Narratives about what we see are fundamental to good photography. Capturing what we see in a deliberately composed frame adds a well examined viewpoint and inculcates ideas and emotions into what we see in the photograph. It changes the narrative but doesn’t eliminate discussion.

This is where it begins; the 1000 words theoretically embedded in every photo. Art and photography depends on language translation. The narration begins in our heads as we create. Just as music rises above its mathematical roots, imagery is descriptive.

Beyond “that’s nice” a good photograph excites curiosity, inspires imagination, and invites empathic exchange. How do we know it’s beyond a nice photograph? “Beyond nice” translates into language without straining our vocabulary.

Good art students learn through classroom discussion to translate the visual into language. We learn to ask ourselves the right questions. What was I feeling at moment of capture? Why did I make that frame that way? What am I feeling while viewing the finished photo? What changes would increase the volume of that feeling? Is the volume loud enough to reach an audience? And so on.

Motivated by massive frame numbers, a competitive market, and an incessantly starved ego, among other things, our nuanced talk begins to morph into criticism. Criticism breeds authority; influence embodies itself while meaningful relevant discussion corrodes erodes.

What is an expert? “Unless you’re an academic” – I’ve read like phrases repeatedly in reference to art writing. In your face academia, I’m an expert by default; by working in the field for 30 years post relevant college degree. Furthermore, so is every vaguely accomplished human who’s learned to translate visual to language despite published pedigree.

Art criticism has a few inherent problems. It’s irrelevant to most everyone but the critic and those interested in assigning material value, plus, it’s inwardly focused. Critics talk to other critics in some “other” vernacular. At best it’s readable and at its worst, comedy bait.

The value of most expert criticism to the artist is minimal if not destructive. Divide art discussion into two piles: 1) What you know 2) What you think you know, and you’ll find one pile much larger than the other. The challenge is that the latter is typically presented with more authority than the former.

What we know belongs to the artist and viewer but involves no speculation.

The Artist: I know why I made this photograph and listen as I describe why it’s important to me and what I hope viewers take from it.

The Viewer: This is what it makes me feel, how it’s changed me, and why I find it important.

The Historian: This body of work has changed the way people respond to (insert subject here) . It is evident for these reasons and through these examples, and influenced the art era in these ways.

The Critic: This is why this photo will be important to society. Listen as I describe why art endures in the historic body of collected works; this is why it’s a collectible piece. This is how it should make you feel and why this body of work has overestimated value.

Bruce DeBoer - post author

Tell the difference? Undeniably, there is room for intellectual discussion about art. In fact, I enjoy it.  The challenge, in my opinion, is to keep it relevant to viewers, artists, and historians while at the same time rejecting speculators. Speculators are non-value adding to the process.  They are typically outsiders offering “expert” opinions about speculative artistic value. They wallow in the pile of “what we think we know” beyond nice.

Similar posts with alternative viewpoints:

How We Talk About Photography – Asad Haider

We Need Better Critical Writing about Photography – Joerg Colberg

Conscientiously Full of Myself – Art is Hard

Previously Titled: A Hunt for Empathic Exchanges through Curiosity and Imagination

There are elements of a great picture beyond composition, simplicity, light, color, texture and all that designy-crafty stuff. With some tormented thought, I’ve narrowed it down to three elements that seamlessly overlap but are also separate enough that they seem to own a category.

[Warning] This is a less concrete way of thinking about quality imagery of the 2D variety; no “how to” list found here. I prefer to stay on the softer more inquisitive side because I believe if your art stimulates curiosity, excites imagination, and induce empathy, it matters little how it’s presented; success on these are paramount, nothing else really matters.

The elements I’m presenting belong to both the artist and the spectator; presented by the artist and collected by the viewer. The extent to which the art is successful belongs to the viewer with blame placed firmly on the artist.

Curiosity:

It’s the power of the unanswered question. Nothing happens in your art without first stimulating viewer curiosity. It’s what I’d initially call the “give-a-shit” portion of our viewing experience that promptly transforms into something else.

This is where surprise lives. We can be surprised by how similar yet different the artist depicted familiar territory, or perhaps how foreign the subject is altogether while remaining relevant.

Curiosity ought to linger unsatisfied to some degree lest the spectator loses interest and leaves unaffected. If there is no need to review the artwork it’s unmemorable, and who wants that? The intensity and shape of disclosure further feeds or disposes of the viewer’s curiosity.

Imagination:

By imagination I think most of us consider the “how” of it: a works staging, basic concept, or overall presentation. Most of us intend “be imaginative” when we say “be creative”.

What I suggest by imagination in this case is as though there were such a thing as an active noun. A two dimensional image is perpetually abstract so it requires some degree of fantasizing for the artist to portray, while involving an active imagination for the viewer to perceive.

Bring me there in my mind, make me fantasize; cause the imagination to jump the chasm that is linking artist and spectator. This is how we see a moment’s capture or still picture as an event. There is a tolerance of ambiguity by the artist and viewer but we surround the still visual with a mind experience that lasts more than the split second it takes to perceive the picture.

The still picture plays as a story in our head and it changes with every new experience. Imagination is what triggers empathy in the viewer.  We project a personal narration as part of a fantasy involvement with the image.

Empathy:

It’s where passion and compassion lives. Art is an empathic exchange. What we are “Seeing-In” [from Richard Wollheim on The Art of Painting] a picture are projected personal narratives. We see art similarly as we see a cut finger on a friend; it makes us feel beyond what is offered to our senses. Call it your pictographic syntax if you will.

As a picture maker I induce empathy; I’m projecting my passion and sensibilities in a search for empathy. I want my art to make you feel what is in you to feel, but I can’t do that without using empathic abilities.

“We see something in the picture, and then become aware of an affinity with some emotion, only then to reperceive the subject which is then couloured by the emotion.” – Malcolm Budd

If artistic imagination and curiosity is used adeptly then there is room for the spectator to maneuver their empathy in the openings we’ve allowed. The door to empathy is closed by being too literal and by answering all questions in the presentation. Think of it as enigmatic empathy; it’s a response intended or unintended, appropriate or inappropriate that the art work pulls from its spectator.

I think a void of artistic empathy is the artwork epitome summarized in this definition of Artistic Narcissism found in Wikipedia:

Artistic Narcissism is the personality trait of egotistic artist denoting vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.

The name “narcissism” is derived from Greek mythology. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who had never seen his reflection, but because of a prediction by an Oracle, looked in a pool of water and saw his reflection for the first time.

Even an artistic narcissist will find viewer empathy but without seeing a reflection in the art produced, it’s impossible the artistic narcissist to connect with their viewer.  Ultimately, isn’t that what we want as creators?

My art is my attempt to elicit empathy from you while simultaneously attempting to empathize with you.  When I make the right empathic trade I create a tribe  through my works of art – a.k.a. admirers – my tribe are those with whom I successfully induce empathy through my curiosity and imagination that I present as artwork.

Permission to Suck Manifesto Rules applied:

6.    Your creativity is about your heart, not their surface. Creativity is your world view filtered through your talent. It’s your passion, experience, expertise, inspiration and your rules that drive you to create wonderful things that you’re destined to hate because they’re not good enough, and others are open to admire because they couldn’t do it.

14.    Don’t let anyone talk you out of your passion. If you have passion for an idea, don’t lose it by asking others if they think it’s good.  They probably won’t.

16.    Imagination is hot, execution is cold. The flame is illusive; if you must obsess about something, make it a flame search. “I think part of the process of this whole thing is to get as close to the flame as you can get without being burned” – Graham Nash

17.   Imagination accelerates in the abstract and slows with tangibility.  Daydream,  maintain vulnerability, innocence and a sense of wonder so that your creativity stays vigorous.

I firmly believe, as this presentation video suggests, that empathy is the invisible hand. To truly understand art’s role in civilization, our society, and our relationships, we need to understand the profound degree to which empathy has shaped our culture.  RSA 21^st Century Enlightenment and Jeremy Rifkin, author and political adviser, helps us examine empathy in this animated video.

Building Art - James Powderly

In my research for my post on Banksy I stumbled onto James Powderly, an incredible high tech street artist.  James gives us a demonstration in this video [via The Creators Project]. You’ll be shaking your head by the end.

James Powderly:

[via F.A.T. Free Art and Technology]

James was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.A. in the year of the dragon, 1976. He has been making technology and media at the fringes of robotics, graffiti, space science, tattoos and rock n roll since 1992. James was a Senior Research Fellow in the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab developing creative tools and media to directly enrich the public domain.    more …

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

http://robotclothes.com/

http://honeybeerobotics.com/

http://research.eyebeam.org/

Powderly’s CV

What is the street artist’s intent? Anti-social pop art with an extreme satirical point intended for consumption across all socioeconomic barriers, or is it hype driven brandalism by an artistic terrorist bent on pulling one over on a naïve culture?  Tagging is clearly vandalism but the line of intent is vague and does mere intent define vandals as artists?

Exit Through the Gift Shop is an extremely thought provoking film by Banksy, one of the more notorious street artists in the UK. I was no more than tenuously aware of Banksy or street art beyond the mundanely obvious, but the fascination button has been pressed.

My fascination is not as much with the art as it is with its place in culture; it’s acceptance or failure, it’s hype driven value and its democratic canvas. I relate stronger to the street artist than I do with his work.

Street art can be beautiful but from my extremely limited surveillance, so far I see its beauty as mostly unconventionally embedded in the “of the people essence” found in the act. Yet street art crosses over and when it does the artist is there to embrace success in the most conventional way; think Shepard Fairey. Which brings us back to intent; was the original intent to gain lucrative artistic notoriety through cheap illegal stunts?

Shepard Fairey (who has a role in the film), for example, was ready to lie about the origin of his work to bolster personal profit. It drives the innocence of illegal art into the ground like a paper airplane; beautiful in its short flight.

In Banksy too, there is a contradiction to his art: a street rebel but also a gallery artist and book publisher making a strong living and building his brand legacy; he’s a (s)pray-on provocateur seen from multiple angles.

The film is filled with anti-heros but the main character is more like an anti-anti-anti hero; he bites back. I’ll pass on to you the favor from a friend who guided me last week by repeating one of the loudest lines in the film:  GO!

I don’t know about you, but as an artist I’m never completely satisfied with my work. Yet, I take pride my collected body of work, while at the same time I wait for that masterpiece that never comes.

I started taking pictures because it made me feel more special than anything else I did at 15, but the “special” wore off. I hit Art College (a.k.a. photo college) and memories of average grades and bad critiques displaced “special” with an undefined obsession; an obsession I’ve tried sporadically to rid from my professional life only to have it zealously restored just as often.

From where does the underlying threat of a life under achieved come? The canvas is barely dry and it’s nearly worthless to the artist; boring let’s move on, we’ll appraise its memory later. Art’s cash value to it’s creator is about ½ ego, ½ a need for food. The real value of the art to the artist is what then, pride plus memories?

Great work is memorable; good work is not. Does that mean that to be satisfied with your work it has to be great? Merely good won’t do. Perhaps it’s the memory of how it affects others that’s important and not so much how memorable it is to the creator.

Is it the “doing” that drives your work, or a satisfaction with the result? Is it notoriety? Certainly it can’t be wealth. My thoughts tie it to a pursuit of well-being and a desire to cheat death; the thrill of being “in the zone” and producing memorable works. This may not be true for everyone.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Law #2:    The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

In this thought provoking presentation, Daniel Kahneman explores the complexity and confusion between experience and memory. He draws a line separating happiness in our life from being happy with our life. The connection I made between his talk and artists is the ease with which artist’s trap themselves by distorting the importance of how their artwork affects well-being.

What defines our story are significant moments and endings; memorable works and what we’ve done lately. Artist’s think of the future in terms of anticipated great works. It’s a trap.

[via TED Speakers Bio]

Daniel Kahneman is an eminence grise for the Freakonomics crowd. In the mid-1970s, with his collaborator Amos Tversky, he was among the first academics to pick apart exactly why we make “wrong” decisions. In their 1979 paper on prospect theory, Kahneman and Tversky examined a simple problem of economic risk. And rather than stating the optimal, rational answer, as an economist of the time might have, they quantified how most real people, consistently, make a less-rational choice. Their work treated economics not as a perfect or self-correcting machine, but as a system prey to quirks of human perception. The field of behavioral economics was born.

Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial prize in 2002 for his work with Tversky, who died before the award was bestowed. In a lovely passage in his Nobel biography, Kahneman looks back on his deep collaboration with Tversky and calls for a new form of academic cooperation, marked not by turf battles but by “adversarial collaboration,” a good-faith effort by unlike minds to conduct joint research, critiquing each other in the service of an ideal of truth to which both can contribute.

“Amos and I shared the wonder of together owning a goose that could lay golden eggs — a joint mind that was better than our separate minds.”

Daniel Kahneman

Creativity is a near simultaneous encounter between our imagination, introspection and reality. The richness of imagination is fed through inspiration to encounter surroundings and cultivated with intense motivations. The value of our introspection is sustained by wisdom and experience; what is essentially you. Confrontation with reality is how creativity is birthed; it’s the final relationship with objectivity.

Artistic creativity is an act of intimacy or not;  it’s genuine art or it’s artifact.  Learn to manipulate tools and their crafty mechanisms so they become secondary or not.

Mechanization serving up uniformity, predictability, and orderliness (i.e. image capturing devices, signal processors, computers, or any fine apparatus) can either heighten the creative encounter or cheat it. Left to dominate with crafty mechanization and we cheat expressive intimacy.

Roughly, in the late ‘80’s, Mark Zimmer and Tom Hedges, founders of the Fractal Design Corporation, created Painter.  I recall passing photographs through a software “filter” to create a painting effect. Extending photography,  it instantly aped wrist skills without the hard work. Incredibly, Painter transformed every photograph into works of painted art.

Yet, it didn’t take long to realize painting filter presets produced artifacts, not art. Extraordinary turned less than ordinary within weeks as my employer’s entire creative department mastered the programmed keystrokes. What just happened? Amazement transformed into distaste within a few weeks.

Now the cheat is obvious, back then, not so much. We correctly felt the excitement in discovering a legitimate creative extension. What failed us was our loss of expressive intimacy; the new tool masked our art transforming it into a mechanistic artifact. There are no shortcuts.

Case in point: A camera is either an extension or protection from the creative encounter. Countless photographers feel defensive because they’ve cheated the encounter and lied to themselves and others about the intimacy of their works. Most recent democratization of the cheat is forcing photo artists and others to cope with the creative encounter that produces art rather than artifacts.

How many of us can say we are hiding behind the mastery of crafty mechanization?  Suddenly, there’s a need to pull up to the creative bar or be forced out of town. It takes courage to rediscover artistic expressive intimacy especially after producing artifacts for years.

Nate Sheaffer - Neon Sculptor / Author

Ten years ago, my life changed forever. Early in 1999, I lost my glassblowing business to offshore competition, followed eight months later by the suicide of my closest brother – my own Y2K meltdown. Losing the brother, some who knew him would say, was every bit as inevitable as having the company disappear in the ever-flattening world of labor distribution. In odd and very different ways, both losses eventually improved my life, also inserting an interesting speed bump, rather – a detour – in my creative life.

I’d been working myself sick – meeting deadlines for production neon sign orders and managing two dozen employees did nothing for my health, which I had been neglecting ever since graduating college. The first half dozen years, I pulled many more all-nighters bending glass than I’d ever done studying. The company grew into something so unrecognizable from the small sculpture studio and boutique glass shop I’d started thirteen years earlier, morphing into a hungry, ugly albatross with monthly overhead twice the size of the first year’s gross revenues – so much more a greedy burden than creative passion. Four months after shutting down production, friends told me I looked ten years younger. I certainly felt at least ten years less burdened.

The loss of the brother, well…what can I say in less than a hundred million words that might adequately convey my sense of loss? I grew up idolizing him the way younger siblings often do. Eventually, we worked together; in fact, he was employee number one when time came to hire someone, and so the two things – neon company and brother – are inextricably tangled in both glorious memory and flaming demise.

Garth was my brother’s name, and when he died, my creative energies turned to writing about him and the many adventures we shared. The cathartic aspects of the process – getting it all out, onto paper – put his life and death into a kind of manageable perspective allowing me to remember without breaking down every day into a puddle of sorrow.

During ten years, learning to express feelings and ideas on paper, a gnawing gap widened in my soul’s creative core, quite literally in the motor memory of my creative soul. Before the losses, I’d spent thirteen years making things with my hands, creating neon and steel sculptures, neon signs, animated displays, advertising prototypes – things. I value the creative process governing writing – constructing sentences and developing plots and characters – but my arms and hands ache to make things.

Not long after Garth died, I moved out of a space specifically designed to enable creation of sculpture. Then I moved again into another home with no workspace whatsoever, and then again and then once more this past year, making it difficult for me to even imagine assembling any of the dozens of sculptures for which I’ve carried drawings and parts longer than a decade. This spring, I put it out of my head that I needed to have a bona fide shop to create sculpture; lack of a perfect work environment had become my best excuse.

Though no one but myself had been keeping me from working, I actually said, aloud, inside a small storage shed, “You’re allowed to do this again.” In the corner, the only witness, a black and white illustration of a woman stared at me through ten years of dirt and grime. She was the last thing Garth created – an image he’d incorporated into a neon wall hanging modeled after the graphic on his favorite t-shirt. Her odd smile looked angry through the decade of schmutz; angry that I’d let her neon tubing become broken and paid her no attention since Garth died.

I organized the shed and began assembling neon and aluminum bits and pieces into my first thing in a long, long time. Between taking care of my children full-time and writing, I spent the next month working in two-hour bursts – every third day or so – until the magic moment arrived when I plugged the piece into a drop cord draped seventy-five feet across the yard to the shed.

In terms of the sculpture itself, the result was what I expected; one or two elements not exactly as intended, but mostly it represented a fully fleshed-out version of my ten-year-old sketch. What caught me off guard was how allowing myself to create (even in a less-than-ideal space) flipped a maniacal switch whose contacts had rusted years ago. Within days, I repaired Garth’s last neon piece, hung it in my home, and began a daily routine of gathering and sorting materials for the next projects.

It’s been a difficult, long decade, living with the idea of creating sculpture relegated to memory and imagination and now, suddenly – thankfully, it’s just as difficult to imagine stopping.

Saul Bass Professional years: 1954 — 1995

Saul Bass to his young daughter: “I’m going off now, you play with your toys and I’ll go play with mine.”  We’re being paid to play with toys.

“I never intended on it being art. I tried to make a communication.”

Saul Bass

You’re work is unappreciated. The price tag hung on well crafted work is approaching zero. Fiscal efficiency dominates. The truth is, you can get an answer quickly if you don’t care about beauty and, I’m sure you’ve heard, time is money.

I believe the universal question that’s rapidly approaching the tunnel’s mouth  is: how are we going to live our lives? New graduates polled reveal that money is less important than to previous generations. Good thing I think.

There is too much evidence to deny that it takes 10+ years to master a craft. Who has that kind of commitment and patience for anything these days?  Mastery is a brutal journey and one easily dropped at a convenient turn.  Yet there is a common thread running through anything we abandon throughout the journey.

How long does it take to master aesthetics?  While not a craft, aesthetics is the “other” component of all commercial and fine art. Aesthetics is lifelong and mastering it is probably unattainable but it is often sacrificed in the money trade.

“Time is short, art is long” – Saul Bass

Everyone has to learn too much in too short a time.  The only way of learning is to do it.  There is no shortcut.  You need to do a lot of things over and over to get better and better.

[[Show as slideshow]]

Saul Bass’ advice to students was “learn to draw” since without hand skills you’ll contort to discover a work-around solution.  I believe this is still true but when then do we find the time to master Adobe Illustrator? Aesthetics must be the answer; study the essence of beauty and apply whatever tool you own.

Viewing Saul Bass I understand that whether beauty is worth anything or not, it is worth a lifetime pursuit.  “Do the work, get paid or spend time to care about beauty. Don’t live under the illusion that anyone else cares.”

Unmistakable artistic signature is found in this “Catch Me If You Can” Title Sequence:

Saul Bass bio [via Wikipedia]

Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, but he is best known for his design on animated motion picture title sequences.

During his 40-year career he worked for some of Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers, including most notably Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Amongst his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm for Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm, the text racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that raced together and was pulled apart for Psycho (1960).

Saul Bass designed the sixth AT&T Bell System logo. He also designed AT&T’s “globe” logo after the breakup of the Bell System. Bass also designed Continental Airlines’ 1968 “jetstream” logo which became the most recognized airline industry logo of the 1970s.

“Let the gun do it’s thing.”

All Creatives will relate to artist Ube Urban. I got an immediate warm feeling when I watched him paint a bicycle in Jake Wiens’ video; I know what it’s like to be immersed in the flow of creating. The idea has been captured so the remainder is letting the gun do it’s thing.

In the end, the finished product is his calling card. “It’s my network, my business card, it’s me.”

Seth Godin's head

I’ve been reading Seth Godin since his second book Unleashing the Idea Virus 2001.  Linchpin is his most personal book to date.  In it he describes our current economic transformation from an individual’s viewpoint. Think of it as a pep talk for Purple Cows or a kick in the ass for the rest of the herd.

I’ve always thought of Godin as a marketing guy for the rest of us.  Idea Virus explained viral marketing, Purple Cow outlined market differentiation just as his others made marketing ideas clear and accessible.  Permission Marketing was a breakthrough since he was ahead of the curve and brought more new ideas to market with that book.

In Linchpin, Godin defines art as “The intentional act of connecting with someone else and changing them.”  While this might not be what many think of as art, it is a great definition when referring to the art of doing.  And really, is there any other kind?  I suppose there is the art of thinking but doing gets more results.

This is by far my favorite of his issues probably because in Linchpin, Godin covers nearly every point in the Permission To Suck Manifesto starting with number 1:

1) Snub expectations.  Excitement needs space; throw a few elbows if required.  Picasso’s friend and art critic, Guillaume Apollinaire, encouraged his cohorts to “innovate violently!   Much more risky for creative professionals, is to abide by rules.

Translated to words closer to his in Linchpin: To follow rules is to be a factory worker which these days is very risky since our factories are dying.

Piers Fawkes from trend blog PSFK interviews Seth Godin about his book Linchpin.