I've just logged on, smoking from a heated debate with Beth, who was plucking high-brows and picking fights on, of all subjects, art, which like personal hygiene and being nice, is clearly not her forte. I'm just kidding; Beth is pretty nice and smells good for most of the time, but has a leaning towards the odd absurd opinion, especially concerning art...
Tonight I noticed how the tulips on my window were looking a little worse for wear. Not a regular flower keeper I'd forgotten to water them. In fact, I didn't even realise you had to - I thought they'd take care of it themselves - and so the tulips were clearly on their way out, on their death flower bed, if you will. Anyway, I gave them water, shone my desk lamp on them and performed the CPR I learned from Baywatch but nothing would revive the purple pretties.
So I decided to take some photos and document their final hours, much like I suppose, The Passion of the Tulips. That's not to compare my flowers to Jesus, although the poinsettia and palm leaf have both enjoyed connotations of the Christ. Right, I better avoid any further charges of blasphemy and get back to my point.
Preparing for the shoot, I arranged the flowers against the glass of the window, which was decorated with raindrops illuminated by the street light. I positioned a lamp beneath the flowers, adjusted my camera accordingly and - content with my composition - began to take photographs.
"Why don't you do some real art?" Beth asked. To which I countered, "And what is real art?" "You know, with pencils and stuff," she replied. "Like the stuff you did in Paris, or the nude...or those skulls you painted." I asked her if she thought photography was art, to which she replied "yes", alluded to Ansel Adams and suggested that time in setting up a shoot was necessarily a requirement of good art. "You can't just take pictures of stuff. Nature is the art in your pictures." And then her most damning accusation. "You're plagiarising God!"
Landscape photography was naturally a point of contention then for Beth and something she's termed, "half-art". Turning her scorn now to Ansel Adams, she continued. "God's already done the art for you. You just have to snap and it looks good."
So, you could say, I snapped - and showed her the photos I had taken. These, Beth said, were "art-y. Not art but like art," which I'm not sure is better than the "half-art" of Ansel Adams, et al., but I'll let you decide. Please post your comments and let us know what you think of my photos, poor Ansel's and of what makes 'real' art.
5 comments:
gotta say san, i know what la soeur is on about. the main feature of your composition i.e. the flower, the landscape, whatever natural thing you're snapping, is already created. whereas, if you create something yourself surely thats MORE art itself...
anyway for a man who wears his underpants on the outside of his trousers, not much of one to talk about personal hygiene here are ya :P
big up the foster massive yo
xxx
Sarah
Hmm...but then what about the, admitedly overated, Mona Lisa? Da Vinci didn't invent that face, like say Matt Groening did Homer Simpson. But then I'm sure Homey is based on someone's face, or a series of faces. Is the art in creating something unnatural out of something natural? Is recreating creative?
I would say that it would have been as easy for me to draw the flower with a pencil as to take a photo (but then I am extraordinarily gifted). Both are representations of a natural object. Which is MORE art? Maybe you'd say the drawing. I don't know.
As for the outerwear: they provide an extra layer of support and don't even come in contact with the general genitalia area, so...hygienic.
I have no comments to add (actually I do, but I'm just about ready for my midday slumber, and attempting to cohere some ideas would be a bad idea now, I think) but I found the whole discussion (and subsequent comments) marvelously humorous.
Might even be considered art on its own, actually :)
AJ
I just wanted to add my two cents since I am being so publicly ridiculed here (although, thanks sis.) The "You know, with pencils and stuff," comment is highly exaggerated for comic effect I presume, and I only said that capturing something sans a specific gift (ie. the gift of drawing that enables you to capture an image/view etc effectively and truthfully) like taking a photo is less artistic because it will still be beautiful whether or not you have the artistic talent. So I think it has the potential to be less valid, as art, but no less beautiful :) HALF. You see?
Beth
Hmmmm, interesting points all round I have to say. It seems that there are types of art that can change value depending on your point of view, por le example en la biblioteque (that don't make sense but it seems a rule to use a French word in these posts, pity I don't know any unlike clan la foster) It is one thing to see a Michaelangelo in a gallery and another thing to see an Ansel Adams photo on your mates bedroom wall that he bought in Athena because that picture of the tennis lady sans underpants was out of stock. Both, in my opinion, art. Both have value. It seems that the 'gift' is apparent at different times for both types of artist. It takes a special gift to make a good piano, it takes another type of gift to use the piano to the full. Un poisoin turne la gauche?
Mike
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