"Interesting" is a social determination. If you are having a good time with it, then it interests *you*, which is important. For the work itself to be "interesting" you have to submit it to the society at large and its art market. Fuck that noise.
Also, as to "original"---about which I'm inclined to say "fuck that noise" too---as I see it, whatever happens before the drawing itself is between you and your God. Unless you actually get sued for copyright violation or something, whatever, have a good time. You don't have to tell viewers that it's drawn from a photo if you don't want to.
If it's Warhol's Marilyn it's high art; if it's Ivan Alias' favourite cat, it's an exercise. Why? I suggest mainly chutzpah.
If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad.
Seriously, it sounds kinda cool to me. If you were putting these pictures forth as some kind of masterwork I would probably think you were silly, but if you're doing it as a hobby for your own enjoyment I think it's great. If you were my roommate or significant other and had a few of these hanging in your room I would be respectful and probably a little impressed if they were good.
Not a big problem. Keep it at it, and you'll be That Person Who Makes Drawings Of Photographs. You can have a series called "People I Know" and another one called "People Who Were In The New Yorker".
Seriously, all you have to do is acknowledge the source material for it not to be plaigarism. That will put into context people's evaluations of your work, but there's still plenty of room for it to add what art people call "soul".
Put the energy currently going into overthinking metacrap into the art itself. Result: more interesting and original art.
I respectfully disagree with Jackmormon's various "fuck that noise"s, unless you really are just painting for yourself. A market, a scene, a history -- whatever you call it, artmaking has a social context, and pretending that you are outside everything besides your own big genius head is boring.
That said, a little "fuck that noise" can help you get started figuring out what it is you want to do. At the beginning, at least, she's right that whether it interests you is more important.
There's an interesting question about art and composition lurking around here. The photographer is the one that composed the shot. But the Artistic Asker is certainly doing something by translating that into a drawing of a watercolor. And that seems to be pretty interesting.
If you say "this work was drawn from a photograph" the audience can make up their own minds about whether it is original or derivative. Their decision will be made on mostly contextual factors, like how much originality they expect from a sketch their friend shows them, or a piece of art in a gallery that they only entered for the free cheese, or a piece of art they are paying $$ for.
This is a matter of interpretation, and for that reason it should be left to the audience, and not the artist. You will distract yourself and get all jumbled up if you think too much from their perspective.
On whether redoing photographs in another medium can be "interesting" or "art", see friend-of-the-Flophouse Ian Whitmore's Monomania Portraits. The one of Dick Cheney is especially fantastic.
Cala's right. We need to distinguish several questions
1. What is the relative importance of composition over coloring and line for individuating works of art?
2. How derivative can a work of art be and still be something other than an exercise?
3. Whose job is it to determine how derivative something is, the audience or the artist?
A Mineshaft-American painter recently posted a painting of hers sources from a photograph of a police officer pepper-spraying a protester.
In trying to find it, I came across the original Ask the Mineshaft letter. In posting it, Tia had appended her own lengthy and forthright answer. Did Becks kill the tradition of the poster's response when she took over Ask The Mineshaft duties? Or has it been a gradual decline, like that of the kids over time and of sandwiches as you move west?
The answers my questions are
1. It depends on context
2. It depends on context
3. The audience.
11 - Dude, I'm busy. The virtue of Ask The Mineshaft is that it lets you get your questions answered and lets me be a lazy blogger.
13, you should move to California. It would be not even seven o'clock; you could have posted a lengthy response before you had to be anywhere.
One last comment and then I'm outta here.
The letter-writer says, "I'm not a Dutch master working in oils." Well, why not? Oils are hott---and you don't really want to be Dutch, do you? Pretty, pretty oils...
you don't really want to be Dutch, do you?
Why not? It seems like a great place to live. And you could meet Gerard Boink!
I'm not sure I can get behind J-Mo's "fuck that noise" consideration of the decisions that lead to the drawing if only because they tend to be enormous qualifiers of the art—at least, your consideration of your art. You "confess" that you drew Paul Wolfowitz because there was a "great" close-up of him in the New Yorker—several important decisions there that you're taking for granted and, worse, feeling sorry about. I will agree with J-Mo that there's nothing to feel ashamed about over the way you arrive at your drawings. Who cares?
As for reproduction, yes, it is a worthwhile area of study. William Henry Fox Talbot invented the talbotype (or calotype) process for photographic reproduction as a way to work around the fact that he was a poor draughtsman. You may want to see if you can find at your library The Pencil of Nature, which WHFT wrote as he was first exploring his drawing workaround.
In contemporary art you'll find a number of artists who re-work reproduction media. Molly Springfield (a friend of mine) makes meticulous photorealistic drawings of photocopies of texts that have to do with reproduction. Richard Prince, the most famous exemplifier, rephotographed photographs that appeared in the New York Times and he's weathered the controversy just fine.
The key issue is how good you are at copying.
If you are good enough that anyone looking at the drawing and the photograph next to each other realizes that the drawing is a copy of the photograph than you are just copying.
You are starting to become an artist when you start thinking thoughts like, "I completely botched that up, but I like my mistakes better than the photo."
Of course Smasher is going to say that. He's an art critic! He is the noise!
;>)-
Dear Sir or Madame:
At this time our staff and management are engaged in repurposing-related program activities. We hope to resume public service outreach shortly. At the present time nothing in the world is Art, and nothing in the world is Art. Thank you for your interest.
"At the present time nothing in the world is Art, and nothing in the world is not Art."
We regret the error.
There is something to be said for moving away from relying on the photograph for the composition and subject, but I say that primarily with respect to developing one's own creativity, drawing style, and sense of composition. Using technology to frame the subject is old skool art, though. You could make a camera obscura, for example, and benefit both from live and framed work.
That said, it's now standard fare for many artists' work to begin in photographs. Eric Zener would be nothing without them, for example.
But Emerson, the question wasn't the boring "is this art" but a bunch of more interesting questions, like "is this original original or is it an exercise" and "is this worthwhile?"
Who's that motherfucker correcting our communique? He can be sure that he'll be the first order of business when we resume our public activities. The Bureau of Critical Standards is not to be mocked.
For further information, much further, consult John Holbo.
In terms of the standards of contemporaryart -- isn't it the case that Damien Hirst has exhibited paintings that are derived from photographs...and he didn't even actually paint the paintings, he just tells his studio assistants how he wants it to look.
Also, comics I'm a big fan right now of comics artists who draw from photos or draw directly on photos to create their panels. It is especially good for comics based on TV shows and movies.
Also pr0n.
Mmmm. Pick a squash blossom at sunrise and lightly rinse it then place it face down on a towel to dry. Prepare a batter of eggs (with a litle milk if it strikes you) and crushed sage. Fully coat the flower in batter - inside and out - and fry with, of course, bacon.
Yum on a summer morning with a Bloody Mary.
Nothing is original, nothing is an exercise, nothing is worthwhile, nothing is not worthwhile.
We resent having to tell you motherfuckers every single goddamn little thing.
23 asks "is this worthwhile"?
Well, there are arguments for everything being worthwhile, and arguments that nothing is worthwhile, but the arguments that try to distinguish between some things that are worthwhile and other things that aren't worthwhile are unconvincing and fail to come up with any practical way of making the distinction.
Switch to upside-down photographs. Instant art!
greg, those Zener pics reminded me of this Anthony Goicolea photograph that I so loved. It is a digital photo and has very little to do with this discussion.
To remove any doubt about whether the work of art is "yours", I suggest that you draw exclusively well-known photos of atrocities, and be sure to substitute your own face for that of the victim.
31: Wrongshore, that photo is captivating.
I come at this sort of how Cala does. I think you could do interesting things for yourself in drawing the photo: work on line, value, etc. and have it be very rewarding. But the one thing it doesn't let you do is think about composition--so if that's what you feel a need to do, or if that seems an absence in what you're learning, then you might not want to be too reliant on photographs. Unless you take the photographs yourself as a way of "locking in" a composition that you like. Even then, though, I think there's a difference that comes from seeing the thing itself and the photo--the ability to get up and move around and see what you're seeing from a slightly different angle can clarify or change a lot of what you're doing with technique in the drawing.
I think any conflict is easily avoided by being forthright about sources if you show the art or submit it for a showing.
If you're simply practicing it for your own enjoyment, fuck those various noises. Use it as a way to practice the technical aspects of putting the image on paper and then abandon it lest it become a crutch. In the meantime, remind yourself that very few musicians learn to play by practicing pieces they write themselves. I was in a lot of band competitions and marched a lot of miles and have never written a single song.
Yeah, but Damian Hirst is a terrible hack.
It's certainly worthwhile as an exercise; isn't going to the Great Museums of Europe and attempting to replicate old masters the classic 19th c. Grand Tour way of learning to be a better painter. Whether I'd find it interesting as art is a different question entirely and depends what you're doing with it. I mean, I like Thomas Demand's stuff a lot, and he's trying to get close to exact duplication...
Enki Bilal does this to photographs. Worthwhile? Yes, if you like European style cartoons.
The only part of the original question that troubles me [as a for real artist / professor] is that the asker paints from photographs because it is easier. If you want to learn how to draw/paint/frame/see - nothing beats good old real world 3D. Fruit for starters, naked people as soon as you can decently arrange it. Seriously. Its lots of fun too.
Don't do anything because it is easier - do it because it is more interesting.
since this is an art thread and people posted interesting photos
street art photo
as a little ot ad
As has already mentioned, copying is a time-honoured method of learning. RMcMP's music analogy is a good one. It's also a jumping off point for all kinds of original art.
Slavishly copying other people's compositions can be a route into banality, I suspect. But it doesn't have to be.
Copying is a great method for learning technique [blend, stroke etc.], but if you are trying to learn how to draw you have to quit drawing things that are already flat. Unless you are finding that flat feeling interesting.
i thought that is an interesting composition illustrating half-Buddha, half-animal sides of human nature
i never saw anything like that before, may be there are similar compositions somewhere because 27, 28
I'd say 17 gets it right, though I'm not sure I'd recommend Richard Prince as a model--successful as he's been, he did have to go through a number of lawsuits, which couldn't have been fun. Permissions: A Survival Guide is a really good book for a non-specialist audience on the existing legal framework for image copyright issues. But if you're doing these as an exercise and not trying to sell them, none of that is a problem.
As Armsmasher noted, working from photography is rather popular these days, but that's nothing new--people have been doing it since the nineteenth century (along with Talbot, one could mention Adolphe Braun, who was a leader in the introduction of photograph into fine design and an innovator in the practice of fine art reproductions.) But the practice of copying obviously goes back further than that. For painting, one reason it's been considered a problem at times is that it upsets certain ideas of the relative status of different media as well as the originality question, but that's not so much the case with copies done in an equivalent or lesser media. Drawing after all, frequently was after some other art (although strictly as a learning tool, it may be more useful to draw after something three dimensional--the fact that it's harder to do is exactly to the point.) In that sense, the drawing has always been "yours," just as (to switch media) an Aegidius Sadeler is always an Aegidius Sadeler, even if it's a copy after a painting.
But when does it become really original? I think the answer's something like Howard Nemerov's "Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry":
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
35: I think you can't help but choose for composition if you're selecting photos in any way that isn't random or automatic.
In China at about the turn of the century they developed an art of handcoloring black-and-white photographs on glass plates. The effects ranged from hokey to pretty nice to vivid. Some colorists came up with futurist effects by using intenser-than-natural colors on desert landscapes, etc. The whole art form rose in fell in a few decades, since it was made obsolete by new technology. (In my youth I knew people who had learned to brush-color B$W prints, buth the effects were not interesting.
I think it's worthwhile as long as it interests you; you can learn a lot about line and tone from this practice. It can be helpful in learning composition, in so far as you can analyze why a certain photo appeals to you. I think it can be interesting to other people on a lot of levels, one of the more interesting to me being how far it deviates from the original image.
Getty and Corbis make the claim that if you use their photos as reference you're supposed to pay them something. I wonder if this has ever happened. I supposed if you were doing a highly realistic copy in a highly visible ad campaign you would. Also, I think they're mainly talking about illustration, a commercial enterprise.
I don't normally work straight from a photo--that piece was an exception, but I'll sometimes do Google image searches for references that I intend to use very loosely. I think a lot of people do that.
Does anyone know if the estates or heirs of Walker Evans (or other photographer whose work she rephotographed) ever sued Sherry Levine?
People seem convinced that Vermeer and others used some kind of optical device to get his extremely realistic effects. Not exactly photography, but close.
re: 45
People still do it a bit. There are web forums out there for people who are into that sort of thing [along with lots of other long-dead photographic processes and techniques].
In some of our family photo albums there are hand-coloured prints from the 1930s.
Getty and Corbis make the claim that if you use their photos as reference you're supposed to pay them something
Corbis can bite me. Back in the day museums used to outsource a lot of their slide-making by contract to independent photographers. These were supposed to be for education use only, for college slide libraries and the like. Many years later, Corbis comes along and buys up the images, most of which are poor by today's standards and out of date, from the photographers' estates, then licenses them for commercial use. The lost revenue is annoying, although for most any single institution it doesn't amount to all that much. What really grates, though, is seeing a crappy image of a painting in our collection on the cover of a cheap paperback and knowing that the publisher paid Corbis for an ugly image of a painting in a public collection.
re: 45
You can still buy glass plate negs. Or coat your own if you are hardcore. Here at work [in the 'day' job] we have a huge archive of glass plate negs.
People seem convinced that Vermeer and others used some kind of optical device to get his extremely realistic effects. Not exactly photography, but close.
I think that's a much more contentious claim than you think it is, John. A number of people dating back to the 19th century have claimed that Vermeer used a camera obscura as an aid to properly depicting perspective; David Hockney asserted that Vermeer and a number of others used a camera lucida in the way you're talking about, and I think the consensus is that he's totally full of shit.
Here at work [in the 'day' job] we have a huge archive of glass plate negs.
So do we--just down the hall, actually. Probably not as huge. We also discovered some negatives made from cellulose nitrate. Fun stuff. We're not going to keep those.
It's worthwhile at some level as long as it interests you.
If other people become interested, it's worthwhile at a higher level.
The nihilists here don't realize it, but that's the whole story. Even JM's FTS is a little too dogmatic. There's really no there there on that kind of question.
A friend of mine has a cousin who does a kind of self-taught folk art consisting of scraps of handwritten text shaped into figures. From about five feet away it looks interesting, but when you look closer you find that her handwriting is sort of ugly and the scraps of text are insane ravings and meaningless phrases, and not in a good way. (She is non-metaphorically, clinically insane, insane by almost every standards.)
But the first-time effect is vivid and if he had more of them I'd lay out a little cash for one.
That kind of art makes you realize that the Surrealists were really faking it. Actual insanity get tedious pretty quickly. They were bright boys calculatedly tweaking an insanity-type state that didn't have much to do with real insanity. It was like people who pretend to be Native Americans in order to become less boring.
Jaroslav Hašek, on the other hand, combined completely unpretentious fuckedupness and disfunction with a lot of talent, thus becoming the greatest writer of our time.
re: 54
Oh we have a LOT of nitrate negs. In freezers. There is long-term talk about digitizing them. But it hasn't happened yet.
The glass plates are great. Surprising how good the image quality on 100 year old glass plates is.
53 is correct, although how Vermeer may have used a camera obscura is itself a difficult topic.
I like Abelardo Morrell's camera obscura series of photographs, especially this one. A lot of them are cool, though.
A quick Google tells me that the Vermeer thesis is indeed controversial, but does not convince me that Hockney has been refuted. This is not a question I feel obligated to know the answer to. (Another Iowa Dutch cousin of mine is named Vermeer. That tickles my amateur artist brother.)
http://www.optics.arizona.edu/SSD/StorkDataerrors.htm
Except for Armsmasher, I'm not too impressed by the art-critical world. They say that the Art History PhD is dominated by the independently wealthy, except for Armsmasher, and a lot of the art books I read are highly conjectural. I just bought a few books about Bosch and the Breugels, and when it came to the questions I was interested in ("WTF were these guys going on about?" -- I love that stuff, but WTF?) my guess was as good as theirs. There's only about one page each of verifiable biographical info for these guys, and there are various things you can say about technique, but the things you want to know are up for grabs.
In freezers.
That's definitely the way to do it, but it's too late for ours--they're starting to decompose. We don't have that many, we have prints of the images, and most of them aren't that important, but it's a shame nevertheless. And now they've got to go.
Can't suicide bombers make good use of nitrate negatives?
Wow, nice art links, and a good idea for puttering with watercolors. Henry Darger appropriated and modified images he found. I really like the resulting artwork.
55: What about Adolf Wolfli? Was he faking it too?
58: I'd be willing to believe that art history PhDs trends a bit more to the middle/upper middle class than other areas of the academy, and there certainly are some independently wealthy art historians, but they days in which they dominated the field have long passed. At least, that's been my experience working in and around the field for the past 10-15 years. Dressing well is important, though. It's a well-dressed crowd.
Unfortunately, a large number of art history books are unreadable. Sometimes for good reason--a lot of the most important are really more like reference books--but it can be depressing when it's unnecessary.
I was surprised to learn that a lot of Bosch's work was commissioned. Both Bosch and Breughel the Elder were
relatively successful in their lifetimes, so knowing something about their buyers and their tastes seems wortwhile. I haven't found anything like Art and Commerce in The Dutch Golden Age for the relevant period, though I haven't looked very hard.
Dressing well is important, though. It's a well-dressed crowd.
I was at the Rodchenko exhibition at the Hayward in London this past weekend. I've never been in a room where I felt less attractive or more badly dressed. Seriously, everyone in the place was either a super-skinny incredibly hot, very well dressed guy or girl in their 20s, or urbane handsome well-dressed buggers in their 50s. Fucking art students.
Bosch and Breugel were both successful mainstream guys. They lived during a transitional period, when the Reformation was just starting to happen. Pre-Reformation mainstream Catholicism could be pretty far out, especially in the Low Countries, and there were also various popular movements which passed back and forth between Orthodoxy and heresy, and then there was the Reformation.
Bosch's work was preserved especially in Spain, the most reactionary Counter-Reformation country, leading one to suspect that Bosch was very orthodox. On the other hand, he died before the Reformation began, and it's possible that the particular pre-Reformation / pre-Counter-Reformation Spaniard who collected his works was some sort of freethinker.
What everyone else said. I've done this loads of times--usually either for myself or in a picture I give someone as a gift. It is an excellent way to improve your technique: as you say, it's already in two dimensions for you. Also: I often want to draw some place specific--e.g., a place where I've been, but I don't have the means to get there now. Or I want to do ink & wash, & it's a bitch and a half to do that outside.
I usually end up changing the composition around a bit, too, but gesture matters a lot too.
This is not even close to illegitimate as a technique for learning to draw & nothing to be embarrassed about showing people. Selling the pictures w/o crediting the source would be bad, and since it IS harder drawing from life I would try that too sometimes. But haven't you ever been to a museum & seen art students sketching & sometimes even painting from the old masters?
I asked the question, btw. I wasn't particularly trying to be anonymous, but didn't have a chance to get on Unfogged earlier today. Very interesting to hear the varying perspectives -- thanks.
Maybe one of these days I'll invite you all up to see my squash blossoms, IFKWIM.
"squash blossoms" = "new glasses", right?
IFKWIM = "I fucking killed with Imelda Marcos"?
Is FK506 a Worthy Intravenous Medication?
oh noone seems interested in the photo i posted, pity, just was curious whether it is an original art from art critics' point of view
like you know there are not many walking half-buddhas in the eastern art to my knowledge
there are sitting buddhas, sleeping buddhas, standing buddhas etc
but of course ircc there are plenty of fawns in the western arts, but those are different, they are facially also affected fawn-like, their nature is not human and they do not disappear into the bordering glass walls
i saw some faces emerging from the building wall in NYC ircc or may be some other place
well, that was just a little ad for the unknown artist, hopefully it will cause a little surge in our tourist industry
but most of all it would be nice i thought if you'd draw based on the photo and i'll be all like i'm infuenced someone?!
just kidding :)
Internet Ferret Kink Will Interest M/tch?
Just remember that, in order for one's oeuvre to be "art", one must engage in painting whilst tied to a baboon by a rope woven of llama hair. All of this must be videotaped by a drunken collaborator, in the style of The Blair Witch Project. Dialogue should be supplied by Carol Kane in Aramaic.
My art has been described as strongly dongical.
Oops, that should be "commended".
I hate the word "commended". Forget that quote.
I Fondle Kids While I Masturbate.
I Forgot Kitten Was In Microwave
I've never been in a room where I felt less attractive or more badly dressed.
I remember one day when, laundry-challenged, I had to go to one of my seminars wearing shorts. It was mortifying. I was generally among the worst-dressed of the grad students as it was, but that was a real low.
76 makes an excellent point. I bet there are llama farms in Texas.
82: Probably, but the baboon is currently in DC.
