Maybe he hasn't been introduced to BanksyOriginally Posted by paulr
Maybe he hasn't been introduced to Banksy
You're not making any friends knocking people's photography styles here.
If someone sees a falling over barn or rust/paint or a plain landscape, sees beauty in it and wants a photo, and maybe learns or hones some sort of skill in the process, it's good and not a waste of time. People wouldn't bring those photos to art fairs for long if they didn't sell, so it's apparently worth doing, just something few of us are interested in pursuing.
Photographing peeling paint is one thing. Someone going out with spray cans and tagging is not art. It's a property crime. Interesting discussion about that over in SF lately. A commercial property owner who doesn't clean up the mess gets fined more than the tagger who caused it. Seems the victim should be suing the city for not protecting property rather than the other way around. The sums of money required to clean up a major incident involved in can run into many thousands of dollars, which logically constitute felony territory. Or you get these E-Geek offices over there nowadays that actually pay people to come in there and spray-paint the walls during work hours so they can customize things. If someone tried that here I'd have them instantly arrested on a health and safety violation. It's illegal period - EPA, OSHA, health dept - not just locally, nationwide. Might as well be sniffing glue. So yeah... it does make a statement, that someone is either stupid to begin with or trying real hard to become stupid permanently.
+1, Well said koh303.
Look up "false dichotomy."
There's no definition of art that says it has to be legal.
And not all street art is illegal. Graffiti artists that I know always ask permission from property owners. They show sketches first. Why? Because what they do is a lot of work, and they don't want it to get painted over.
Street art is often sponsored by the city in public places. It's supported by grants.
Try something novel and research a topic before forming a negative opinion about it. I promise—it'll only hurt for a minute.
Indeed, anyone who does not have cash to burn on really useless and meaningless, thoughtless and mostly no art education whatsoever type of photography is actually smart, not stupid, and makes excellet work to be admired. Marshall Mcluhan would have a field day with this one. In a nut shell, this interesting thread about the merits of art education at the post graduate level has ended with Wiley's definition of who should be arrested because of the quality of the art they may or may not make.
In my humble opinion rust bucket/paint chip/lone tree at the grand canyon of yosemite should be arrested for wasting film, and money that could have otherwise be used to feed the masses (and save some fish along the way). They can spend all their time in the pen, penning those greatly boring ideas of "ideal and conceprual" beauty that sells so well in craft fairs and call it art.
Having an art education might be useless in most cases, but can also be priceless when considering what is an "art" felony. Surely creative thinking, even if not at the Bansky level, are by far better then more of the same, of people who are "learning" how to get better at more of the same.
There is nothing wrong with making statements, defying the law, rebelling against societies inadequacies, and pointing out to anyone who passes by that not everything can fit inside small cubes of understanding so common here. Robert Venturi talks about this in his book learning from Las Vegas. Drew - you should read it, it might make you think twice about those felons (though the second though might still be to put them away and throw away the key for violating OSHA regulations).
If you are still not sure what i am talking about check this out:
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhib.../oxidation.php
posted at the risk of trolling (or feeding the troll)
Indeed there is no accounting for taste, but the masses choice does not make something good, rather, in most cases popular things are down right awful.
If being worth doing is the measure, pornography is most likely the best and most successful type of art.
One irony I find in these discussions. Oftentimes the critics of old school peeling paint photography are obvious descendants of New Topographics. So while one is following a 40 year old tradition (New Topographics and criticizing a 45-65 year old tradition (late modernism-Brett Weston to Siskind).
In my mind the first question is never "is it new" but in my mind "is it any good". IMHO very little is actually new and even less is any good.
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
Indeed.
I've bought some fine photography at art fairs, including from some people who frequent this site. Lumping all "art fair" photography together is a bit needlessly dismissive.
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
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