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Meta-meta-art
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Meta-meta-art

Fergus Currie
Blind watcher of the sky

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Posted 03/14/08 - 06:29 AM: Subject: Meta-meta-art	#1
Here's a link to a photograph I snapped in the Lovre last year. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1248/1340687487_23... Are you looking at a man looking at people looking at art? How is this photo characterized? Meta-meta-art, perhaps?
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Caldwell
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Posted 03/16/08 - 12:24 AM:	#2
I'm looking at a man taking a picture of something, people or art. How is that photo characterized? If we look at a photograph of Pollock doing his painting, canvas on the floor, is that a similar thing?
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Floyd
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Posted 03/16/08 - 09:37 AM:	#3
If you want an artsy mind-f*ck, then you need a bit of Colbert: http://a.abcnews.com/images/Entertainment/ap_colb...
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Fergus Currie
Blind watcher of the sky

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Joined: Jan 11, 2008
Location: Athens Greece
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Posted 03/17/08 - 03:22 AM:	#4
Caldwell wrote: I'm looking at a man taking a picture of something, people or art. How is that photo characterized? If we look at a photograph of Pollock doing his painting, canvas on the floor, is that a similar thing? Only if you consider the photograph to be art. I consider my photo to be a pictorial comment on how we look at art. Maybe this is not exactly art, but I can imagine a well-taken version (not mine) of this photographic image/idea being considered, in some way, as art. How far is art self-referential? Can then a reference be made to this reference, and so on? Walter Benjamin claims that photographic replication devalues the original work. Is this so? Is then the Mona Lisa not thus the most worthless image? My comment on it's 'photographability' pertains to this idea. The original hangs, seemingly ignored, while the photographer in the foreground seems more interested in the huge crowds (unseen) which were taking photographs of the painting. on another tack, my wife, who is a painter, sometimes makes 'quotes' in her work. That is, she uses images from classical art deliberately. For instance there is a book about Vermeer, the cover of which shows the 'girl Pouring Milk', in the foreground of a full body portrait of the Scottish actress Louise Ironside. The components of the portrait are not arbitrarily chosen, they add to or manipulate the impression of the sitter. Such referencing is common practice in classical art (how many paintings, like the 'Meninas' of Velasquez, show the 'artists studio' filled with other paintings?) But Maria's quotes are part of the internal structure of the painting creating compositional balance and rhythm between the subject and their surroundings. Is Vermeer's 'Astronomer' not referencing the image of the constellation map projected on the globe to balance the painting in a structural way and in an iconological way too? Does the formal balance alone justify our appreciation or are the reference to the stars and the astronomer's outstretched hand, which indicates his thirst for exploration, not signifiers of even more real emotions which spatially balance the work? The implication of the objects (hand, star-map, window) give more weight and structure to the work than their physical presence does. The point is that if the surface of the globe was just a plain single color the work would be structurally weaker too. So, Back to the photograph. I am quoting in a way the Mona Lisa (even if it is the actual painting) as a means to express what is happening between the photographer in the picture and his subject. It makes my photograph structurally balanced through meaning as much as by formal composition. FC
_____________________ ...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise. ...so never send Achilles to get fags!

Fergus Currie
Blind watcher of the sky

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Joined: Jan 11, 2008
Location: Athens Greece
Total Topics: 5
Total Posts: 143

Posted 03/17/08 - 03:36 AM:	#5
Floyd wrote: If you want an artsy mind-f*ck, then you need a bit of Colbert. This is exactly what I'm talking about! Nice pic, Floyd! I wonder If it would be possible to make a kind of gallery of these and other such images here on the forum. What do people in admin. think about this? I'd put up a prize for the most convoluted entry! Perhaps a copy of Nigel Warburton's 'The Art Question'. FC
_____________________ ...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise. ...so never send Achilles to get fags!

Caldwell
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Posted 03/18/08 - 01:27 AM:	#6
Fergus Currie wrote: Only if you consider the photograph to be art. Ah! so there's the rub. For the record, I do. Composition matters.
_____________________ So, you've finally figured out how reality works. Have a glass of muriatic acid, everyone.

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