pictures that break composition rules

[Drew Wiley]

... of course, that is a rule to be broken too. Don Worth made shadow boxes with collages and porcelain plates at flowers. The flowers were obviously perishable.
But otherwise, one was just left wondering why he bothered. The big Ciba prints from the 8x10 chromes were wonderfully detailed due to such a shallow depth
of field; but why didn't he just build the shadow box and leave it at that? But that was a kinda obvious cul-de-sac. I've got an equipment customer who makes huge intricate origami-style sculptures out precisely cut and folded aircraft aluminum honeycomb panel, which in turn have 3-D iridescent hologram photographs
printed on them. Expensive commissioned work, of course. How do you classify it. I dunno. If I photographed something like that, it would still be a photograph.

[Kirk Gittings]

No. Absolutely not, Kirk. They photographed it. They built a tangible, visible set or model, focused upon it. It was there, and therefore not an abstraction in sense Kandinsky first broke that threshold, as defined by the precedent of painting. The model might be an abstraction, in the sense of a collage or sculpture. But the photograph of it isn't.

Actually the Kandinsky threshold is likely a phantom.http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comme...-not-kandinsky Who knows how many other people were out there experimenting that never made it into the art history books. Kids for example just playing with color and shape for the hell of it.

[Drew Wiley]

I don't think so, Kirk. That link had distinct subject matter in it, flowers. Kandinsky was conspicuously edging up to something incrementally, conceptually, along
with others like Cezanne and the Fauvists. I'm even more fond of when he was almost to the finish line than over it. It wasn't about mere quilt patterns. There
was a level of genius to it, not accident. I'm sure you or I could go out and find some petroglyphs and call that "abstract", but it still wouldn't be the same thing,
any more than tic-tac-toe crosshatches. I've got one of those fun "Why Cat's Paint" calendars. No cat is Kandinsky. Who knows what they're thinking when someone sticks their paw in paint and has them swat a piece of paper - maybe killing birds and watching the feathers fly? One of my cats swats the TV screen anytime a bird documentary is on. Otherwise, she completely ignores TV. No cat is a starving artist. They expect to be fed for no work at all.

[RSalles]

Kirk,

I understand otherwise, abstractionism being another thing but not figurative... If it's from a person, a portrait, if an object, a still life, from a nature scenery, a landscape.

It have been a real issue for figurative painters when photography became "the exact representation of the object perceived" in terms of shapes, light, shadows, and so on. Their calm and assured way of life as a figurative painters has been shaken deeply with the advent of the photography. We can understand the necessity of these artists going toward a path each time farther from the purely descriptive painting, searching for new perception characteristics other then the exact replication from the visible reality - which any person with good skills with the new medium could make with less "talent".

We find sometimes all sort of conversations of photography being or not an "art" in the strict sense, but looking otherwise, what really have been happen with the painture in terms of innovation if never have been a thing like photography, to challenge its status of perfect medium of reproduction of the visual reality,

Cheers,

Renato

[Kirk Gittings]

Who knows what they're thinking

Exactly. Hence there is no good reason to not think they were doing abstraction.

[djdister]

Well I guess this thread should be removed or renamed then...

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...8941-Abstracts

[prendt]

One of my cats swats the TV screen anytime a bird documentary is on. Otherwise, she completely ignores TV. No cat is a starving artist. They expect to be fed for no work at all.

Drew, cats are one of the few animals capable to watch TV like we, humans, do. I.e. they capable of seeing a scene on the screen and perceive it as a reality you're in. No wonder your cat ignores Shakespeare but watches birds on TV.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, everyone knows what "abstract" photographs allegedly involve, so no big deal. I've never seen an abstract photograph. I've seen lots and lot of photographs
of things in nature people labeled as abstract. But they're not. They're seen things, which mimic the feel of what painters have done. Analogously, using a soft focus lens and printing colorful things on pastel paper does not constitute Impressionism. It merely mimics it, usually badly. One has the consider what went into
the pipeline first, then went out afterwards, before one confuses Kandinsky with some kid with a DLSR and macro lens aimed at some rock cracks, or what some
aerial photographer does with landforms. I enjoy the challenge of finding things in situ and making an intriguing composition out of it. But that's photography.

[RSalles]

I like a lot what Man Ray, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Carl Chiarenza and many others make, in the middle of what is supposed to be a pictorialist or "straight" photography and pure abstractionism. "Purity" - btw - always have to be pushed, pressed, straightened, tortured until the born/conception the new comes to life - and just to cite what I readed from a forum member some time ago, otherwise we could have been still painting cave walls,


Cheers,

Renato

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah... they'd smush a soft emulsion and then paint alter it as they perceived some imaginary image in the smush. All kinds of fun things that tweak the taxonomic pigeonholes. On one hand, rules are made to be broken. On the other hand, it's pretty darn liberating to confine yourself to a flat rectangular plane on a groundglass and make something compelling out of that. But what Kandinsky did with that historic watercolor, nobody else could have done. Every little squiggle has magical feeling, form, and color balance proprietary to him. There was a tremendous amount leading up to it. Nor can someone dropping a can of paint on the highway ever equate to a Jackson Pollock painting, though we photographers might select something within an accidental paint splatter that achieves a satisfying composition. But it was there, to be found, seen, photographed. But don't knock the cave painters. It was Miro who stated that art has only gone downhill since.