Coca-Cola at Fine-Wine Prices?

[Alex Hawley]

There you go - making fun of the educated, again, Jorge. Anything you want to tell us?

Being "educated" is the only way of having any praise for the photo of discussion. My redneck butt brain still thinks it stinks. Any teenager or college dorm dweller can make the same photo any day of the week and its probably been done many thousand times.

Have to compliment Wall on the way he gets the "educated" to spend that much money on something of so little merit. That's the real "art" here.

[Colin Graham]

By the way, I've seen a lot of Goyas. If that is what you expect from Wall, don't waste your time. On the other hand, I don't think that I'd like to evaluate Goya on the basis of a 3"x4" .jpeg on the net, which is pretty much what the net offers as reproductions of Wall's work, and which is qualitatively not the same thing as seeing a connected series of backlit transparencies on the order of 15'x20'. The only thing missing from the internet reproductions of his work, apart from the fact that backlit transparencies and internet .jpeg images are just not the same thing, is the content. In the 3"x4" .jpegs, the content isn't there. And that is a big problem if one chooses to evalute his work based on a tiny image on a computer screen.

r.e, I can't believe I'm clarifying this, but I don't expect all art to look like Goya. I only mentioned him because I used his work in a previous example, as did a review of the photograph Untangling.

On another note, it's not difficult to tell things about composition or originality from a small sample. Postage stamps have led me to explore Dorothea Lange's work. And no, I don't expect Wall's work to be like her's either. I spent around two hours last night during my involvement with this thread looking into Jeff Wall because I was curious. If I was an artist, I'd love to have that sort of consideration from a potential audience.

[Doug Howk]

The Art Con-a-sewer(sp?) has of late been indicating by their purchases that theatrical & concept photography is on the creative cutting edge. 20-30 years ago it was snapshot or New American landscape that was all the rage. It just proves that money & good taste do not usually co-exist. If you need an artist statement or pontification by curators in order to appreciate it, then it will not stand the test of time.

[Martin Miller]

Notwithstanding the unseemliness of all the mudslinging, there is an underling point to the disagreement. I have had the experience of acquiring a taste for art that I did not at first grasp, so I am open to that possibility and willing to suspend first impressions. However, the art that I warmed to gradually did not evoke an initial aversion quite so much as "Just Washed". I have to say that other works by Wall more stimulate my curiosity, but none have grown on me to any great degree. I even recently had the opportunity of seeing Wall talk about his work and found him very articulate, hard working, and very serious about his art.

I have not seen this particular work in person. (I have others of Wall.) However, my experience has been that that seeing work in person only changes my general impression if the work needs a large scale either for impact or because of intricate detail that gets lost in a small image or because of subtle tonality/color. Evidently scale is not really important for "Just Washed" at only 18 x 20", and there appears not to be intricate detail that must be appreciated, or even subtle color.

It has been suggested that the work need not stand on its own without accompanying explanation because the artist's explanation of his intention is part of the art work as a conceptual package. I do not have a problem with this notion in general; I certainly have had the experience of coming to appreciate a work with explanation and may not have otherwise. It would seem that if the explanation is part of the work, then it ought be linked to it in some way. I also find it curious that one of the complaints of the early postmodernists about late modernism was that the images themselves did not support the ambitious claims made for them by the artist. One could make the same criticism of late postmodern work.

[Brian Ellis]

Brian - after doing a little bit of googling.. I'm thinking it must have been stravinsky I was thinking of. Regardless. Now popular artists once reviled.

Yes, it was Stravinsky who provoked a riot as I mentioned, not Tachaikovsky (who did write the music to The Nutcracker but whose music never provoked a riot AFAIK). But regardless, that was just an aside.

When I was studying art I had several instructors who were wonderful at explaining the work of an artist whose paintings weren't immediately obvious and appealing. So I was genuinely sorry that you elected not to explain this one. I'm not close-minded about any form of art and I realize that it often takes a certain amount of knowledge to understand and appreciate some artists. Of course it's entirely possible to possess that knowledge and still not appreciate his or her work. Nevertheless, in the case of some artists (of whom Wall is apparently one) a certain amount of basic knowledge is a prerequisite to understanding and appreciation. I clearly don't possess that knowledge in the case of Wall. So I'll do a little research and see what I come up with.

[Brian Ellis]

Notwithstanding the unseemliness of all the mudslinging, there is an underling point to the disagreement. I have had the experience of acquiring a taste for art that I did not at first grasp, so I am open to that possibility and willing to suspend first impressions. However, the art that I warmed to gradually did not evoke an initial aversion quite so much as "Just Washed". I have to say that other works by Wall more stimulate my curiosity, but none have grown on me to any great degree. I even recently had the opportunity of seeing Wall talk about his work and found him very articulate, hard working, and very serious about his art.

I have not seen this particular work in person. (I have others of Wall.) However, my experience has been that that seeing work in person only changes my general impression if the work needs a large scale either for impact or because of intricate detail that gets lost in a small image or because of subtle tonality/color. Evidently scale is not really important for "Just Washed" at only 18 x 20", and there appears not to be intricate detail that must be appreciated, or even subtle color.

It has been suggested that the work need not stand on its own without accompanying explanation because the artist's explanation of his intention is part of the art work as a conceptual package. I do not have a problem with this notion in general; I certainly have had the experience of coming to appreciate a work with explanation and may not have otherwise. It would seem that if the explanation is part of the work, then it ought be linked to it in some way. I also find it curious that one of the complaints of the early postmodernists about late modernism was that the images themselves did not support the ambitious claims made for them by the artist. One could make the same criticism of late postmodern work.

Thanks Martin, that's exactly what I would have said if I could have said it as well.

[r.e.]

r.e, I can't believe I'm clarifying this, but I don't expect all art to look like Goya.

Colin,

Sorry, I should have been clearer in what I was saying. What I mean is that Jeff Wall's show at MoMA is fun, irreverent and frequently amusing. He reminds me more of Magritte crossed with Breugel than Goya. I went with two friends who knew nothing about Wall, or his internal references. It's nice to know when he his playing with sources (as it is with people like Eliot and Pound), but it is not necessary. The images do stand on their own and they are a pleasure to look at. The enjoyment of the people in the gallery was palpable. As the New York Times review says: "These are outright gorgeous, fully equipped all-terrain visual vehicles, intent on being intensely pleasurable while making a point or two about society, art, history, visual perception, the human animal or all of the above." I think that the reviewer's phrase "intensely pleasurable while making a point or two", putting the pleasure before the point, is dead on.

My overall reaction was, "This is such a refreshing change from all that photographic seriousness". You know, the kind of photographic seriousness that is so much in evidence in this forum. It seems to me that this whole side of him is being missed in this terribly serious, dare I say overly-serious, discussion. Reading this thread is like listening to people argue about Gulliver's Travels on the premise that it is a work of non-fiction

I suggested that it is important to see the actual works (which will be travelling to two other museums) because I was floored at the discrepancy between what I saw on the wall and what I saw on the internet. One specific example, the work called "in front of a nightclub". Here it is on the net: http://time-blog.com/looking_around/...e_indispe.html I can only say that that reproduction (which for one thing is not the whole image) bears very little resemblance to the actual image, which gives a completely different visual impression and contains a lot of content that is is simply not visible in the reproduction (at least on my computer screen). Postage stamp images, to use your analogy, don't have 10-15 people in them, and tiny little details like carefully positioned debris on the ground.

Isn't this one of those photographic forums where people frequently talk about how the net doesn't properly display images? I mean, the people on this forum constantly post images with a qualification, such as this comment from today (with apologies to Gene): "For some reason any color upload I do to this forum gets muted color, the original is much more vibrant." How come this applies to the people who post on this forum, but not to Jeff Wall? Don't artists go to museums in part because a van Gogh or a Monet on a wall is not the same thing as a van Gogh or a Monet in a book? Is it not evident that large scale pieces, like Guernica or Monet's paintings from Giverny, come across differently in real life than on a computer screen? For me, at least, the difference between seeing one of Monet's large-scale paintings on a wall and seeing one in a book is stunning, and no, I don't think that you can judge his Giverny paintings by looking at them in a book. They are a pale imitation of the real thing. And the viewing distance is completely wrong.

If you are able, go see the show. Above all, you'll have fun, a concept that in this conversation seems to have gone missing in action

P.S. For someon who dabbles in photography, one of the pleasures of the MoMA show is the number of times one finds oneself asking "How did he do that?" And if you happen to have Vittorio Storaro's books, it is perhaps worth spending a few minutes with them, especially volume I (The Light), beforehand.

[r.e.]

I've just discovered that there is one site on the net where one can at least see some of the detail in Wall's images. The Tate Gallery in London had a show of his work in 2005-6, and they have the images from the show on line together with areas of detail. Here, for example, is A Sudden Gust of Wind: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibi...ion3/img2.shtm It's a pity that one can barely make out the figure on the far left in the distance, if one notices him at all, because he is important to the composition. But to its credit, the Tate, unlike MoMA on its site, conveys the message that a lot of information is lost when one reproduces these works on the net, and attempts to make up for that. Unfortunately, the humour in the original just doesn't fully come across, probably because you have to look hard at the reproduction just to figure out what is going on. When you see this work live, at 8' x 13', 250cm x 400cm, the first and immediate reaction is a smile. For me, this is one of the images that brought to mind Bruegel, although it in fact draws from a woodblock print by Hokusai.

[JW Dewdney]

The Art Con-a-sewer(sp?) has of late been indicating by their purchases that theatrical & concept photography is on the creative cutting edge. 20-30 years ago it was snapshot or New American landscape that was all the rage. It just proves that money & good taste do not usually co-exist. If you need an artist statement or pontification by curators in order to appreciate it, then it will not stand the test of time.

I think that 'good taste' is a pretty arbitrary notion. Talk about cultural relativism. I think that's where a lot of people get messed up and irate - they assume that notions of taste are absoulute and unchanging. Not to be 'negative' but realistically and accurately - it's all really quite meaningless until we (arbitrarily) establish emotional connection with one thing or another.

[JW Dewdney]

Being "educated" is the only way of having any praise for the photo of discussion. My redneck butt brain still thinks it stinks. Any teenager or college dorm dweller can make the same photo any day of the week and its probably been done many thousand times.

Have to compliment Wall on the way he gets the "educated" to spend that much money on something of so little merit. That's the real "art" here.

What you like tends to be dictated by your culture. The 'academics' are just another culture, not higher or lower... just different, and slightly isolated - just as all cultures are from eachother to different degrees. Just as you probably won't find the chinese eating too many pupusas in their cantons...