Cindy Sherman Print Sells For $3.9 Million At Auction, The Highest Ever For A Photogr

[ArtRosen]

Whoa.

http://www.popphoto.com/news/2011/05/cindy-sherman-print-sells-39-million-auction-highest-ever-photograp

Christie's had a bumper night, tallying more than $300 million in sales. While not the priciest item up for auction that day, Cindy Sherman's "Untitled #96" from 1981 passed all records for photography, and was sold for $3.89 million.

[Mike Anderson]

I always had a suspicion that photography was an easy way to easy money. Now I know it is. If I just had a better camera...

...Mike

[Drew Wiley]

Obscene. I never figured out what the appeal of her work was in the first place. Wonder what they're adding to the drinking water in that part of the world. Probably an old-style C-print anyway that will fade just as fast as these conspicuous consumption fads do.

[David Aimone]

From the looks of it, your camera is TOO good!


I always had a suspicion that photography was an easy way to easy money. Now I know it is. If I just had a better camera...

...Mike

[rdenney]

I wish that, just once, the photo that sets the record would make me go "wow!" rather than "huh?".

Rick "who would like to 'get it', but never seems to" Denney

[Brian C. Miller]

buyer was New York dealer Philippe Segalot, and the underbidder was Per Skarstedt, also a New York dealer.

New York dealers. New York. We'd better ask Paul and Frank what's up.

[Brian Ellis]

Cindy's in her darkroom as we speak, madly cranking out a whole bunch more of these babies.

[JMB]

I did a quick search on the Internet to have a look at the print, and I overlooked it several times during the search because I thought it was a pop-up Google ad. Frankly, I am very skeptical about these kinds of sales. It's very hard for me to believe that a NYC condo did not change hands with it.

[KenM]

I don't get it. I just don't get it.

Whatever - it's not my money. Thankfully!

[Drew Wiley]

Just one more reason we need to set aside some of money to erect a guillotine on
Wall Street. Where is Robspierre when we need him? While everyone else is getting their job outsourced to some sweatshop in East Balookistan, the guys writing the pink
slips seem to have wheelbarrows of money to flagrantly waste on this kind of stuff.
They probably don't pay taxes either.

[Drew Wiley]

Oh don't get me wrong ... it's a pretty interesting composition considering the geometry and the way the color is used. But that seems to be the thing right now.
Gursky, Burtynsky to some extent too; sorto a two-dimensional cubism, but too lazy to
paint it. It's all interesting and creative, and I do get it; but the prices just seem ridiculous. I know a few folks out on this side of the country doing stuff way
beyond this kind of thing, but who have to market in Europe or to private commissions just to make a living. Basically, I get the impression that the NYC art scene has its head up its a.. , and just doesn't get past its own little neurotic microcosm very often. Won't change the way I photograph. Life is too short.

[paulr]

I think you need to look at this phenomenon with Warhol as a frame of reference rather than the modernists or anyone who came before them.

Cindy Sherman marked a kind of turning point in photography, a shift in what the medium could be about. And she came along at the right time. Her work wasn't about any of the traditional values of the medium (which were concerned with making objects of one sort or another) but about using it as a tool to explore identity and cultural roles, and to do so using the vocabulary and tropes of popular culture (they were all staged, pretend film stills) rather than the vocabulary of high art. It was new, and it was profoundly influential.

For better or for worse—doeesn't really matter. I'm not especially interested in her path of exploration. Neither was John Szarkowski. He dismissed it entirely as being outside the concerns of photography that matters. This was either a bold statement of tastemaking, or the career blunder of the 20th century ... he had the oportunity to acquire her work for pennies when it was new and already making a buzz. Instead Peter Galassi had to buy it for millions after Szarkowski retired.

At any rate, her work now stands as an important turning point in 20th century art history. It's old enough to have become a kind of classic, new enough to still feel relevent. And in the context of the art world at large, photography is still a bargain (notice that at the same auction a Rothko painting went for ten times as much and a giant yellow bear went for double). $3million is not that big an outlay for someone who's genuinely rich these days.

I used to get all bent out of shape about Cindy Sherman. But I read some interviews with her, and realized she was just an artist doing her thing. When the world surprised her by lionizing her and throwing all kinds of money at her bank account, she respond the way I think any of us would have: gratefully.

[Drew Wiley]

Like I said ... NYC has its head up it's ... and still thinks it's the center of the universe... And yes, Warhol was a master of redefining art as basically a bluff, but so
was the whole Pop art ethos ... the dark ages as far as I'm concerned

[Struan Gray]

There's been a lot of the usual hand-wringing all over the net about this. I just remind myself that if I was the sort of person who shared the motivations and tastes of the filthy rich, I would be filthy rich. I'm not, ergo...

But still, four hundred thousand dollars more than the manuscript of Beethoven's 9th?

[Kirk Gittings]

Like beauty and sex, there is allot of art I "recognize" as important in the history of art that I don't "like".

[paulr]

Like I said ... NYC has its head up it's ... and still thinks it's the center of the universe...

How does any of this have to do with NYC? I'm amazed that you know what a city of 8 million people from all of the world "thinks" about anything. I've lived here 16 years and I don't have the foggiest idea.


And yes, Warhol was a master of redefining art as basically a bluff, but so
was the whole Pop art ethos ... the dark ages as far as I'm concerned

I don't think Warhol believed art was a bluff. He took art and artists very seriously. He believed classical ideas about the division between high and low arts was a bluff. That's different.

[paulr]

Like beauty and sex, there is allot of art I "recognize" as important in the history of art that I don't "like".

Amen.

Cozying up to this idea makes it possible to learn from art history without throwing tantrums.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Anybody know what Cindy Sherman was getting for a print in 1981? Or whether it was part of a limited edition?

[rdenney]

Like beauty and sex, there is allot of art I "recognize" as important in the history of art that I don't "like".

Crap. I wish I recognized its importance. What makes it more than a common snapshot? That it was staged? It's not like cubism, where we see the subject from all angles at once. (And that easily stated a point is perhaps why Paul wants us to eschew modernism with respect to this work.) Like Warhol, this seems to me famous for being famous.

Frankly, I like the photo more than any hint of importance it might impart to me. It seems likably trivial, not unlikable-but-important.

Rick "not holding anything against Cindy Sherman at all" Denney

[Drew Wiley]

I don't mind any such thing being abstractly appreciated or even being brought to attention, but with millions of folks literally losing everything in this country, where the
hell do people get the nerve to devote public funds to some relatively minor tweak in contemporary esthetics? My dig at NYC is simply the focus being placed on neurotic
subject matter, polluted landscapes etc. Equally sophisticated compositions which take
the world a little differently are apparently now irrelevant. Fads, damn fads. Reminds me of how my friend Ctein couldn't even sell at auction the last remaining dye transfer print of Hendrix first burning his guitar, and it was returned to him wrinkled ... as we
get older the superstars of our own generation will just be so much forgotten medieval ho hum to the next generation. The same will be true in photography. As I've said
before, if you really want a photograph which has social implications, the Marlboro man
on the billboards would be at the top of my list ... killed more people than two world
wars.

[paulr]

Crap. I wish I recognized its importance. What makes it more than a common snapshot? That it was staged? It's not like cubism, where we see the subject from all angles at once. (And that easily stated a point is perhaps why Paul wants us to eschew modernism with respect to this work.) Like Warhol, this seems to me famous for being famous.

If you're looking at it out of context there wouldn't be anything remarkable. It needs the context of the rest of the series (the untitled film stills) in order to make sense, and that needs the context of what came before and after for its broader importance.

As far as what "importance" means, we're not comparing it to a cure for HIV. This is about its influence on artists who came after. Sherman's work exerted tons.

[Mike Anderson]

...
I used to get all bent out of shape about Cindy Sherman. But I read some interviews with her, and realized she was just an artist doing her thing. When the world surprised her by lionizing her and throwing all kinds of money at her bank account, she respond the way I think any of us would have: gratefully.

Yeah, I was kind of intimated by her feminist anger (the twisted mannequin phase) until I saw "Guest of Cindy Sherman" (OK movie) and realized she's just a regular person whose work is art. And in that weird (NY art) context.

I don't often use 1980's vernacular but I say "you go girl" (I'm sure she'd appreciate that).

...Mike

[Brian C. Miller]

Where is Robspierre when we need him?

Dead! That psycho is dead, and good riddance! Because an art dealer buys a banal photograph for an absurd amount of money you want to summarily execute stock traders, lawyer, and bankers? Robspierre "passed" a "law" to execute "counter-revolutionaries." Sham accusations and sham trials, to lead to real death. We don't need it.

Better to photograph the poor and downtrodden, and then print it 30 feet high and put that on Wall Street, with the message, "You don't give a f***!" Photograph their houses, and put it side by side with that.

[Greg Miller]

At least its better than a photo of a photo of a cowboy...

[paulr]

I don't often use 1980's vernacular but I say "you go girl" (I'm sure she'd appreciate that).


Ha. Why do I doubt that someone who just sold a print for $3 million needs approval from the likes of us?

[Drew Wiley]

Real death? That happens all the time when people lose their jobs and their health insurance, and the fat cats just keep getting richer and richer. But lighten up ... after all, Robspierre finally got a deserved dose of his own medicine. These things go in cycles. Apparently some of the Romanticist French paintings of the Napoleon III era
which were the rave at the time still haven't recovered the value folks paid for them way back then. Someone will probably find a missing nose from Michael Jackson and then a collector will pay millions for it; then their nephew will inherit it and throw it out with the cat litter where it really belongs. Why is one idiotic baseball card worth thousands, but a whole stack of others only good for clothepinning to bicycle spokes? They're all the same to me; but frankly, I can't even figure out why they pay ball players what they do to hit something with a stick and spit chaw, when it takes more
skill and hygiene to be a mimimum-wage pizza tosser.

[Mike Anderson]

Ha. Why do I doubt that someone who just sold a print for $3 million needs approval from the likes of us?

I'm just showing my support. I'm there for her if she needs me.

...Mike

[Drew Wiley]

"Likes of us"??? What does that imply? ... that someone is better because they got more loot than you or I? Or that their art if better because they got paid more for it?
By that standard, Van Gogh was an inferior artist to any of us.

[matthew klos]

I am not a huge fan of her work, but i will admit that she has certainly changed 20th century photography in a very positive light. Good for her, i would rather buy Sugimoto, or Vermeer for money like that.

[Brian Ellis]

I am not a huge fan of her work, but i will admit that she has certainly changed 20th century photography in a very positive light. Good for her, i would rather buy Sugimoto, or Vermeer for money like that.

For $3.9 million you might get to keep a Vermeer in your house for a few weeks but it wouldn't get you anywhere near buying one. The last sale of a Vermeer that I remember was for something like $40 million. Cindy Sherman is peanuts compared to Vermeer. But I get your point. There's a whole lot of things I'd rather have for $3.9 million too. But I don't go around ranting and raving about the NYC art scene just because someone makes a different choice than I would make when it comes to deciding how to spend their money.

[keith english]

What made that particular print worth that? How big, what kind of print? Was it a one-of and burn the negative?

[Maris Rusis]

As a sometime past director of a photographic gallery I tried to be sensitive to the reasons why some people would pay big money for what looked to be a photograph of very modest accomplishment. In the end I came to the conclusion that the photograph itself had little to do with it. People buy photographs:

To fill an empty space on the wall, a gap in their art collection, or a gap in their lives.

To announce their social status through the spending of conspicuous and extravagant resources.

To exert cultural and intellectual power by owning, displaying, and valorising what others covet but cannot gain.

To demonstrate to friends and rivals a refinement of discerning taste and an aggressive connoisseurship of prestigious things.

Because they want to assert their cojones by buying the art the timid majority only fantasize about buying.

To deflect suspicion that having great wealth goes with being a rich jerk.

A photograph for $3.9 million is nothing to the ultra-rich. What on earth do you do with your second billion that you haven't done with your first? Buy art perhaps; see reasons above.

[Jim Galli]

They buy art because gold is boring to look at. Doesn't much matter what the picture is, as long as it's somehow tied to the gold standard, and not the dollar standard.

[Marko]

But still, four hundred thousand dollars more than the manuscript of Beethoven's 9th?

Not to apear judgmental, but I suspect a great majority of people might find it very hard to play the 9th, even if they owned a piano.

[Mark Sawyer]

If I had a Cindy Sherman, I'd put it on ebay with a BIN of 2.5 million. Free shipping...

[mandoman7]

As a sometime past director of a photographic gallery I tried to be sensitive to the reasons why some people would pay big money for what looked to be a photograph of very modest accomplishment. In the end I came to the conclusion that the photograph itself had little to do with it. People buy photographs:

To fill an empty space on the wall, a gap in their art collection, or a gap in their lives.

To announce their social status through the spending of conspicuous and extravagant resources.

To exert cultural and intellectual power by owning, displaying, and valorising what others covet but cannot gain.

To demonstrate to friends and rivals a refinement of discerning taste and an aggressive connoisseurship of prestigious things.

Because they want to assert their cojones by buying the art the timid majority only fantasize about buying.

To deflect suspicion that having great wealth goes with being a rich jerk.

A photograph for $3.9 million is nothing to the ultra-rich. What on earth do you do with your second billion that you haven't done with your first? Buy art perhaps; see reasons above.

These comments are dead on, IMO. I've worked with many galleries, but eventually dated a woman who ran a gallery that sold a great deal of work, and many of the expensive sales involved the exact people you describe. The average Joe might spend $300 on something they really like, while the big money, look-at-me guys, buy the $10,000 piece primarily for what it does to their image. And for those sales, the artists needed to have resumes and their work needed to be in collections, to give the buyer some schpiel to throw out when they're impressing their peers. Sherman's work, for all its pretention and absurdity, is in major collections, and her resume probably also reads impressively.

[paulr]

The average Joe might spend $300 on something they really like, while the big money, look-at-me guys, buy the $10,000 piece primarily for what it does to their image.

I don't think you can make that generalization. Many of the people who buy 10,000 pieces of art are passionate collectors. They love photography (or painting, drawing, sculpture) as much as the people here, do, but as consumers and not producers. I've met a few people who fit this description; I haven't personally met anyone who buys art purely out of vanity (although they certainly exist).

As far as the people spending millions on art, I'm really in no place to generalize. I don't know those people, and I'm willing to bet that no one else here does either.


Sherman's work, for all its pretention and absurdity, is in major collections, and her resume probably also reads impressively.

I don't know how you can call her work pretentious or absurd. I'm not personally a fan, but these strike me as farfetched criticisms. The work is very straightforward by today's standards, and it's pretty clear that it came out of her own personal explorations. She had no reason to expect that it was going to become a huge thing back when she made it.

[paulr]

I don't mind any such thing being abstractly appreciated or even being brought to attention, but with millions of folks literally losing everything in this country, where the hell do people get the nerve to devote public funds to some relatively minor tweak in contemporary esthetics?

Public funds? This was a private auction.


My dig at NYC is simply the focus being placed on neurotic subject matter, polluted landscapes etc. Equally sophisticated compositions which take the world a little differently are apparently now irrelevant.

You would have to spend a solid week in museums and galleries here to have even the beginnings of a frame of reference for such a generalization. I live here and have no idea what you're talking about. What exactly is "neurotic subject matter?" Poluted landscapes? That describes much of the world. I imagine if there was more landscape photography hanging in galleries here, we'd see plenty of that, but I don't see so much. I also don't know what you're suggesting with "equally sophisticated compositions whih take the world a little differently." Differently from what?


... as we get older the superstars of our own generation will just be so much forgotten medieval ho hum to the next generation. The same will be true in photography.

This city is packed with photography from every generation. There are the biggest historical photography collections in the world, and more galleries that specialize in vintage work than you could visit in single trip.

If you're wondering why contemporary people who do old fashioned work don't get attention ... why would they? If people want to see work in the style of Edward Weston, they look at an Edward Weston. They don't look at the work of a living copycat who hasn't gotten the memo that it's no longer 1930.

Many old timers still get a ton of attention. They do it by evolving, by continuing to do work that's fresh and that holds surprises. Lee Friedlander is an old man and a relentless innovator. He's someone we should all be looking at as inspiration for our golden years. New York welcomes his work from every era.

If you're just suggesting that there are pervasive trends here, then sure, I agree with that. There has always been a fashion element to art, for better and for worse. My own work has been pretty out of fashion since I've lived here, at least in comparison to the blue chip end of the art world. But so what? Every region that has a vibrant arts culture has trends and fashions, whether they acknowledge it or not. Complaining about it is like complaining about the weather.

FWIW, Sherman's work is not what's in fashion now. It was the big thing 30 years ago. She's the pre-pioneer of today's trendy stuff, which probably explains the renewed interest.

[chij]

At least its better than a photo of a photo of a cowboy...

a la Richard Prince

[JMB]

"Cindy Sherman marked a kind of turning point in photography, a shift in what the medium could be about. And she came along at the right time. Her work wasn't about any of the traditional values of the medium (which were concerned with making objects of one sort or another) but about using it as a tool to explore identity and cultural roles, and to do so using the vocabulary and tropes of popular culture (they were all staged, pretend film stills) rather than the vocabulary of high art. It was new, and it was profoundly influential."



I do not believe that her photographs mark anything: nor are they in the least influential. They do, however, represent what some influential individuals in contemporary, popular culture would like to see occur as a shift in values: a shift away from the Latin conception of art as a means towards human cultivation and a downward slide towards a conception that does not encourage mankind to question his materialist conditions. Hence, Sherman (whom I seriously doubt has much of an agenda of her own) is the astonished, happy victim of culture architects that find her stuff useful in taking art down from its historically important and lofty place in the course of human history and development in the interest of preserving and advancing a banal and artless consumerist culture. Stop in at any major university these days for an aesthetics course, and you will see what I mean.

[Brian Ellis]

Public funds? This was a private auction.



You would have to spend a solid week in museums and galleries here to have even the beginnings of a frame of reference for such a generalization. I live here and have no idea what you're talking about. What exactly is "neurotic subject matter?" Poluted landscapes? That describes much of the world. I imagine if there was more landscape photography hanging in galleries here, we'd see plenty of that, but I don't see so much. I also don't know what you're suggesting with "equally sophisticated compositions whih take the world a little differently." Differently from what?



This city is packed with photography from every generation. There are the biggest historical photography collections in the world, and more galleries that specialize in vintage work than you could visit in single trip.

If you're wondering why contemporary people who do old fashioned work don't get attention ... why would they? If people want to see work in the style of Edward Weston, they look at an Edward Weston. They don't look at the work of a living copycat who hasn't gotten the memo that it's no longer 1930.

Many old timers still get a ton of attention. They do it by evolving, by continuing to do work that's fresh and that holds surprises. Lee Friedlander is an old man and a relentless innovator. He's someone we should all be looking at as inspiration for our golden years. New York welcomes his work from every era.

If you're just suggesting that there are pervasive trends here, then sure, I agree with that. There has always been a fashion element to art, for better and for worse. My own work has been pretty out of fashion since I've lived here, at least in comparison to the blue chip end of the art world. But so what? Every region that has a vibrant arts culture has trends and fashions, whether they acknowledge it or not. Complaining about it is like complaining about the weather.

FWIW, Sherman's work is not what's in fashion now. It was the big thing 30 years ago. She's the pre-pioneer of today's trendy stuff, which probably explains the renewed interest.

If anyone who participates here suddenly saw the art world taking a great interest in their work, and if as a result their work started selling for large amounts of money, I guarantee that you'd hear no more irrational whining about the NYC art world and neurotic subject matter.

[Colin Graham]

Whoa.

http://www.popphoto.com/news/2011/05/cindy-sherman-print-sells-39-million-auction-highest-ever-photograp

Christie's had a bumper night, tallying more than $300 million in sales. While not the priciest item up for auction that day, Cindy Sherman's "Untitled #96" from 1981 passed all records for photography, and was sold for $3.89 million.


Ha, that's fantastic. I hope Sherman profited from the auction directly. It would be great to see an artist having a record payday instead of a sports star for a change.

[Brian K]

As a sometime past director of a photographic gallery I tried to be sensitive to the reasons why some people would pay big money for what looked to be a photograph of very modest accomplishment. In the end I came to the conclusion that the photograph itself had little to do with it. People buy photographs:

To fill an empty space on the wall, a gap in their art collection, or a gap in their lives.

To announce their social status through the spending of conspicuous and extravagant resources.

To exert cultural and intellectual power by owning, displaying, and valorising what others covet but cannot gain.

To demonstrate to friends and rivals a refinement of discerning taste and an aggressive connoisseurship of prestigious things.

Because they want to assert their cojones by buying the art the timid majority only fantasize about buying.

To deflect suspicion that having great wealth goes with being a rich jerk.

A photograph for $3.9 million is nothing to the ultra-rich. What on earth do you do with your second billion that you haven't done with your first? Buy art perhaps; see reasons above.

I think you hit it right on the head.

For most of us buying art is about seeing an image that speaks to us. It's a window we put on our walls, a window that shows another moment in time, another place, another person or another event, and in that context it speaks to us.

The problem I have with Sherman's work is that it requires a whole dialog, a huge contextual explanation to support it's merit. That the image itself does not stand on it's own. And while those who have studied art or are heavily involved in the art world may have heard the whole back story to the image and therefore have a readily available rationale for it's merit, 99.99% of the world has to base their view on what they see before them, and what is before them is not all that much. But the "experts", most of whom are not photographers themselves, or photographers of notable ability, but who have a financial incentive to praise work that can bring them attention or other rewards, tell us it's significant, so then we simply accept that it's significant.

And in the upper echelons of the art world, it's all big commerce, art is a commodity. The passion is more in the acquisition than the long term relationship. For most of us the art hung on our walls are a part of our lives, for the collector it's more a sign of status, or a fulfillment of a need for affirmation. Some of us just like to look at a pretty picture everyday, other's like to follow the auction sales and value what they possess in terms of money and prestige instead of emotional connection. When I sell a print to someone, I am flattered and honored, sincerely. Because the reality is that my print has now become a part of their daily life. When they walk through their home, there it is, every day, for the rest of their lives.

The Sherman print is a c-print. C-prints do not have good archival stability, in fact according to MOMA they fade noticeably within 10-20 years and in order to insure their viability need to be stored in the dark at 33 degrees F. Does that indicate that the person owning that print is going to interact with it on a daily basis, that it is a part of their lives? Would any of us want to buy work that we could not actually see readily? For these high end collectors, it's not about the life of the work, it's about the ownership.

[paulr]

The problem I have with Sherman's work is that it requires a whole dialog, a huge contextual explanation to support it's merit. That the image itself does not stand on it's own. And while those who have studied art or are heavily involved in the art world may have heard the whole back story to the image and therefore have a readily available rationale for it's merit, 99.99% of the world has to base their view on what they see before them, and what is before them is not all that much. But the "experts", most of whom are not photographers themselves, or photographers of notable ability, but who have a financial incentive to praise work that can bring them attention or other rewards, tell us it's significant, so then we simply accept that it's significant.

This is THE pervasive fallacy that's used to defend conservatism and neophobia in art. It's exactly what was used for centuries in literature and art to defend an old, all male, all white canon, for example. It's the idea that the "real art" stands on its own, outside genre, and doesn't need to define itself, etc. etc...

This is demonstrably incorrect. The art that "speaks to you" does so because you have been immmersed in the back story and conversation surrounding it, even if you aren't aware of it. But I guarantee you that someone from a different cultural background will be as perplexed by the work you like most as you are by the work that perplexes you.

History tells us as much. All of the work we see as "classic" today met precisely your criticism when it was new. Secular painting. The impressionists. Romantic music. Jazz. Every type of modernism, including the cubists, the fauves, Weston and Steichen. Color photography. The new topographics.

Then people got immersed in the cultural conversations surrounding those works, at younger and younger ages, and the work gradually went from outrageous to conventional.

It's happened over and over, throughout history. The worst thing we can do is learn nothing from it.

[paulr]

IAnd in the upper echelons of the art world, it's all big commerce, art is a commodity. The passion is more in the acquisition than the long term relationship.

Everyone loves to repeat this stuff, but what's it based on? Who do you know in the upper echelons of the art world? What makes you think they're any more homogenous than people the lower echelons?

[paulr]

I do not believe that her photographs mark anything: nor are they in the least influential.

Then your beliefs are not based on looking at what's gone on in photography in the last 30 years.

Good God, just say you don't like them and be done with it. Nonsense like this doesn't add authority to your opinions, it does the opposite.

[mandoman7]

I don't think you can make that generalization. Many of the people who buy 10,000 pieces of art are passionate collectors. They love photography (or painting, drawing, sculpture) as much as the people here, do, but as consumers and not producers. I've met a few people who fit this description; I haven't personally met anyone who buys art purely out of vanity (although they certainly exist).

Why does someone have a passion to own an expensive piece of artwork? That's is the question. There is often a lot of verbiage given about appreciating its creation, but other factors are certainly at play. I can assure you that image is never very far from the equation. Just like with their other purchases, a subconscious analysis of how they'll look with this thing in their house. If they believe it enhances their image, no price is too high, if it doesn't then no sale.

This is not my lonely revelation, but the conclusion that most marketing firms would agree with. Many successful ads focus on how you'll look when using this product, with beautiful women and happening scenes all coming about because you bought this product. If you really look into it, why does anyone own anything beyond their basic need to survive?

[Mark Sawyer]

The Sherman print is a c-print. C-prints do not have good archival stability...

They have better archival stability than the market manipulations that make such sales possible. Such auctions, as has been said already, are more about the buyers' financial status than art.

The only important artistic element in a Cindy Sherman print is Cindy Sherman. The only place I know of where her work was influential was in the art programs where a few wanted to be the next Cindy Sherman. But I do give her credit for working the system...

[Chris Strobel]

lol


Whoa.

http://www.popphoto.com/news/2011/05/cindy-sherman-print-sells-39-million-auction-highest-ever-photograp

Christie's had a bumper night, tallying more than $300 million in sales. While not the priciest item up for auction that day, Cindy Sherman's "Untitled #96" from 1981 passed all records for photography, and was sold for $3.89 million.

[Drew Wiley]

Tell me something I don't already know. I've sat down with people probably richer
than ANYONE in NYC and had them haggle with me for hours on end over literally a
few dollars for some minor thing. I've watched them spend millions on end on some
minor remodeling tweak and then stiff the carpenters and painters afterwards (but
with six or seven lawyers on retainer so they could get away with it). I've dealt
with keep-up-with-the-Jonses' types who would spend $550 apiece for cabinet pulls
simply so they could wave the invoice in their neighbor's face and upstage them with
an analogous purchase. Taste had nothing to do with it. Certainly not everyone with
money is like that - some are very nice people indeed - but there is enough of a pattern out there to allow us to form our stereotypes. The worst ones are the ones
who are spending beyond their means and trying to impress their better off neighbors. And yes, conspicuous consumption is a big part of it. Of course, what do
we hicks out here in the West know about art or photography, and what is progressive or backwards? To quote a famous line, "Frankly, I don't give a damn".
Scuse me, I've got to go and photograph some weeds somewhere, whether they're
in style or not.

[paulr]

Why does someone have a passion to own an expensive piece of artwork? That's is the question.

That's a reasonable question. I think it's worth pursuing rather than taking as rhetorical. One answer can be found in Robert Adams' 2 page essay on the topic in Why People Photograph; I'm sure that's not the whole story.

[Jim Galli]

These discussions always turn into a them and us thing with someone like Paul who presumes to be much closer to a them than we all are.......blah blah blah.

I'll seperate myself further from the them's and just admit I'd have never never never taken that image in the first place. I have to blink back tears of boredom just thinking about a picture like that. Purposeless, unless of course you're on the plain with the them's, the others. I'll never be in this race. So what.

[Marko]

These discussions always turn into a them and us thing with someone like Paul who presumes to be much closer to a them than we all are.......blah blah blah.

Reading as carefully as I did through this discussion, I could not see anything that Paul said that could be even remotely interpreted as "him presuming to be much closer to them". Other than the fact that he actually lives in NYC rather than in Bumfuck, ND, of course. If anything, that would actually give him a bit of real cred for describing the local "scene" as it is.

Whether someone likes it ("the scene") is a different matter altogether. Intelligent people don't have to like something in order to accurately describe it.

Everything else notwithstanding, it is disgustingly dishonest to twist someone's effort at honest discussion only because... what? They have a different view? The world is round and has turned quite a few times since the 1890's? You don't like what they describe?

Blah, blah, blah indeed. And a pretty stale one at that.

[Jim Galli]

Reading as carefully as I did through this discussion, I could not see anything that Paul said that could be even remotely interpreted as "him presuming to be much closer to them". Other than the fact that he actually lives in NYC rather than in Bumfuck, ND, of course. If anything, that would actually give him a bit or real cred for describing the local "scene" as it is.

Whether someone likes it ("the scene") is a different matter altogether. Intelligent people don't have to like something in order to accurately describe it.

Everything else notwithstanding, it is disgustingly dishonest to twist someone's effort at honest discussion only because... what? They have a different view? The world is round and has turned quite a few times since the 1890's? You don't like what they describe?

Blah, blah, blah indeed. And a pretty stale one at that.

Fair enough. Jim out.

[Brian Ellis]

Tell me something I don't already know. I've sat down with people probably richer
than ANYONE in NYC and had them haggle with me for hours on end over literally a
few dollars for some minor thing. I've watched them spend millions on end on some
minor remodeling tweak and then stiff the carpenters and painters afterwards (but
with six or seven lawyers on retainer so they could get away with it). I've dealt
with keep-up-with-the-Jonses' types who would spend $550 apiece for cabinet pulls
simply so they could wave the invoice in their neighbor's face and upstage them with
an analogous purchase. Taste had nothing to do with it. Certainly not everyone with
money is like that - some are very nice people indeed - but there is enough of a pattern out there to allow us to form our stereotypes. The worst ones are the ones
who are spending beyond their means and trying to impress their better off neighbors. And yes, conspicuous consumption is a big part of it. Of course, what do
we hicks out here in the West know about art or photography, and what is progressive or backwards? To quote a famous line, "Frankly, I don't give a damn".
Scuse me, I've got to go and photograph some weeds somewhere, whether they're
in style or not.

Ignoring all the usual BS, you've got the quote wrong. It's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

[Brian K]

This is THE pervasive fallacy that's used to defend conservatism and neophobia in art. It's exactly what was used for centuries in literature and art to defend an old, all male, all white canon, for example. It's the idea that the "real art" stands on its own, outside genre, and doesn't need to define itself, etc. etc...

This is demonstrably incorrect. The art that "speaks to you" does so because you have been immmersed in the back story and conversation surrounding it, even if you aren't aware of it. But I guarantee you that someone from a different cultural background will be as perplexed by the work you like most as you are by the work that perplexes you.

History tells us as much. All of the work we see as "classic" today met precisely your criticism when it was new. Secular painting. The impressionists. Romantic music. Jazz. Every type of modernism, including the cubists, the fauves, Weston and Steichen. Color photography. The new topographics.

Then people got immersed in the cultural conversations surrounding those works, at younger and younger ages, and the work gradually went from outrageous to conventional.

It's happened over and over, throughout history. The worst thing we can do is learn nothing from it.

Paul, One of my favorite contemporary photographers is a woman, Susan Burnstine. Her work is not traditional, in fact Sherman's work is FAR more traditional and in many way's is a poor adaptation of Arbus' work.

Sherman's work is not revolutionary in any way. It's a series of photographs of women (herself) in different roles in society? And that was never done before? Both known and unknown photographers and painters have been documenting women's lives and roles for centuries. There have been movies documenting women's lives long before Sherman. So what is it about Sherman's documentation of women's roles that's any different? That at the peak of the women's feminist movement she stated that it was all about women's roles in society whereas all the countless imagery that came before and showed actual women's lives did not come about at the height of feminism and out of NY?

Do you really think that "untitled film stills", and it's contrived images, has more veracity about the roles of women than the countless photographs taken before of the real life roles, and real life moments of real women? Like the women's movement needed artificial images of imaginary women to have affirmation that their movement was justified? That all of those non contrived images of poorly paid women in sweat shops, or working on farms, or raising 4 kids, or dressing in tight skirts and carry a steno pad in the 1950's, REAL LIFE IMAGES, wasn't enough affirmation? That it took amateurish pictures of Sherman putting a book on a shelf, or sitting in a chair with a cigarette, to focus and clarify the women's movement? Look at the images!! Look at Hine's work, or Lange's "Migrant Mother", Levitt, or especially, Diane Arbus, many of whose images seem to have inspired Sherman. And Arbus' images were of real people, real life. Not pale contrivances. I don't know how Sherman gets anywhere the recognition, let alone more than Arbus, Levitt, Lange, etc. I'm sorry but having seen their work, and then looking at her work, I can not see the merit.

As for the "art that speaks to me" being because I am immersed in the back story surrounding it, I see work everyday that speaks to me that I have never seen or heard of before but just speaks to me because the image has CONTENT that speaks. It doesn't require a backstory because the story is evident within the image. When I look at Sherman's work, knowing full well the backstory all i can think is, that seems like a pointless and poorly done image and the backstory seems like an awful stretch. If Sherman had the ability to convey a story or a feeling like Arbus, Levitt, Lange, Hine, etc, etc, I'd be a fan, but she can't.

I get a greater emotional response looking at a Michael Kenna tree or a Sugimoto movie theatre than i do a Sherman, and they don't even have people in their images. I'm getting an emotional reaction with their work from OBJECTS! And yet with Sherman's work, portraits of a person, and let's face it we're made to get an emotional response, made to feel empathy from the image of a person, I don't.

[paulr]

Reading as carefully as I did through this discussion, I could not see anything that Paul said that could be even remotely interpreted as "him presuming to be much closer to them".

Thank you, Marko. I would hope that I don't come off as insinuating any such thing. I'd actually like to see the whole us / them notion evaporate entirely. It's a healthier world if there's s just 6 billion different varieties of "us."

At any rate, I thought I said explicitely that I'm not especially a fan of Sherman's work—and that, as both you and Kirk acknowledged, this should have nothing to do with our attempts to appreciate something or to grasp its place in history.

[Kirk Gittings]

Being around two university art programs and the contemporary arts scene for the last 30 years, I can attest that Sherman's impact has been huge, I dare say monumental. Do I have to like it or even understand it to recognize its place in history? I have witnessed it.

To deny its influence because you don't like it is simply a narcissistic frame of reference for art history.

[paulr]

Do you really think that "untitled film stills", and it's contrived images, has more veracity about the roles of women than the countless photographs taken before of the real life roles, and real life moments of real women?

No one's talking about "veracity." The conversation about newness in art always concerns ways of showing, ways of seeing. Sherman's co-opting of the trope of the film still, and using it as an examination of archetypes, was unlike anything people were familiar with.

It started one of the major waves of staged photography in the 80s and 90s. I'm not really interested in this stuff. I thought it was played out by 1990, but its had legs, for better or worse. If you read a contemporary history of photography, you'll get a sense of Sherman's influence.


As for the "art that speaks to me" being because I am immersed in the back story surrounding it, I see work everyday that speaks to me that I have never seen or heard of before but just speaks to me because the image has CONTENT that speaks. It doesn't require a backstory because the story is evident within the image..

This is a pretty good description of pre-modern ideas of art theory. All of them discredited. If content did the speaking, we wouldn't need artistic vision. Any picture of a pepper would be as good as Weston's. What weston brought to the party is a visual language—a set of formal strategies of picture making, which establish a context for seeing the content. But these strategies themselves are dependent on broader contexts that lie outside of the picture itself. Viewers need to speak the language. In 1920 some Americans did, but most did not, hence the controversial nature of these pictures.

Are you really unfamiliar with the history of this negative criticism? Look at the reviews from any of the seminal modernist shows. Look at all the shit that Stieglitz took for what he showed at 291.

Do you think you're smarter than the art critics of the day who dismissed Weston and Picasso and Brancusi? And Arbus? You're using their precise reasoning.


I get a greater emotional response looking at a Michael Kenna tree or a Sugimoto movie theatre than i do a Sherman...

You're saying what ... that you don't respond to her work, and therefore no else possibly could?

An instructive bit of dialog: an angry woman approached Stieglitz at his first show of the cubists. She asked, "can you explain to me why this work does NOTHING for me?" Stieglitz responded, "Can you explain to me why you don't give me an erection?"
(as reported by Dorothy Norman)

[paulr]

Ha, that's fantastic. I hope Sherman profited from the auction directly. It would be great to see an artist having a record payday instead of a sports star for a change.

Yeah, right?

I mean, I'd prefer it if it were one my friends or artistic heroes, but whatever!

[Brian K]

Being around two university art programs and the contemporary arts scene for the last 30 years, I can attest that Sherman's impact has been huge, I dare say monumental. Do I have to like it or even understand it to recognize its place in history? I have witnessed it.

To deny its influence because you don't like it is simply a narcissistic frame of reference for art history.

Kirk, I know it's significant because of the attention it has gotten and the influence it has had, but what i question is that fact the the work itself was of sufficient merit to warrant it's ultimate significance. The Big Mac is a significant influence on food culture, but is it really any good?

[Kirk Gittings]

Well to me personally no. I've been to shows of hers and felt really let down. But I've been around the block enough times to know absolutely that what I consider good has little more value than the selection of art that I choose to surround myself with and the art I choose to make.

On the other hand I know legions of artists, a whole generation virtually of contemporary artists, (many of whom I respect) that have been directly influenced by her. Is my opinion worth more than theirs? or vice versa. I have learned not. In the market place clearly their opinion holds sway. Does that mean anything? It means something clearly. That image was bid up to that price with at least one person competing. I am sober enough about the weight of my own opinions to stand back and say "good for her-some people really valued that image". I think this is a good thing for photography.

[rdenney]

Why does someone have a passion to own an expensive piece of artwork?

They like it and they have the money. Or maybe they just want to like it.

We should understand that there are people to whom four million bucks is as insignificant an amount of chump change as a hundred bucks might be to us, just as there are people who believe our speculative purchase that cost a hundred bucks the most profligate of self-indulgent excess compared to the pennies they might have in hand.

If we knew these people, we might be able to speculate on their motives. There are people of all classes who spend to show off. Marketers target the masses more easily than the wealthy, after all.

Someone may buy this work because they believe it's important and worth owning, rather than because they like it for its own sake. But in looking at it, they may achieve some understanding that we may lack, for all our supposed expertise. I would rather have a glimpse of that understanding than continue to just not get it. I'm happy to decide I don't like something, but I'm not happy to not understand it. And I think it's intellectually lazy to dislike something just because I don't understand it.

In this case, I don't dislike the photo, I just don't understand it. I did a Google image search and frankly I don't see that the whole ouvre says something that I miss in this one photo. I'm sure it's because Google doesn't edit.

There is much art that I like that others don't get at all, and vice versa. There is some that I think I can understand even if I don't much like it. There is some that presents itself as a common form but that provides something ironic beneath the surface. This one doesn't do that for me. Even if I was trying to apply a feminist agenda to it, I would still not get it.

But somebody gets it. I just wish they would explain it to me in ways that flip the dummy switch in my brain, which right now is set to "dirt".

As William F. Buckley once approximately wrote, "I once attended a concert where the performer played some inscrutable and downright bizarre chords. Never did I think to suggest to Mr. Thelonius Monk that he simplify is approach just so I could understand it." That was his final argument against those who accused him of showing off his vocabulary at the expense of their understanding, just because he enjoyed the art of using obscure words for their precision.

It sounds as though Sherman had no intention of being esoteric. And there's nothing like an art salesman to spray magic dust on whatever is shown in the gallery. That doesn't mean the people who buy it believe it. Maybe instead of having to "get it", they prefer to have some faith in those they admire who seem to, and buy it in the hopes of developing an appreciation. I've certainly bought art on speculation, with the understanding that it doesn't always work out.

Rick "not a rich man but thinking many who are rich are neither stupid nor vain" Denney

[Richard Mahoney]

But somebody gets it. I just wish they would explain it to me in ways that flip the dummy switch in my brain, which right now is set to "dirt". ...

It sounds as though Sherman had no intention of being esoteric. And there's nothing like an art salesman to spray magic dust on whatever is shown in the gallery. That doesn't mean the people who buy it believe it. Maybe instead of having to "get it", they prefer to have some faith in those they admire who seem to, and buy it in the hopes of developing an appreciation. I've certainly bought art on speculation, with the understanding that it doesn't always work out. ...

Many readings are possible for this photograph but you might find a comparison between Sherman and Balthus helpful, noting esp. the significance of the `aggressive wrist display' and the `dream state' of the subject:

Sherman

http://www.popphoto.com/files/_images/201105/96.jpg

Balthus

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3334/3211812828_ced446a988_o.jpg


Kind regards,

Richard

[paulr]

I don't think Sherman's work is particularly obscure or esoteric, and I don't see it being presented as such. My criticism of it ... and this is nothing but my opinion and fairly narrow ideas about photography speaking ... is that it's too easy.

One thing that gets lost in all the implications of elitism and fraud is that her work is popular. Without the benefit of the mountains of critical essays, people walk into galleries and museums, walk right past dense and somber modernist work (like mine), and go stare at the cindy shermans. It resonates with them. People, especially women, get the references to the cultural archetypes she's playing with. And they think the work is fun, even if it doesn't actually tell them anything new. It's showing them what they already feel or suspect, but in an especially engaging light.

It comes down to a pretty familiar news flash: the world is full of people whose tastes and interests are different from yours and mine.

[JMB]

Being around two university art programs and the contemporary arts scene for the last 30 years, I can attest that Sherman's impact has been huge, I dare say monumental. Do I have to like it or even understand it to recognize its place in history? I have witnessed it.

To deny its influence because you don't like it is simply a narcissistic frame of reference for art history.



In my experience you have the situation reversed. Many elite university programs try hard to make work like Sherman's influential in an effort to re-write artistic standards (i.e. lower them). Generally, these efforts aim at normalizing the rejection of transcendent theories of art and to replace such conceptions with popular, banal standards and commercialism. When work like hers is presented in contemporary programs. it is not because researchers have found real evidence of its impact upon working photographers. Such work appears in these programs because the designers of the programs want such work to be influential. In fact, some of the professors can be quite dogmatic about forcing young students to accept a contemporary, deflated conception art. In any case, it is not at all obvious to me that it is a compliment to say that the contemporary art scene embraces a particular work. The contemporary art scene is hardly an enlightened movement, and I do my best to distance myself from it.

Why does one have to be a narcissist to reject your view that Sherman's work has been influential? I see plenty of evidence of institutional efforts and attempt to make work like Sherman's influential (that's part of what the NYC sale was all about), but I see very little evidence that Sherman's work has actually influenced working photographers. And it does seem to me that you would have to point to a body of photographers that do indeed "like" her work before you could claim that the the work's influence is "monumental." Its very hard for me to conceive of a worker who is influenced by work that he does not in some sense like. If work like Sherman's has the appearance of influence it only because its promoters lower standards such that a wider body of work becomes acceptable that would otherwise be ignored.

[mandoman7]

In my experience you have the situation reversed. Many elite university programs try hard to make work like Sherman's influential ... I

Academia likes to present material that fits into categories and lends itself to extensive verbal analysis. Photos that represent simple observation of commonplace things don't seem to get a lot of attention in that context.

[Drew Wiley]

Heck Rick, I listened to Wm F Buckley going on and on for two hours once, using every fancy word in the dictionary, and came away with the impression he said
absolutely nothing. He was just showing off, fancy elocution and all. Maybe beats the
pants off the marginally lieterate types dominating talk/hate radio at the moment;
but talk about a peacock brandishing its superficial plumes! I won't be around to see
whether or not art historians a century from now will even remember who Cindy Sherman was; but I'll agree that some attention and high prices for a contemporary practitioner is good for the overall genre.

[Brian K]

If content did the speaking, we wouldn't need artistic vision. Any picture of a pepper would be as good as Weston's. What weston brought to the party is a visual language—a set of formal strategies of picture making, which establish a context for seeing the content. But these strategies themselves are dependent on broader contexts that lie outside of the picture itself. Viewers need to speak the language. In 1920 some Americans did, but most did not, hence the controversial nature of these pictures.

Are you really unfamiliar with the history of this negative criticism? Look at the reviews from any of the seminal modernist shows. Look at all the shit that Stieglitz took for what he showed at 291.

Do you think you're smarter than the art critics of the day who dismissed Weston and Picasso and Brancusi? And Arbus? You're using their precise reasoning.



You're saying what ... that you don't respond to her work, and therefore no else possibly could?
)

Weston's pepper was about seeing a common object with a new eye. In his print it wasn't a pepper, it was something entirely different yet simultaneously it was still an accurate recording of that object. He made us all look at a common object in a different way, and that was somewhat revolutionary for that time.

The critics have almost always been behind the artists when it came to new things. The critics are most often academics, not practitioners of the art. So while critics may not have liked something, the practitioners who worked in this field everyday and were far more intimate with the creation of the art, tended to know better and move the art along. Eventually the critics caught up.

What Sherman's work reflects is the now academic and auctioneers preferences of what is art, not the practitioner's. ( and for most of the recorded history of art it was a trade or profession, not a hobby) A review of the comments made by other photographers in this thread show that almost all of those commenting do not like the work. Some will support her, some are glad that any photograph fetched a price this high, but even those supporters aren't fans of the work itself.

As for Brancusi, Picasso, etc. Sherman's work is not in the same league in any way when it comes to the work itself. Brancusi and Picasso created styles, or contributed to styles that were revolutions. And one need not know any history behind a cubist painting to see composition, form, dimension (albeit a strange one) and basically imagery that is incredibly interesting. You might not like a cubist painting but can still appreciate the skill and creativity behind it.

In my opinion the vast majority of the images in Sherman's "untitled film stills" are boring, amateurish and disinteresting. Now maybe I'm jaded and it takes a really special image to perk me up, but her work is not worth a glance to me.

Check out these images and tell me, are they really genius?

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_10.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_13.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_14.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_15.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_16.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_21.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_25.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_35.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_53.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_56.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/sherman/sherman_76.html

Seriously, is anyone here really impressed with that work? If that work was not already famous would any of you give it a second look?

[Drew Wiley]

Kirk - influential to whom? Kids who don't know how to think for themselves? Judy
Dater, who cloned some of this look and made some of the stupidist images I've
ever seen in my life? The NEA, who often seems more interested in the content of
a hypothetical project or resume in advance than in what actually comes out of it
visually aftrwards? My gosh, the art schools have a genius for killing anyone's potential quality in the first place. Talk about assembly lines.

[JMB]

Academia likes to present material that fits into categories and lends itself to extensive verbal analysis. Photos that represent simple observation of commonplace things don't seem to get a lot of attention in that context.

In my most recent encounter with academia the foregoing is exactly what the professor avoided. Most of the readings aimed at advancing a conception of art such that one might "read anything as art, including a door, a table, or a blank sheet of paper." The most disturbing feature of my latest experience was the fact that there was not even an attempt at the aesthetic analysis of any complex sort, which you might have in mind. The aim was more to change the standard of art and to accept objects as banal renderings because they were banal.

[Kirk Gittings]

kirk - influential to whom? Kids who don't know how to think for themselves?

First of all, I never see the university students I have contact with that way. Nor was I that way, maybe you were and the people you hung out with. I was in graduate school when Sherman was hot. She was topic number one for years. You see her influence in my work?

Sherman's influence peaked 30 YEARS AGO DUDE!. Her influence is historical, obvious and now highly collectable. Dater is older history-she peaked 40 years ago.

[rdenney]

Heck Rick, I listened to Wm F Buckley going on and on for two hours once, using every fancy word in the dictionary, and came away with the impression he said
absolutely nothing.

Actually, that makes my point. People who have read enough about the subjects he discussed don't think his contributions to the conversation were in any way vacuous, even if they vigorously disagreed with it (which many did, of course). Many thought his underlying points so carefully constructed and so important that it irritated them that he made it hard to read by using words many didn't understand. I get what he said and wrote completely, but at one time I had read quite deeply into the topics that interested him. And I like the way he gave value to obscure words, the same as he liked the way Thelonius Monk gave value to obscure chord progressions. It is not a matter of whether I agreed with him or not. Most of the people he invited to his television show fought him, using many of the same words. Having to have a dictionary handy did me no harm.

He tells the story of one reader of his who wrote suggesting that he simplify his vocabulary a bit, to which Buckley responded, "Keep reading." A year later, the guy wrote again, thanking Buckley for having implemented his recommendation to use easier words. Of course, Buckley had changed nothing.

And that is a lesson for me now. When thinking people consider something important, it is intellectually lazy to reject that without at least understanding it. And understanding may come from just looking at more of it.

Paul's point that Sherman's material is popular comes to me out of left field, and I think many here have missed that altogether. But it really changes the way I look at the photo. I think we keep assuming that the photo must have some deeper meaning that we bumpkins are too non-cosmopolitan to understand. But really I think it's a photo that tugs at female heartstrings. It's not the feminist agenda, which I had tried to channel with no successful outcome, but rather than feminine agenda.

It's a picture of a girl whose eyes have turned inward, because something she read, which is crumpled up in her hand, has taken her out of the real world for a while. That's the "dream state", but even that is too fancy a term. Maybe she got a Dear Jane letter, and she's already used up her tears and is left with just staring. Yes, I think I can see how this will appeal to women and resonate with their own experiences. What I was missing is the unimportance of it. And, really, is there any need for art to be important in order for it to be important?

Paul thinks it's too easy, but maybe we are all trying too hard to figure this out in the context of college art programs, instead of in the context of an art dealer who happens to think this photo will really ring the bell of at least one of his wealthy female clients. Not all wealthy female clients are jaded--some can be wistful, can't they?

Maybe the importance of it was just: Lighten up. Instead of being overwrought, it's underwrought. Read Naipaul for an example of the same in literature. His writing seems so easy that it's hard to understand his descriptions of spending half a day on one sentence, until we try it.

This famous painting by Andrew Wyeth might resonate with people in similarly simple ways.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/Christinasworld.jpg

Frankly, it opens a line of thinking about Lee Friedlander. His photos are also routine to the point of being mundane. He's not seeking beauty in routine, and he's not trying to get us to see the mundane in new ways, but really just reflecting scenes the way real people see them, perhaps as a link to their daily experience.

Much of the art on the walls of our home is transcendent, but much of it is just explorations of scenes the artist happened upon without any special importance. And the value of it for me is that it pleases me when I look at it. None of it is worth real money, but none of it was cheap in the context of what I can afford, either, and the amount would have been considered profligate consumption by most of humankind.

Rick "who made some photos from the front porch of the house this morning, and is feeling good from having found half a dozen interesting compositions from camera positions occupying about 25 square feet" Denney

[Merg Ross]

Judy
Dater, who cloned some of this look and made some of the stupidist images I've
ever seen in my life?

It is evident, or at least my opinion, that Judy Dater's work of the 1980's was influenced by that of her contemporary, Cindy Sherman. Attached is a self-portrait of Judy eating in 1982.

Back on topic, my take is that two dealers were bidding for a client who wanted a Cindy Sherman photograph. We do not know who the client might be, or how sophisticated a collector, either. However, it was obviously someone with money who wanted this image. This is not necessarily about the historical significance of a Sherman image, or even a fondness of the image, but simply the desire to own it.

The intrigue here, for most, is the price. And because few, if any, of us would spend that kind of money on this particular print, we have a very long thread on the significance and meaning of the image. Most here, after a quick read, are not excited about the image. I am in that camp, and need not listen to a lecture as to how I might open my mind and understand the significance of such a banal offering. Thank you, I would rather use that energy to pursue my own art.

My congratulations to the high bidder. Perhaps it was Elton John, with another nugget added to his collection, which he periodically unloads portions of at Christie's. His Mapplethorpe, Adams and Sugimoto prints went for about a million a few years ago.

[chij]

paulr, can you write my next term paper for me

[Darin Boville]

Sherman's work is sort of hard to react to in some ways. You have this mountain of critical baggage--so much has been written about her work--but then discover that she freely admits that none of that was in her thoughts when she was making the work. Are you sort of wonder which is the ship and which is the wake.

It may be hard to remember now but this was back in the day that photography was struggling to be taken seriously in the gallery world, and as the gallery world merged more and more with the museum world, by that world, too. Yes, yes, we all know the creation myths about Ansel Adams and the great victories in this regard.

Then suddenly--so suddenly one would suspect that Sherman must have been plugged in with some heavyweights in the art world--Sherman pops into the scene. She is a woman at a time the art world is looking for a woman artist. She is young and reasonably attractive. Her work is full of hooks to hang articles on. It's edgy--she even has what appears to be cum in her hair in one image.

From an art student's point of view it must have been a heady mix--lab-printed 35mm transparencies, DIY lighting, big sales, readily available subject matter. And so much critical acclaim.

--Darin

[Brian K]

From an art student's point of view it must have been a heady mix--lab-printed 35mm transparencies, DIY lighting, big sales, readily available subject matter. And so much critical acclaim.

--Darin

I lament the death of skill in photography. The ability to take almost any scene or subject and find something interesting, thought provoking or beautiful in it. I don't consider provocation or sensationalism to be of any value as they are low hanging fruit and usually don't have much depth to them.

I think Sherman's success has contributed to the acceptability of amateurish work with meritless or obscure content becoming an all too common fact in photography today and the belief that all photography is of equal merit. The addition of at first automated film cameras and then fool proof digital point and shoot photography has further lowered the bar. There is now a veritable tsunami of mediocre images out there flooding us all. But it was the fact that amateurish work received museum level acclaim that made mediocrity seem acceptable, even meritorious.

When I was in high school and looked at the photography of the masters, I knew that I could not do work anywhere near that, that at best it would take me decades of hard work to even match their technique, if I ever could at all. But if you're starting in photography now, and you see a Cindy Sherman, you could very realistically say to yourself, "i can do that". While some might feel that is a tremendous democratizing of photography, I've always believed that photography should be a meritocracy. That in order for photography to advance we needed to keep setting the bar higher, not lowering it.

It seems to me that the academia were always more interested in concept than the actual image. I would think that those that study and verbalize about photography would have a different approach to it than those who actually produce it. One being theoretical the other being the practical. So now the concept trumps the execution. That might not sound too bad to some, after all I think we all agree that an image benefits from having a sound concept behind it. The problem is that now the concepts are so thin, so obscure or pointless, so meaning less. A fictitious project like photographing your breakfast everyday for a month would not seem out of place on a college's gallery walls. Or a series on the changing inventory levels of your sock drawer. I've seen concepts just as ridiculous get raves from gallerists and academics.

Concepts are easy. Worthwhile concepts are hard to come up with, and seem to rarely occur today. And executing a worthwhile concept in an interesting way is harder still. Learning how to execute an image properly takes many years, even decades. And for the part time artist, with the bar being so low, why bother?

[Brian K]

Here is a story that illustrates the lowering of the bar:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/artinfo/cooper-the-cat-photographer_b_863555.html?ref=tw

And the cat's work is compared to Eggleston's. What does that say about Eggleston?

[Wayne]

Cindy who? I had never heard of her or had forgotten about her and having now examined some of her work I will go about forgetting her again. But then I really don't care how much money the latest movie grossed at the box offices either, a useless piece of information that seems to hold great appeal to some segments of society.

[Colin Graham]

Here is a story that illustrates the lowering of the bar:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/artinfo/cooper-the-cat-photographer_b_863555.html?ref=tw

And the cat's work is compared to Eggleston's. What does that say about Eggleston?

Hmmm I must have missed the part where the cat bought the camera, loaded it with film/memory card, chose the subject matter and then edited out some interesting stills.

[Brian K]

Hmmm I must have missed the part where the cat bought the camera, loaded it with film/memory card, chose the subject matter and then edited out some interesting stills.

Colin, come on, just like determining exposure, focusing, etc have become automated and therefore unneeded skills, so will loading a memory card, choosing subject matter and editing. It's photography after all, no skills required. No thinking needed, except of course post exposure to explain why the images are so damn significant.

This Cat photographer is the next revolutionary step in the evolution of photography. Of course dogs and hamsters now feel justified and affirmed in their desire to produce photographs. As we speak my golden retriever is loading some T-max into a Rolleiflex....

I swear the next calendar that PETA puts out will have photographs done by animals. How long before the first Siamese joins APUG or Rottweiler signs up at LF forum?

[Jay DeFehr]

Paul,

I'm so glad you're here. You too, Marko.

[paulr]

Paul thinks it's too easy, but maybe we are all trying too hard to figure this out in the context of college art programs, instead of in the context of an art dealer who happens to think this photo will really ring the bell of at least one of his wealthy female clients.

Just for the sake of clarity, my "too easy" remark isn't about this picture in particular, but about the bodies of work of Sherman's that I've spent any time looking at, like the earlier film stills. This doesn't mean that when I see an individual picture of hers out of context it hits me like a one-liner. The picture in question is ambiguous in many ways. Its ambiguity could be a strength or a weakness, depending on the context it finds with the rest of her work. But I can't look at this picture cold and say, "it's about a, b, and c, and that's all there is to it."

[paulr]

Paul,

I'm so glad you're here. You too, Marko.

Thank you. Don't forget Kirk. I have the feeling it's a surreal party for all of us when we find ourselves digging in and defending Cindy Sherman.

[Darin Boville]

To clarify my earlier remarks, Sherman's work, even a generation later, is better than 99% of the work out there. It's good enough to engender a debate on its importance. The other 99% isn't worth having that discussion about.

--Darin

[paulr]

Frankly, it opens a line of thinking about Lee Friedlander. His photos are also routine to the point of being mundane. He's not seeking beauty in routine, and he's not trying to get us to see the mundane in new ways, but really just reflecting scenes the way real people see them, perhaps as a link to their daily experience.

It's surprising and instructive to hear you say this ... I think of you as someone with a sensitive eye for photographs of all kinds, and am almost stunned by the characterization of Friedlander's work as being routine or mundane.

This probably speaks to the subjectiveness of our frameworks for appreciating images. "Beauty," obviously, but also the idea of what's intersting or unusual.

I think of Friedlander as a wizard with form and chaos, a deep miner of subtlety and irony and wit, and someone who's able to play many visual and cultural games simultaneously within the frame of a single image. This probably has to do with my own immersion in a particular school of photography.

Back in college, I visited the art museum in Santa Fe with my girlfriend at the time. She was a painter and ceramicist and a bit of a smarty-pants esthete. She found me with my jaw hanging open at Stieglitz's equivalents. She looked at those dark, 4x5 prints of clouds, and proclaimed, "I dont' get it. These are pictures of nothing."

Sadly, I lacked the vocabulary or frames of reference to even have a conversation about it. We just drove home, me thinking she was brain damaged, just as she thought i was brain damaged in many similar, reciprocal situations.

[Drew Wiley]

Even Friedlander doesn't impress me too much. There was that 70's things about having foreground clutter out of focus and so forth, but he never really made it work,
at least in the 8x10 shots - halfway there at best. I don't worship these guys just because they got their fifteen minutes of fame and find them frequently artificially customizing their vision to what they think will impress the immediate influential critics. But if someone like Elton John collected Sherman, that would explain a lot. I wonder what kind of stuff Liberace collected? (No, I don't really want to know.)

[paulr]

Friedlander's 15 minutes of fame? That's the funniest idea in this whole thread.

[Jay DeFehr]

Someone like Elton John? What do you mean by that? Do you mean, one of the most active and important collectors of photography in the world? Or.. something else?

[D. Bryant]

Friedlander's 15 minutes of fame? That's the funniest idea in this whole thread.


These comments about Dater, Sherman, Eggleston are really lame. Have you ever looked at any of Eggleston's early work made with Large Format cameras, (not you Paul). The work looks about the same as a lot of the work posted here. Traditional photography gloriously printed carefully in the darkroom. After he opened his mind and quit trying to imitate the old school masters he began making fresh new work.

Now how many of us have sold as much work as Eggleston, Dater, or Sherman.

Yes that's what thought, no one including me is raising their hand.

BrianK I love your work but I don't get your attitude about contemporary photography. Believe it or not Sherman is technically savvy with film based photography.

Drew Wiley, whoever heard of Drew Wiley before you started posting here telling us how great you are? That's what I thought no one. You've made comments in the past about the poor technical quality of photographers such as Richard Misrach's work (as well as other contemporary photographers.) That's nothing but a bald faced lie or sour grapes or both.

Rant over with, now you can flame me. :)

Don Bryant

[Darin Boville]

>>Believe it or not Sherman is technically savvy with film based photography. <<

That's not what she says or describes!

--Darin

[paulr]

I don't think Drew is trying to trumpet how great he is. And I don't think the relative merits of our own work (or how much we've sold) needs to be considered in our opinions of other people's work.

My remarks about Friedlander have nothing to do with his popularity or fame or marketablility or anything besides his relentless creativity for over 40 years. With the possible exception of Stieglitz I can't think of anyone who's kept all the burners on high for so long.

[Kirk Gittings]

And I don't think the relative merits of our own work (or how much we've sold) needs to be considered in our opinions of other people's work.

I don't agree. When an artists makes a concerted effort to belittle (not just critique) the efforts and success of others, he deservedly invites a critical look at his own contributions.

But in terms of Drew, at least he is democratic-his barbs are not just aimed at contemporary photographers-remember his thoughts on David Muench?;)

[paulr]

I don't agree. When an artists makes a concerted effort to belittle (not just critique) the efforts and success of others, he deservedly invites a critical look at his own contributions.

Do you have to be a good practitioner to be a good critic?

[Kirk Gittings]

Who here is (or trying to be) a good critic? This is just a bunch of aging hobbyists with various chips on their shoulders, venting their prejudices. :rolleyes:

[mdm]

These comments about Dater, Sherman, Eggleston are really lame. Have you ever looked at any of Eggleston's early work made with Large Format cameras, (not you Paul). The work looks about the same as a lot of the work posted here. Traditional photography gloriously printed carefully in the darkroom. After he opened his mind and quit trying to imitate the old school masters he began making fresh new work.

Now how many of us have sold as much work as Eggleston, Dater, or Sherman.

Yes that's what thought, no one including me is raising their hand.

BrianK I love your work but I don't get your attitude about contemporary photography. Believe it or not Sherman is technically savvy with film based photography.

Drew Wiley, whoever heard of Drew Wiley before you started posting here telling us how great you are? That's what I thought no one. You've made comments in the past about the poor technical quality of photographers such as Richard Misrach's work (as well as other contemporary photographers.) That's nothing but a bald faced lie or sour grapes or both.

Rant over with, now you can flame me. :)

Don Bryant

Some cats learn to spray from the example of their owners.

[Drew Wiley]

I judge photograph by what I see. Right or wrong, like it or not. My opinion and I've got as much right to it as any collector or published critic wherever. And how do you in
your own little microcosm have the slightest idea of what I can or can't do, or what I
do or don't visually understand? You haven't heard of me or have a monograph on your
little bookshelf? So damn what! I'm my own worst critic alive. I set my own standards.
And I was having one-man shows thirty years before I ever heard of this forum and
getting plenty of compliments from the tippy-top tier of living "famous" photographers.
Maybe I just don't give a rats arse about the fame game or about trying to impress anyone.

[Merg Ross]

Someone like Elton John? What do you mean by that? Do you mean, one of the most active and important collectors of photography in the world? Or.. something else?

I brought up Elton John, and can't answer for Drew (nor would I dare). However, what I found disappointing was the presentation of the photographs in the Elton John collection; large, garish frames that completely dominate the images in many instances; a case of interior decorating at its worst. My opinion only. Of course,they are his to do as he wishes.

There is no doubt that Sir Elton has a very impressive collection of photography representing a broad spectrum.

[Jay DeFehr]

That's funny!

[Darin Boville]

I brought up Elton John, and can't answer for Drew (nor would I dare). However, what I found disappointing was the presentation of the photographs in the Elton John collection; large, garish frames that completely dominate the images in many instances; a case of interior decorating at its worst. My opinion only. Of course,they are his to do as he wishes.

There is no doubt that Sir Elton has a very impressive collection of photography representing a broad spectrum.

I picked up the book on his collection that he put out at a discount store. Quite a hodgepodge including a fondness for cheesecake.

--Darin

[paulr]

Who here is (or trying to be) a good critic? This is just a bunch of aging hobbyists with various chips on their shoulders, venting their prejudices. :rolleyes:

Well, I try to be a good critic. Not professionally, but for the purposes of being able to better understand and communicate about art. And for kicking my own ass creatively. One way I'd define good criticism is as the opposite of venting one's prejudices.
But whatever it is, it isn't contingent on me being a good artist.

Truly bad criticism (of the "you stink!" variety) probably depends more on the critic being able to back things up with his own creative abilities / chest puffery.

[paulr]

... what I found disappointing was the presentation of the photographs in the Elton John collection; large, garish frames that completely dominate the images in many instances; a case of interior decorating at its worst...

Well, look at his wardrobe over the years ...

[Marko]

Who here is (or trying to be) a good critic? This is just a bunch of aging hobbyists with various chips on their shoulders, venting their prejudices. :rolleyes:

And doing it with a very broad brush too, the broader the better. Certainly makes it easy easy on the old eyes, no need to fiddle with the nuances along the way... ;)

[Marko]

Truly bad criticism (of the "you stink!" variety) probably depends more on the critic being able to back things up with his own creative abilities / chest puffery.

There are people who can only feel big if they make someone else feel small. Most of the time it only emphasizes the size difference though.

[jnantz]

Well, look at his wardrobe over the years ...

i can just see him giving a tour of his vast art collection
dressed as donald " lord fauntleroy " duck

[Struan Gray]

Random thoughts.

1) Nobody here minded much while Steichen's pondweed was the highest-priced photograph ever. Perhaps we should have a whip-round.

2) I'm sure that somewhere there are Chinese painting discussion groups getting their panties in a bunch about the non-traditional brushwork in Qi Baishi's eagle daub (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13501773).

3) If you google images of and by Cindy Sherman it is fantastically, overwhelmingly depressing how often you get linked to a page where her work is surrounded by adverts for cosmetic surgery and mail order wives.

4) Friedlander is a GOD!

5) see 4).

6) see 5).

[paulr]

Qi Baishi is obviously just a fad. I don't get any of the so-called brushwork from the last couple of millennia.

[Drew Wiley]

First of all, I never said I disliked the particular Sherman image in question. In fact, I think it's quite compelling. I just like to poke fun at how people assess the relative monetary value of things. And I never said I disliked Friedlander - I find many of his images moving, but think he missed an opportunity to take things to a much higher level compositionally (in other words close, but no cigar - and I am one of those persons who defines a photograph by what lies INSIDE the parameters of the specific frame in question). And I never said I disliked Muech ... in fact, I praised him as an
illustrator, much like Norman Rockwell ... just couldn't find a way to fit him into any
"fine art" context. None of this makes my particular perspective either the only one or
either the allegedly valid one - but neither does it diminish it either within my own
self-defined objectives. And I am a much more vicious critic of my own work than of anyone else's. I'm always aspiring to do something I proably really can't. There's a
different set of rules attempting to discover a certain kind of composition in the real
world than in choreographing it in a studio or fabricating it in Photoshop. But those are
the rules I choose to play by.

[Brian K]

These comments about Dater, Sherman, Eggleston are really lame. Have you ever looked at any of Eggleston's early work made with Large Format cameras, (not you Paul). The work looks about the same as a lot of the work posted here. Traditional photography gloriously printed carefully in the darkroom. After he opened his mind and quit trying to imitate the old school masters he began making fresh new work.

Now how many of us have sold as much work as Eggleston, Dater, or Sherman.

Yes that's what thought, no one including me is raising their hand.

BrianK I love your work but I don't get your attitude about contemporary photography. Believe it or not Sherman is technically savvy with film based photography.

Drew Wiley, whoever heard of Drew Wiley before you started posting here telling us how great you are? That's what I thought no one. You've made comments in the past about the poor technical quality of photographers such as Richard Misrach's work (as well as other contemporary photographers.) That's nothing but a bald faced lie or sour grapes or both.

Rant over with, now you can flame me. :)

Don Bryant

Don, first thanks for the compliment.

You said that the Sherman work looks like a lot of the work posted here. Well maybe the lower quality work printed here because on average I'd say the typical photographer on LFF is much better technically than Sherman, at least much better than her work from the 1980's which is what we are referring to.

The other issues that I have with Sherman and a great deal of contemporary work is a lack of understanding light, composition, tone and which elements to include or exclude from a photograph. I can tell you that these factors matter to me having come from the professional background and what typically looks amateurish is the absence of these qualities. She has no clue about lighting, none. And the ability to light a scene is critical in contrived photographs. Her compositions are boring and predictable.

I am willing to bet that what it is you like about my work are the very same virtues that I have described as being absent in Sherman's.

[Brian K]

There are people who can only feel big if they make someone else feel small. Most of the time it only emphasizes the size difference though.

That's true, but there's also well reasoned and factually based criticism as well as people's sense of taste. And as it seems that most of the people here do not like her work, I'm sure a majority of them have photographers that they adore who are very acclaimed, then maybe it's not about jealousy but the fact that they sincerely dislike her work.

[paulr]

The other issues that I have with Sherman and a great deal of contemporary work is a lack of understanding light, composition, tone and which elements to include or exclude from a photograph.

Why would you assume the artists have no understanding of these ideas? Don't you think it's possible that they're just concerned with different ones? It's a bit like accusing Mondrian of not knowing how to draw (which some craft-minded critics might do, if they haven't seen his earlier work).


I can tell you that these factors matter to me having come from the professional background and what typically looks amateurish is the absence of these qualities.

Yes, I can see this. I also see the same arguments time and time again historically, when ideas about a medium change, and members of a guild or old guard get up in arms in about it. The fundamental values in every medium get rethought every once in a while. It's why the end of civilization has been declared so many times over the last five hundred years, with respect to visual arts, literature, music, theater ...

The arguments always seem quaint after a few decades. In this case it seems three decades isn't long enough.

[Drew Wiley]

Amen, Brian. This forum is a nice collegiate round-table in which we can discuss artists
or images as public figures or through known representative images. There's elbow room for lots of different viewpoints. But has anyone ever known me to either criticize or praise anyone actually participating in this forum? There are some folks whose work I really admire - but I'm not likely to say who they are, and am unlikely to say anything at all unless it articulates what I do or don't respond to visually in a specific image or set of images. That some dealer out there has money to throw around speculating on the potential future importance of a particular piece doesn't make them the expert, just a high roller gambler. Heck, even experts like Warren Buffet and T.Boone Pickens lost a ton on the stock market recently. If its worth the risk, and someone can flip the print for a profit, then they won, but if not ... heck, ain't my money anyway. Just a very different game than I play.

[ASRafferty]

Rick "not holding anything against Cindy Sherman at all" Denney

Well, that will certainly prevent the possibility of sex we recognize but don't like. :)

[Drew Wiley]

Paul - lots of the new ideas are simply old one rehashed and remarketed, and not really
that creative in the first place (as if "creativity' was the sole value in the first place -
something wholly entrenched and thoroughly repetitious in Western Modernism itself).
And yeah, I can tell you exactly what I don't like about Mondrian (my gosh! criticize
someone canonized like that??? Heresy!) - I don't like all those damn masking lines which show on his repeatedly repainted surfaces. It makes the surface quality of his painting annoying. There, I've articulated it - now you can burn me at the stake.

[paulr]

Paul - lots of the new ideas are simply old one rehashed and remarketed, and not really that creative in the first place (as if "creativity' was the sole value in the first place ...

sure, but that's a platitude. You could say it any time about anything. It doesn't speak to any particular idea.


And yeah, I can tell you exactly what I don't like about Mondrian ...

if one of your reasons is that "he doesn't know how to draw," I'd point you to his earlier work, as evidence that he does ... so his later style demonstrates choice, not handicap. That was my only point with his example.

[Bill_1856]

How much do, or rather did, Cindy Sherman's pictures usually sell for?

[Brian K]

Why would you assume the artists have no understanding of these ideas? Don't you think it's possible that they're just concerned with different ones? It's a bit like accusing Mondrian of not knowing how to draw (which some craft-minded critics might do, if they haven't seen his earlier work).


Paul, I've seen enough of their work. And consistently poorly lit, poorly composed and poorly designed would pretty much lead one to the educated opinion that the photographer in question lacks those skills.

I don't know if Mondrian could draw, I assume he could as in his days even the most abstract of painters had classical training, but his work is also well composed, uses color and tone effectively, uses positive and negative areas affectively and is interesting to look at.

[D. Bryant]

But has anyone ever known me to either criticize or praise anyone actually participating in this forum? .

Yes. You called people discussing Richard Misrach's work groupies; that didn't come across as being very collegial.

You want to voice strong opinions but don't like people to push back with theirs.

[Drew Wiley]

I have no problem running over sacred cows. What on earth does that have in common with your own photography? I've certainly known enough of the art critic gurus and already canonized painters and photographers to know they're human too. They treated me as an equal (whether I deserved it or not). I've been around the block enough times to understand my choices in what time I might have left, and that
I don't want to waste any of them on hero worship. That kind of stuff is Little League
as far as I'm concerned.

[paulr]

Paul, I've seen enough of their work. And consistently poorly lit, poorly composed and poorly designed would pretty much lead one to the educated opinion that the photographer in question lacks those skills.

My point is that it's an uneducated opinion. It's based solely on the assumption that these artists are pursuing the same standards that you hold sacrosanct—an assumption that different standards couldn't exist. History shows us that fundamental changes in standards are commonplace ... as are blindered critics who mistake them for a collapse of standards.

Critics routinely accused the modern painters of not knowing how to draw. They accused modern composers of having no melodic sense. Modern poets for not knowing how to rhyme ...

You're doing precisely the same thing. And the point isn't that contemporary artists are somehow beyond the reach of criticism. A critic needs to understand what's been attempted before judging its success or failure.

[Brian Ellis]

"When I was in high school and looked at the photography of the masters, I knew that I could not do work anywhere near that, that at best it would take me decades of hard work to even match their technique, if I ever could at all. But if you're starting in photography now, and you see a Cindy Sherman, you could very realistically say to yourself, "i can do that".

Depends on what you mean by "i can do that." If you mean could you have made the same photograph as Cindy Sherman did if she came up with the concept, explained it to you, and then posed for you in the same way she posed for herself, so that all you had to do was aim the camera and click the shutter - sure, you absolutely could have done it. So could most of us. But if you mean could you have come up with the concept in the first place and then figured out a way to present the concept through a series of photographs - no you couldn't have begun to do that. If you could have you would have.

[Drew Wiley]

I like the way you phrased that, Brian. It does point out a distinction, but in many
cases, including this one, something I tend to take exception to. A lot of what's being
pushed as photographic relevance nowadays has to do with ideas that are exterior
to the print itself - in other words, things which the print itself fails to communicate unless the viewer is somehow already initiated into a secondary resume. In my rules (which obviously aren't universal), if the print can't at least at some level be
self-contained, I consider it a failure. A scholarly analysis or monograph might or
might not help you understand it (or help you understand what the critic thinks, and
not necessarily what photographer himself or herself saw; but this kind of initiation
shouldn't be requisite to visual comprehension of the object in the first place. The image in question on this thread works at a graphic level, which might spell out why it sold and not something else in the same series; but it's hardly a remarkable example. And it obviously fails to impress those of us who admire refined technique.
To me it's like vegan cuisine - fine for others perhaps - but I'll dine elsewhere.

[paulr]

A lot of what's being pushed as photographic relevance nowadays has to do with ideas that are exterior to the print itself - in other words, things which the print itself fails to communicate unless the viewer is somehow already initiated into a secondary resume.

I'm guessing you don't see your position as an academic one, but you're advocating for a mid-20th century theory called New Criticism, which is one of radical self-containment. It's been almost entirely discredited, as it pretends that the shared cultural references and ideologies of the viewer / reader don't influence interpretation.

What's been found is that response and interpretation are deeply dependent on these conceptual frameworks. Ideas about how to look at a picture, vocabularies of symbols, values concerning content, ability to identify content, formal vocabulary ... these are all cultural creations. They're all learned. And they change over time.

The work that you consider self-contained is simply work that's accessible with with the ideas and interpretive tools you've already acquired. But you DID acquire them. Sometime after you were born. And the tools you've acquired already aren't in any fundamental way superior to the ones you may acquire later.

[Jay DeFehr]

Drew,

I agree that if a viewer doesn't respond to a photo, there's a failure....somewhere. If Ms. Sherman counts you among her audience, she might be partly to blame for the failure. If you, as a viewer, fail to recognize the significance of a work, for whatever reason, and assuming the work is significant, you are at least partially to blame for the failure. Is this work significant? Apparently, lots of educated people think so, and at least a few assess it's significance in the millions of dollars category. But, millions of dollars is less telling than the fact that the photo sold for more than any other photo, ever. So, it could be that Cindy failed as an artist, but it might also be that you've failed as a viewer, and given the fact that the photo in question is now the most valued photo in history, your prowess as a viewer is questionable, at best.

Many people are incapable of appreciating atonal music, but we should not conclude from this that atonal compositions are failures. The artist has no responsibility to you, personally, but to his/her audience. You are clearly not Cindy Sherman's audience.

[Kirk Gittings]

The work that you consider self-contained is simply work that's accessible with with the ideas and interpretive tools you've already acquired. But you DID acquire them. Sometime after you were born. And the tools you've acquired already aren't in any fundamental way superior to the ones you may acquire later.

Well said.

I grew up in a working class home that listened to country western and Sinatra. I became a big rock fan. I didn't get classical music at all. It fell on my deaf ears. After I got out of college I decided that I was going to try and figure out what Classical music was all about. I felt, based on exposure through friends etc. that I must be missing something. So I started reading CM appreciation books and actively listening. I taught myself to appreciate it and now am a huge CM lover (for the last 40 years).

Because I didn't respond to it without studying it, doesn't mean CM was a failure.

[Greg Blank]

Maybe the work was designed to make one grit their teeth and scream argh! There that makes me a perceptive viewer and Cindy a success all at once ;)


Drew,

I agree that if a viewer doesn't respond to a photo, there's a failure....somewhere. If Ms. Sherman counts you among her audience, she might be partly to blame for the failure. If you, as a viewer, fail to recognize the significance of a work, for whatever reason, and assuming the work is significant, you are at least partially to blame for the failure. Is this work significant? Apparently, lots of educated people think so, and at least a few assess it's significance in the millions of dollars category. But, millions of dollars is less telling than the fact that the photo sold for more than any other photo, ever. So, it could be that Cindy failed as an artist, but it might also be that you've failed as a viewer, and given the fact that the photo in question is now the most valued photo in history, your prowess as a viewer is questionable, at best.

Many people are incapable of appreciating atonal music, but we should not conclude from this that atonal compositions are failures. The artist has no responsibility to you, personally, but to his/her audience. You are clearly not Cindy Sherman's audience.

[Drew Wiley]

The comments are appreciated, but 50%. To call this the most significant photograph
so far in history just because it sold at auction for such as such almost yesterday is
pretty insignificant in the bigger picture. It could simply be commercial speculation
on a short-term present trend. Like I said, some pre-Impressionist French paintings
sold for huge sums over a hundred fifty years ago which have never recovered their full value, at least if we factor in ordinary monetary inflation, and are works largely
ridiculed today, even though they were regarded as standards of artistic orthodoxy at that time. I'll admit I might appreciate Sherman a little more if I hung around nail parlors and inhaled some of the lacquer thinner fumes, but that aside, to say I "don't get it" is itself a presumption about what I personally get or don't. I said, it's not my diet, it's not my "rules", which are made for myself and not someone else. But I do judge with my eyes first. It is, after all, a visual art. But to go around quoting that this of that kind of evaluation has been discredited, or that I therefore belong to this or that particular school of thought, is captial B, capital S. It's that's kind of talk that makes me despise the worship of academia. How the hell do you know what I can
see or can't; or what the hell makes you think only the published "experts" are the
only ones with a valid opinion? Talk about arrogance! I don't have to be an expert
in fashion to think that some lady who spends $7000 dollars on a pair of tattered blue jeans is an idiot. Heck, for that price I'd even throw in a little real steer manure.

[Greg Blank]

Watch your blood pressure bro, or you might have an art attack.


How the hell do you know what I can
see or can't; or what the hell makes you think only the published "experts" are the
only ones with a valid opinion? Talk about arrogance! I don't have to be an expert
in fashion to think that some lady who spends $7000 dollars on a pair of tattered blue jeans is an idiot. Heck, for that price I'd even throw in a little real steer manure.

[Drew Wiley]

Sorry Kirk, but I don't think any music appreciation class in existence would get me
to appreciate Sinatra. It's like I have a huge grudge. Televisions were almost nonexistent where I came from (no reception), and even as I was entering college
only one local family had a real stereo. The kids were my friends, but the parents real uptight psychos. They had a big electrified razor wire fence around their property and a pack of dobermans awaiting the great "race war", plus a soldier of fortune pal who hung out there and ate his meat raw with a combat knife. It was a bad day to begin with ... we had already been chased by a brahma bull out in the field, with the nearest fence almost two miles away. So when we finally got back to their house, we smuggled in Jimi Hendrix's first album and started playing it. Then the mom came home from work and all hell cut loose. Skriiiitch ... off came our album and on went Sinatra. Heck, that was torture ... it felt better being chased by the bull.

[Colin Graham]

Colin, come on, just like determining exposure, focusing, etc have become automated and therefore unneeded skills, so will loading a memory card, choosing subject matter and editing. It's photography after all, no skills required. No thinking needed, except of course post exposure to explain why the images are so damn significant.

This Cat photographer is the next revolutionary step in the evolution of photography. Of course dogs and hamsters now feel justified and affirmed in their desire to produce photographs. As we speak my golden retriever is loading some T-max into a Rolleiflex....

I swear the next calendar that PETA puts out will have photographs done by animals. How long before the first Siamese joins APUG or Rottweiler signs up at LF forum?

I can deal with criticism of Craft simply on it's own merits, but this reflex of panning artistic expression because it doesn't hold up to a certain standard of workmanship seems sort of limiting. Clearly Sherman's work isn't break-taking in its execution, but I think that technical proficiency in the traditional sense would be ancillary to content and meaning. It's beside the point, at least for me.

Sorry- I'm really not understanding the issues with the cat. The cat was just the vehicle, like an unmanned lunar probe or submersible. OK to cull images off an interplanetary voyager, why not an everyday domestic one? Seems like there's some potential there. Wish I'd thought of it.

[paulr]

The comments are appreciated, but 50%. To call this the most significant photograph so far in history just because it sold at auction for such as such almost yesterday is pretty insignificant in the bigger picture.

Who said anything about it being the most significant picture in history? No one here is conflating auction price with significance. We've just been pointing out that the artist has historical signifcance, whether we like it or not, and that many of the claims against this are based on very shaky grounds.


to say I "don't get it" is itself a presumption about what I personally get or don't.

Your arguments suggest that you broadly don't get the whole genre that the work belongs to. This isn't an insult. Why would you? You've looked at very little of it, and what you've seen hasn't grabbed you. "Getting" something new usually requires, at the least, some curiosity towards it. You have even less curiosity toward it than I do, and I don't have much.


But to go around quoting that this of that kind of evaluation has been discredited, or that I therefore belong to this or that particular school of thought, is captial B, capital S.

Own it or not—the ideas about art that you've been championing are inherited. They aren't natural law, and you didn't invent them yourself. You learned them, consciously or not, and did so to the exclusion of other ideas that in some cases are even more defensible.

Yeah, this position is one supported by academia. But to say you dislike or distrust academia is basically saying that you dislike or distrust people who have studied something. If I want to know about art history, I'll go the person who's studied it rather than the person who refuses to.

[Drew Wiley]

Paul - exactly the kind of response I'd expect from someone who knows zero about
me. Again, what on earth makes you think that I haven't been exposed to the concepts of academia? Since when does jargon equate with perception? Not that it matters; but ultimately, we all have to personally choose what matters to us, and not just naively swallow anything put on our plate. Nobody has to become sychronized with every trend out there in order to be relevant. Maybe if you're just
a player trying to get your foot in the door ... but that kind of whorish mentality is
why a lot of us dropped a "fine art" career in the first place - maybe we don't want
our work to be the doormat of any ideology. There are different kinds of academics
too, and the worst kind are the ones who know how to throw around a lot of
estoeric vocabulary and how to pigeonhole everything into some discrete category,
but can't seem to see a damn thing for themselves.

[Brian K]

My point is that it's an uneducated opinion. It's based solely on the assumption that these artists are pursuing the same standards that you hold sacrosanct—an assumption that different standards couldn't exist. History shows us that fundamental changes in standards are commonplace ... as are blindered critics who mistake them for a collapse of standards.

Critics routinely accused the modern painters of not knowing how to draw. They accused modern composers of having no melodic sense. Modern poets for not knowing how to rhyme ...

You're doing precisely the same thing. And the point isn't that contemporary artists are somehow beyond the reach of criticism. A critic needs to understand what's been attempted before judging its success or failure.

Paul, I don't see a standard in many of these contemporary artists, they are working with the limited skill set they have. Composition is not just purely some aesthetic thing, it's a means to control the viewers eye, a means to express and communicate something. Poor composition is both uninteresting and vague. Something as simple as having a horizon just slightly off perfect level causes a subtle uneasiness in many viewers. But it is far easier to state that you choose to do poorly composed work as a choice when in fact you simply lack the ability.

Lighting sets the mood. We are, by design, affected by light. it gets dark we go back to the cave and get ready to sleep. Sun comes up, we get active. For those living in long dark winters depression is common. Candlelight sets the mood for romance. Harsh light causes anxiety, soft light, comfort. The feeling of light in an image also affects the mood, and perceptions of the viewer. Lighting can also diminish or increase the sense of depth within an image and that can also affect the perception of the viewer. If you place a deeply saturated red and a deeply saturated blue in close proximity, the two colors can appear to physically vibrate. There are many, many ways in which knowledge of human visual perception can work in an image, it is unlikely that anyone well versed in these matters would simply not choose to use them. Why would someone with the ability to compose well choose not too?

Composition and lighting are not just choices about making an image pretty, it's not just aesthetics, it's expression and communication. It is the lack of these things and similar aspects that is the reason why so much contemporary work can not stand on it's own. Why it needs an accompanying context or backstory. The long time saying was that a picture was worth a thousand words. Too often now it's worth less than a tweet.

[paulr]

Brian, you're just restating classicist aesthetic theory as if it's the only one. The idea that there's such thing "good" composition, separate from what serves the vision behind a particular image, is a classical holdover that didn't last long into the 20th century.

You don't have to like the work in question, but it's arrogant to assume that everyone is aspiring to the same standards. Artists have been very deliberately breaking classical rules, for defensible reasons, for many decades. Sometimes its simply in order to co-opt the esthetics of vernacular work. Sometimes it's to cause visual tensions of one kind or another. And sometimes it's because classical beauty is simply antithetical to what the work is about. I suspect Sherman has worked with the first reason, but I don't know her work well enough state that confidently.

[Jay DeFehr]

Paul,

You have the patience of Job.

[paulr]

You have the patience of Job.

more like unlimited ability to procrastinate when I'm supposed to be using the computer for something else ...

Jay, it probably wasn't your intent, but you've convinced me to shut up :)

[Drew Wiley]

Maybe she was just having a good fun time and got lucky. If so, more power to her.
Somebody has to win the lottery from time to time. But still, I doubt that many
photographers start with all this art-speak goobledygook in the back of their heads. That was invented by those whom Misrach appropriately termed a basically parasitic profession. Artists can exist without them, but they cannot exist without artists.

[Kirk Gittings]

Actually this thread has stimulated me to look into her imagery and career in some depth and frankly I've found some appreciation for her work.

[Richard Mahoney]

Actually this thread has stimulated me to look into her imagery and career in some depth and frankly I've found some appreciation for her work.

:)

... Well perhaps our next thread could focus on working through my own personal blind spot -- LaChapelle (http://www.davidlachapelle.com/). I'm sure I'd be the better for it ;)


Best,

Richard

[Cor]

A very interesting read, thanks to all the contributors..it strikes issues I personally struggle with (not to much though, my work is mainly for myself)..but I try to be open minded when I see a show at a gallery or a museum.

But I wonder than: how much context does an image need to get interesting, how much effort should I put in, is it worthwhile or just the emperors new clothes..I keep on struggling...;-)....

I do notice that a recent show of Eugene W Smith (a retrospective in FOAM, Amsterdam) was packed with people, and a great show it was, whereas a Gallery few doors down with contemporary photography was deserted. Perhaps this tells that the taste of the public is much more conservative that the critics..(an open door I guess)

I guess I mean to say there is still an audience for well crafted (technical and content wise) B&W photography (some was even large format..;-)..his Pittsburgh series)..

Best,

Cor

[Brian K]

Brian, you're just restating classicist aesthetic theory as if it's the only one. The idea that there's such thing "good" composition, separate from what serves the vision behind a particular image, is a classical holdover that didn't last long into the 20th century.

You don't have to like the work in question, but it's arrogant to assume that everyone is aspiring to the same standards. Artists have been very deliberately breaking classical rules, for defensible reasons, for many decades. Sometimes its simply in order to co-opt the esthetics of vernacular work. Sometimes it's to cause visual tensions of one kind or another. And sometimes it's because classical beauty is simply antithetical to what the work is about. I suspect Sherman has worked with the first reason, but I don't know her work well enough state that confidently.

So Paul you mean they are intentionally TRYING to make work that is boring, disinteresting, vague, non expressive and uncommunicative?

The way the human eye perceives things does change from generation to generation, it's hard wired in our DNA.

And Paul this is not my first rodeo. It's not like I don't have a vast reference of art and photography to base my opinions on. Far more than the average person and even the average LFFer. Just because I think some work is pointless and poorly done doesn't mean I don't "get it". It means that after 35 years of being a professional visual artist I simply don't like something. I started out as an abstract, stone sculptor.

Art is a visual language, and visual language in itself is our most basic form of communication. You can communicate with someone who speaks a different language far easier visually than orally. And if in the most basic form of language these images fail to communicate then they are not working.

But your POV in this is not that I have a reasonable basis for not liking her work, your explanation is that I have some out dated notion of art, mind you the notion of art that I have is pretty much what the notion of art was from the Egyptians, through the greeks, through the renaissance and up until about the 1950's or 60's, and even then was still the prevailing POV. The impressionists, expressionists, modernists, minimalists, etc, etc still relied on the basic elements that can be traced back thousands of years. They don't rely on them because they're stuck in the mud, they rely on them because they are used to communicate in art. They rely on them because they create the desired response or reaction. Maybe the notion that you have of art is nothing more than fashion and will seem as absurd in 20 years as Nehru Jackets do now?

If the only people who can see the merit in a certain photograph are Yale MFA's then maybe it's those MFA's and those artists that are out of touch? In this thread is a pretty large group of serious photographers, you have to be if you embrace LF today, and just how many of those in this thread actually like Sherman's work? Very, very few. So I guess that we all don't get it.

[Brian K]

Actually this thread has stimulated me to look into her imagery and career in some depth and frankly I've found some appreciation for her work.

Kirk, please show me which stuff appeals to you.

[JMB]

Yes, I can see this. I also see the same arguments time and time again historically, when ideas about a medium change, and members of a guild or old guard get up in arms in about it. The fundamental values in every medium get rethought every once in a while. It's why the end of civilization has been declared so many times over the last five hundred years, with respect to visual arts, literature, music, theater ...

The arguments always seem quaint after a few decades. In this case it seems three decades isn't long enough.



The foregoing strikes me as another example of having matters upside down in three respects.

First, is easy to see how this claim is a very fast, convenient, and unreflective way to circumvent any meaningful analysis or criticism of contemporary renderings. It is tantamount to saying that if a work fails by certain value standards that it is nevertheless valuable, inscrutable, and immune from criticism if it is at least new. In essence, the foregoing claim reduces to a crude form of debate: “name calling.” And the accusation that anyone who insists upon complexity and value in art is only failing to recognize an important revolution in art is itself a tiresome claim that ends all possible dialogue.

Secondly, the confused defense of the Sherman photograph is, once again, itself an example of guild mentality. Sherman’s photographs represent the status quo; they are not revolutionary. And in light of their immaturity, lack of complexity, and commerciality they fall easily within currently and widely acceptable standards. Hence, such work cannot in the least be responsibly compared to any real revolution in art or photography (e.g. the Blau Rider and Stieglitz’s Photo Secession). When Blau Rider exhibits opened, viewers spat upon the paintings, and Stieglitz sold very few photographs. The guilds resisted these genuine revolutions. But the “guild” just threw 3.9 million dollars (supposedly) at the Sherman commodity. With a little reflection it becomes very clear that it takes a great deal more independent thinking (and even courage) to reject a wide variety of contemporary renderings like Sherman’s than to accept them. The “guild” (academic and commercial) pushes these renderings hard, and it attempts to marginalize critics who refuse to ignore the contemporary lack of standards.

Thirdly, genuine artistic revolutions spring from the intelligence, insightfulness, maturity, and psychological complexity of uniquely inspired artists, not from promoters with a commercial agenda. Moreover, the leaders of real revolutions were also able to articulate compelling aesthetic value arguments in support of their work. Kandinsky and Stieglitz wrote compellingly and prolifically. If anyone is finding evidence of this kind of inspiration in the Sherman photographs, then it is indeed a surreal accomplishment achieved by digging in instead of thinking.

I say lose the political correctness and call a banal object by its true name “banal.” And let’s get on with a real revolution.

[Richard Mahoney]

Art is a visual language, and visual language in itself is our most basic form of communication. You can communicate with someone who speaks a different language far easier visually than orally. And if in the most basic form of language these images fail to communicate then they are not working. ...

If the only people who can see the merit in a certain photograph are Yale MFA's then maybe it's those MFA's and those artists that are out of touch? ...

Brian, it used to be said of certain individuals that they `had a good eye'. I'm unsure whether many people wondered if this was in-built or learned, but it did seem clear to many that certain individuals just knew what they were doing. I don't believe that this was a nebulous phrase, but something [innately ?] sensed by the viewer. Do you think this sort of statement -- possibly subjective -- still holds up?


Best Richard

[Brian K]

The foregoing strikes me as another example of having matters upside down in three respects.

First, is easy to see how this claim is a very fast, convenient, and unreflective way to circumvent any meaningful analysis or criticism of contemporary renderings. It is tantamount to saying that if a work fails by certain value standards that it is nevertheless valuable, inscrutable, and immune from criticism if it is at least new. In essence, the foregoing claim reduces to a crude form of debate: “name calling.” And the accusation that anyone who insists upon complexity and value in art is only failing to recognize an important revolution in art is itself a tiresome claim that ends all possible dialogue.

Secondly, the confused defense of the Sherman photograph is, once again, itself an example of guild mentality. Sherman’s photographs represent the status quo; they are not revolutionary. And in light of their immaturity, lack of complexity, and commerciality they fall easily within currently and widely acceptable standards. Hence, such work cannot in the least be responsibly compared to any real revolution in art or photography (e.g. the Blau Rider and Stieglitz’s Photo Secession). When Blau Rider exhibits opened, viewers spat upon the paintings, and Stieglitz sold very few photographs. The guilds resisted these genuine revolutions. But the “guild” just threw 3.9 million dollars (supposedly) at the Sherman commodity. With a little reflection it becomes very clear that it takes a great deal more independent thinking (and even courage) to reject a wide variety of contemporary renderings like Sherman’s than to accept them. The “guild” (academic and commercial) pushes these renderings hard, and it attempts to marginalize critics who refuse to ignore the contemporary lack of standards.

Thirdly, genuine artistic revolutions spring from the intelligence, insightfulness, maturity, and psychological complexity of uniquely inspired artists, not from promoters with a commercial agenda. Moreover, the leaders of real revolutions were also able to articulate compelling aesthetic value arguments in support of their work. Kandinsky and Stieglitz wrote compellingly and prolifically. If anyone is finding evidence of this kind of inspiration in the Sherman photographs, then it is indeed a surreal accomplishment achieved by digging in instead of thinking.

I say lose the political correctness and call a banal object by its true name “banal.” And let’s get on with a real revolution.

Well articulated. The fact is that Sherman's work is the darling of the new "guild", that is the art establishment (museums, colleges, auction houses, etc). The reality is also that most of the members of that guild are actually not practicing artists or photographers, they're academics. They don't have the hands on intimacy that someone who creates art every single day does, they just talk about and analyze it.

The old saying is those that can do, those that can't teach. While there are some excellent artists out there that teach, I think for most they teach because they were not very good artists, at least not good enough to make a go of it. And when you have those who are not good at something setting up the standards and philosophy for a given field, you're going to get a skewed perspective. I learned far more from my time as an assistant, because there I learned from those who did, they were too busy producing art to teach. The traditional way art was taught was through the apprentice system, you learned from a working master.

I see people with little if any real background in photography doing portfolio reviews, giving workshops, writing photo blogs, and even pawning themselves off as curators. It's no wonder that amateurish work has gained acceptance, it is the level at which the art establishment is rapidly becoming more comfortable with. It's their own level.

[Tobias Key]

There seems to be a lot of argument about why someone might pay $3.9m for a Cindy Sherman, but most people seemed to have missed an obvious one. The two main bidders were art dealers. Perhaps they spent $3.9m because they think they might get double that in five years time. Perhaps they both have extensive collections of Sherman's pictures and by bumping the price of this one up, they stand to make a killing on the 20 others they collected over the years. A dealer doesn't buy a picture he doesn't think he can make money on, and his motives may be no more than that. Away from the debt ridden west there are plenty of far eastern millionaires and billionaires with money to spend and no shame in doing so, I suspect that is where this picture will go.

[Brian K]

Brian, it used to be said of certain individuals that they `had a good eye'. I'm unsure whether many people wondered if this was in-built or learned, but it did seem clear to many that certain individuals just knew what they were doing. I don't believe that this was a nebulous phrase, but something [innately ?] sensed by the viewer. Do you think this sort of statement -- possibly subjective -- still holds up?


Best Richard

Richard when asking if this statement still holds up I assume that you are referring to those who have an "eye". I think it still holds up for the vast majority of people who will look at a given work and see something in it that they know is special. They may not have the vocabulary to explain it or even fully understand why it's special, but I think they will nevertheless find something to connect to. The art establishment is rather jaded, especially by the traditional works, they are dying to latch onto something new and maybe also trying to feel better about their own abilities and wanting to support work that looks like work that would be within their own skill set to produce. If you're a baseball player who can only hit .200, wouldn't it make you feel a whole lot better about yourself when players who hit .200 get honored?

I'm jaded in the fact that I've seen what can be done with a camera by someone who knows what they're doing, while simultaneously having also seen vastly more work that was unoriginal, boring, and lacked any visible merit. So I have very little patience for work that I perceive as lacking in those areas.

Getting back to having an "eye". Just look at Sebastio Salgado. He has no formal background in photography, he was an economist. But there's no doubt he has an "eye". And what makes his work so much more compelling than nearly every other photojournalist or documentarian? Why is Salgado a great artist? Because he has the ability through his inherent understanding of light, composition and form to take a journalistic scene, and make it also beautiful and interesting, not just emotionally compelling but also visually compelling. He uses those antiquated notions about art and he draws you into the scene far more than other documentary photographers working with the same subject matter. Look at Salagdo and then look at Sherman's work. Which really speaks to you?

[Colin Graham]

Well said.

I grew up in a working class home that listened to country western and Sinatra. I became a big rock fan. I didn't get classical music at all. It fell on my deaf ears. After I got out of college I decided that I was going to try and figure out what Classical music was all about. I felt, based on exposure through friends etc. that I must be missing something. So I started reading CM appreciation books and actively listening. I taught myself to appreciate it and now am a huge CM lover (for the last 40 years).

Because I didn't respond to it without studying it, doesn't mean CM was a failure.

I had some problems with punk rock when it started to gain momentum in the mid/late seventies. After being spoon fed hyper-produced commercial pop most of my life, this new noise was abrasive, devoid of ability and fantastically crappy on so many levels. But still there was the sense that there was something there, maybe only because of the challenge of exploring it and keeping an open mind despite the knee-jerk recoil.

Maybe that experience helped me to appreciate work like Sherman's, or at least not dismiss it outright. But I sometimes wonder if in trying to check my baggage at the door with certain work if I've gone too far the other way- I'm curious if keeping an open mind doesn't rob some of the more visceral reactions to art of it's primary intent.

[ArtRosen]

I think there's a vast difference in taste here. A Pond, Moonlight by Edward Steichen which sold for $3 million in 2006 doesn't seem to have had the same negative effect on people's opinions here as Cindy Sherman's photograph which sold for just $1 million more. Also missing from the list of complaints here is Alfred Stieglitz who has had two of his photographs sell for more than one million dollars each.

From what it sounds like here, everyone's tastes are more geared towards the traditional photography rather than contemporary photography. Which is fine, but it doesn't ... how shall I say ... reduce the value of Sherman's prints because it isn't a black and white contact print.

I wonder how everyone reacted when Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon sold for $3.3 million.

[Kirk Gittings]

Kirk, please show me which stuff appeals to you.

I see absolutely zero reason to continue in this discussion. But I will say this. What peaked my interest was when I read she was a McArthur Fellow. Hmmmm, not what I expected. I have known quite a few MFs and they are no slouches-by and large they are among the most interesting, capable, creative and dedicated people I have ever met.

[Drew Wiley]

Debt-ridden West, Tobias? There are more obscenely rich people around here than on
the east coast, and they spend accordingly. Some of these guys have gigantic egos;
they're self-made techies, not old money, and do things simply because they have the
financial muscle to do it. One-upmanship is part of game, part of what they consider
"winning". A few of them gentrify, start a vineyard or apple orchard and collect art;
but more likely, they'll build a multimillion-dollar castle of a house and not even live in it, or a big film "campus" and then abandon it. One of lesser ones (multimillionaire, not
multibillionaire) is a friend of mine and simply driven by pure adrenalin. He own multiple
resorts but has never taken a vacation himself. He first became rich on photography
(yes, he made millions at it - an incredible studio guy whom none of you have even
heard of - so to some of you he simply cannot exist), then he reinvested that in entire
blocks of downtowns. Like many of the wealthy, he drives around in a beat up old VW van and dresses in bluejeans. I know a couple of these guys who buy their clothes at
KMart, drive clunkers, and then have a few hundred Maseratis, Lambourghinis, and Ferraris locked up brand new in their warehouses. One of them is into collecting expensive racehorses. People love looking at photography in this part of the world and
discussing it, and they're pretty savvy, but rarely collect.

[paulr]

I wonder how everyone reacted when Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon sold for $3.3 million.

If you do a search on the site, you'll find the exact same conversation (with one or two names changed ... )

ok! shutting up again.

[Brian K]

I see absolutely zero reason to continue in this discussion. But I will say this. What peaked my interest was when I read she was a McArthur Fellow. Hmmmm, not what I expected. I have known quite a few MFs and they are no slouches-by and larger they are among the most interesting, capable, creative and dedicated people I have ever met.

Kirk that doesn't sound like it was her work that won you over but her recognition. I don't know why you would have an issue showing the work that you thought was of merit, I had no problem showing links to the work of hers that I thought lacked merit.

[Drew Wiley]

I don't think anyone here ever implied she was less than intelligent or creative. It's the
dollar amt which is the shocker. Never mind Gursky, which is plainly labeled as a high art act. Remember how, slightly before that, the record-setting price for a photograph
was somewhat over 300 grand, and went for a half-faded early advertising C-print by
a largely unknown commercial photographer, apparently because it was a supreme
example of 50's kitch becoming trendy or nostalgaic or whatever. I personally couldn't
even understand how something like that could be collective - it was not only on a fugitive medium, but was alreadly looking hopelessly geriatric. Apparently the faded look gave it appeal - but given the condition, makes one wonder just why collectors
spend big money the way they do.

[Kirk Gittings]

Kirk that doesn't sound like it was her work that won you over but her recognition. I don't know why you would have an issue showing the work that you thought was of merit, I had no problem showing links to the work of hers that I thought lacked merit.

I have no problem, I just don't care about this discussion anymore-more important things to do like finishing my city arts commission so I can get paid.

[Scratched Glass]

Strange, my Untiled #96 sold for 3.9 dollars.

[JMB]

I see absolutely zero reason to continue in this discussion. But I will say this. What peaked my interest was when I read she was a McArthur Fellow. Hmmmm, not what I expected.



The New Guild

[The Board of Directors of the McArthur Foundation]


Don’t get me wrong. I think that the Foundation has recognized some very accomplished individuals during its history. But if anyone thinks that Sherman’s work is banal, nothing in the following CVs should make him shy about expressing his view just because the foundation recognized Sherman’s photographs in 1995.




Robert E. Denham is chair of MacArthur's Board. He is an attorney with the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, specializing in corporate, financial, and strategic issues. He is the former chair and Chief Executive Officer of Salomon Inc.

Lloyd Axworthy is the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. He served as Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996-2000. In 2004, he was appointed as the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Ethiopia-Eritrea to assist in implementing a peace deal between the East African countries.

John Seely Brown is the former chief scientist of Xerox Corporation and former director of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

Jack Fuller was president of Tribune Publishing (1997-2001) and on its board of directors from 2001 until he retired in 2004. In 1986 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials in the Chicago Tribune on constitutional issues. He is the author of News Values: Ideas for an Information Age and six novels.

Robert Gallucci, MacArthur's fourth President, served as Dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University for 13 years. Previously, as Ambassador-at-Large and Special Envoy for the U.S. State Department, he dealt with the threats posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

Jamie Gorelick is a partner in the Washington office of WilmerHale.

Mary Graham co-directs the Transparency Policy Project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Her current research focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of transparency systems as means of furthering public priorities.

Donald R. Hopkins is vice-president for health programs at The Carter Center, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization based in Atlanta, GA. He is responsible for leading public health efforts such as the Center's worldwide Guinea worm eradication initiative and its efforts to fight river blindness and trachoma in Africa and Latin America.

Daniel Huttenlocher is Dean of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University, where he is the John P. and Rilla Neafsey Professor of Computing, Information Science and Business. His research interests include computer vision, social and information networks, collaboration tools, geometric algorithms, financial trading systems, and IT strategy. He holds 24 U.S. patents and has published more than 75 technical papers.

Alan Krueger is the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Princeton University. He served as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2009--2010.

Will Miller is Chairman of Irwin Management Company, a Columbus, Indiana, private investment firm. Prior to October 2009, he was Chairman and CEO of Irwin Financial Corporation.

Mario J. Molina is a Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), with a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Mr. Molina received the Tyler Ecology & Energy Prize in 1983, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995, and the UNEP-Sasakawa Award in 1999.

Marjorie M. Scardino is Chief Executive Officer of Pearson, an international education and media group headquartered in London, England, whose businesses include The Financial Times Group, Penguin books, Pearson Education, and half of The Economist Group.

Claude M. Steele is Provost of Columbia University. He previously served as the Director of the Center of Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

John MacArthur was a businessman whose funds created the Foundation; Catherine was his second wife and a member of the boards of many of the firms he owned. John MacArthur was the sole owner of Bankers Life & Casualty Company, a Chicago-based firm he purchased in the 1930s. He had numerous real estate holdings in New York and Florida, and other businesses and real estate all over the country. He created the Foundation in 1970.

[Drew Wiley]

What in the Sam Hill is a resume list like that supposed to prove? Or what in heaven's
name does this kind of list have in common with visual fluency? Accomplished people
no doubt; but otherwise, what does any of this have in common with whether a
photograph works or not? Heck, the Unabomber was really really smart and accomplished too, but I wouldn't call him an expert on art.

[Brian Ellis]

Kirk that doesn't sound like it was her work that won you over but her recognition. I don't know why you would have an issue showing the work that you thought was of merit, I had no problem showing links to the work of hers that I thought lacked merit.

Have you considered the possibility that you have more time on your hands than Kirk does?

[paulr]

Off Topic aside. The board is not relevant. From the Macarthur site:


How Fellows are Chosen
Each year, the MacArthur Fellows Program invites new nominators on the basis of their expertise, accomplishments, and breadth of experience. They are encouraged to nominate the most creative people they know within their field and beyond. Nominators are chosen from as broad a range of fields and areas of interest as possible. At any given time, there are usually more than one hundred active nominators.

Nominations are evaluated by an independent Selection Committee composed of about a dozen leaders in the arts, sciences, humanities professions, and for-profit and nonprofit communities. Each nomination is considered with respect to the program's selection criteria, based on the nomination letter along with original works of the nominee and evaluations from other experts collected by the program staff.

After a thorough, multi-step review, the Selection Committee makes its recommendations to the President and board of directors of the MacArthur Foundation. Announcement of the annual list is usually made in September. While there are no quotas or limits, typically 20 to 30 Fellows are selected each year. Between June of 1981 and September of 2010, 828 Fellows have been named.

Nominators, evaluators, and selectors all serve anonymously and their correspondence is kept confidential. This policy enables participants to provide their honest impressions independent of outside influence.

The Fellows Program does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations.

[Drew Wiley]

Heck, I know Nobel prize candidates who are damn near color blind.

[JMB]

What in the Sam Hill is a resume list like that supposed to prove? Or what in heaven's
name does this kind of list have in common with visual fluency? Accomplished people
no doubt; but otherwise, what does any of this have in common with whether a
photograph works or not? Heck, the Unabomber was really really smart and accomplished too, but I wouldn't call him an expert on art.


That's the point!

[Jay DeFehr]

Other Macarthur fellows:


Robert Adams
Allison Anders
Edet Belzberg
Richard Benson
Charles Burnett
Wendy Ewald
Lee Friedlander
Alfredo Jaar
Susan Meiselas
Fazal Sheikh
Camilo José Vergara

[JMB]

Off Topic aside. The board is not relevant.


Tell that to the board. Don't be naive.

[paulr]

Tell that to the board. Don't be naive.

Show me a grant-giving organization in the arts where the administrators participate in the jurying process. Most are smart enough to distance themselves as much as possible, to avoid inevitable accusations of political influence, meddling, etc..

Shutting up on this topic, too. No one likes to think anyone knows anything.

[JMB]

Other Macarthur fellows:


Robert Adams
Allison Anders
Edet Belzberg
Richard Benson
Charles Burnett
Wendy Ewald
Lee Friedlander
Alfredo Jaar
Susan Meiselas
Fazal Sheikh
Camilo José Vergara

Re-read my message. I respect some of these choices. The Foundation is a bit of loose canon when it comes to photography.

[JMB]

Show me a grant-giving organization in the arts where the administrators participate in the jurying process. Most are smart enough to distance themselves as much as possible, to avoid inevitable accusations of political influence, meddling, etc..

Shutting up on this topic, too. No one likes to think anyone knows anything.

As I wrote, don't be naive. The point is that the photographs have substantial status quo support and are not in the least revolutionary. And no one should be shy about insisting that the photographs stand on their own. On the other hand, some are apparently very shy about displaying any of her photographs that allegedly can stand on its own.

[JMB]

Show me a grant-giving organization in the arts where the administrators participate in the jurying process. Most are smart enough to distance themselves as much as possible, to avoid inevitable accusations of political influence, meddling, etc...


Let me show you your own quotation instead:

"After a thorough, multi-step review, the Selection Committee makes its RECOMMENDATIONS to the President and board of directors of the MacArthur Foundation."


And the board could not be a better example of the status quo and commercial interests. The board is very much an example of the current guild that is willing to support substandard work. In any case, nothing is gained by citing the authority of the foundation in support of the photographs instead of answering the challenge to refer directly to a photograph itself.

[sanking]

Thanks for the interesting comments. Quite a diversion from the usual suspects such as "flatbed scanners compared to drum scanners", "digital output versus optical printing" etc. etc.

Amazing what discussions like this say about our perspectives.

I mostly agree with Kirk on all of this. Cindy Sherman's conceptual work is not my cup of tea but there is no question but that she has has a major impact on modern photography in the art world. And if you did not already know that it is not our job to educate you.

Sandy

[chris_4622]

I mostly agree with Kirk on all of this. Cindy Sherman's conceptual work is not my cup of tea but there is no question but that she has has a major impact on modern photography in the art world. And if you did not already know that it is not our job to educate you.

Sandy

It's not a question of whether she has had a major impact on modern photography. JMB and BrianK made very clear concise points as to how the conditions arose in the first place that would foster the growth and elevation of some modern artists.

[Drew Wiley]

Forging a fine art career has always required an inside track. You have to know someone or be patient until you stumble through the right door. Of course, you generally have to have some kind of real talent or salesmanship to back it up in the first place. But with photography in particular, people who actually earn their living as
artists per se are extremely rare. Nearly everyone supplements their income through
commercial work, teaching, workshops, stock or maybe book publishing, or like me,
through keeping a day job. The handful of those who make it through to the other side have probably thorougly paid their dues. Luck and favorable geographic location helps, but no point in being envious. And it will be interesting to see how the game
becomes played now that Fed and state grants for some of these things start
inevitably drying up. Heck, I'll be happy if I can sell enough prints in old age to support
my film addiction and still bring in a meaningful boost to my pension income etc. The
whole point is simply to do it and enjoy it. If everything else fails, just lugging the
8x10 over hill and dale sure beats trying to stay in shape by running like a rat on a treadmill in some smelly indoor city gym!

[paulr]

It's not a question of whether she has had a major impact on modern photography.

You've been reading a different thread from the one I've been reading.


JMB and BrianK made very clear concise points as to how the conditions arose in the first place that would foster the growth and elevation of some modern artists.

You've been reading a much different thread from the one I've been reading.

[sanking]

It's not a question of whether she has had a major impact on modern photography. JMB and BrianK made very clear concise points as to how the conditions arose in the first place that would foster the growth and elevation of some modern artists.

Perhaps we were responding to different threads?

Sandy

[JMB]

I mostly agree with Kirk on all of this. Cindy Sherman's conceptual work is not my cup of tea but there is no question but that she has has a major impact on modern photography in the art world. And if you did not already know that it is not our job to educate you.

Sandy

In other words, neither you nor Mr. Gittings are willing to offer evidence in support of your views.

In any case, with your late post we have come full circle, and I suppose that at least for my part it is timely to close it. To be sure, no man is obliged to educate another, but everyman is obliged to educate himself. A review of some previous posts that offer the thesis that a certain contemporary, status quo guild of mostly non-photographers seek to make work like Sherman’s influential (artificially) rather than report a genuine influence on real photographers might help you fulfill your duties to yourself. You certainly do not have to agree with the thesis, but you should read it sensitively.

Ironically, as far as I can tell, those who have so far claimed that Sherman's work is monumentally influential appear to reject her work themselves, and apparently would deny any of her influence in their own work. At the same time, they have also failed to show evidence of a body of other responsible workers who are impacted.

[sanking]

In other words, neither you nor Mr. Gittings are willing to offer evidence in support of your views.



No, I am absolutely not prepared to waste my time offering evidence that Cindy Sherman has had a major impact on modern photography. If you don't already know that you need to do your own research.

Sandy King

[Drew Wiley]

Well, I'm certainly not in her sphere of influence, and certainly have zero reason to be
(after all, one doesn't make ice cream using dill pickles and beef jerky - they're entirely unsuitable flavors) - but this fact certainly doesn't nullify the fact her work has set some kind of conspicuous precedent and influenced numerous others, and it
started quite some time ago. Live and let live. I'm free to question the visual validity of
this kind of work, and she's free to exhibit it and make as much money as she can.
The motive or strategy of dealers is a bit more complicated question. But I'm with
Sandy and Kirk on this one - there's already a track record out there.

[Jay DeFehr]

This discussion reminds me of something Susan Schultz said, "Being wrong feels just like being right. Realizing you're wrong feels much worse."

[jnantz]

when i was taking history of photography courses in 1980s cindy sherman was in the text
that was taught at the time ( i think it was written by beaumont newhall ).
just because one denies she has been an influence doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

if someone CHOOSES not to follow the rules of perfect lighting, perfect composition and
commerical-glitz doesn't mean they are not able to, it means they don't want to.

[Greg Blank]

Well my two cents is that Before this discussion - I had never heard of her- ever. I have been a photographer for over twenty seven years and I am fairly linked into at least the Baltimore Art scene through connection to MAP. I have an associates in applied art and design, what is shone on her website, does not particulary hold my interest as a photgrapher or an artist...and yes I can draw and paint.

I have also been helping other professional photographers from all over the US for what seems like eions. Her name never came up or was even mentioned in passing to me as a influencial photographer who's work I had to or should at least view as important - ever. Plenty of others I have a different experience with regard to. I have been to a fair number of contemporary shows over that 27 years span. After Googling her name I find that she is seemly one of the Aperture type photographers..I think there are a lot of far better photographers on this forum.




No, I am absolutely not prepared to waste my time offering evidence that Cindy Sherman has had a major impact on modern photography. If you don't already know that you need to do your own research.

Sandy King

[paulr]

Well, I'm certainly not in her sphere of influence, and certainly have zero reason to be (after all, one doesn't make ice cream using dill pickles and beef jerky - they're entirely unsuitable flavors) ...

This is a beautiful example of how an obvious truth can turn out to be merely a convention, and quite untrue.

Dill pickle and beef jerky ice creams are old news, and many flavors that once seemed way out there are now commonplace among adventurous diners. I studied pastry with one of the more conservative of the elite pastry innovators, and he wouldn't bat an eye at either of those. People pay a lot of money for his creations. Some other flavors that I've had or seen on menus:

chocolate wassabi, guiness, jalpeno, olive oil, sea water, bacon (crazy popular in many incarnations), sweet potato, tomato, peppercorn and terragon, caramel guacamole, porccini mushroom, seaweed, kimchee.

Your metaphor is a nice one, but I think it subverts the point you're trying to make.

[paulr]

Well my two cents is that Before this discussion - I had never heard of her- ever. I have been a photographer for over twenty seven years and I am fairly linked into at least the Baltimore Art scene through connection to MAP. I have an associates in applied art and design, what is shone on her website, does not particulary hold my interest as a photgrapher or an artist...and yes I can draw and paint.

I'm right there with you. I happen to be personal friends with many of the top vegetable judges at the county fair, and not one of us has ever heard of this so-called chief justice John Roberts, so how can he be so gosh darned high faultin'?

[Drew Wiley]

Now you're getting technical, Paul; but it was inevitable someone said it. Yeah, I suppose in a place like you're from, and certainly around an extremely cusine
experimental and ethnically diverse place like here, things like pickle ice cream actually exist (I know where you can buy it)- but most folks get my analogy. My favorite is white licorice ice cream; but at the moment we do have some pretty interesting ethnic flavors in our freezer that one typically wouldn't find most other places in the country. Allegedly there are more per capita restaurants around here, and more ethnic diversity among them, than any other place in the country, even NYC, though the Asian, Pacific rim, and Middle East influence predominates over the European one.

[Greg Blank]

So how did you manage with your feable knowledge base, to latch onto his name?


I'm right there with you. I happen to be personal friends with many of the top vegetable judges at the county fair, and not one of us has ever heard of this so-called chief justice John Roberts, so how can he be so gosh darned high faultin'?

[paulr]

Of course, of course. But i don't think I'm getting technical. I think your ice cream analogy illustrates something really nicely. There are things can be either way outside the bounds of acceptable, or perfectly normal, depending on the frame of reference and the expectations you've acquired.

Chinese food was once an exotic novelty in this country. Never mind sushi. And I think people are automatically more conservative with food than they are with visual arts, because food actually has to follow a few unbreakable rules (like, it can't be poisonous!)

[mdm]

I like Irish food but the mush they serve up in Scotland is not even fit for a pig. Even in a Michelin starred fish n chip shop. Its no wonder Susan Boyle has such a deep voice and hairy armpits.

[Greg Blank]

I think you should go for broke....what the hell.


, because food actually has to follow a few unbreakable rules (like, it can't be poisonous!)

[Edwin Beckenbach]

Ice cream truck and detail.

Seems popular.

[Richard Mahoney]

... at the moment we do have some pretty interesting ethnic flavors in our freezer that one typically wouldn't find most other places in the country. Allegedly there are more per capita restaurants around here, and more ethnic diversity among them, than any other place in the country, even NYC, though the Asian, Pacific rim, and Middle East influence predominates over the European one.

So that's where our endangered geckos are turning up. I wondered why so may `tourists' are so keen to get them out of the country. Drew, you should be ashamed :) And to think that the West Coast is cornering the market in hackles too ...


Best,

Richard

[paulr]

Allegedly there are more per capita restaurants around here, and more ethnic diversity among them, than any other place in the country, even NYC, though the Asian, Pacific rim, and Middle East influence predominates over the European one.

I didn't notice you were from the Bay Area. Yeah, you guys have everything. You put NYC to shame when it comes to Vietnamese and Mexican food. But don't talk to me about California style pizza. It is to my universe what cindy sherman is to yours :p

[paulr]

Ice cream truck and detail.
Seems popular.

I can't believe I left that one off my list! I've seen it before but never indulged. Creeps me out a little.

[Jay DeFehr]

Paul,

Isn't it much easier when your opponents make your point for you? I love the ice cream analogy! Perfect!

Unlike many, or even most of the posters here, I am a fan of Cindy Sherman's work. But then, I also enjoy David Lynch films (and his photography). Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series changed the way I look at photographs, but more importantly, it changed the way I think about photography.

[paulr]

Unlike many, or even most of the posters here, I am a fan of Cindy Sherman's work. But then, I also enjoy David Lynch films (and his photography). Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series changed the way I look at photographs, but more importantly, it changed the way I think about photography.

Could you elaborate? Some people seem to think people with your opinion don't exist!

If you don't want to, I'm happy to go back to talking about ice cream.

[Jay DeFehr]

I found Sherman's work several years agao, as I was just beginning to study photography. I'd always been interested in portraiture, and the way a portrait could reveal something about the identity of the subject, but my thinking was narrow, and restricted to an almost documentary approach. Sherman's Untitled Film Stills opened my eyes and my mind to other possibilities. That she was her own subject, that she played freely with her identity, and that she referenced non-existent films all combined to fascinate me, and liberate my thinking about what a portrait could be, and how we all create our own identities, and even the context that defines our identities. Admittedly, I was naive, and had I studied more formally I would undoubtedly and inevitably have faced those concepts with or without Sherman, but as it happenned, it was she. So, I've always had an appreciation for her work, and admired her as an artist, though my own portraits have been far more conventional. I attribute that apparent discrepency to my desire to learn the craft, as if I need to pay my dues. It's a ridiculous notion, and I'm trying to shake it off and get on with some creative work. I have some ideas........

[kev curry]

I like Irish food but the mush they serve up in Scotland is not even fit for a pig. Even in a Michelin starred fish n chip shop. Its no wonder Susan Boyle has such a deep voice and hairy armpits.

I quite enjoy reading comments such as these, there insightful. They generally reveal more about the mind of the author and in this case how superficial that mind is by the very nature of the criticisms they pen!

This thread makes me realize more than anything else that I know jack shit about art history!

[mdm]

I quite enjoy reading comments such as these, there insightful. They generally reveal more about the mind of the author and in this case how superficial that mind is by the very nature of the criticisms they pen!

This thread makes me realize more than anything else that I know jack shit about art history!

I knew I could count on you Kev. I wrote that to highlight the bigotry and naked prejudice that has filled this thread. The histroincs of tomcats.

[paulr]

I knew I could count on you Kev. I wrote that to highlight the bigotry and naked prejudice that has filled this thread. The histroincs of tomcats.

Let's make peace over kiwi & haggis ice cream.

[kev curry]

I'm choosy over the friendships I keep but I keep an open mind when it comes to ice cream and nearly always make perfect peace with it!

[Struan Gray]

Let's make peace over kiwi & haggis ice cream.

Deep fried in batter, of course.

It is often said that there is no gendered photography. I disagree. I see a lot of women photographers following a predictable career arc, from photographs of their friends and family, to macro shots of flowers and plants with zero depth of field, to moody self portraits in vaguely edgy settings. By the final stage of the arc they have, unlike most responders here, done their homework, and are citing Cindy Sherman or Francesca Woodman as influences.

Yes I'm a sexist pig. But you know I'm telling the truth. Men also do the kids and relatives thing at first, but they quickly get obsessed with technical distractions like sharpness when they start on the macro phase, and then they're lost, forever, ending up at the 8x10 maple-leaf-on-wet-rock terminus without ever disturbing their composure with fripperies like background reading.

The idea that Sherman hasn't strongly influenced several generations of photographers, whether art, commercial or amatuer, seems like those friends of mine who claim that lasers haven't really affected their lives. It's an opinion founded on a fundamental ignorance, and for the purposes of discussion or debate it doesn't much matter whether that ignorance is willful or innocent.

I have mixed feelings about Sherman, but then I have mixed feelings about most strongly conceptual photographers. Mostly because the standards of thinking and, especially, analysis demanded of artists are woefully low. Sherman's film stills - her most famous, and career-establishing work - are a case in point. For me, they are too easily read and digested, and they make points which were already old hat even on the periphery of the feminist debate by the time she made them.

The bits of plastic babies photos are just weird. In a good way, but still. I put them down to second-novel-syndrome: the desire and need to break away from a massive early success and grow as a creative artist. Maybe, like Beethoven's late quartets, or Bill Brandt's nudes, they are a good investment for the long term.

Sherman's later colour self portraits are something I have more time for. Their most obvious aspect is the bad makeup. The photo that sparked this thread includes a germ of this - I always think she looks sunburned when I see it, and diagnose heat exhaustion rather than existential angst or anything deeper. The makeup - like opera or any stage makeup designed to be seen from a distance - when seen up close makes it clear that you are watching a performance, and for me at least sparks off a loop of questions about a depiction of a performance of an idea about identity. Which is not to say that photographs about photographs are necessarily good or thought inducing, but these particular ones contain enough of a spark to engage my attention as part of what they do. The older B+W film stills are too lollipop-like easy to consume.

The later pictures also include more ambiguity in their props, costumes and staging. The eye and brain flit about trying to make sense of the whole, and in not succeeding, interact with the 'ceci n'est pas un pipe' aspect mentioned above, which in me leads to interesting musings about the whole process and purpose of looking at art, especially in a gallery setting.

I can see why people who like photographs of the things themselves don't like Sherman. I can see why people who value technical competence don't like Sherman. I can also see why people who are ready to consume ideas ready-packaged and relatively un-nuanced like her more than I do. That doesn't change my reaction to her work, and it certainly does not change the role she has already played in the contemporary arts scene for several decades. Even if her detractors here get their wish, and she is edged out of the official history of medium, she has an undeniable place in it's historiography. Good luck to her.

[paulr]

Lots of good ideas, Struan. On the subject of gendered photography, I think it's significant to mention how common it is for young (college age) women photographers to go through a self-portrait phase. My friend Anne McDonald teaches college courses on portraiture, and is amazed to find virtually all of her students obsessed with this kind of thing, as Anne herself had been for many years.

Sherman's twist was that she didn't precisely do self portraiture, but rather cast herself in roles. But the impulse to point the camera at oneself seems like it was probably at least a starting point.

You could say that the self portrait is to college women what the old barn door is to the boys around here.

[Drew Wiley]

What on earth off-topic drift did I start (again)? But we not only have so many ethnic
restaurants that one almost trips over them, but entire huge modern ethnic shopping
centers and supermarkets. And I don't just mean inner city Chinatowns etc. Probably
every nationality on earth has a restaurant here. I really like the Asian and Latin ice
creams because they aren't nuked with sugar like our typical American version and you
can really taste the fresh fruit flavors. I don't know about pizza; there's all kinds of choices for that too, some really good. But my wife makes better pizza than we can buy.

[paulr]

I don't know about pizza; there's all kinds of choices for that too, some really good. But my wife makes better pizza than we can buy.

If you're ever in NYC I can suggest what pizzerias to visit. and what galleries to avoid.

[Drew Wiley]

Thanks Paul. My wife was in NYC not long ago for a medical conference. Here in Bk the
best pizza places are Cheeseboard (thin crust vegan served with local Napa Valley wines, no beer), and across the street the pizza at Chez Panisse, arguably the most
influential restaurant in the country at the moment. My nephew knew someone who
worked there so was able to get in, back when he was a UC student. Bill Clinton
was in there snacking on pizza and sat down at his table and struck up a twenty minute conversation - apparently a real friendly guy (perhaps too friendly in some cases, but that's all history now).

[paulr]

Your most influential restaurant out there is probably the French Laundry in Yountsville. Chez Panisse was influential back in the 1970s when Alice Waters was the force behind new California cooking. She's been more of a food advocate than a chef in recent decades. Their pizza has gotten middling reviews from the east coast snob cognoscenti, but some LA joints have been getting steadily better. We're having a pizza renaissance in these parts. I used to make my own and finally surrendered when my local wood oven joint started putting me to shame.

Re: Clinton ... I love this SNL sketch (http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clinton-at-mcdonalds/2871), lampooning his charm and his lust for food.

[Drew Wiley]

Oh I don't know, Paul. Alice Waters has been to the current White House kitchen, and the Clintons still routinely drop in at Chez Panise. It's unbelievable how much variety in
fresh and organic produce is available in this town. I just printed an 8x10 shot of the
Zen farm out at Muir Beach, and I can't even look at the thing without running into the
kitchen and making a salad, otherwise I'd end up eating the print itself!

[paulr]

Well, Waters is a very important figure, but she's primarily a political one now. She's the Grand Damme of the slow food movement, and a founder of programs for getting good food into inner city schools. Michelle Obama has taken on food as a cause and so has embraced Waters as an ally, along with being active in the White House garden, etc...

And yes, the food at Chez Panisse is still delicious. It's just not new. It's based on the same ideas that launched the restaurant in the early 70s. Radical at the time, and completely standard now. So yes, their influence was enormous, and can be felt all over today. But the restaurants that are actively exerting influence today are doing very different things. It's places like Per Se, WD50, Alinea ... They take seasonal, fresh produce for granted, and are more focussed on what remarkable and transformative things can be done with it.

I do envy your farmers' markets. We have good ones here, but the growing seasons are so much longer in California. The year-round bounty you guys have is amazing. I don't know how the prices are out there. Here it seems like the farm markets used to be a bargain but have lately gotten really steep.

[Drew Wiley]

We have a number of huge indoor produce markets here, not so much Farmer's markets. Roadside fruit stands are common rural inland. Just wish people were into art
around here like they are into food. My former gallery rep was just in here joking about the distinction between the East and West in this respect, while we were deciding where to eat next time!!

[Bill_1856]

Wasn't she the recepient of a McArthur Award a few years ago? A Million Bucks, tax free.

[mandoman7]

Up here in Sonoma County, CA, there's a market in every community, and they're all doing quite well. Buying directly from a grower, or growing it yourself, is a significant and still growing trend. A lot of the art here is fairly direct, too...

[paulr]

Wasn't she the recepient of a McArthur Award a few years ago? A Million Bucks, tax free.

Well. Half a mil. Over five years.



As far as the big money, I did a little research on the auction winner who inspired this thread:





http://reason.com/assets/mc/tcavanaugh/drevil.jpg
Three point nine MILLION dollars ....

[Drew Wiley]

Sonoma is so close yet so far! A horrible commute from here, and the real estate even more expensive than here. If I was ever going to acquire a commercial gallery location it would have been last year, but all the storefront etc foreclosures were snatched up in a heartbeart, remodeled, and flipped within two or three months. So much for the recession. On to plan B, which is basically coast into retirement first. Don't want to rock the boat too much, especially with all the political uncertainty over health care etc. Most off the inner city type "art colonies" are basically "artistes", i.e., starving artists that deserve to starve. The really good ones are shipping there scultptures etc
east, or more often to the EU, Tokyo, or Souel Korea. You only get so many big breaks
in life, and I've passed all of mine up, specifically because I don't want to relocate away from the West. For every Cindy S. out there one wonders how many aspiring art
careers in that part of the world ended up driving taxis or waiting on tables. The odds
probably are almost as good winning a bit of the lottery. Like all the kids in the hood who think their ticket will be the NBA or as a rap singer. I grew up next to a town with
less than six kids in it, and one of them actually made it into the NBA. Another kid was
even a better basketball player than him, but at 5'4" couldn't even get a college
scholarship. You play the hand you get dealt.

[mandoman7]

Sonoma is so close yet so far! A horrible commute from here, and the real estate even more expensive than here. If I was ever going to acquire a commercial gallery location it would have been last year, but all the storefront etc foreclosures were snatched up in a heartbeart, remodeled, and flipped within two or three months. So much for the recession. On to plan B, which is basically coast into retirement first. Don't want to rock the boat too much, especially with all the political uncertainty over health care etc. Most off the inner city type "art colonies" are basically "artistes", i.e., starving artists that deserve to starve. The really good ones are shipping there scultptures etc
east, or more often to the EU, Tokyo, or Souel Korea. You only get so many big breaks
in life, and I've passed all of mine up, specifically because I don't want to relocate away from the West. For every Cindy S. out there one wonders how many aspiring art
careers in that part of the world ended up driving taxis or waiting on tables. The odds
probably are almost as good winning a bit of the lottery. Like all the kids in the hood who think their ticket will be the NBA or as a rap singer. I grew up next to a town with
less than six kids in it, and one of them actually made it into the NBA. Another kid was
even a better basketball player than him, but at 5'4" couldn't even get a college
scholarship. You play the hand you get dealt.

We don't have any artiste colonies around here, that's big city stuff, Drew. I share some, or a lot, of your cynicism about the art world, but did have several print sales this week that have made for a somewhat brighter outlook. I swallowed some pride (from my perspective) to get in to this gallery, but stuff moves there, apparently, having lots of upscale foot traffic.

[Mike Anderson]

I bought her "Complete Untitled Film Stills" a year ago and Amazon just sent me an offer to buy it back:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?redirect=true&field-keywords=0870705075&url=n=2205237011&6i=textbooks-tradein&ref_=pe_85300_19980960_pe_01

As of today (May 26) Amazon has 11 new in stock. I'm going to keep an eye on Amazon's availability count. Maybe that book will be a good investment. ;)

...Mike

[Drew Wiley]

I'm not worried about making money, John ... it's just the itch whether I want to risk
doing it big time, especially during geezerhood; but that's ironically when most people
seem to do things like that. Probably depends on my energy level. Right now I almost
go insane if I don't multitask - otherwise I wouldn't be bullshitting on this forum and
buying and selling tens of grand of machinery and supplies at the same time. I sure as
hell don't want to go cold turkey into retirement without some kind of gig.

[paulr]

Interesting for perspective:

the 15 most expensive photographs (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-15-most-expensive-pictures-ever-taken-2011-5#) (as of right now).

It's a curious mix of things you could call very traditional, contemporary, and anti-traditional. The only obvious trend is that as the years go by, photo prices are inching closer to painting prices.

[Drew Wiley]

That is sure an interesting list, Paul. Just goes to show that intrinsic value or talent has damn little to do with it. People with big money have their own whims and don't need a justification to spend it. Most interesting is a miserable snapshot by the Russian
president, probably just because he was/is ... But as we've all discussed elsewhere, no telling if the Lik purchase was genuine or a straw purchase. Wonder if som platinum Cameron print I passed up for $1200 in the 60's is going to sell to someone for over a
million some day ($1200 was a lot of money for a print back then). I don't know if a
mathematical or statistical equation can be written, but money + taste = 0 sometimes.

[paulr]

That is sure an interesting list, Paul. Just goes to show that intrinsic value or talent has damn little to do with it.

I see it as evidence of a diversity of tastes and approaches to the medium among wealthy collectors. Which I think is healthy compared with any of the alternatives.

[Mark Sawyer]

It's based on the same ideas that launched the restaurant in the early 70s. Radical at the time, and completely standard now. So yes, their influence was enormous, and can be felt all over today. But the restaurants that are actively exerting influence today are doing very different things...

Sounds like Cindy Sherman! :rolleyes:

[paulr]

Sounds like Cindy Sherman! :rolleyes:

I almost said that but you're braver.

[rdenney]

Who here is (or trying to be) a good critic? This is just a bunch of aging hobbyists with various chips on their shoulders, venting their prejudices. :rolleyes:

Well, I guess that puts me in my place. But you seemed to enjoy my praise of your work. (And if you didn't intend me, then perhaps you need a less broad brush.)

The only chip on my shoulder is...

...wait, I don't have a chip on my shoulder. I'm just trying to understand what I'm seeing. Paul keeps talking about seeing things as a body of work, and I looked at whole portfolios of Friedlander's work. The image that stays with me is a picture through a car window. Form? Subtlety? I'm sure it's there, but I don't see it. I don't believe I live up to Paul's description of me, but that doesn't mean I'm venting prejudices.

The ones I see venting prejudices in this thread actually purport to be professional artists.

The Wyeth painting I linked (and the dream-state painting that was shown for my benefit) brings up a question: Are these paintings worthwhile because of their technique or in spite of it? So many complaints have to do with technical issues that it makes me think the principle prejudice of photographers is the supremacy of technique. I suspect the key to Sherman (or Friedlander) lies not in the choice of aperture or in the way it was printed.

Rick "in Alaska and not really caring so much one way or the other this week" Denney

[Struan Gray]

I looked at whole portfolios of Friedlander's work. The image that stays with me is a picture through a car window. Form? Subtlety? I'm sure it's there, but I don't see it.

Executive summary of why I love Friedlander: look at this photograph:

http://www.artnet.com/usernet/awc/awc_workdetail.asp?aid=424415352&gid=424415352&cid=84105&wid=424427412&page=10

It's a mess, right? Wrong. It's syncopated. Think jazz or live blues with cross rhythms and bending of the beat to create tension. There's perfect coordination of the shadows, lines, vanishing points and blocks of tone to create a self-consistent strongly aesthetic whole. And in the middle of it all, there's a dog with it's tongue out, crossed out by a lamppost, saying "don't take this too seriously".

Had Friedlander done this once he'd be good, but he's done it again and again and again. He's taken the formal aesthetic tension of this picture and added the tangled fractals of nature - a feat akin to successfully merging "Eight Red Rectangles" and "Lavender Mist".

One caveat: try to see some prints. The formal structure of these photos is so strong that they depend more than most on being seen at the right size. The interaction between the various shapes, lines and elements can get completely skewed at typical web sizes. "Sticks and Stones" is my favourite of Friedlander's recent series, and the photos are much more readable at exhibition size (around 40 cm square) and the messy aspect less dominating. You get a real sense of the ordinary, with a little touch of magic.

[Darin Boville]

Interesting for perspective:

the 15 most expensive photographs (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-15-most-expensive-pictures-ever-taken-2011-5#) (as of right now).

It's a curious mix of things you could call very traditional, contemporary, and anti-traditional. The only obvious trend is that as the years go by, photo prices are inching closer to painting prices.

Hey,

There a Peter Lik "capture" in there! We can merge two similar threads...

--Darin

[Kirk Gittings]

Executive summary of why I love Friedlander: look at this photograph:

http://www.artnet.com/usernet/awc/awc_workdetail.asp?aid=424415352&gid=424415352&cid=84105&wid=424427412&page=10

It's a mess, right? Wrong. It's syncopated. Think jazz or live blues with cross rhythms and bending of the beat to create tension. There's perfect coordination of the shadows, lines, vanishing points and blocks of tone to create a self-consistent strongly aesthetic whole. And in the middle of it all, there's a dog with it's tongue out, crossed out by a lamppost, saying "don't take this too seriously".

Had Friedlander done this once he'd be good, but he's done it again and again and again. He's taken the formal aesthetic tension of this picture and added the tangled fractals of nature - a feat akin to successfully merging "Eight Red Rectangles" and "Lavender Mist".

One caveat: try to see some prints. The formal structure of these photos is so strong that they depend more than most on being seen at the right size. The interaction between the various shapes, lines and elements can get completely skewed at typical web sizes. "Sticks and Stones" is my favourite of Friedlander's recent series, and the photos are much more readable at exhibition size (around 40 cm square) and the messy aspect less dominating. You get a real sense of the ordinary, with a little touch of magic.

I was a student at UNM when he took this. I met him briefly on that trip at a little party. Having grown up here I was a bit amazed at his vision of this place. He found things to photograph in the most mundane urban landscapes. That impressed and taught me something important as a student.

[Drew Wiley]

The kind of division of space Friedlander was attempting was a fairly common visual
exercise in the 70's. I think it goes clear back to the influence of Klee at the Chicago
Institute of Art. But long before this, Charles Sheeler was doing analogous compositions. I've seen a number of dye transfer prints by Raghubir Singh of India along these lines, and of course Stephen Shore was successful with his particlar C print pallette. I really like these complex compositions. Now you've got guys like Burtynsky with their fascinating "shattered glass" sorta-exploded way of composition. But I still hold Carleton Watkins in the highest esteem, because no one else has ever come so close integrating hard structural angles and intricate organic tapestry together in the same image (though he accomplished this only a few times, and these particular images might not even be published - seems he's still a step ahead of the what the curators and critics can visualize themselves).

[mandoman7]

Who here is (or trying to be) a good critic? This is just a bunch of aging hobbyists with various chips on their shoulders, venting their prejudices. :rolleyes:


The ones I see venting prejudices in this thread actually purport to be professional artists.


Mr. Denney brought up the example of Andrew Wyeth, who's work always soid well but didn't really get much recognition from the art world elite of his day. Here's a quote from a Thomas Wolff's review of Wyeth's work regarding this lack of acceptance...
"If there is one thing the elite of the art world cannot abide it is the realization that an artist they might admire is also the particular favorite of plumbers and farmers. It threatens their claim to be ‘special’, to have insights and sensitivities beyond those of 'ordinary' human beings.... Not surprisingly, it is important to these people that art be perceived in the most precious and progressive of terms, as something so subtle and innovatlve that only persons of unusual refinement and imagination could possibly understand and appreciate it."

Its kind of a reverse point to what's being said about Sherman and Friedlander, but seems to have some application here. If someone doesn't get the point of the work of those artists, then its due to their lack of artistic sophistication, of course.

[Drew Wiley]

Heck, even Peter Lik has earned his place in art history: nobody else has ever succeeded so well in the volume production of designer toilet paper.

[Mark Sawyer]

The kind of division of space Friedlander was attempting was a fairly common visual exercise in the 70's...

I think Friedlander's imagery could best be traced back tho Steiglitz' The Steerage from 1907. (Wikipedia has Steiglitz' description of the composition, which jibes nicely with Kirk's description of how Friedlander's image works.) Why that image doesn't pop up on the "most expensive photographs ever" lists I don't understand...

Trying to figure out a predecessor to Cindy Sherman's work, the closest I could think of was Frida Kahlo's self portraits, but there are probably better, earlier sources. (Anyone?)

[paulr]

The kind of division of space Friedlander was attempting was a fairly common visual

I don't think anyone did as to the degree (or as well) as Friedlander.


Charles Sheeler was doing analogous compositions.

I see them as antithetical. Sheeler was about tightening and perfecting formal structures. Fiedlander was about playing with them, fracturing them, almost, but never quite to the point that they fly apart. They are icons of the early modern (centripetal) and late modern (centrifugal) approaches. And Sheeler's pictures, as much as I love them, are never funny.

Most of the artists you mention are great in their own way (I would hesitate to include Burtynsky in this company, but that's another topic ...). Carleton Watkins prefigured the modernists by decades before anyone noticed (along with W.H. Jackson and O'Sullivan). Shore had his own brilliant vision ... similar, but very distinct from Friedlander's. Shore's pictures are more contained; they don't tend toward flying to pieces. Winogrand is a closer analog, but his pictures too are unmistakably his own.

[paulr]

Trying to figure out a predecessor to Cindy Sherman's work, the closest I could think of was Frida Kahlo's self portraits, but there are probably better, earlier sources. (Anyone?)

I'll ask my friend Anne her opinion. She lectures on the history of staged and fantasy photography. I'm guessing she'll point to someone Victorian. A collector I know has a theory that every type of picture that's ever been conceived can be found somewhere in the 19th century.

As far as the comparison to The Steerage, I don't see it. That's much more along the lines of Sheeler in its early modern bent. Very tight, very controlled. Stieglitz's innovation was the ability to make such a contained image of such a chaotic scene. Szarkowski no doubt placed this in the technological history of the medium as well as the visual history ... handheld photography was pretty new in 1915 and people weren't used to seeing the world tamed in an instant. Friedlander doesn't tame anything ... he's more about finding a way to lovingly coexist with a wild beast in the parlor.

[Drew Wiley]

Maybe the Steerage would command a huge price if it came up for sale. But auctions
can be very fluky - I've seen certain images sell for five or ten times at auction than
the asking retail price at certain dealers at the very same juncture in time, and you
know they were expecting to make money too. I remember classic vintage Edward Weston prints (printed by himself) being literally thumbtacked to Celotex wallboard in
the college library. Almost nobody bothered to even look at them, let alone steal them.
The whole point of an auction is to foster hype and the status that comes with a
successful purchase of something prominent. As a kid I had schoolmates who repeatedly won grand champion state prizes on livestock. Some retaurant would come
along and pay top dollar for a prize steer just to say they were serving it. In fact, the sale of that single critter paid for four years of college; but it probably didn't taste any better than any other steer. It like the businessmen who will pay the equivalent
of a thousand bucks for a single bite of top-pick tuna - in that case it might tast a
tiny bit better; but ego and status certainly must have a lot to do with it.

[Drew Wiley]

Paul - I appreciate your comments, but think that Sheeler did indeed have an element
of humor or irony at times. There's a couple of shots of big machines in the Ford plant that look almost like sci-fi creatures from a Termintor movie or something like that. People were doing quite a bit of stuff like that in the late 60's into the 70's with farm equip etc, but more in a Pop art sense. If Sheeler had a precdent for that, it would have been in Surrealism or Dada - but maybe he was just having fun with it. Not everything in art is based on this or that ... there a plenty of parallels and reinventions of things too, once the proper ingredients are in place.

[paulr]

Sure, everything has precedent of one sort or another. Most innovation is some kind of synthesis or other variation. Most of the talk in defense of Friedlander is, I suspect, an attempt to explain something subjective: the sense that I haven't been shown the world like this before.

I look at his precedents, and can see the lineage, but but his work still looks different in a way that feels substantial. I never get the sense of "oh, this again." And that's a sense that I get often, looking at all kinds of work. Lately, my own included.

[paulr]

Speaking of Sheeler, several years ago SFMOMA acquired a gargantuan collection of American Modernist photography, and launched a big show with a big hardcover catalog. In spite of all the big names and famous images, Sandra Philips (who curated the show) considered this 1915 picture by Sheeler

http://www.tfaoi.com/cm/2cm/2cm403.jpg

the most important one of all. According to her, it's the first known example of this kind of abstraction of space in photography, predating similar efforts by Strand and Weston by many years.

[Mark Sawyer]

I'll ask my friend Anne her opinion. She lectures on the history of staged and fantasy photography. I'm guessing she'll point to someone Victorian. A collector I know has a theory that every type of picture that's ever been conceived can be found somewhere in the 19th century.

As far as the comparison to The Steerage, I don't see it. That's much more along the lines of Sheeler in its early modern bent. Very tight, very controlled. Stieglitz's innovation was the ability to make such a contained image of such a chaotic scene. Szarkowski no doubt placed this in the technological history of the medium as well as the visual history ... handheld photography was pretty new in 1915 and people weren't used to seeing the world tamed in an instant. Friedlander doesn't tame anything ... he's more about finding a way to lovingly coexist with a wild beast in the parlor.

I've heard the theory many times, that everything in art/photography was done in the nineteenth century, and I suppose it's true if you stretch your vision enough. I can see Cameron's work being cited as an ancestor of Sherman's, but it's a pretty distant relative for me.

Then again, I see Friedlander's image as a direct descendant of Stieglitz'. You're right, Stieglitz created a much more controlled and structured image, where Friedlander lets it dance on the edge of chaos, and isn't that in their personalities? But both were very deliberately organizing the hard-edged and very random compositional elements of a man-made environment towards their own ends.


...like the businessmen who will pay the equivalent
of a thousand bucks for a single bite of top-pick tuna - in that case it might taste a
tiny bit better; but ego and status certainly must have a lot to do with it.

Agreed, but there is still an appreciation somewhere for "this is the best". Perhaps the wealthy sushi-eaters and art collectors must sometimes be goaded into proper consumption by "gourmet" chefs and art dealers, but there is a qualifying pedigree in there somewhere. Mind you, the tuna probably doesn't appreciate it...

[Brian Ellis]

I think Friedlander's imagery could best be traced back tho Steiglitz' The Steerage from 1907. (Wikipedia has Steiglitz' description of the composition, which jibes nicely with Kirk's description of how Friedlander's image works.) Why that image doesn't pop up on the "most expensive photographs ever" lists I don't understand...

Trying to figure out a predecessor to Cindy Sherman's work, the closest I could think of was Frida Kahlo's self portraits, but there are probably better, earlier sources. (Anyone?)

Stieglitz' description of how he made the photograph is mostly BS. He claims he saw the composition - man with white hat, guy with white suspenders, etc. - but didn't have his camera with him. So he supposedly raced from the steerage area of the ship back to his first class suite, grabbed his camera, loaded it, and raced back to the steerage area and made the photograph. Right. How nice for him that nothing of significance changed while he was doing all this. The guy in the white hat stayed put, the guy in the white suspenders stayed there, the people in steerage stayed where they were, etc.

Which doesn't detract from the photograph any more than Carteir-Bresson's BS about how he photographed detracts from his photographs. Stieglitz isn't the first artist to figure out what he was doing only after he had done it.

[paulr]

The "everything was done in the 19th century" idea is too loose and fast to be called a real theory. But it's a fun way to point out the crazy variety of experiments that people were doing back then. The range is amazing considering the newness the medium was and the relatively tiny number of practitioners. And also considering our tendency to see that whole century as fitting into a handful of little esthetic boxes.

[Mark Sawyer]

Agreed, Paul! Human beings are natural sorters; organizing things in little boxes is one one of the ways we like to figure things out. And we like to credit "the first" of anything, though evolution theoretically, and usually in practice, brings improvement.

[Drew Wiley]

Like I suggested, "precedent" might just mean the raw materials (conceptually and
technically) are in place, then different people start drawing upon that in their own
way, and not necessarily dependent upon a linear chain of who's influneced by whom.
For example, I find it pretty hard to point to who might have influenced Brett Weston.
Abstraction was already in full gear, but saying Sheeler did it first (even though that
probably is an inaccurate statement in itself), still doesn't make it two plus two by any
means. Or pointing out superficial similarities of self-explanantion or self-exploration between Frieda Cahlo and Cindy S. might not prove any linear connection whatsoever.
Better to ask the specific artist what they were thinking, if they're still alive, and even
then they might pull a retrospective PR comment on you.

[mandoman7]

Reminds me of the "potted plant" gigs we often play.

[Drew Wiley]

Paul - by the standards of the painters, no kind of photography can be considered true
abstraction. One might use photographic materials to create something abstract; but
once any kind of real-world image is taken, it's representational or something real, no matter how much it mimics a painterly style. We photographers have commandeered the vocabulary! Even worse - the ideal of abstraction in modern pop photography generally just refers to repetitious patterns in nature and so forth.

[Mike Anderson]

Executive summary of why I love Friedlander: look at this photograph:

http://www.artnet.com/usernet/awc/awc_workdetail.asp?aid=424415352&gid=424415352&cid=84105&wid=424427412&page=10


There are so many things wrong with that picture. The rule of thirds is only marginally applied. There doesn't seem to be a subject other than a fire hydrant or the building behind the fire hydrant. Hello?!?!? Lee baby, I love you but make up your mind. Photography is about being decisive (some famous French guy said something like that). And have you tried the latest version of Photoshop? You can easily remove that dog bisected by the pole (there are tools out there that can help you - don't be afraid to use them). And that crooked telephone pole - easily corrected in Photoshop if you take the time. But don't be discouraged, overall the contrast is good and exciting and sharpness is excellent, you just need to work on composition.

...Mike

[Darin Boville]

Executive summary of why I love Friedlander: look at this photograph:

http://www.artnet.com/usernet/awc/awc_workdetail.asp?aid=424415352&gid=424415352&cid=84105&wid=424427412&page=10

It's a mess, right? Wrong. It's syncopated. Think jazz or live blues with cross rhythms and bending of the beat to create tension. There's perfect coordination of the shadows, lines, vanishing points and blocks of tone to create a self-consistent strongly aesthetic whole. And in the middle of it all, there's a dog with it's tongue out, crossed out by a lamppost, saying "don't take this too seriously".

Had Friedlander done this once he'd be good, but he's done it again and again and again. He's taken the formal aesthetic tension of this picture and added the tangled fractals of nature - a feat akin to successfully merging "Eight Red Rectangles" and "Lavender Mist".

One caveat: try to see some prints. The formal structure of these photos is so strong that they depend more than most on being seen at the right size. The interaction between the various shapes, lines and elements can get completely skewed at typical web sizes. "Sticks and Stones" is my favourite of Friedlander's recent series, and the photos are much more readable at exhibition size (around 40 cm square) and the messy aspect less dominating. You get a real sense of the ordinary, with a little touch of magic.

I've always found this photograph more interesting than exciting. More intellectually fun then emotionally compelling. Ditto for the whole genre.

Then again I feel the same way -gasp- about jazz.

--Darin

[Jim Jones]

There are so many things wrong with that picture. The rule of thirds is only marginally applied. There doesn't seem to be a subject other than a fire hydrant or the building behind the fire hydrant. Hello?!?!? Lee baby, I love you but make up your mind. Photography is about being decisive (some famous French guy said something like that). And have you tried the latest version of Photoshop? You can easily remove that dog bisected by the pole (there are tools out there that can help you - don't be afraid to use them). And that crooked telephone pole - easily corrected in Photoshop if you take the time. But don't be discouraged, overall the contrast is good and exciting and sharpness is excellent, you just need to work on composition.

...Mike

He did get the vertical lines almost vertical. As for the rule of thirds, that's mostly a crutch for the uninspired to lean on. Without the dog there's no reason to make the photograph. Elliott Erwitt would have done something more clever involving the relationship of dogs and fire hydrants, but Friedlander perhaps did the best he could at that moment. A belly laugh is better than a snicker, but a snicker beats nothing.

[D. Bryant]

There are so many things wrong with that picture. The rule of thirds is only marginally applied. There doesn't seem to be a subject other


You're pulling our leg, right?:(

[Drew Wiley]

I don't like that he visually split the dog right in half. If the dog were meant to be a
symbol of a conflicted state, a different breed would be preferable. Poodles are inherently schizophrenic. Gursky would have at least Photoshop substituted the correct breed of dog. Lik would have made the dog fluorescent purple and eight feet
across.

[Mike Anderson]

You're pulling our leg, right?:(

Would I do that? I'm just trying help those less informed than I am.

;)

...Mike

[mdm]

There are so many things wrong with that picture. The rule of thirds is only marginally applied. There doesn't seem to be a subject other than a fire hydrant or the building behind the fire hydrant. Hello?!?!? Lee baby, I love you but make up your mind. Photography is about being decisive (some famous French guy said something like that). And have you tried the latest version of Photoshop? You can easily remove that dog bisected by the pole (there are tools out there that can help you - don't be afraid to use them). And that crooked telephone pole - easily corrected in Photoshop if you take the time. But don't be discouraged, overall the contrast is good and exciting and sharpness is excellent, you just need to work on composition.

...Mike

Hilarious. Thank you.

[paulr]

Paul - by the standards of the painters, no kind of photography can be considered true abstraction.

Abstraction vs. representation (like most binaries) is an artifice.

Although I don't actually agree that pure abstraction is impossible in photography—if you can't identify the subject, then the image would count as such—but that's not really important and it doesn't apply to the Sheeler photograph.

It's more useful to think of Abstraction and representation as a sliding scale or a question of degree. The more the the form is the subject, the more we think of an image as abstract. Sheeler's image was revolutionary at the time for the degree of abstraction, and for the way he compressed space.

And I didn't make this observation; Sandra Philps did. Neither of us wants to get into an art history argument with her!

[paulr]

Elliott Erwitt would have done something more clever involving the relationship of dogs and fire hydrants, but Friedlander perhaps did the best he could at that moment.

I don't know man. Erwitt is an old friend of my family's but he's not in Friedlander's league. Erwitt's dog pics are fabulously witty one-liners. Friedlander's are symphonies.

[Kirk Gittings]

Somebody should post that Friedlander on Luminous Landscape and ask for a critic.

[paulr]

Hilarious. Thank you.

I think Mike's po-po-mo critique was inspire by this (http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/11/great-photographers-on-the-internet-part-ii.html) stroke of genius.

But if Mike would allow me to retort, it looks like Mr. Friedlander has already graduated to using the rule of fourths.