have a simliar reaction? (Or the > oppoiste?) > > http://www.cliffordross.com/R1/R1-image.html
I'll tell you what pisses me off. I'm trying to be all sulky and "take a break", then I come back to maybe lurk for a bit, and Ann posts this thing that I can't ~possibly~ ignore! How can I not respond?!? <vbg> Okay, so first of all, who cares if it's art? Art is so ephemeral, and means so many different things to so many people, it's so subjective, that the question in and of itself is meaningless, in my not so humble opinion. I don't pretend to know what art is. I admit that it exists. It's one of those things that reminds me of the US legislator who was asked to define "pornography": "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Art's sort of like that. I know it when I see it. Sometimes I don't know it at first, and after someone who purports to know explains it to me, I grudgingly admit that something's art. Sometimes I just don't get it, and no amount of explanation can convince me that something's art. Like the Poop Machine. I think it's by a French "artist" (certainly European). It's a machine into which food is fed at one end, the human digestive process is more or less replicated (as best as is possible), and poo comes out the other end. It's brown, has the consistency of poo, and it smells like poo (or so the TV commentator told me - I'll have to take his word on that one...). I have trouble thinking of that as art. But, I digress... I think Amita is right. It's hard to consider the "artfulness" of this one unless it's seen in the context in which it was intended: a big giant freaking huge print. At the Art Gallery of Ontario a year or two ago, the most banal snapshots were blown up huge on positive glass transparencies, then backlit. I had trouble thinking that was art, but it was in an Art Gallery, so... Anyway, as a landscape, this one's okay, but only. Is it me, or is it tilted? (asks the man who specializes, it seems, in tilted photos <g>) Or, maybe the foothills tilt to the right. I find it very unsettling. I regularly see landscapes here as PAWs or PUGs that blow this one out of the water, at least on a computer screen. Mark Roberts, Ken Waller, Mark Cassino and many more (sorry if I forgot a few, there are more) do stuff that interests me much much more than this. As (I think) Keith said, it's a technical tour de force, to be sure. It's not one of those that I look at and immediately say, "Hey, that's nice art." I ~do~ (based on what little I've seen and read) think that this guy's a pretentious artsy weinie. Something about people who allow themselves to be photographed while they work - as if they're so important. I'm also not real big on process - and this seems to be all about process - I'm big on the finished product (which we don't really see anyway). The whole "process is important" thing seems somewhat self-important, too. I mean, tell us about your equipment and technique, your self-imposed rules, but don't make it part of the exhibit, thank you very much. Crap. See what happens? I don't post for a few days, and I can't stop typing. Okay, I'll go away now (right after I tell Mark how much his motorcycle piccies blew me away). cheers, frank ===== "The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
