"How America's Most Cherished Photographer Learned to See" / Stephen Shore with Peter Schjeldahl

[Alan Edward Klein]

Art isn't intellectual unless you make it so. It's about feelings not the mind. It has no heart if you have to explain it.

 

[Don_ih]

Art isn't intellectual unless you make it so. It's about feelings not the mind. It has no heart if you have to explain it.

Art is open to interpretation. Also, if you can identify the feeling you are experiencing, you are intellectualizing. That we have names for emotions implies a shared experience - but it's one you were taught. As in, someone saw you crying and asked if you were "hurt" or "sad". There is nothing purely physical about emotion -- that word itself implies the outward expression of feeling. Knowing what you're feeling is something you learn - and responding to symbolism and imagery appropriately is also something you learn, through living with other people, in a social environment.

There is no necessity behind the perceived significance of any artwork.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

It's about feelings not the mind. It has no heart if you have to explain it.

The center of emotions is in the brain. Feeling is part of the complex wiring that's in the brain, the complex network of interconnexions that is the brain. There is no "mind vs heart"—that's just an old, very old, metaphor that keeps perpetuating a fundamental misunderstanding about how we function, a distinction that is cultural, not factual.

There is no "mind vs heart". It's all up there, is the same place, all wired together. Feeling is a form of thought. It's all intellect, with each part functioning differently, with a different purpose, yet each connected to the other. It's only the different manner in which each part converse with each other—the intensity of the interconnexions—that differentiates each of us and impacts our "emotional" relation with the world, including our reactions to "art," amongst other things. But it's all mind. That's the beauty, and miracle, of it.

I'm not saying everything has "feeling"—that purely conceptual art, for example, should never leave you "cold." Rather, that, contrary to what you are stating, it's not because something can be explained that "it has no heart"—or maybe I should say "it has no (he)art" . Sometimes the depth of feeling comes precisely from the fact that there is a strong conceptual foundation to the art work, that the artist thought long and hard about what he wanted to do, why he wanted to do it, how he wanted to do it—even if, paradoxically, these all take in him or her the form of questions—and is later able to articulated verbally. I think this is often the case with serial works as discussed here.

"Makes you think" can sometimes be perfect synonym to "makes you feel." Feeling is thinking, but different.

 

[Arthurwg]

Art isn't intellectual unless you make it so. It's about feelings not the mind. It has no heart if you have to explain it.

That may be true for the viewer but not for the artist. Art-making requires thought and intellect.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Art is open to interpretation. Also, if you can identify the feeling you are experiencing, you are intellectualizing. That we have names for emotions implies a shared experience - but it's one you were taught. As in, someone saw you crying and asked if you were "hurt" or "sad". There is nothing purely physical about emotion -- that word itself implies the outward expression of feeling. Knowing what you're feeling is something you learn - and responding to symbolism and imagery appropriately is also something you learn, through living with other people, in a social environment.

There is no necessity behind the perceived significance of any artwork.

If you have to explain a joke's punchline, it isn't funny.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The center of emotions is in the brain. Feeling is part of the complex wiring that's in the brain, the complex network of interconnexions that is the brain. There is no "mind vs heart"—that's just an old, very old, metaphor that keeps perpetuating a fundamental misunderstanding about how we function, a distinction that is cultural, not factual.

There is no "mind vs heart". It's all up there, is the same place, all wired together. Feeling is a form of thought. It's all intellect, with each part functioning differently, with a different purpose, yet each connected to the other. It's only the different manner in which each part converse with each other—the intensity of the interconnexions—that differentiates each of us and impacts our "emotional" relation with the world, including our reactions to "art," amongst other things. But it's all mind. That's the beauty, and miracle, of it.

I'm not saying everything has "feeling"—that purely conceptual art, for example, should never leave you "cold." Rather, that, contrary to what you are stating, it's not because something can be explained that "it has no heart"—or maybe I should say "it has no (he)art" . Sometimes the depth of feeling comes precisely from the fact that there is a strong conceptual foundation to the art work, that the artist thought long and hard about what he wanted to do, why he wanted to do it, how he wanted to do it—even if, paradoxically, these all take in him or her the form of questions—and is later able to articulated verbally. I think this is often the case with serial works as discussed here.

"Makes you think" can sometimes be perfect synonym to "makes you feel." Feeling is thinking, but different.

You don't have to know how to cook to like a tasty meal. Art is about feelings most of all. Sure you can intellectually discuss the history, techniques, schools, styles, culture, etc. But art first effects you in the soul and your emotions. And you don't have to analyze it after the fact. You could, but it's not necessary to do that to be art. Art stands on its own. How poor we would be if we needed intellect to appreciate art.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

That may be true for the viewer but not for the artist. Art-making requires thought and intellect.

It requires soul more than those other things. Loads of people are smart, think about and plan what they're going to shoot, and have the craft down perfectly. But without soul, all they get is a picture, not art.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

You don't have to know how to cook to like a tasty meal. Art is about feelings most of all. Sure you can intellectually discuss the history, techniques, schools, styles, culture, etc. But art first effects you in the soul and your emotions. And you don't have to analyze it after the fact. You could, but it's not necessary to do that to be art. Art stands on its own. How poor we would be if we needed intellect to appreciate art.

"Balance", "harmony", "contrast", "composition", "form", "symmetry", "dissonance", are all intellectual concepts, yet all play a role in our emotional relationship to an artwork—wether we are creating it or reacting to it. It often happens instinctively, "without thinking" as we say, but that's because, as I said, our so-called emotional response is a form of thought process. If art affects "your soul and your emotions," it's precisely because it affects your intellect—because, as I said in my previous post, it connects the different parts of your brain that are sensitive to "form", "harmony", "concept", "idea", "contrast", "composition", "dissonance", etc. and translate all of that into an emotional response.

Art doesn't stand on its own: it's too complex for that, i.e.,, what it triggers in our brain is too complex to do that. This no matter how "simple" the artwork actually may be.

And nobody states here that you need to analyse a work of art to appreciate it. But that one can analyse a work of art doesn't in any way diminish its value, its meaning, its emotional content, etc. "Whatever you do, don't use your brain" seems to me a pretty poor way of approaching millennia of art production in the history of mankind.To paraphrase you: how poor would we be if we never used our intellect to appreciate art?

Artists have constantly "intellectually analyse" the works of the artists that came before them, trying to understand what others have done before is how every great artist actually advanced in his practice.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

"Balance", "harmony", "contrast", "composition", "form", "symmetry", "dissonance", are all intellectual concepts, yet all play a role in our emotional relationship to an artwork—wether we are creating it or reacting to it. It often happens instinctively, "without thinking" as we say, but that's because, as I said, our so-called emotional response is a form of thought process. If art affects "your soul and your emotions," it's precisely because it affects your intellect—because, as I said in my previous post, it connects the different parts of your brain that are sensitive to "form", "harmony", "concept", "idea", "contrast", "composition", "dissonance", etc. and translate all of that into an emotional response.

Art doesn't stand on its own: it's too complex for that, i.e.,, what it triggers in our brain is too complex to do that. This no matter how "simple" the artwork actually may be.

And nobody states here that you need to analyse a work of art to appreciate it. But that one can analyse a work of art doesn't in any way diminish its value, its meaning, its emotional content, etc. "Whatever you do, don't use your brain" seems to me a pretty poor way of approaching millennia of art production in the history of mankind.To paraphrase you: how poor would we be if we never used our intellect to appreciate art?

Artists have constantly "intellectually analyse" the works of the artists that came before them, trying to understand what others have done before is how every great artist actually advanced in his practice.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

You don't have to analyze or intellectualize art to appreciate art. Who has time? Nice shot. Nice shot. Nah, don't like it. Nice shot. etc.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

I didn't take it that way - because there's no reason to take it that way. @Helge was trying to indicate a person who has no experience in the relevant culture for interpreting Picasso's art. And he's correct. Whatever is commonly understood by Picasso's more abstract images would not be understood by a complete outsider. But it's not necessary to go so far to find an example. All you need to do is ask someone who has no interest in art, no knowledge or artists or artworks other than accidental, to interpret one of those painting and they will probably say nothing that resembles what is commonly understood by critics, art historians, artists, and art-appreciators.

Art is not something that exists in isolation from everything else. If it happens to "speak to you", the language it's speaking is one you already understand.

If that is the case, then why do we even bother to pass a glance toward antiquities? There is no way, ever, anyone can understand the original "why's" of a Mayan temple or the artworks it contains, yet, there is a recognizable power in them which is universal in the way it emotes responses from viewers.

I believe it was Picasso who said something like, "Mediocre artists borrow, great artists steal".

Now there's someone who, upon discovering west African ceremonial masks, recognized the power they had as objects without a smidge of knowing why they were made or what cultural significance they held, and then incorporated some of that power into his own work. The masks could speak for themselves without guidance from the sculptor or a gallery representative.

So, when you think about it, Picasso is proving my point and debunking yours.

If a large photograph of low desert scrub brush receding to a distant hill needs an 'insider-nudge-nudge-wink-wink-secret-society-only-we-educated-can-truly-understand' explanation, it probably won't work for me. Artwork should be capable of speaking for itself.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

You don't have to analyze or intellectualize art to appreciate art. Who has time? Nice shot. Nice shot. Nah, don't like it. Nice shot. etc.

Alan, I'll say it for the last time: I never said you have to. But many people like to, and for many people it's important to, wether it's as viewers or as artists themselves. And that many photographers want, or need to go beyond one "nice shot" after the next doesn't make their work less powerful, evocative, emotionally relevant than the work of those who go from nice shot to nice shot.

You say "Art is about feelings most of all." Sorry to point this out, but that's not for you to decide.

 

[Helge]

As I said, I like Weather Report and my wife hates them. The world continues spinning. We're talking preferences here.

To your Picasso point...a "rain forest Indian" might see more than you think, considering Picasso 'invented' Cubism after seeing West African ceremonial masks and sculptures: https://www.pablopicasso.org/africanperiod.jsp

To say one artist is better than another because one is anointed by New York galleries is preposterous.

My experience in art schools helped form my view on this. One school heaped praise on people who had extensive art-speak vocabularies and could expound voluminously on what their pieces meant. I didn't last long there, and found another school better suited to the way I work, where experimentation sprang from a foundation of strong technique.

To have to explain how your work should be viewed, I see as a failing. Do poets have accompanying text to explain the meaning of their poems?

There is a drinking of the Koolaid, secret handshake, private club aspect to what I perceive as a condescending tone from people saying that I just don't get Shore's photography.

Some artists and galleries are very adept at culturing a singularity of vision and/or purpose to help people justify spending lots of money. That will never end, but it shouldn't be judge & jury of what is, or isn't, good art.

My preference is to not swim in that end of the pool.

*Edit* A Boo and a Hissss on the "rain forest Indian" bit. Implies that people unencumbered by modern societal norms are incapable of complex thought or valid interpretations of modern art. Smacks of elitism and of the same condescending tone where those who don't ascribe to accepted ways of interpretation are unenlightened lesser than's.

You seem eager to build strawmen for cheap social justice points?
Otherwise known as virtue signaling.
A rampant sickness in these last few years. Far worse than Covid19. Goes straight to the brain.

A rainforest Indian is of course merely an extreme proxy for someone simply just not schooled in a certain culture or type of art.
As with almost everything human that comes in degrees and variations.

I could find hundreds of paintings of for example ancient, aboriginal, Polynesian origin that you wouldn’t even know how to look at without some sort of primer. And even then, they’d be mysterious.
What I wrote has nothing to do with talking down or belittling rainforest Indians (who are incredibly diverse) and everything to do with finding an example of one of the last groups of people almost guaranteed to simply not having the right mental tools and cultural background to understand, for example a Picasso, in other than the most basic sense.
But you knew that.

Similarly with my compare between Herzog and Shores careers. You started off by talking about Shore being late to the game. When in fact he was not at all.
Their academic or other recognition is important in that it marks the point at which they go from mere amateurs (like there are thousands and thousands of at any given time) to actually making a lasting mark.
Vivian Maier is an example of someone who was never discovered in here lifetime.

I didn't take it that way - because there's no reason to take it that way. @Helge was trying to indicate a person who has no experience in the relevant culture for interpreting Picasso's art. And he's correct. Whatever is commonly understood by Picasso's more abstract images would not be understood by a complete outsider. But it's not necessary to go so far to find an example. All you need to do is ask someone who has no interest in art, no knowledge or artists or artworks other than accidental, to interpret one of those painting and they will probably say nothing that resembles what is commonly understood by critics, art historians, artists, and art-appreciators.

Art is not something that exists in isolation from everything else. If it happens to "speak to you", the language it's speaking is one you already understand.

Thanks. The quickly chosen clichéd (but a cliche for good reason) example was as I wrote to put a point on it.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

If a large photograph of low desert scrub brush receding to a distant hill needs an 'insider-nudge-nudge-wink-wink-secret-society-only-we-educated-can-truly-understand' explanation, it doesn't work for me.

Totally agree that it shouldn't need it.

But is it bad for a viewer to ask of such photograph, of any photograph, "What are you about?", "What are you trying to tell me about the world I live in, about the people I live with?" or to ask of the photographer "why did you do this this way?" or "why did this interest you?" and "why did you want us to look at this this way"?

To me (I know I'm repeating myself) photography, because of its ambiguous relationship with reality, because of its ambiguous relationship with time, because, also, it can't always easily distinguish beauty from prettiness, is the most complex of all crafts. A photograph is far from simple, and all photographs asks questions in one form or another, even the simplest of snapshot. Yes, that's precisely what makes it easy to over-analyse, it doesn't mean one should never try to answer these questions, or, better yet, put them into words.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

This unending (we are all right, in our own way) debate, in a cute nutshell:

 

[faberryman]

Please note the title of the video: "Who Decides What Art Means". The video has nothing to do with what is art, how that is determined, or who determines it..

 

[MurrayMinchin]

You seem eager to build strawmen for cheap social justice points?
Otherwise known as virtue signaling.
A rampant sickness in these last few years. Far worse than Covid19. Goes straight to the brain.

No, it's something I do in real life as well, like calling someone out for telling a racist joke and expecting me to laugh.

A rainforest Indian is of course merely an extreme proxy for someone simply just not schooled in a certain culture or type of art.
As with almost everything human that comes in degrees and variations.

I could find hundreds of paintings of for example ancient, aboriginal, Polynesian origin that you wouldn’t even know how to look at without some sort of primer. And even then, they’d be mysterious.

Wouldn't know how to look at them? Really? If you stumbled across a Shinto Shrine wandering off trail on a Japanese mountainside, would you give it no attention? Wouldn't you pause and drink in the relationship between the shrine and its surroundings, or would you immediately turn on your heel, scurry back to town, and find someone to help you understand?

What I wrote has nothing to do with talking down or belittling rainforest Indians (who are incredibly diverse) and everything to do with finding an example of one of the last groups of people almost guaranteed to simply not having the right mental tools and cultural background to understand, for example a Picasso, in other than the most basic sense.
But you knew that.

Sigh...they don't have the right mental tools? Nothing offensive there at all! Because Picasso stole the essence of West African ceremonial masks to 'invent' Cubism, I'd say forest dwelling Indigenous people would be closer to the source material than even Picasso was.

Similarly with my compare between Herzog and Shores careers. You started off by talking about Shore being late to the game. When in fact he was not at all.
Their academic or other recognition is important in that it marks the point at which they go from mere amateurs (like there are thousands and thousands of at any given time) to actually making a lasting mark.
Vivian Maier is an example of someone who was never discovered in here lifetime.

I didn't say he was late to the game, just that some suggest he was a pioneer when he wasn't.

The root of the problem/debate here is best highlighted in the title of the article which spawned this thread, as it was written from a New York gallery scene centric perspective. Calling Shore "America's Most Cherished Photographer" is ludicrous. He might be quite the darling to Big Name Gallery insiders, but pretty much unknown anywhere else.

As demonstrated in the video I posted, there are many valid ways to interpret art. It is the presumptive totality of correctness in the argument you are making that makes me say, "Hey, wait a minute".

There is room in the pool for all of us, but it seems you have decided that people need requisite knowledge to even get their feet wet.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

If you stumbled across a Shinto Shrine wandering off trail on a Japanese mountainside, would you give it no attention? Wouldn't you pause and drink in the relationship between the shrine and its surroundings, or would you immediately turn on your heel, scurry back to town, and find someone to help you understand?

Personally, I'd be in the moment and contemplate, and would start looking deeper and think about the relationship between the shrine and its surroundings—to topography, its place in the landscape—, and later find someone to help me fill in the blanks, to understand it more than I do it at that moment—the shrine as cultural object, the shrine as religious object, the who, why and how of people living there, and all this would make me question myself, my prejudices, my apprehensions, my relationship with religion or with the sacred, even the why of my being there. In the end, hopefully, I'll have learned a little more about myself, my understanding of and relationship with the world I live in, which is about the best you can get from any knowledge, and the best you can get from questioning any photographic or artistic work, as what holds for the shrine on a Japanese mountainside also holds for a Stephen Shore photograph viewed in Uncommon Places or Picasso's Les demoiselles d'Avignon seen on the wall at MoMA.

The root of the problem/debate here is best highlighted in the title of the article which spawned this thread, as it was written from a New York gallery scene centric perspective. Calling Shore "America's Most Cherished Photographer" is ludicrous.

Ludicrous it is. But it's just a title. Has nothing to do with Shore or Schjeldahl, has nothing to do with the core and subject of the article, something which anybody who has actually read it would quickly realize. Some anonymous editor asked some copy editor or page layout designer to produce a title for the article, and chances are that person has never even heard of Shore or Schjeldahl. The title is ludicrous, but so is building an argument regarding Shore's work from an irrelevant title.

 

[Don_ih]

Picasso is proving my point and debunking yours

Not even remotely. The fact that you can appreciate something foreign or ancient doesn't mean you have a comprehensive understanding of what it means within the culture that generated it.

In your shrine example, yes - you can wander through and enjoy the craftsmanship of the work, the proportions of the design, the choice of materials and the setting, etc. But, without appropriate cultural knowledge (which is not impossible to attain), you will not be able to interpret any symbolism you encounter, in the way one with that relevant cultural knowledge would. That means you may not even approach the same understanding that a "native" would easily attain.

If you have to explain a joke's punchline, it isn't funny.

In order to find a joke funny, you have to understand a great many things. Needing the joke explained means you didn't understand something important. Since you said that, I guess you do agree with Alex.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Personally, I'd be in the moment and contemplate, and would start looking deeper and think about the relationship between the shrine and its surroundings—to topography, its place in the landscape—, and later find someone to help me fill in the blanks, to understand it more than I do it at that moment—the shrine as cultural object, the shrine as religious object, the who, why and how of people living there, and all this would make me question myself, my prejudices, my apprehensions, my relationship with religion or with the sacred, even the why of my being there. In the end, hopefully, I'll have learned a little more about myself, my understanding of and relationship with the world I live in, which is about the best you can get from any knowledge, and the best you can get from questioning any photographic or artistic work, as what holds for the shrine on a Japanese mountainside also holds for a Stephen Shore photograph viewed in Uncommon Places or Picasso's Les demoiselles d'Avignon seen on the wall at MoMA.

I agree with the bulk of what you wrote above, but depart when it comes to artwork which is intentionally banal and only gains meaning once you learn the intent behind the work.

Like I keep saying, there's room in the pool for everyone. I prefer art which speaks for itself without having to join a club to get the decoder ring.

Ludicrous it is. But it's just a title. Has nothing to do with Shore or Schjeldahl, has nothing to do with the core and subject of the article, something which anybody who has actually read it would quickly realize. Some anonymous editor asked some copy editor or page layout designer to produce a title for the article, and chances are that person has never even heard of Shore or Schjeldahl. The title is ludicrous, but so is building an argument regarding Shore's work from an irrelevant title.

In Shore's words from the article:

"The second approach entailed the idea of the snapshot. Snapshots, too, have their own visual conventions, but sometimes they feel like an unmediated experience. That’s what I was after. I made the snapshots with the Mick-A-Matic, and that led to “American Surfaces,” taken with a 35-mm. point-and-shoot. While working on this series, I engaged in a mental exercise. At random times during the day, I took “screenshots” of my field of vision. I wanted to make a conscious mental record of what seeing looked like. And I based my pictures on this.

This practice not only informed how I photographed but what I photographed. Since I was choosing random moments, I found I was looking at situations that were not usually the subject of photographs: riding in a taxi, standing in an elevator, eating a meal, watching television. This led me to go beyond conventions not only of pictorial structure but of content, too."

There are as many ways to photograph as there are photographers, and this is equally valid as any other, but it and the resultant images don't resonate with me. Having a decoder ring and knowing why it was taken doesn't change the way I see it. Guess I'm just not good herd member material...knowing why it was made doesn't change the way I see it.

I choose to walk, typically through Nature, and wait until a particular place or thing stops me. I'll move around until the strongest vantage point is found which accentuates what stopped me, then decide on the best way to arrive at a print which accentuates it even more. I want the photograph to speak for itself. A diametrically opposed aesthetic.

Shore can happily splash away in his end of the pool and I'll splash away in mine. I've previously stated I can see what he's doing and have tipped my hat his way for achieving it, but it just doesn't float my boat.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Not even remotely. The fact that you can appreciate something foreign or ancient doesn't mean you have a comprehensive understanding of what it means within the culture that generated it.

In your shrine example, yes - you can wander through and enjoy the craftsmanship of the work, the proportions of the design, the choice of materials and the setting, etc. But, without appropriate cultural knowledge (which is not impossible to attain), you will not be able to interpret any symbolism you encounter, in the way one with that relevant cultural knowledge would. That means you may not even approach the same understanding that a "native" would easily attain.

So, shrug & stroll past antiquities? I can't bring my own inquisitiveness and Life experience to search out my own meaning?

How's about a bit more "virtue signalling"?

Our hearts go out to a farmer who loses the farm after their family had been there for five generations. Why? Because there is an understanding that a connection to place occurs over time.

In the context of ancient culturally motivated art, just because you've read a couple chapters in a book or have acquired a degree of some sort doesn't mean you'll achieve the same depth of knowing that 500 generations would give you.

Art speaks for itself. We all listen differently.

 

[MattKing]

Art, jokes, shrines - they are all things that are appreciated by different people in different ways.
If you say "Art is XXXXX" you are implying that you think others should share the same view as you do.
Whereas, if you say "To me, Art is YYYY" you are acknowledging that your thoughts are personal to you, and that others may well or understand things differently.
On the subject of jokes, I have great memories of a joke told in a number theory class that is hilarious - if you are knowledgeable about polynomials!

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Yup, lots of room in the pool and we can even bat an inflated ball around between all of us

 

[faberryman]

I spent yesterday afternoon looking at Stephen Shore's photographs, reading Steven Shore's writings, and watching Stephen's Shore's videos, all of which were very interesting, if a little repetitive. Of course, one afternoon of study does not an expert make. I like some of Stephen Shore's photographs, and I can appreciate some of Stephen Shore's photographs that I don't like. I generally get what he was trying to do during each of his, for lack of a better word, periods. I still think the parking lot photo is a dud. But my interest is piqued and I'll try to track down his new book Topographies: Aerial Surveys of the American Landscape and read what he has to say about his parking lot photo. I may change my mind. The book only came out a couple of weeks ago, so it may take a while to reach the library. I am not ready to drop $85.00 on it.

When I was but a wee lad back in the 1960s, I had a friend whose father was a civil engineer. One Saturday morning we accompanied him down to his office. I remember there were quite a few aerial photographs of the projects the engineering firm had worked on over the years. They looked a lot like Stephen Shore's parking lot photo. Maybe Stephen Shore's parking lot photo is better composed. So I am not sure whether Stephen Shore's parking lot photo belongs down at my friend's father's office, or the photos at my friend's father's office belong at the MOMA. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

To be honest, from what I've seen, I like Edward Burtynsky's drone photos better than those of Stephen Shore. And Edward Burtynsky seems to have a well articulated intellectual basis underlying his work too, if you are into that sort of thing.

By the way, I was looking at Stephen Shore's work that has sold at auction. Some of his color work from the 1970's appears to have color shifted and faded, particularly the 8x10 contact prints. Has anyone seen any of Stephen Shore's early prints in person? The other thing that occurred to me was that they were not auctioning off sequences of photographs. They were auctioning off individual photographs. Seems like the photographs that did well were the ones that were excellent in their own right, even if they were also part of a sequence.

Query: Who is Canada's Most Cherished Photographer? Jeff Wall?

 

[awty]

Art isn't intellectual unless you make it so. It's about feelings not the mind. It has no heart if you have to explain it.

You romantic fool Alan. I agree it shouldn't need explanation, but people arent very observant or imaginative, they need someone to tell them what is or what isnt.
Plenty of intellectual people wouldn't know how to change a light bulb, the price of a loaf of bread or know if someone is struggling emotionally.

 

[Don_ih]

So, shrug & stroll past antiquities? I can't bring my own inquisitiveness and Life experience to search out my own meaning?

How's about a bit more "virtue signalling"?

Our hearts go out to a farmer who loses the farm after their family had been there for five generations. Why? Because there is an understanding that a connection to place occurs over time.

In the context of ancient culturally motivated art, just because you've read a couple chapters in a book or have acquired a degree of some sort doesn't mean you'll achieve the same depth of knowing that 500 generations would give you.

Art speaks for itself. We all listen differently.

If you actually read my post (which you responded to), you'd notice that you are agreeing with it.