Dan,
“I will ask you
if you could better describe for me how you feel about the effects of digital
and film cameras on the perception of art, are you stressing the
effects on how people now view artwork in the gallery setting through their
recording lenses, or is it also just as important how they interact with
artwork during their everyday lives (advertisements, posters, magazines)
as well.”
First of all, once a work of
art leaves the studio and enters the world, it is what people make of it. So I
can talk about my intent, but in the
end your interpretation is as valid as mine.
I’m saying that technology
and mass media change everything. We can never go back to what paintings and
other artwork once meant to the culture. There is ambivalence in all my work.
I’m not pining over painting’s diminished role, but I want to make the point
that the experience of viewing art is forever altered in a myriad of ways. The
art experience has been changed, even when we are looking at a painting. This
is most notable in tourist museums, where visitors often wait a lifetime to see
a work, only to spend a short time looking at it, and half of that time is
through one lens or another.
The pace of modern life and
easy availability of huge numbers of images, has largely eliminated long,
slow, contemplative art viewing. Then too, (and here’s where my series really
comes in), we are often inclined to forgo the first-hand experience of viewing
art for the delayed experience of reviewing it later via pictures and video.
Imagine the experience of
seeing a painting in
Once you arrive at the location
of the painting—say for instance Botticelli’s Birth of Venus—you would spend
many hours, maybe days looking at what you had only previously read about.
Or maybe you had seen an etched copy of the work, but now here it is. You
might make drawings of it to remember later, exercising careful observation.
As you left it, you would be aware that you might never see it again, and
would henceforth only have the memory of the experience to last a lifetime.
By the time I was growing
up, I had my choice of numerous full color printed images in books as near as
my local library. Today you Google it: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=OtW&ei=CsLGSaifKYvhtgfep73LCg&resnum=0&q=birth%20of%20venus%20botticelli&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Let me tell you about one on
my favorite paintings. It’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe,
by Manet. I often talk about this painting with my students. I list it among
the works of art I most admire. Here’s the thing; I’ve never seen it. Never been to
Then there is what I call
the trophy photo. This is a picture taken by someone in a gallery to document
the fact that the subject has been there and seen the picture. I was in the
National Gallery once, taking my pictures for the series, and a woman asked me
to take her camera and photograph her with a certain painting. Here I was doing
a series of art on this very same phenomenon.
“Also, could you
better explain for me your feelings towards the perception of art work
(painting) as a three- dimensional object existing in real space
verses the perception of artwork as two dimensional mechanical mass-reproductions.”
Frankly I am with Manet on
this. A painting is after all, a flat surface with paint on it. The difference
between a painting and a reproduction is not one of dimension, but one of
nuance. Lost are numerous subtleties of the art that can only be experienced in
person. Scale is another factor. A Clifford Still can never be the same in a
book or online as it is in person, because you cannot be enveloped by a book or
internet image (not until they make really giant screens for personal
use). Also, there is always distortion.
Go back right now to that page of Birth of Venus images. Note how each one is a
different color. The painting is cropped different ways. Note that the foot of
the male zephyr on the left is sometimes cut off as is Venus’s shell, and other
border items. Note how dark the painting is in some images, and how light in
others. Do you know which, if any, of these images are “accurate?” In my works
I exaggerate this fact by distorting the image more extremely. But I also
reproduce every nuance of distortion that occurred in the photo I’m working
from, like reflections. My works are no more copies of the art than a picture in
a book is. It’s my hope that my work will just make this fact evident.
Bruce