By Reason, or by Faith?

[Heroique]

...If someone were to hold that one should pursue what one doesn't find most aesthetically valuable, i.e. if they value some other goal higher, such as making money, pleasing others,...., then wouldn't the type of communication involved be a bit deceitful?

Yes, that’s an important clarification w/o easy answers...

I would also ask who’s the deceived one – in some cases, it might be both, photographer & audience.

[Mark Barendt]

Whose emotion -- the artist' own or the intended audience. Because I really have hard time thinking that Jackson Pollack set out intending to solicit an emotion from anyone. Some people make art because they have a need for self-expression, even if no one sees/reads/understands it. That's also why people keep diaries.

Whether the audience is someone else or my self makes no difference, when I shoot I expect an emotional response from the intended audience.

[MrJim]

Well, these two (adjacent!) posts caught my attention since they seem to represent conflicting extremes – Peter stressing how photography should serve the individual at the (implied) expense of communication w/ others, and Mr. Jim stressing how important it is for art to communicate w/ others at the (implied) expense of the individual.

Probably most would discover a healthy share of each approach in their personal balancing act between these competing claims (for self & audience).

When it comes to “Classics” and how they are born, I think Arnold Bennett (in post #1 for people joining late) would choose a balance weighted toward Mr. Jim’s approach – for doesn’t the very term “Classic” necessarily imply an audience whose members share some sort of common ground of idealized standards? (Made manifest to the passionate few w/ the “reasoning” that Bennett opposes to “faith.”) Not exactly something that will ring true in all modern ears, but it seems necessary if Bennett is to make sense.


I’m curious if people here think that the closer a photographer comes to Peter’s important claims for expressing self, the less likely it becomes for a “Classic,” as Bennett understands the term, to come about? Similarly, would a “Classic” have increasingly poor chances of establishing itself, the closer it comes to Mr. Jim’s claims for audience?

I didn't specifically quantify want an audience is. E.G. for a stage actor, or comedian the audience has a large seperation from self, therefor how well the piece resonates and how far it reaches are easily measured. For a poet their greatest poem may be intended for the audience as self, and the value is unkown to the outside. The quantification of an audience are only two ends of a scale. The value of a piece or artist from the zero of complete apathy is largely irrelevant, unless discussing a comparitive of multiple artists in a similiar scale of balance. Most likely any piece of art will fall between the two extremes, while the value is irrelevant inside the audience beyond anything besides specific comparisons.

Then again my wife hates it when I say that we are not snowflakes, we are not absolutely unique. Most likely an audience of one can not exist and someone will come along that "gets its" as long as the bread crumbs are out. Which echoes back to one of the original premises of the passionate few. The problem is, the passionate few can exist for too many reasons to extrapolate beyond their existence without a rigourous academic and reasoned view to each case. I for one haven't read through Bennets work, and his detractors to completely understand his premise to really comment on it in great detail.