Discuss a Joel-Peter Witkin Photograph.

[Sparky]

The last ones I saw, about 3 months ago, were magnificent. What does that have to do with Witkin? His prints are not nearly as good as the Bill Brandt prints I've seen.

No - I was just trying to (literally!) tie threads together - with all the azo/contact print/fine print oriented snobbery/insecurity going around these days (which is NOT to say that I wouldn't try azo - hell, why not!) I would assume most advocates would look down their noses at prints lacking shadow detail. Hey, there's no accounting for taste, right?

 

[David H. Bebbington]

Your dinner parties certainly wouldn't lack for topics of conversation then, would they?

But would anyone eat anything? And keep it down if they did?

 

[catem]

I love Witkins work. I'm fascinated by the spirituality at its core. If I would collect photography and live with it on my walls, I'd have Witkin at or near the top of my list -even though it's not 'easy on the eyes' in certain ways. I think people might do well to try to get beyond any shock value the images may have and read some criticism of his work.

You could argue that Witkin has made the artistic choice to present his ideas in a sensational way. Therefore he bears the responsibility of how they are perceived.

More is coming back to me now about the dubious ways in which he obtained his body parts, thanks to allusions on the thread. This, together with the fact that I have read something about him (years ago, which I admit I then forgot, and just now) means that I have looked below the surface of the sensationalism of the image and even his methods (though can you, in fact, do that? does that mean that morality is not important in art?) I see an image that is, in fact, fairly banal.

But in any case appreciating art is about considering all levels - intent, approach and methodology, as well as result.

I cannot personally see spirituality in this one. Not my idea of sprirituality, anyway (and this will vary from culture to culture, it is not unique).

I don't make this judgement about all of his work - all my comments have been about this particular photograph. Whilst I wouldn't choose to have his pictures on my walls, I can appreciate others (although they don't do a lot for me) or at least I do not object to them.
Cate

 

[DREW WILEY]

I'll stick with my original assessment, "demented", sick. I don't care if this was due to an assumed art career strategy or an inherent mental state. I'm referring to the effect and how it was attained. Should public museums or galleries even allow minors into the presence of that kind of imagery, along with the trend in blatant pornography that often accompanied it in the same venues, during the same era? Think twice before giving some airheaded "artiste" culture reply. Otherwise, I should have never replied to this disgusting thread myself. Some of the responses remind me of just how callous people can be to the obvious. So like I said, if you want to hang these kinds of pictures in a dungeon somewhere, that's your own business, but in public?? That whole ethos, "It must be art if it offends people, or shocks them", is neither new nor much more than a lame excuse for lack of an alternative.

 

[CMoore]

You "original" assessment.?
Are you commenting on something you said 12 years ago.?
But to answer your question.....Yes.
Unless there is a "standard" rating system for museums like there is with movies.
If you take your 14 year old teenager to a museum, why should the person(s) that run the museum be able to tell you if your kid can enter or not.?

 

[DREW WILEY]

I would have dodged this thread entirely, knowing where it could lead. And this has the inevitable pitfall of fueling another myth, that something must have merit if it
sustains controversy, but we already get more than our fair share of that nonsense in politics. But there are aspects of printmaking which lured me in. His subject matter itself was not in fact unique for the era; he just had the gall to use the real deal rather than photocomp it like dozens of others working the same kind of genre in SF then, which does in fact lend these contact prints a visual authenticity absent in the scissors and glue crowd (pre-PS). His scratching and split toning of Azo paper was not unique either. Others were experimenting with the same effects. And it was around the same that people were first beginning to deliberately show the scratchy filed borders of substandard print easels, now nothing more than yet another boring passe gimmick. His "collectability" fell into the usual pattern - people with money being told what to buy as an alleged investment. Sometimes that works monetarily, sometimes not. As per those who actually gravitated toward these themes,
well, you already have my opinion about that. And maybe these prints really do look better by moonlight. .. And as far as the
"right" of parents to decide the suitability of such venues on their own? That involves a legal contradiction. One would hope
they had a bit of common sense. But why should art exhibitions be exempt from showing things often worse than venues under laws expressly forbidding minors under any circumstances? Are you even aware of the horrifying degree not only
runaway teenagers but even young children were being exploited at that point, in that very demographic cauldron? It went far
beyond social permissiveness into downright criminality. There was a very hazy line between "art" and human trafficking and
other forms of exploitation through drug addiction. All this might get glossed over through the distance of time, but
even the remnants of it are ugly. Witkin is just another spinoff of that whole ugly mess. Just like the music culture glamorized
drug abuse, he glamorized certain other things, at least in the eyes of a sicko subculture.

 

[Wayne]

I'll stick with my original assessment, "demented", sick. I don't care if this was due to an assumed art career strategy or an inherent mental state. I'm referring to the effect and how it was attained. Should public museums or galleries even allow minors into the presence of that kind of imagery, along with the trend in blatant pornography that often accompanied it in the same venues, during the same era? Think twice before giving some airheaded "artiste" culture reply. Otherwise, I should have never replied to this disgusting thread myself. Some of the responses remind me of just how callous people can be to the obvious. So like I said, if you want to hang these kinds of pictures in a dungeon somewhere, that's your own business, but in public?? That whole ethos, "It must be art if it offends people, or shocks them", is neither new nor much more than a lame excuse for lack of an alternative.

Agreed. Why did you necropost and dredge it up again? Instead of discussing his photos lets discuss locking this thread and not discussing this mentally deranged bastard again.

 

[CMoore]

Are you even aware of the horrifying degree not only
runaway teenagers but even young children were being exploited at that point, in that very demographic cauldron? .

I am not aware of anything He/She photographed. Never heard of this person before. I was simply addressing the idea, that you raised, about museums not allowing a certain person to enter the museum.

 

[removed account4]

his work has often times had a deeply catholic subtext.
haven't seen his work in decades but i had a teacher who
bought one of his proof prints at auction or something and it was
absolutely beautiful... very much like the work of jeffrey silverthorne,
whose work i have seen in person and it was pretty amazing.

 

[pdeeh]

the work of jeffrey silverthorne,

if nothing else, necrothreading has brought this to my attention.
thanks john.
Hi DREW
(he's got me on ignore )

 

[jtk]

The last ones I saw, about 3 months ago, were magnificent. What does that have to do with Witkin? His prints are not nearly as good as the Bill Brandt prints I've seen.

I've seen many Bill Brandt prints. He's one of my favorites. Dramatic. Easy to "like." He didn't make many of the prints that are shown. His own prints were often heavily and even crudely retouched. You've seen that if you've seen his originals. Some of his best were scanned from the original negatives and reprinted via inkjet to remind us of what we believe from popular magazines

I've seen around two dozen Witkin prints. I don't "like" Witkin's images but he's a far better printer than was Brandt. I don't "like" some of the Bible's stories (for example around King David) but having read them carefully I can't get away from them.

Art doesn't ask to be "liked."

Before I was mature and seriously looked at it I didn't like Picasso's work.

 

[removed account4]

if nothing else, necrothreading has brought this to my attention.
thanks john.
Hi DREW
(he's got me on ignore )

you're welcome !
he came to visit my photo class when i was in college
earlier in the day i looked at civil war corpses by brady
then oral interviews of genocide survivors and black and white
movies of people being raped and pillaged and death marches in
the syrian desert from around ww1
then 3 hours of jeffrey silverthorn
it was 1 long super depressing day of death !

we saw beautifully prints from his morgue series
and i see his photographs in my mind vividly like the day i saw them
close to 30 years ago. one of them, the woman who was stitched up after
her autopsy might be the most beautiful photograph i have ever seen.

 

[pdeeh]

Death and the corporeal dead are so often treated with disgust, and as not fit for art of any kind. Much pearl-clutching and calls for the fainting-couch to be brought forth ...

In earlier days, when death was (literally) so often on the doorstep, people were less squeamish.

We only have to think of David's Marat (dead and bloodied) or even Millais' Ophelia (not dead but on her way) let alone of course 2,000 years of depictions of a horribly mutilated middle-eastern guy being tortured to death by being nailed to some wood, or all the mourning paintings and sculptures made over thousands of years.

Still, as you mentioned Brady, by coincidental happenstance I came upon this interesting Twitter 'moment' today:

https://twitter.com/DrLindseyFitz/status/1022933481247191040

in which we learn of the birth of the embalming industry during the American Civil War, and the guy who not only had photographs of corpses, but actual corpses in his shop window ...

 

[BrianShaw]

“Art doesn't ask to be "liked."“

I like that thought.

 

[removed account4]

Death and the corporeal dead are so often treated with disgust, and as not fit for art of any kind. Much pearl-clutching and calls for the fainting-couch to be brought forth ...

In earlier days, when death was (literally) so often on the doorstep, people were less squeamish.

We only have to think of David's Marat (dead and bloodied) or even Millais' Ophelia (not dead but on her way) let alone of course 2,000 years of depictions of a horribly mutilated middle-eastern guy being tortured to death by being nailed to some wood, or all the mourning paintings and sculptures made over thousands of years.

Still, as you mentioned Brady, by coincidental happenstance I came upon this interesting Twitter 'moment' today:

https://twitter.com/DrLindseyFitz/status/1022933481247191040

in which we learn of the birth of the embalming industry during the American Civil War, and the guy who not only had photographs of corpses, but actual corpses in his shop window ...

yeah it was just one of those things just like butchering the food you would eat
now everyting is really sanitized and prepackaged so lovely, isn't it ?

i wasn't disgusted or squeamish by it that day, the movie footage of the death marches of my grandparents' generation
the dead civil war bodies and his stillborn babies on a cold slab or random corpses didn't really bother me in that way
but there was only so much nonstop dead people i could watch. it started for me at like 9am, and was around 9pm when i left the classroom.
( i only missed about 10-15 mins ) ... had a cup of coffee and went to the library to study ...
throbbing gristle might have been a good sound track that day LOL

nothing like an embalmed corpse in the window to drum up business