How much editing is justified?

koraks said:

If you replace "must" with "can", then I agree. Taken as it's formulated, literally, I think it flies in the face of how much art comes into being. There's a lot of mucking about especially in the 'fuzzy front-end' of the artistic process, that constitutes a search for intentionality and direction. And the degree of control by artists of the process involved is really very variable. Some like to be in that position (and manage it), quite a few don't. Artists are a rather motley crew, it seems to me. They appear to defy generalizations. Perhaps, if anything, that's their most defining characteristic. That, and being overall utterly allergic to anyone saying the word 'must' in their vicinity. Tends to freak them out pretty badly, much of the time.

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Street, wildlife, sports and candid photography in general would seem to be exceptions.

tcolgate said:

... I'm fighting anyone that says Duck Dodgers isn't art.

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As hunks of breathing meat, we can individually call something art or not art...and be right as rain. Just be ready to duck!

Western art has spread across the globe, not always on its own merits, but on the back of commerce, conquest, and the allure of the foreign. And as Westerners, we tend to elevate our own past and culture, and appropriate others (and it goes the other way, too, of course). It makes looking at art from a global perspective difficult.

One fun aspect on making single transfer carbon prints is that is reverses the image. It gets me to thinking. There is a tendency for a people to look at images in a way that is influenced by their culture's form of writing. Western writing is read left to right, so that influences a left-to-right 'reading' of an image. So an image that encourages the eye to enter from the left and keeps it from exiting stage-right can work well for westerners -- but might create barriers for those who culturally would prefer entering the image from the left.

Square images are nice that way...there tends to be a more circle like movement than left-right/right-left...perhaps it is a minor factor in Kenna's Japan work.

"Intention" is meaningless. I can intend any number of things and fail in the attempt. Furthermore, I can intend to do one thing and result in something different. Also furthermore, my intent is not something anyone else is privy to.

Physical art (all those objects people generally call art) has an existence on its own - it does not rely on an artist to be, even if it does rely on an artist to become. It can cease to be regarded as art, though - just as various things seemingly never intended to be art can eventually be considered art.

(Note that some art does not persist after the act of the artist. That would be performance.)

Don_ih said:

"Intention" is meaningless. I can intend any number of things and fail in the attempt. Furthermore, I can intend to do one thing and result in something different. Also furthermore, my intent is not something anyone else is privy to.

Physical art (all those objects people generally call art) has an existence on its own - it does not rely on an artist to be, even if it does rely on an artist to become. It can cease to be regarded as art, though - just as various things seemingly never intended to be art can eventually be considered art.

(Note that some art does not persist after the act of the artist. That would be performance.)

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Whether you fail or succeed there has to be intention on the artist's part or it's just random noise.

In any of these settings there are three actors: The artists, the artifact, and the observer/consumer. The first creates the second thereby making art. The third consumes the second independently of the first. The first make care about the third but that's not what creates the art.

BrianShaw said:

I'm not convinced that this criteria is valid as a definition for art. Artists have produced art on commission for a very long time.

Yep...

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Yeah, but was the commissioned work in their time actually considered "art"? More often than not, these were vanity pieces produced for the egos of their benefactors.

MattKing said:

On the latter point, we fundamentally disagreee.
Of course, I look at art as a continuum. I look at creations, and judge how much art is in them.
The purpose for which they were made is relatively irrelevant. For that reason, things like hand tools and software coding can be imbued with art too.

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I am an engineer and scientist by training. Hand tools and software are normally understood as craft, not art. Only in rare circumstances does a hand too rise to the level of art. I have yet to see any software that was remotely art. Only better- or worse craft.

chuckroast said:

Yeah, but was the commissioned work in their time actually considered "art"? More often than not, these were vanity pieces produced for the egos of their benefactors.

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Sigh. Deep sigh…

tcolgate said:

Norman Rockwell and N C Wyeth created images for advertising that are almost the definitive look of their time and had a huge cultural impact. It's silly to not consider that work art.
Don't get me started on cartoonists.waterson, Schulz, Chuck Jones, Maurice Noble? I'm fighting anyone that says Duck Dodgers isn't art.

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These people were all certainly emblematic of their time. But that doesn't make it art. If that were the case, the Malboro Man, the "Where's the beef?" lady, and United Airlines' Al E. Gator would all be art. They aren't. The mere fact of capturing a moment in time isn't sufficient.

chuckroast said:

I am an engineer and scientist by training. Hand tools and software are normally understood as craft, not art. Only in rare circumstances does a hand too rise to the level of art. I have yet to see any software that was remotely art. Only better- or worse craft.

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Mathematicians refer to a proof as "elegant" when they value it highly.
If you don't see art in some of the creations of a talented finishing carpenter, or even a really difficult installation of a master plumber, you are excluding yourself from some of the most meaningful art there is.
An anecdote I've shared before: the story of someone coming across someone drawing patterns - delightedly - in the sand on a beach, right down where the incoming tide was rising. Swirls and curls and fantastic shapes, that were there for just minutes, only to washed away by the sea.
The creator, not immediately recognized, turned out to be Pablo Picasso.
Self editing art?

MattKing said:

Mathematicians refer to a proof as "elegant" when they value it highly.

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That's doesn't mean it's art. That means it has been demonstrated with great clarity and presumably a simply as possible. I have done more than a few proofs in my lifetime, a few were elegant, most were not. No one of my acquaintance in grad school thought this was art.

A parallel exists in competitive chess where the best players in the world do not seek just to win but to win with style and, yes elegance. But again, no one seriously treats this as art.

MattKing said:

If you don't see art in some of the creations of a talented finishing carpenter, or even a really difficult installation of a master plumber, you are excluding yourself from some of the most meaningful art there is.

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It's craft but not art. No one is going to hang an corner miter from a crown molding that fits perfectly in an asymmetric corner of a kitchen on the wall the as an object of art. I greatly admire people who can do this but it is still craft. I have never heard any great craftsmen (and I know more than a few) claim what they were doing was art. (BTW, I am a fair construction monkey in my own right butI can't cut a corner miter to save my life. It's not craft or art, it's pure hackery when I do it.)

MattKing said:

An anecdote I've shared before: the story of someone coming across someone drawing patterns - delightedly - in the sand on a beach, right down where the incoming tide was rising. Swirls and curls and fantastic shapes, that were there for just minutes, only to washed away by the sea.
The creator, not immediately recognized, turned out to be Pablo Picasso.
Self editing art?

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