Let me dip in here with a question. Do you say Photography 'is not "art" in the highest sense' because of, what? Why? Its reproducibility? Certainly the David is art in the highest sense and, although it could be reproduced, let's be serious; it's a one off. Is it uniqueness that is the basis? Is that why photography is not Art (as in artist) but Craft (as in artisan) in you view? I ask because I once saw a show of work by, I think, Kim Weston. One feature of the works for sale is that each piece had its negative permanently mounted on the back of the print. This was his attempt to provide uniqueness to the eminently reproducible photograph. I don't know if it worked for him.
My attempt was to provide an explanation of why the expression "fine art photography" is used so widely and why, in my opinion, it is a "legitimate" and non-pretentious expression for photography which is produced for merely aesthetic
purposes. The degree of aesthetic merits stays away from this definition as it is entirely personal.
That said, I wanted to eschew the useless infinite question of "but is it art?" (or, "but is it Art?") but made this mistake of saying that photography for me it is not Art but craft + taste (I stress "taste" because certain higher forms of craft do always strive for beauty: think about cars, fashion etc) which originated this semi-ambivalent provocation
at a direct answer. My mistake. Too late. I'll try to give an answer then, and flog this poor horse once again on this forum.
I'll be concise and imprecise. Don't take what follows as if they were my creed. It's a fast attempt at a difficult matter.
In my personal view of seeing the concept of "art", or of Art, several elements must be present.
To me, a sculpture or a painting or a poem or a roman can be Art because the artists starts with a white page, canvas, a block of marble, a shapeless amount of clay. Whatever is created out of those "emptiness" is entirely the work of the artist. An artist creates entirely from his own mind first, and only then executes employing a certain amount of craft. He literally gives birth to a work which did not exists beforehand not even in traces. Take this as an absolutization. I am extreme in the effort of being clear.
That said, photography, just like cooking or tailoring to make some other example, never starts from a blank page. When Ansel Adams takes his picture of a certain cemetery near a certain hamlet with certain mountains in the background under a certain moon, he did not start from a white page. He did not create cemetery, hamlet, mountains and moon. They existed there and he captured them.
I do not want to undermine the aesthetic value of the work, all the skill, all the personal taste and effort going into this. But I see that the contribution of the photographer to the work, albeit important, was in being there, possessing and applying the right skill, possessing and applying the right "taste", the aesthetic sensitivity so to speak, and again applying taste and skill maybe during the printing stage. But the hamlet was there of his own. The "matter" of which his work is done existed before the artist. He skillfully captured it.
Certain other kinds of photography work with a subject matter which is more "created" by the photographer. Think about a still life, or a memento mori, where the composition is entirely created by the artist in his mind first, and then arranged, and then captured, and is not merely "captured". There is a higher degree of Art in this picture because there is more of a "blank page" where the work started.
This, to me, is a big difference.
But in painting the entire realization does not stop at arranging the subject matter on the table (or imagining it, as the painter can, because he CREATES the subject), lighting it, choosing the point of view etc., the painter must then begin again from a white canvas. This again introduces this element of
absolute creation. I repeat: the painter
can actually merely imagine the scene, and most often actually he does just that. The photographer cannot.
When Caravaggio painted the dinner at Emmaus, or when Michelangelo sculpted the pietà, they started from a blank canvas, a block of marble. The work is entirely created, and I use this word really as in Genesis, by the artist. It's "absolute" creation, whereas with photography we have so to speak mere "capture", however well planned and thought out and however great the final result.
This creation from "blank" is not enough to define Art IMO. Crap is crap also when painted or sculpted. Besides being "creation", Art must
give the shiver. The shiver is
entirely subjective but it always is, in my way of seeing Art,
entirely meta-rational. Being meta-rational it cannot be explained (nor defended, justified, etc.).
Any attempt to conceptualize, cathegorize, justify, explain, motivate, contextualize etc. any work of art is a negation of the word Art itself. If it's Art, it cannot be explained or demonstrated or justified or legitimized by any reasoning.
The brain is not the organ where Art is perceived. If it's Art, you know it before any attempt at intellectual examination. All the mental masturbation over Art is nice or funny University activity but it's not what can give Art its value or reason to be.
I am perfectly aware that plenty of University courses, University teachers, Art galleries, Art merchants, Art editors etc. thrive on the opposite view of Art. It is this sad conception of art, entirely intellectual and academic, which make people think the work of Stockhausen or Nono or Berio, or Cage to name some composers, as deserving some attention and interest, or even make people think them as being "geniuses". In the realm of the mental masturbations that afflict certain music academies they certainly can be "geniuses". But no shiver. No shiver, no art.
The brain is not the organ where Art is perceived.
I am aware that there is a certain amount of intellectualism in most forms of arts. Wagner being an immediate example coming to my mind. But ultimately Wagner is great (or is Great in my perception) because of the immediate, copious SHIVER it gives me, not for the tons of bull-stuff he wrote about his art
All this IMO.
I would like to make extremely clear that I do not intend to make the least attempt to "defend" what above. That is just what my gut defines Art*. There is no algorithm to define Art and there is no scientific way in which any definition can be "defended". If somebody looks for a scientifically "defensible" definition of Art, I think he is seriously artistically challenged
.
*And in any case my gut would know much more than my brain about art so in case it's the brain which should give a gutly defence of his opinion and not the other way round
