My photography at Deviant Art

[anthony]

The purpose of the artist is to convey 'something'(that's implicit) To whom? Why bother? I think this concrete, stylized work is then 'received' by the viewer whose purpose is to find sustenance from that artist's concepts of truth and existence.

Rand's answer was that she wished to convey it to herself. You seem to have a problem with that.

J

I'm interested in this last comment. It seems senseless. What do you mean by "she wished to convey it to herself"? I was talking about the self-evident process of art-to-viewer.

Again, you've told me what I'm going to think and how I will react - a} that I'm tied to Rand's apron strings...b} no, I am not faithful enough to her ideas ... blah blah:

All patently false, to anyone who has ever read me.

And still you have not revealed openly and honestly what your thoughts and evocations of the leaf drawing are. Let alone "proved" anything. You already know my response, you say, and in a rare display of bashfulness do not want to show anybody your hand.

A is A. An apple is an apple, a leaf is a leaf. I think you've made an invalid connection between Rand on one still life painting and assumed it goes for all still-life illustrations too.

It's nothing new, J. You always have invoked Rand when it suits you to "win" a debate, and excoriated her when it suits you, too. Tricky as ever - but you can't have your cake and eat it, y'know. It's the concepts of art and art appreciation I'm interested in, not this concrete-mindedness, so there is nothing more for me here.

[Ellen Stuttle]

"I say it's art, doesn't matter why it was drawn". [Ellen]#108

Tony,

Here's an analogy to what I was saying there:

It doesn't matter why a tree is planted, it's a tree.

Ellen

Is that not begging the question, Ellen?

I might say: it's not a tree, but a bush.

It is the ~identity~ of art - and who does the identifying, and by what standards - that's at question here.

No, Tony, it's not "begging the question." It's an attempt to get through to you what I am saying as distinguished from the Tony-invention viewpoint you attribute to me.

My viewpoint on the nature of art is different from yours, but it is not the idea that the viewer's consciousness is what makes something "art." This is all I was trying to get through to you with the analogy.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jonathan, re #125,

I think we're largely in agreement, too. I'm finding this conversation an especially interesting one.

A couple specific examples which have occurred to me: Vermeer and Georgia O'Keefe.

There's very little - close to zero - information about Vermeer's approach to art, or about his life in general. Yet I think his work can unhesitatingly be classified as art.

Some of Georgia O'Keefe's work strongly suggests to many viewers (including me) sexual allusions which she adamantly disclaimed having any intention of suggesting.

About the apple. I'm going to re-read that passage tonight. From memory, I think that what Rand says about the still-life and what she says about sculpture generally and about Rembrandt's side of beef specifically don't add up.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

The purpose of the artist is to convey 'something'(that's implicit) To whom? Why bother? I think this concrete, stylized work is then 'received' by the viewer whose purpose is to find sustenance from that artist's concepts of truth and existence.

Rand's answer was that she wished to convey it to herself. You seem to have a problem with that.

J

I'm interested in this last comment. It seems senseless. What do you mean by "she wished to convey it to herself"? I was talking about the self-evident process of art-to-viewer.

Jesus. Um, to Rand, art was about experiencing something. It's purpose is to model-build so that we can experience some phenomenon as if it were real. An artist can experience her work as if it were real after she creates it, just as any other viewer can. Understand?

Again, you've told me what I'm going to think and how I will react - a} that I'm tied to Rand's apron strings...b} no, I am not faithful enough to her ideas ... blah blah:

All patently false, to anyone who has ever read me.

There you go again claiming to know what others think based on nothing but what you think.

And still you have not revealed openly and honestly what your thoughts and evocations of the leaf drawing are. Let alone "proved" anything. You already know my response, you say, and in a rare display of bashfulness do not want to show anybody your hand.

I understand how your Objectivish method of aesthetic intimidation and attempts at establishing yourself as an authority works, Tony. I've seen it many times. It's pseudoscience. You will allow for no possible disproof of your assertions. If I identify a certain meaning in a work of art which you think has a different meaning, or no meaning at all, then you will say that I am wrong, or that I'm just making things up, etc. You will claim, as you did in post #106, that I know as well as you do that your view is the correct one. You will claim that I'm being dishonest. If I demonstrate that millions of other people spontaneously shared my interpretation upon viewing the art for the first time themselves, then you will say that they are also wrong. If I interview the artist and discover that I and millions of people other than you accurately identified his artwork's intended meaning, then you will claim that even he is wrong, that you know his mind better than he does (just as you've already claimed to know mine better than I do), and that you know his real "sense of life" and his real "metaphysical value-judgments" despite his stating otherwise.

A is A. An apple is an apple, a leaf is a leaf. I think you've made an invalid connection between Rand on one still life, and assumed it goes for all still-life paintings.

I don't think that you've read and understood Rand's comments on the still life of apples and visual abstractions. Despite her attempts to educate you, you seem to be incapable of judging visual art visually, but insist on judging it as if it were literature. Your approach is very shallow and literalistic. You seem to be capable only of looking at objects depicted in a painting as literalistic placeholders for external symbolic/metaphoric reference.

It's nothing new, J. You always have invoked Rand when it suits you to "win" a debate, and excoriated her when it suits you, too.

Actually, I invoke Rand when her views were rational, and criticize her when she was irrational and bluffing.

Tricky as ever - but you can't have your cake and eat it, y'know. It's the concepts of art and art appreciation I'm interested in, not this concrete-mindedness, so there is nothing more for me here.

Well, then, perhaps you could give some examples of paintings of non-humans and non-apples which you think qualify as art, while explaining how you've determined and verified that your interpretations aren't just "guesses."

J

[anthony]

"I say it's art, doesn't matter why it was drawn". [Ellen]#108

Tony,

Here's an analogy to what I was saying there:

It doesn't matter why a tree is planted, it's a tree.

Ellen

Is that not begging the question, Ellen?

I might say: it's not a tree, but a bush.

It is the ~identity~ of art - and who does the identifying, and by what standards - that's at question here.

No, Tony, it's not "begging the question." It's an attempt to get through to you what I am saying as distinguished from the Tony-invention viewpoint you attribute to me.

My viewpoint on the nature of art is different from yours, but it is not the idea that the viewer's consciousness is what makes something "art." This is all I was trying to get through to you with the analogy.

Ellen

"I say it's art, doesn't matter why it was drawn".

Ellen, I can take no other reading of that but some breach between the consciousness (his "why") of artist, and the consciousness of a viewer ("I say it is").

To get past the rigmarole, do you see the artist communicating something ethereal to a viewer which he/she does not know themselves? Like, perhaps, some medium, a conduit, through whom a spiritual message flows? I don't necessarily believe you do, but it is not uncommon.

If it is NOT, as you insist the viewer's consciousness which "makes something art", than please tell me what IS it?

Do you not identify it as the viewer's consciousness encountering the artist's consciousness, via a tangible medium - paint, stone, etc?

Does the notion of an artist wanting to convey 'something' seem crass?

Does the idea of a viewer easily recognizing that 'something' seem too empirical?

Some people would have all potential art-viewers trained and educated in art appreciation before they have the gall to assess an artwork. Notwithstanding that one's eye for art certainly improves hugely with exposure and experience, the fact remains that an artist who is obscure, is so either by poor technique, or by choice. If this, one must doubt his truthfulness.

If one can't garner with clarity what concepts, "abstractions" he thinks or feels are true of existence - what is his purpose?

I think it is elitist to consider the nature of art as incomprehensible but to a chosen few; and subjectivist, to consider it mutable to whomever is looking at it. I don't include anyone here, but those are the parameters I see.

Has nobody watched the responses of a youngster paging through art illustrations? Her reaction might be "Oh, no!" to a scene of pain and suffering on men's faces. It may be "It makes me want to dance!"

of a picture of a field of flowers.

She KNOWS ART, its inherent man-made, man-intended purpose, and its importance to her - better I think than many sophisticates.

[Jules Troy]

http://jestephotography.deviantart.com/art/Marshland-Sunrise-452071222

Without taking multiple exposures and blending into an HDR in Lightroom I used the adjustment brush and brought up the exposure a bit on the catails. In photoshop I further adjusted some of the highlights using color mode, selected the eyedropper tool to choose the exact highlights and used about a 3% flow to further accentuate them. (In my view HDR is way over done by most people).

[Ellen Stuttle]

"I say it's art, doesn't matter why it was drawn".

Ellen, I can take no other reading of that but some breach between the consciousness (his "why") of artist, and the consciousness of a viewer ("I say it is").

Maybe try re-reading the whole of post #108 and the discussion preceding that post instead of focusing on a particular sentence out of context.

To get past the rigmarole, do you see the artist communicating something ethereal to a viewer which he/she does not know themselves? Like, perhaps, some medium, a conduit, through whom a spiritual message flows? I don't necessarily believe you do, but it is not uncommon.

The wording "something ethereal" loads the question.

I think that art works probably always evoke suggestions to readers, viewers, listeners which the artist wasn't thinking of, since no two people have an identical context of background.

There are multiple famous cases in music of a composition being given a name by a listener due to some suggestion which the composer never thought of occurring to that listener.

See the Georgia O'Keefe example I gave above (#128) for a well-known example from painting.

How many people have you read who have interpreted Rand's novels in different ways than you do? Lots, I'd imagine. I've certainly encountered many people who have interpreted Rand differently than I do.

If it is NOT, as you insist the viewer's consciousness which "makes something art", than please tell me what IS it?

See my post #114: "[...] characteristics of a form, a structure." And see post #108.

Do you not identify it as the viewer's consciousness encountering the artist's consciousness, via a tangible medium - paint, stone, etc?

No, I don't view it as consciousness encounters. As I've already indicated with the novel-put-"in a drawer" example, I don't think that a reader, viewer, listener is required in order for a work to classify as art.

If a musician is improvising and there's no one but the performer to hear the sounds, are they music? Apparently, you'd say, no.

Does the notion of an artist wanting to convey 'something' seem crass?

No, but I don't think that a desire to communicate is a necessary condition for a work's being art.

Does the idea of a viewer easily recognizing that 'something' seem too empirical?

I don't know that it's ever the case that a responder to an art work is recognizing exactly what the artist had in mind. Different responders give the artist more or less of a feeling of being understood.

I don't know what you mean by "too empirical." However, I have observed with your particular comments about various art works that you readily find "obvious" meanings which you're unable to demonstrate are there and which I don't discern as being there.

Some people would have all potential art-viewers trained and educated in art appreciation before they have the gall to assess an artwork. Notwithstanding that one's eye for art certainly improves hugely with exposure and experience, the fact remains that an artist who is obscure, is so either by poor technique, or by choice. If this, one must doubt his truthfulness.

Speaking of non-demonstrable assertions you make.

If one can't garner with clarity what concepts, "abstractions" he thinks or feels are true of existence - what is his purpose?

I don't understand the question.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jules,

I hope you aren't unhappy about the aesthetics highjack.

I think I'll start a different thread with the quote from Rand about apples.

Ellen

Edit: I started the thread here, title: "Apples - Rand on Still Life Paintings, Plus."

[anthony]

Ellen:

(Have you and J. been burning up the Personal Messenger, perhaps? I know this slice-and-dice technique

from him - I get more interrogation than candid opinions...)

You don't understand the question, you say. OK.

1. An artist has some purpose in what he does or else he wouldn't do it.

2. He might be totally self-less (mindlessly dutiful) in what he represents in his art.

3. Or he might strongly and selfishly wish to convey something of immense value to him.

If 2., then I'd grant that whatever he paints is probably the random out-pouring of an unfocused mind,

and you can take it any way you please.

If 3., then - surely - he wishes to be perceived exactly for what he stands i.e. his personal view about life and existence.

4. If it's not clear with close and prolonged scrutiny what his 'view' is - as a little child would recognise - then he's failed his purpose.

If there's one thing all artists I've met want, it is to communicate what's important to them.

As a photographer, I feel the same.

Of course with visual art it happens at the emotional, subconscious, sense of life level - but further, the artist crafts a physical image which ties to an abstraction, an abstraction (or concept) which lingers in the minds of viewers. One they can always recall by recalling the picture.

But if the viewer sees something not there, or worse - doesn't see what IS there - either the viewer is subjectively misreading it, or the artist will feel he has failed.

[Jonathan]

http://jestephotography.deviantart.com/art/Marshland-Sunrise-452071222

Without taking multiple exposures and blending into an HDR in Lightroom I used the adjustment brush and brought up the exposure a bit on the catails. In photoshop I further adjusted some of the highlights using color mode, selected the eyedropper tool to choose the exact highlights and used about a 3% flow to further accentuate them.

Good job in not being sucked in to doing shitty tone mapping. There's nothing in your image that stands out as evidence that it was messed with, which is rare these days.

(In my view HDR is way over done by most people).

Overblown digital HDR is to the twentyteens what overblown electronic drums were to early eighties.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen:

(Have you and J. been burning up the Personal Messenger, perhaps? I know this slice-and-dice techniquefrom him - I get more interrogation than candid opinions...)

You don't understand the question, you say. OK.

Well, you certainly didn't "get more interrogation than candid opinions" in the post to which you're responding but which I wonder if you read.

And, no, Jonathan and I haven't been using Personal Messenger.

1. An artist has some purpose in what he does or else he wouldn't do it.

But the purpose isn't necessarily communication. According to Rand, btw, it isn't primarily communication.

2. He might be totally self-less (mindlessly dutiful) in what he represents in his art.

3. Or he might strongly and selfishly wish to convey something of immense value to him.

Non-exhaustive alternatives.

If 2., then I'd grant that whatever he paints is probably the random out-pouring of an unfocused mind,and you can take it any way you please.

If 3., then - surely - he wishes to be perceived exactly for what he stands i.e. his personal view about life and existence.

Neither Jonathan nor I has said anything about "tak[ing] it any way you please."

4. If it's not clear with close and prolonged scrutiny what his 'view' is - as a little child would recognise - then he's failed his purpose.

If there's one thing all artists I've met want, it is to communicate what's important to them.

See my remarks in #133. I'll add that it sounds to me as if you have a limited acquaintanceship of artists.

As a photographer, I feel the same.

So you're talking photographs in order to communicate what's important to you and you feel you've failed if a viewer doesn't see what you wanted seen, or sees something you didn't think of?

Of course with visual art it happens at the emotional, subconscious, sense of life level - but further, the artist crafts a physical image which ties to an abstraction, an abstraction (or concept) which lingers in the minds of viewers. One they can always recall by recalling the picture.

But if the viewer sees something not there, or worse - doesn't see what IS there - either the viewer is subjectively misreading it, or the artist will feel he has failed.

So you say.

Ellen

[Jules Troy]

Jules,

I hope you aren't unhappy about the aesthetics highjack.

I think I'll start a different thread with the quote from Rand about apples.

Ellen

[Jules Troy]

Oh hell no! Carry on I am really enjoying the discussion no need to move it anywhere! Once in a while Ill even post more pics! I have been working 14 hour shifts so I have a huge backlog of post processing to do! I have some REALLY good ones coming soon!

[Jules Troy]

http://jestephotography.deviantart.com/art/Marshland-Sunrise-452071222

Without taking multiple exposures and blending into an HDR in Lightroom I used the adjustment brush and brought up the exposure a bit on the catails. In photoshop I further adjusted some of the highlights using color mode, selected the eyedropper tool to choose the exact highlights and used about a 3% flow to further accentuate them.

Good job in not being sucked in to doing shitty tone mapping. There's nothing in your image that stands out as evidence that it was messed with, which is rare these days.

(In my view HDR is way over done by most people).

Overblown digital HDR is to the twentyteens what overblown electronic drums were to early eighties.

J

[Jules Troy]

From my perspective if a person can TELL that you have done post work or can tell that an image is HDR then it is crappy post work. In the case of HDR if I ever explore it I do not want people to tell that it is HDR. I dooooo however like one technique for bracketing an exposure. In a landscape shoot the forground, shoot the mid, shoot the background. Blend in either photoshop or photomatix(or whatever software, some like gimp). The reason for the blend? Maximizing depth of field so fore,mid and background are all sharp as hell. Same thing for doing macro photography at angles, because depth if field can be sooooo narrow especially when using extension tubes it may take 14 exposures to get a 10mm bug completely in focus. I've seen some amazing results using focus stacking.

[Jonathan]

Ellen:

(Have you and J. been burning up the Personal Messenger, perhaps? I know this slice-and-dice technique

from him - I get more interrogation than candid opinions...)

Quit whining and answer the substance that you're evading. No one's falling for the victim routine.

You don't understand the question, you say. OK.

1. An artist has some purpose in what he does or else he wouldn't do it.

2. He might be totally self-less (mindlessly dutiful) in what he represents in his art.

3. Or he might strongly and selfishly wish to convey something of immense value to him.

If 2., then I'd grant that whatever he paints is probably the random out-pouring of an unfocused mind,

and you can take it any way you please.

If 3., then - surely - he wishes to be perceived exactly for what he stands i.e. his personal view about life and existence.

4. If it's not clear with close and prolonged scrutiny what his 'view' is - as a little child would recognise - then he's failed his purpose.

So, you're saying that an artist's process should be to create artworks, and then test them on people with very limited intellectual abilities, like "little children" and aesthetically retarded Objectivists, and if they can't grasp his "view," then, what, he should learn from that information, start over, dumb down his work, spell it out as clearly as he can, and then run it past the Objecti-tards and kiddies again? And then once he achieves the success of getting his intended meaning through to them, we can declare that his work qualifies as art? And also that it's great art? Your theory is that the more obvious that his intended meaning is to the dumbest people on the planet, the greater his work is as art?

If there's one thing all artists I've met want, it is to communicate what's important to them.

I don't think you've known many, if any, artists. I think that your entire point of view comes from uncritically buying into Rand's inappropriate attempt to apply her personal theory of literature to all of the art forms.

But if the viewer sees something not there, or worse - doesn't see what IS there - either the viewer is subjectively misreading it, or the artist will feel he has failed.

Please give us some examples of visual works which you think qualify as art, and explain how you've rationally/scientifically tested and verified the fact that you haven't subjectively misread the work and that the artists did not fail in communicating their "views" to you. Please describe the method that you used in discovering what "view" the artist intended to convey.

Brighter Objectivists than you have had a great deal of difficulty grasping and answering the same challenge, so I'll give you the same additional help that I gave them in understanding what I'm after: When testing whether or not a means of communication has succeeded in delivering a message clearly from one party to another, the message that was received must be compared, by some means outside of the means that is being tested, to the message that was intended to be sent. That's very simple, basic science. Understand?

See, if the test message that is sent is "ZXMD," but the person operating the receiver hears, "CFNB," in order to determine if the intended message was received properly, we'd have to have some method of verifying what message was sent. See what I'm saying? The guy running the receiver couldn't just declare that he's certain that he heard "CFNB" as clear as a bell, and therefore he's absolutely certain that "CFNB" was what was transmitted.

So, if the artist is the transmitter, and you and I and everyone else are receivers, by what method do you propose that we determine that the transmitter and receivers succeeded, versus that the transmitter and only some of the receivers succeeded, versus that only the transmitter but none of the receivers succeeded, versus that the transmitter failed?

J

[Jonathan]

From my perspective if a person can TELL that you have done post work or can tell that an image is HDR then it is crappy post work. In the case of HDR if I ever explore it I do not want people to tell that it is HDR.

Totally!

I dooooo however like one technique for bracketing an exposure. In a landscape shoot the forground, shoot the mid, shoot the background. Blend in either photoshop or photomatix(or whatever software, some like gimp). The reason for the blend? Maximizing depth of field so fore,mid and background are all sharp as hell.

I've used focal stacking, and it works well for objects that are basically on a single plane which could be stacked manually using gradient masks (an image where all of the parts of objects that are close to the camera are at the bottom of the frame, and all parts of objects which are farther from the camera are at the top of the frame).

Example:

But it doesn't work well for clusters of objects that don't conform to a single focal/gradient plane. For example, it wouldn't work well on something like this scene that I found online (because it contains parts of objects that are close to the camera throughout the entire frame, and parts of objects which are distant from the camera are also throughout the entire frame, top and bottom):

It would confuse the hell out of photoshop.

There can also be problems with single-plane stacking due to the fact that changing the focus changes the lens length just slightly, which causes images that are distant-focused to be slightly larger than images that are near-focused (when shot from the same tripod postion). Sometimes photoshop won't recognize them as being similar-enough images to qualify as stackable (auto-align moves and rotates objects but doesn't scale them), which means that you'll have to resize them manually before stacking. Personally, I think it's just as easy to do the entire process manually, and skip the auto blend layers stuff. And that way you can use your own specific gradient as a mask, which is better (more natural-looking) than the hard-line masks that auto-blending creates.

Same thing for doing macro photography at angles, because depth if field can be sooooo narrow especially when using extension tubes it may take 14 exposures to get a 10mm bug completely in focus. I've seen some amazing results using focus stacking.

You'd better kill the bug if you want it to sit still through 14 focal changes. :-)

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Although Jules says he's enjoying the aesthetics discussion, I did start a different thread so I could compile and feature certain passages from The Romantic Manifesto.

The new thread, which begins here, is titled "Apples - Rand on Still Life Paintings, Plus."

Ellen

[Jules Troy]

Or shoot the bug first thing in the morning when he is still too cold to move. Also dragonflies when they moult stay suspended in one spot for 2 days while their carapace hardens up.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Or shoot the bug first thing in the morning when he is still too cold to move. [....]

That reminds me of a drama I saw enacted by some wasps. There was a small hive, home to four or five wasps, which had been built in the lower corner of a window where the screen had come somewhat ajar. Shortly before sundown, a wasp which didn't belong got in through the crack. Then, as it was headed back out, two of the wasps that belonged there returned. They prevented the intruder from escaping. For awhile, there was a bit of a "dance," with the intruder advancing and being driven back by the other two, then the same sequence being repeated.

Then the sunlight faded. And bingo, all three wasps stopped in place, like in that game "Freeze!" They stayed that way, suspended motion, I suppose until dawn. I'd meanwhile gone to bed and didn't see whatever happened when the wasps started moving again. However, when I looked, one wasp - I assume the intruder - was lying dead on the windowsill.

Ellen

[Jules Troy]

Check thisss out!!

Those are European honey bees. The native Japanese honey bees have developed a defense!

[BaalChatzaf]

Check thisss out!!

Those are European honey bees. The native Japanese honey bees have developed a defense!

It was a surprise attack.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Ellen Stuttle]

If you haven't seen this....

You can watch it via a weblink. I saw it in a theater. Really amazing!

MicroCosmos

topdocumentaryfilms.com link

Utilizing special macroscopic photographic techniques, filmmakers Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou created this fascinating and visually spectacular look at the hidden worlds in the life cycle of an ordinary meadow in France. When seen through the lens of Nuridsany and Perennou's cameras, insects become gigantic beasts, blades of grass turn into towering monuments, and raindrops form puddles that resemble vast oceans.

[....]

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen:

(Have you and J. been burning up the Personal Messenger, perhaps? I know this slice-and-dice technique

from him - I get more interrogation than candid opinions...)

Quit whining and answer the substance that you're evading. No one's falling for the victim routine.

How would you go about proving that no one is "falling for the victim routine"?

Ellen

[Jules Troy]

Ellen I had to watch snips from youtube as the documentary is blocked in Canada for some copyright stuff. Amazing video!