 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Return to Speak Out Menu | GRUMP | Walter Trego | Neophyte | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 83rd Issue, July 2002 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| picture layout revisited Smithsonian magazine drove me to it. Aren't we tired of beating this dead horse that won't lie down? Blame the June, 2002 issue. So what have they done now? Page 17. The editor bids an all but tearful farewell to the retiring art director, Ed Rich, who is apparently a peach of a fellow. I infer that it has been he (how's that for proper English?) who has perpetrated many layouts for which, if the taste-and-elementary-sense laws that we need, but do not have, were enforced, he'd be cast into the pit (What pit? Any pit). This swell guy's departure might tempt us to rejoice, but let's not. Let us remember the question: When you cure cancer, what will you replace it with? Edgar Rich is still on the June issue's masthead, so its photo-choice-and- layout sins seem to be his. Pages 24 through 26: "Indelible Images: Luminous Joy in the City of Steel" [or How to Make a Good Photographer Look Bad] is a short article on W. Eugene Smith's massive coverage of Pittsburgh. The only picture here by Smith is forgettable, but fortunately it is on p. 25, hidden behind one of those "Become a Paying Member" cards we know and love. Two photos of Gene Smith, one on p. 26 and one on a table-of-contents page, are each much better than Gene's nothing photo. Oy, would he be mad! He made many superb ones - so they use this. The story mentions an exhibition of Smith's Pittsburgh photos in New York until June 16, and says it will go on to Tucson and Durham, NC (what, not Pittsburgh?), but doesn't tell where to find the show in any city. Pages 70 through 80: "Stieglitz in Focus" (how do they think of those titles?) starts by printing one of Stieglitz's weak pictures larger than seven out of eight better ones also shown here, but Good Old Ed makes up for that by running it across the gutter to make it conclusively dead. One other hopeless photo is printed here, less badly. Why include any failures? Stieglitz made many good pictures. The article is about a 100-print show drawn from the National Gallery collection described by its curator as "far and away the most comprehensive collection of Stieglitz's photographs...." Thus at least ten good pictures by Stieglitz should have been available to Smithsonian. The writing tells what photographers already know about Stieglitz, but the public doesn't, so that's all right. By some miracle, only two poor photos were chosen, and one of them was picked to lead and be guttered. The other eight are worth seeing. Here comes my other complaint. These are, I guess, duotones on the pages, and they are too flat and dark instead of being rich, as I suppose Edgar Rich intended. Too bad, because, for once, eight out of ten pictures are good and are even placed well on their pages. Only one good photo was bled to a gutter on one edge - more a misdemeanor than a crime - but muddy murk murders them all. The rest of the magazine's picture layout ranges from routinely fair to routinely awful, but so few of the pictures are worth printing that we need not go into it. The problem is, good pictures exist, and good layout is not even difficult. Why are both so rare in our magazines and books? Ostentatious incompetence is in fashion, has been forever, and no end to it is in sight. That seems to be the only explanation. There is no excuse. still more on photo layout, This is from a letter from Richard Gordon, who said in a second letter, "Yes, of course you may quote me in GRUMP. Use my name and Cuomo's too if it suits your purpose. I was not trying to be personally nasty, rather to point to a problem of which she is symptomatic." Here is the heart of what Richard wrote about his review of a book I haven't seen and can't judge. [My editorial uncertainties are in brackets]: "I wrote an as yet unpublished long review of John Cohen's There Is No Eye. The book, in my mind, is quite wonderful. I am not 100% convinced by 100% of it, but aside from my opinion that it could have used a better text editor, what would have made the book much better is reasonable design. It has gutters galore and every single one is stupid. Perhaps Ms Yolando [sp?] Cuomo might have considered an oblong [horizontal?] design, but she probably would have found a way to ruin the verticals. I went out of my way to point out the stupidity of the design in my review, but did not name Ms Cuomo, since I guess what she wants is to see her name in print - this is sounding harsh. I never met her, don't know her, and I'm sure she is a lovely, smart human. But she is one god-awful book designer. Small point, only point. "So then someone recommends that I send my review to Aperture. So I go out and buy an Aperture and guess who is the new designer. I send the review anyway." more on the late Michael Hoffman Nice postcard from Roy Arenella, MAD (modest, accomplished, devoted) photographer. Pleasant photo ("lampscape") on one side, all-caps note on the other: DEAR DAVID, PLEASE LET AL WEBER KNOW THAT I DO HAVE SOMETHING GOOD TO SAY ABOUT MICHAEL HOFFMAN. IT COMES FROM MY ONLY MEETING WITH HIM, A LONG TIME AGO. I HAD WRITTEN, ASKING IF "APERTURE" MIGHT PUBLISH PHOTOS BY LUCIEN CLERGUE. HOFFMAN INVITED ME TO HIS OFFICE. IT WAS A "NO-GO" FOR CLERGUE PHOTOS. BUT AS A THANK YOU FOR MY INTEREST I WAS GIVEN A HANDFUL OF EARLY "APERTURES" FROM BOXES IN A BASEMENT STORAGE ROOM. ONE ISSUE HAD AN ARTICLE I TOOK TO IMMEDIATELY, LEARNED FROM, ENJOYED & STILL TREASURE TODAY. FOR THIS GIFT MICHAEL HOFFMAN DESERVES - & GETS - A GOOD WORD (OF THANKS) FROM ME. BEST, ROY It seems typical of Roy that he went to Aperture for Lucien Clergue's sake, not for his own advantage. much ado about Mondrian Hugh Linn sent clippings from the San Francisco Chronicle for April 28, 2002. Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic, debates on "meanings" in Mondrian's paintings with Didier de Fontaine, a physicist at the U of C in Berkeley. There is a third player, painter Alan Lee, identified by Baker as "honorary visiting scholar in the philosophy department of Flinders University in New South Wales, Australia." A painter, that is, who is also a word man, Lee concocted a "Mondrian Test" that presents twelve images consisting of black vertical and horizontal lines on a white ground, and red, blue and yellow rectangles. Four are by Mondrian: the rest are "random combinations of the same elements." When Lee showed them "to respondents, including recognized art professionals," their choices were "less accurate than 'blind guessing."' The Chronicle printed the test images, identifying the Mondrians on another page. Hugh flunked the test. I also flunked it, with four wrong choices. I made one right guess, based not on seeing, but on thinking: "This one is too simple. No faker would stop at this point." But then I blew it, choosing four others because they looked more like Mondrians. To Baker's credit, he got three out of four right. He is "hard put to say why these three struck me as credible and the rest did not." He thinks of this as "further corroboration of Polanyi's contention that 'we know more than we can tell."' Yes we do, but who's Polanyi? Baker explains. "A theory of perception does lie behind what I write about art. I borrow it from Michael Polanyi (1981-1976) [sic], a research chemist. He retired to write important books about perception, meaning and social issues. The most significant is 'Personal Knowledge,' a critique of objectivity from the perspective of a practicing scientist - in the Kantian sense not of dismantling but of a probing for limits. I will not recount his argument here, but I hope you will read it (if only in the brief book, 'The Tacit Dimension')." This is in answer to de Fontaine's e-mail about an earlier article on Mondrian by Baker. De Fontaine had said, "Though I admire Mondrian's work, I take exception to the ridiculous literature that has sprung up concerning art and literary criticism. "In the caption of the Mondrian in your article, we read: 'Mondrian's "Composition in Red, Yellow and Blue" shows the tension of the era of Nazi oppression with its incompatible scales and sight lines.' How can anyone in his right mind read the evils of Nazism in the straight lines of the painting? What do you mean by 'incompatible scales and sight lines?' The scales in the vertical lines are compatible as they lie precisely opposite each other. Why are sight lines incompatible? All lines are either parallel or orthagonal to each other, so what are you talking about? "And more: 'Mondrian's "Composition" objectifies the effort of a mind not to cave in to anxieties such as these. It offers us a scaffold from which to see beyond deterministic visions of a doomed fature.' Whoa! You may see all that in Mondrian's abstraction, but why foist your interpretations on an unsuspecting public who may thus be misled into seeing profundity in wordy self-indulgence? We object when critics string together words and distort their meanings in order to create a concoction intelligible only to the writer, not even to other critics. "Please leave Piet Mondrian alone and allow his soul to rest in peace." [I've cut the statements of both sides drastically, for clarity and to save space.] Credit to Baker for printing so strong an objection to his own writing. Less credit for his answer: "It's a stretch to accuse me of that kind of excess. No fishy theories and no jargon sully what I wrote. (I suggest you steer clear of Mondrian's woolly-minded writings.) You misquote me. I didn't say that Mondrian registered the tension of dreading the Nazi onslaught in his painting's incompatible scales and sight lines. The point was to ask whether Mondrian's 'Composition,' the product of a time and mind even more full of apprehension than our own, might show us anxiety transcended, or sublimated, as Freud would say. The answer can come only as a matter of perceptual experience - one you seem not to have had. "My description of Mondrian's 'Composition' in terms of incommensurate scales and sight lines was an attempt to get participation going in an imaginary reader who might take the trouble to stand before the work itself. 'Scale' refers to a perceived quality - a virtual one if you like - not the measurable dimensions of the forms on the canvas. In this sense, the two sides of the painting definitely break into impressions of frontality (and transparency) on the right, and an opaque aerial viewpoint on the left. Mondrian studiedly does not make these things explicit, one reason they embarrass any attempt to put them into words. "Not the tension between these aspects of the painting alone matters, but the perceived resolution of that tension through all the adjustments of form and quantity and intensity of color. That resolution, I tried to say, manifests itself perceptually as an improbable (we might almost say hallucinated) radiance of light by the painting itself. This is not a mystical experience (though Mondrian would have no problem with that). It is, simply, one way of perceiving the painting as meaningful." [His reference to Polanyi's theories came here, and was followed by): "My Mondrian commentary was a humble instance of Polanyian thinking applied to a specific artwork, occasioned by specific recent events. In the newspaper setting I rarely have a chance to explain my viewpoint in sufficient detail - I simply have to speak from it and hope that readers catch whatever implications come though." Apparently Baker thinks he's won. But it's bogus. To argue his claim to no fishy theory or jargon, he draws heavily on both. With nothing clear to say, he falls back on critic-ese, an opaque in-language, in the hope that his failure to say anything will go unnoticed. Dropping Kant's and Freud's names and dragging in the WTC attack - his "specific recent event" - have no bearing on this case. It is hard to talk accurately and understandably about art because of two things. One: The experience of art, for maker as for viewer, is always personal and subjective-a mystery. Two: Words are treacherous. Here's my chance to inflict on you a quotation from Flaubert, a word maven if there ever was one, that has kept shoving itself under my eye lately - not only because it's true, but because it's pertinent here. He wrote this, editorializing, somewhere in Madame Bovary. It's only a part of a sentence. The part that concerns us is: "Human speech is like a cracked pot on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity." There is a little more to say. In his argument, Baker says that Mondrian was not so good a craftsman as he's thought to be. He doesn't quite call him sloppy. Baker speaks from seeing recent museum shows. It seems there is visible deterioration in some paintings. The latest are around sixty years old. He also declares his contempt for Mondrian's writing. I speak from my experience. Mondrian's writing is not so dumb as Baker thinks. His logic is sound: it's his premises that don't hold up, That goes for Aristotle too. You don't have to be stupid to be wrong. Intelligent people are especially good at it. The errors in Mondrian's writing, no worse that those of the critics who explain him, don't matter much, because his paintings work. Look up his Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art, published by Wittenbom in the 1940s. I wish I hadn't lost my copy. It was one of a series, "Documents of Modern Art," all edited by Robert Motherwell. The book designer and typographer was Paul Rand, America's answer to Eric Gillclean - clean and clear if not much more. But don't underestimate clean clarity, a quality unknown to today's decorators who are miscalled designers. I've seen no recent Mondrian shows. In the late 40s, after his death, I saw what was said to be his first one-man show, at a gallery in a house on East 57th Street in New York. The paintings, in white rooms, gave off a clear sense of calm and light. They were not yet old. I saw his brushstrokes, not sloppy, not hidden. Mondrian wrote that he'd like his work to be mass-produced. If that had happened, would he would have approved? Maybe. I don't know if he ever mentioned those patterns in floor linoleum that seem based on his work, but use earth colors more often than primaries. Desecration! I imagine, To be ignored! But I don't know, and the paintings neither know nor care. There's one more thing. If "random combinations of the same elements" give results so much like Mondrian's own long-considered choices, what does the word "random" really mean? Here's what my big Webster says: ran'dom, n. [Ofr, a randon, at random; randon, an impetuous course or efflux, vivacity, violence; randoner, randir, to run rapidly,] 1. a roving motion or course without direction; want of direction, rule or method; used only in the phrase at random, without careful choice, aim, plan, etc.; haphazardly.ran'dom, a. without aim or purpose; haphazardly; as a random shot; a random guess. Here's something to think on. In my photography, random shots - found but not planned, with no purpose - so consistently work better than my best conscious efforts to make my pictures good that I have abandoned effort and plan. Random shots are what I take now, and perhaps what I always did take. Nothing in the definitions says that random means "without order." The examples point to the fundamental order described by the laws of physics. So I suspect that in shooting at random by deliberate choice (choice, though not plan, is essential) I may be tuning in to the random order of reality, which is nothing so trivial as the perceptions of art professionals. Choice comes to me mainly from instant recognition without thought. It's never certain, but I must give it a chance. I find out later if it works. The only sure thing is, if I don't push the button, it won't work. Mr. Baker loses. His article is titled, "Reading Between the Lines." That's wrong. I think he's reading book-learned notions into Mondrian's lines and colors, and may miss the best that they offer directly - a look into the order that lives in the random - the core stuff, perhaps, that good painting and photography are made of, along with light and life. Who can be sure? googies So I have heard those grants irreverently called. The announcement booklet got here on June 14. Formally they are Fellowships of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Only one grant - no second or third, as in the past - is available per person. Seven photographers won Guggenheim grants in 2002: Marion Belanger (Connecticut)The project of each is listed only as "photography," with no elaboration. They used to say things like, "Macrophotographs of the big toes of the Statue of Liberty" or "Infrared color photos of discarded fastfood napkins," and that had more flavor. The thing about a grant is, it provides cash and therefore freedom, and much incentive - don't underestimate that - to do your work. A grant is a good thing to have. And then, almost before you know it, it's over, so if and when you get one, start right in. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. One nice thing about Guggenheim grants is that the foundation doesn't have to see what you produce. The foundation people take some interest in it but don't require reports or samples. Congress, I believe, does want a report on how you use the money, so if you get a grant, save your receipts and keep good records. Out of curiosity I did some counting. This year 184 Guggenheims were given in the USA and Canada (there's a separate program for Latin America). The US/Canada score for 2002:
artists of all kinds 63
scholars & scientists 121
Of the art grants, photography came in fourth after painting, music
composition and poetry, and was followed by film making, play writing,
choreography and sculpture. In order of their appearance in the list, "new
media," "video installation," "installation art," "video and film making,"
"visual art," "film animation, "drawing," "painting and sculpture" and
"video" also ran. This doesn't mean they lost. These aren't racehorses. A
breakdown of the art winners follows: the percentages are rounded but seem to
work out:
1) painting - 11 grants 17.5%
2) poetry - 8 grants 12.7%
3) music composition - 8 grants 12.7%
4) photography - 7 grants 11.1%
5) fiction writing - 6 grants 9.5%
6) film making - 5 grants 7.9%
7) play writing - 4 grants 6.3%
8) choreography - 4 grants 6.3%
9) sculpture - 2 grants 3.2%
10- 17) each one grant or 1.6%,
for a subtotal of 12.8%
grand total 100.0%
It's odd that the word "digital" does not appear anywhere among this year's
arts grants. There's better entertainment in the scholarly grant
descriptions. Here are a few, chosen for their poetry:
A biography of the Indian elephantHard to beat, poetrywise. It may also be of interest that in 2002 the average grant paid $36,685 - up, I think, from around $30,000 not too long ago. If inflation proceeds as before, then 2003 grants might come to $44,000 or more. Don't trust this wild guess, but whatever it is would be worth trying for. (The general experience is that you got somewhat less than you ask for, something to remember if the Foundation asks you for a budget.) Here's some of what the booklet says: "The Foundation offers Fellowships to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color or creed. "Appointments are ordinarily made for one year and in no instance for a period shorter than six consecutive months. "Requests for application forms for Fellowships should be addressed to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 90 Park Avenue, New York, NY 100 16. Completed applications must be submitted by the candidates themselves no later than October 1, 2002. Final selection of Fellows for 2003 will be made in March, 2003. "Further information is available at the Foundation's Internet site on the World Wide Web (http://gf.org). "Fellows of the Foundation, until further notice, may no longer seek renewed assistance. The Board has instructed the Committee of Selection to recommend only individuals who have not previously had the Foundation's support." Aw, shucks, that throws me out. On the other hand, This may Mean You. Why not try? Not getting a grant is no loss, but getting one is a definite gain. home cooking Ingredients for mixing your own photo processing chemicals, and premixed formulas, are offered in the catalog of Artcraft Chemicals, Inc., PO Box 583, Schenectady, NY 12301, (800) 682-1730, (518) 3558700, fax (518) 355-912 1, www.artcraftchemicals.com and e-mail at artcraft@peoplepc.com "Feel free," it says, "to contact me for any reason," and adds, "Having problems finding a product, call or e-mail us and we'll see if we can help you out." A source for conventional b/w, for pyro, and for other processes. I'm tempted by their "Safe-Stop," a stop bath with no acetic acid, so it can be shipped and need not be shlepped (down with delusions of safety. What we need is competent care). The catalog has an ad for PHOTOVISION Art & Technique ("NEW MAGAZINE! By Photographers, For Photographers"), six issues a year for $26.95. Attempts deserve support, to be continued if they're good, and not if they're not. PhotoVision is at PO Box 845, Crestone, CO 81131. Hast Publishing, www.hastpublishing.com I'll subscribe and perhaps report. Atlantic Monthly A magazine I'd subscribed to died, and the Atlantic has been coming here instead. Monthly? The latest issue is dated July/August 2002. Oh, well, GRUMP should talk. But it has interesting stuff this, uh, month. William Langewiesche has the beginning of a serial story on what has been going on at the World Trade Center site. It's good reporting, not hysterical. Considering that the USA, along with bombed Britain, did such a great job of destroying, among other cities, Dresden (read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, drawn from life, however oddly. KV was a prisoner of war in Dresden at the time), we may be overreacting to the - yes, inexcusable - destruction of a few buildings in New York. We are not immune and never were. We drop our own smart and dumb bombs on others, so what do we expect? (My ideas, not Langewiesche's.) Some people want to cut us down to size - an idiom that also appears at the end of the Atlantic's review of John Szarkowski's odd show, Ansel Adams at 100 (or Revenge of the Curator). Kenneth Brower's last sentence is, "The aesthete from the East has come out west and cut Ansel Adams down to size." Well, not really. Adams did tend to overdo things late in life, but big prints, say 40x6O inches, suit his pictures well. Szarkowski's own photography - not, to his credit, shown at MoMA during his teniure - is on the well-crafted bland side. I guess Ansel's drama was too much for him. But few of Ansel's timid early prints are nearly as good as most of his later ones. Judging from descriptions, this show may be more about Szarkowski than about Adams. I haven't seen it and can't review it, but I've had an eye on Szarkowski since he replaced Steichen at MoMA He showed good intelligence early on, but did less well later. In his last MoMA years, this implacable enemy of the overblown chose to show a number of remarkably dull new photographers. Some of them made, or had made for them, huge prints that merely amplified their dullness. Szarkowski kept his lively sensitivity to 19th-century photography intact, but came to seem blind to photos made since the 1960s, when photography became Art, you should excuse the expression, and its curators became Artistic. If asked to name the least bad MoMA photo curator, I'd pick Beaumont Newhall. He had his limitations but they didn't run him. pessimists have better surprises I made that up as a bumper-sticker text, though I have no more use for bumper stickers than for e-mail. We've outlived Hitler and Stalin and others, but the promised time when we'll all live happily ever after is still on hold. I'll drop four names. Osama Bin Laden. Ariel Sharon. Yasir Arafat. George W. Bush. Each tries hard to make his world better. On other wrong tracks, add Enron, the Catholic Church, Worldcom, Arthur Andersen, and Sotheby's: even, perhaps, M. Stewart. A California court has ruled the words, "under God," in the schoolkids' pledge of allegiance, unconstitutional. The pledge means nothing to children. The ruling is right but probably won't survive the fury of the loudly religious and the fears of politicians who go to church to get votes. But cheer up: god, shmod, habe gezunt - so long as you have your health. As an expert has said: "There is no such thing as justice - in or out of court." -Clarence Darrow | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Return to Hoboken Almanac | |
|
|
|
|
| Copyright 2001-2002. Hoboken Almanac. All Rights Reserved. All Photographs Use by Permission from the Photographer. Questions or Comments? E-mail us |