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Art edu­ca­tion: (…) gen­er­al capa­bil­i­ty in deal­ing with the arts. (TLA).
… I do not want art for a few, any more than edu­ca­tion for a few, or free­dom for a few. (TLA).

Art: (…) the human plea­sure of life is what I mean by art. (A&L).
(…) It is the art of the peo­ple: the art pro­duced by the dai­ly labour of all kinds of men for the dai­ly use of all kinds of men. (Idem.)
(…) ART IS MAN’S EXPRESSION OF HIS JOY IN LABOUR. (AuP).

Art and labor: (…) I under­stand by real art … the expres­sion by man of his plea­sure in labour. (AOP).

Art price: … the pro­vid­ing of a hand­i­crafts­man who shall put his own indi­vid­ual intel­li­gence and enthu­si­asm into the goods he fash­ions. (MB).

Art jus­tice: … so that we may adorn life with the plea­sure of cheer­ful­ly buy­ing goods at their due price; with the plea­sure of sell­ing goods that we could be proud of both for fair price and fair work­man­ship: with the plea­sure of work­ing sound­ly and with­out haste at mak­ing goods that we could be proud of? (TLA).

Aes­thet­ic sim­plic­i­ty: All art starts from this sim­plic­i­ty; and the high­er the art ris­es, the greater the sim­plic­i­ty. (BOL).
(…) have noth­ing in your hous­es which you do not know to be use­ful or believe to be beau­ti­ful. (TBL).

Beau­ty: …every­thing made by man’s hands has a form, which must be either beau­ti­ful or ugly; beau­ti­ful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is dis­cor­dant with Nature, and thwarts her. (TLA).

Beau­ty of life: that beau­ty … is what is meant by art. (BOL).

The hand­i­craft ques­tion: …have we not good rea­son for wish­ing, if it might be, that hand­i­craft should once more step into the place of machine-pro­duc­tion? (The Revival of Hand­i­craft)

Ugly: I have said that the pro­duce of man’s labour must be ugly if art be not applied to it. (ACT)

Form: … forms and intri­ca­cies that do not nec­es­sar­i­ly imi­tate nature, but in which the hand of the crafts­man is guid­ed to work in the way that she does, till the web, the cup, or the knife, look as nat­ur­al, nay as love­ly, as the green field, the riv­er bank, or the moun­tain flint. (TLA).

Pur­pose of art­work: To give peo­ple plea­sure in the things they must per­force use, that is one great office of dec­o­ra­tion; to give peo­ple plea­sure in the things they must per­force make, that is the oth­er use of it. (TLA).
(…) art will make our streets as beau­ti­ful as the woods, as ele­vat­ing as the moun­tain-sides: it will be a plea­sure and a rest, and not a weight upon the spir­its to come… (TLA).
(…) art made by the peo­ple and for the peo­ple as a joy to the mak­er and the user. (TLA).

Orig­i­nal­i­ty: (…) the essence of the art is that the dec­o­ra­tor’s art can­not be imi­ta­tive even to the lim­it­ed extent that the pic­ture-painter’s art is… (MB).
(…) your con­ven­tion must be your own, and not bor­rowed from oth­er times and peo­ples; or, at the least, that you must make it your own by thor­ough­ly under­stand­ing both the nature and the art you are deal­ing with. (Idem.)

Tra­di­tion: It is no longer tra­di­tion if it is servile­ly copied, with­out change, the token of life. (MB).

Prof­it: (…) for prof­it the work­man has been robbed of one plea­sure which as long as he is a work­man is per­haps his most impor­tant one: plea­sure in his dai­ly work: he is now only part of a machine. (A&L).

Art own­er­ship: He must be allowed to think of what he is doing, and to vary his work as the cir­cum­stances of it vary, and his own moods. He must be for ever striv­ing to make the piece he is at work at bet­ter than the last. (MB).

Craftsper­son­’s “due”: Mon­ey enough to keep him from fear of want or degra­da­tion … leisure enough from bread-earn­ing work to give him time to read and think … work enough of the kind afore­said … and last­ly, his own due share of art, a dwelling that … does not lack beau­ty. (MB).

Machines: (…) chiefly machines for car­ry­ing on the com­pe­ti­tion in buy­ing and sell­ing, called false­ly com­merce; and machines for the vio­lent destruc­tion of life (…) men’s work shall be fit for free men and not for machines. (AOP).
(…) we should be the mas­ters of our machines and not their slaves, as we are now. It is not this machine which we want to get rid of, but the great intan­gi­ble machine of com­mer­cial tyran­ny, which oppress­es the lives of all of us. (AP).
(…) why is he (Man) the slave to machin­ery? Because he is the slave to the sys­tem for whose exis­tence the inven­tion of machin­ery was nec­es­sary. (SC).

Medieval labor ideals: (…) the work of all hand­i­crafts in the Mid­dle Ages pro­duced beau­ty as a nec­es­sary part of the goods. (A&L).

Mam­mon-wor­ship: Four more church­es are to be sac­ri­ficed to the Mam­mon-wor­ship and want of taste of this great city. (DCC)

Indus­tri­al evil: … by far the most part of their lives in work, which at the best can­not inter­est them, or devel­op their best fac­ul­ties, and at the worst is mere unmit­i­gat­ed slav­ish toil, only to be wrung out of them by the sternest com­pul­sion. (TBL).

Sim­plic­i­ty of life: Sim­plic­i­ty of life, beget­ting sim­plic­i­ty of taste, that is, a love for sweet and lofty things, is of all mat­ters most nec­es­sary for the birth of the new and bet­ter art we crave for; sim­plic­i­ty every­where, in the palace as well as in the cot­tage. (TLA).
(…) is the absence of encum­ber­ing gew-gaws. (TBL).
(…) sim­plic­i­ty of life, even the barest, is not a mis­ery, but the very foun­da­tion of refine­ment. (PAC).
(…) Sim­plic­i­ty of life, beget­ting sim­plic­i­ty of taste, that is, a love for sweet and lofty things, is of all mat­ters most nec­es­sary for the birth of the new and bet­ter art we crave for; sim­plic­i­ty every­where, in the palace as well as in the cot­tage. (TLA).

Com­merce: (…) all Soci­ety rests on a gigan­tic sys­tem of usury, piti­less and implaca­ble, which is pre­pared to crush out of exis­tence all peo­ples and com­mu­ni­ties that can­not adapt them­selves to its laws. (OOA).
(…) com­mer­cial­ism has crushed the pow­er of com­bi­na­tion out of the low­er class­es, the Trades Unions, found­ed for the advance­ment of the work­ing class as a class, have already become con­ser­v­a­tive and obstruc­tive bod­ies, wield­ed by the mid­dle-class politi­cians for par­ty pur­pos­es. (AuP).
(…) The present posi­tion of the work­ers is that of the machin­ery of com­merce, or in plain­er words its slaves. (SC).
(…) That sys­tem, which I have called Com­pet­i­tive Com­merce, is dis­tinct­ly a sys­tem of war; that is of waste and destruc­tion. (AS).

List of cit­ed Mor­ris Essays

AS, Arts and Social­ism
AC, The Arts and Crafts of Today
SC, Sign Of the Change
AP, Arts and Its Pro­duc­ers
A&L, Art and Labour
DCC, Destruc­tion of City Church­es
PAC, The Prospects of Archi­tec­ture in Civ­i­liza­tion
MB, Mak­ing The Best Of It
AuP, Art Under Plu­tocrary
AOP, The Art of The Peo­ple
TLA, The Less­er Arts of Life
TBL, The Beau­ty of Life
OOA, Ori­gins of Orna­men­tal Art

Last I checked, diver­si­ty was a for­mal prop­er­ty, not a sub­stan­tive one:

A good that is good in itself (for a sec­ond, let’s accept an intrin­sic good) must have sub­stan­tive con­tent: hap­pi­ness, jus­tice, health, knowl­edge, friend­ship, etc.

But diver­si­ty mere­ly describes a state of variation—the pres­ence of dif­fer­ence. It alone tells us noth­ing about:

*whether the dif­fer­ences are eth­i­cal­ly valu­able,
*whether they pro­mote human flour­ish­ing,
*or whether they cre­ate or solve prob­lems.

A group of peo­ple with high­ly diverse vices, dan­ger­ous skills, or incom­pat­i­ble aims is “diverse,” yet not nec­es­sar­i­ly good.

In oth­er words, diver­si­ty is more a con­fig­u­ra­tion, not a val­ue.

Think (for a moment) of the fol­low­ing:

con­tra­dic­to­ry belief sys­tems,

harm­ful prac­tices,

destruc­tive behav­iors,

incom­pat­i­ble cos­molo­gies,

What’s valu­able above any of the above?

If diver­si­ty were intrin­si­cal­ly good, then the pres­ence of any difference—even irra­tional­i­ty, injus­tice, or cruelty—would count pos­i­tive­ly. This is absurd.

Diver­si­ty mere­ly increas­es the num­ber of ele­ments or types in a sys­tem.

Knowl­edge aims at truth.

Jus­tice aims at fair­ness.

Courage aims at right action in the face of dan­ger.

Diver­si­ty aims at … more diver­si­ty.

Isn’t that redun­dant?

Ruskin, 1863

Every so often, we review the state of national art-writing. Check Art Forum’s review page, labeled “Critic’s Picks.” Art writing has become coded hairball of theory, ideology & arcana. Clarity? Explanation? What for? Yet, when it comes to aesthetic evaluations you’d expect a writer to justify his/her judgments.

Instead,

1- A Matthew Bour­bon describes the works of Mark Man­ders for the Dal­las Muse­um of Art. At the end of his sec­ond para­graph he asserts:

Man­ders care­ful­ly gov­erns the pre­sen­ta­tion of his art  to expose the inte­ri­or­i­ty of a self ––a por­trait of the artist revealed in the tan­gen­tial rela­tion­ships he cre­ates.

An impor­tant con­clu­sion. Yet, from look­ing at Man­ders’ work, how can Bour­bon fath­om such a state­ment in heav­en? Is “tan­gen­tial” here a geo­met­ric real prop­er­ty, or is it a metaphor for a rela­tion­ship? In some sense, any­thing is tan­gen­tial to any­thing else. So?

Worse yet, Bour­bon exhibits an ‑almost- auto­mat­ic ten­den­cy to approve, as in this sam­ple:

Dis­play­ing a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the rela­tion­ship of objects to one anoth­er, and the rela­tion­ship of forms to their envi­ron­ment, Man­ders crafts and arranges his ambigu­ous sculp­tur­al aggre­gates as thought-pro­vok­ing machines. That’s not to sug­gest that he is mere­ly com­bin­ing dis­parate ele­ments in some emp­ty game of neo-sur­re­al­ism. Instead, his orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple is the notion of a self-por­trait as a build­ing. Manders’s indi­vid­ual sculp­tures are pre­cise­ly con­ceived and func­tion as parts in a larg­er and per­pet­u­al­ly expand­ing whole. Man­ders care­ful­ly gov­erns (…)

Each sen­tence con­tains hack­neyed nuggets: “dis­play­ing a sen­si­tiv­i­ty,” “though-pro­vok­ing,” “pre­cise­ly con­ceived,” “care­ful­ly gov­erns”, “cre­ates pal­pa­ble ten­sion.” Then, accord­ing to Bour­bon’s take Man­ders’ work can­not be chancy (it would amount to “an emp­ty game of neo-sur­re­al­ism”?). But the writer does­n’t explain why he makes this dis­tinc­tion, oth­er than throw­ing an orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple: “self-por­trait as build­ing.” What is that? We’ll nev­er know.

2- How about Nico­las Lin­nert’s review of Cheyney Thomp­son’s show @ Mit List Visu­al Arts Cen­ter:

There is an impen­e­tra­bil­i­ty to Thompson’s art, which is unex­pect­ed giv­en that his ref­er­ences and meth­ods are so exten­sive and clear­ly elu­ci­dat­ed.

How can Thom­son’s “clear­ly elu­ci­dat­ed” ref­er­ences and meth­ods simul­ta­ne­ous­ly elic­it “impen­e­tra­bil­i­ty”? Lin­nert’s own aes­thet­ic baf­fle­ment leaves us with pel­lu­cid balder­dash.

3- Stephanie Sny­der cov­ers artist Joe Thurston’s exhib­it @ Eliz­a­beth Leach Gallery. Here is an inter­est­ing part:

The res­o­nant index­i­cal­i­ty of the works’ geome­tries sug­gests his­to­ries of exchange. And in fact the accom­pa­ny­ing text reveals that the works con­tain objects we can­not see, such as eye­glass­es, let­ters, and old­er paint­ings by the artist.

What’s “res­o­nant index­i­cal­i­ty”? Sny­der con­cludes “res­o­nant index­i­cal­i­ty” implies “his­to­ries of exchange.” But alas, she betrays her own infer­ence with the infor­ma­tion of an “accom­pa­ny­ing text.” Which is first?

Sny­der con­cludes:

Inside each object sits a piece of the artist’s life, its human val­ue enclosed with­in the ques­tion of the object’s val­ue as a work of art. Thurston offers us the opportunity—with each piece’s painter­ly force field act­ing as a psy­chic oasis—to con­tem­plate the impor­tance of his­to­ry and the chal­lenge of let­ting go.

… “painter­ly force field act­ing as psy­chic oasis” notwith­stand­ing, Sny­der’s con­clu­sion in red can be said of vir­tu­al­ly any art­work.

Until the next,

Of course, tele­vi­sion is edu­ca­tion­al. What does it teach?

Übercritics Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz

I found out about this thanks to a Facebook post by ex-Miami Herald art critic Lisa Turner. (As usual, we enter the thorny issue of social causation.) I pass.

How­ev­er, some­thing must be said in favor of the dis­il­lu­sioned crit­ic, who always writes from the ruins of cul­ture. Indeed, we all read that dis­en­chant­ed crit­ic proud­ly car­ry­ing the air of Weber’s Entza­uberung.  A strength of the crit­ic is their con­tempt for polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. A superb case is 19th-cen­tu­ry rebel Jules Val­lès. His crit­i­cism was forged in anger against aca­d­e­m­ic pom­pos­i­ty and the cor­rect pieties of the Sec­ond Empire. He wrote with a pam­phle­teer’s fire, mix­ing irony with out­rage, con­tempt with humor. His con­tempt for “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” was not just styl­is­tic but existential—he refused the masks of pro­pri­ety because he lived and wrote on the side of those denied pro­pri­ety.

Jules Vallès appears in Fèlicien Champsaur’s Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui

Here are spe­cif­ic epigons of the French street scrib­bler:

1. The “Cas­san­dra of taste”, prophet­ic and warned, but nev­er heed­ed. Dwight Mac­don­ald’s end­less warn­ings about “Mass­cult” ver­sus “Mid­cult,” see­ing “debase­ment” every­where.
2. The per­ma­nent mal­con­tent? George Stein­er: sharp, mem­o­rable, iron­ic, always antic­i­pat­ing a col­lapse.
3. The crit­ic of ash­es?  Harold Bloom —his every lament about the decline of the canon reads like com­men­tary deliv­ered among ruins (while fierce­ly guard­ing the embers that remain).
4. The Jad­ed Ora­cle. She speaks with author­i­ty and weary skep­ti­cism (Camille Paglia’s best 1990s writ­ings are filled with nos­tal­gia for lost cul­tur­al seri­ous­ness).
5. One more! The “Ashen crit­ic” —they sur­vey cul­ture as though it were already ruins (as if sigh­ing through the dust). Let’s hear it for Theodor Adorno, Mae­stro of Malaise: wit­ty and pon­der­ous.
6. Son­tag became increas­ing­ly skep­ti­cal about con­tem­po­rary culture’s “super­fi­cial­i­ty”. Too late.
7. Clé­ment Greenberg’s bard atti­tude. He saw mod­ern art’s tra­jec­to­ry as nar­row­ing and often railed against kitsch and deca­dence.

Slavoj Žižek is our flam­boy­ant stand-in: end­less­ly say­ing “no” to lib­er­al opti­mism, cap­i­tal­ist real­ism, and post-ide­o­log­i­cal com­fort (with more jokes and spit than Adorno would have tol­er­at­ed). He clev­er­ly denounces ide­ol­o­gy while thriv­ing on its cir­cus.

How about play­ing Der Nein-Sager, clever and min­i­mal­ist, cap­tur­ing resis­tance and nega­tion?

Com­pared with these gods, I pre­fer to play the what­ev­erist.

Beardedness or non-beardedness?  A bit puzzling.

It seems that full beards and heavy stubble edged out the light, clean-shaven look.

The conclusion is based on a study of women’s judgments of attractiveness, health, masculinity, and parenting abilities, from photographs of clean-shaven men, lightly or heavily stubbled, and fully bearded.

How about non-beardedness?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, men rat­ed full beards and heavy stub­ble as most attrac­tive, fol­lowed close­ly by clean-shaven and light stub­ble as least attrac­tive. Well, a dose of male nar­cis­sism is to be expect­ed here.

Men and women agree on male beard­ed­ness, i.e., mas­culin­i­ty rat­ings increased lin­ear­ly as facial hair increased.

I’m afraid there’s a social side-effect the study is over­look­ing. Remem­ber that our cul­ture pro­motes and rewards a “clean” male image over its beard­ed coun­ter­part (which may explain why beard­ed­ness is a less com­mon trait than non-beard­ed­ness).

How does that prove the study’s con­clu­sions regard­ing female courtship behav­ior?  Should­n’t women reflect/influence cul­tur­al mores?  West­ern cul­tur­al andro­cen­trism notwith­stand­ing, one would expect beard­ed­ness to fig­ure more promi­nent­ly.

Let’s fol­low the study: sup­pose a beard­ed male gets many more females than a non-beard­ed one.  Should­n’t beard­ed­ness then, in time, become a pre­ferred social male trait, which would, as a con­se­quence, increase the pop­u­la­tion of beard­ed males?  If so, would such a pre­dom­i­nant trait remain a favorite amongst females?  We don’t know.  The arti­cle does­n’t explain why beard­ed­ness con­veys attrac­tive­ness, mas­culin­i­ty, or parental abil­i­ties.  Only that it just hap­pens.  Accord­ing to evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry, mod­els of sex­u­al selec­tion sug­gest that a trait does not need any under­ly­ing selec­tion advan­tage.  Females have to demon­strate an under­ly­ing sen­so­ry process favor­ing the stim­u­lus.

But we knew that sex­u­al pref­er­ence was redun­dant!

Are wom­en’s incli­na­tions wired to our fur­ry ances­tors?  It gets more nuanced.

Researchers believe that a thresh­old of den­si­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion may be nec­es­sary for beards to func­tion as an attrac­tive sig­nal,

In oth­er words, women, by con­trast, may balance…a com­pet­i­tive mas­cu­line part­ner against the costs of mat­ing with a too-mas­cu­line part­ner.

(on the oth­er hand, stand­alone mus­tach­es are gen­er­al­ly less appeal­ing; recent fash­ion com­men­tary even dubs them “a major mis­step” when done alone).

As such,

Too masculine?

Here’s a mul­ti­ple choice:

a) As Niet­zsche declared, the West has become a non-beard­ed deca­dent cul­ture.
b) Jews, Mus­lims, Rasta­far­i­ans & Sikhs look sex­i­er.
c) We should pre­scribe more testos­terone for our beard­less youth.
d) Wall Street CEO’s are unat­trac­tive peo­ple.
e) All of the above

You women & why not, men, be the judges. Which is sex­i­er?

The Thoreau? Sparse and stub­born, the beard of a man who mea­sures beans and mis­trusts soci­ety. Its charm lies in its refusal of charm: a naturalist’s whiskers, like moss on a stone. Odd­ly appeal­ing if one loves ascetic inten­si­ty. The Castro? The rev­o­lu­tion­ary beard par excel­lence. Thick, mil­i­tary, unyield­ing — emblem rather than an orna­ment. Seduc­tive in its viril­i­ty, but quite author­i­tar­i­an. The Asimov? Trimmed, pro­fes­so­r­i­al, self-aware. This beard arrives late in life as a badge of ven­er­a­ble geek­dom. More avun­cu­lar than erot­ic: the beard one lis­tens to while it explains the laws of robot­ics.

The Melville?

A beard full of storm and sea-spray, bib­li­cal in its thun­der. It frames eyes that have seen whales breach­ing in the mind’s abyss. Seduc­tive in the way of doomed voy­agers and unread man­u­scripts.

The Whitman?

The demo­c­ra­t­ic beard: abun­dant & ten­der. Whitman’s beard wants to kiss the world, to brush against every cheek and shoul­der of human­i­ty. A bit erot­ic, mater­nal, and fra­ter­nal at once (per­haps the most tru­ly lov­able of the lot).

The fight above has milieu and rhythm.  Its function (the mapping of its constituent parts) presupposes the expressiveness of its territory.  Milieu brings forth the very phenomenon of how life expresses itself.  Surely, the event is not self-conscious.  A Deleuzian question: Can this emergence be called art?  Art is connected to representation, but not necessarily the idea of “presenting again.”

Against “tra­di­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” Deleuze sug­gests a one-to-many/­many-to-many rela­tion­ship that changes the dynam­ics of rep­re­sen­ta­tion:

Rhi­zomat­ics! An a‑centered, non­hier­ar­chi­cal, non­signi­fy­ing sys­tem with­out a gen­er­al and with­out an orga­niz­ing mem­o­ry or cen­tral automa­ton, defined sole­ly by a cir­cu­la­tion of states.

What is at ques­tion in the rhi­zome is a rela­tion to sex­u­al­i­ty —but also to the ani­mal, the veg­e­tal, the world, pol­i­tics, the book, things nat­ur­al and artificial—that is total­ly dif­fer­ent from the arbores­cent rela­tion: all man­ner of “becom­ings.” (ATP, 21).  That is why.

The artist is the first per­son to set a bound­ary stone or make a mark. (ATP, 314).

Artist?  Ani­mal?  How?

Not in the sense that these qual­i­ties belong to a sub­ject, but in the case that they delin­eate a ter­ri­to­ry that will belong to the sub­ject that car­ries or pro­duces them. These qual­i­ties are sig­na­tures, but the sig­na­ture, the prop­er name, is not the sub­jec­t’s mark but the domain’s con­sti­tut­ing mark. (ATP, 311).

What’s art any­way?

Art is a false con­cept … sole­ly nom­i­nal. (ATP, 301)

“False” is the fal­la­cy of defin­ing some­thing for which we already have an exam­ple.  That’s the prob­lem of defin­ing art a pri­ori.¹ Deleuze favors the empir­i­cal approach of the anthro­pol­o­gist over that of the essen­tial­ist philoso­pher. We can learn about art objects because of their orga­ni­za­tion, dif­fer­ences, and inter­nal coher­ence with their exhib­it pur­pose.  Instead of “defin­ing,” let’s talk about how art is exem­pli­fied

 

Deleuze is explic­it about not falling for the essen­tial­ist trap. Art shows itself in its expres­sive qual­i­ties, not by “belong­ing to the sub­ject,” but because it brings forth a ter­ri­to­ry. The mark in the cave-wall above is not that of a sub­ject, but the abode itself. “The sig­na­ture is not the indi­ca­tion of a per­son, but the chancy for­ma­tion of a domain.”

 

As it’s to be expect­ed, art [as ter­ri­to­ry] pre­sup­pos­es de-ter­ri­to­ri­al­i­sa­tion, which is why the lat­ter becomes essen­tial to the strat­i­fi­ca­tion of human life: From undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed mag­ic, to tra­di­tion, to reli­gious sym­bol, to l’art pour l’art insti­tu­tion, to post-Cap­i­tal­ist art as spec­ta­cle. Mean­while, artists “pro­duce frag­ments with­out total­i­ty, cut-up par­ti­cles.” Deleuz­ian art pre­sup­pos­es a con­stant frag­men­tary inter­ac­tion between par­tic­u­lar instances (say, Ducham­p’s “ready mades”) and fields (the Avant-garde). ⁴

What defines a ter­ri­to­ry is the emer­gence of dif­fer­ent mat­ters of expres­sion. (ATP, 315)

There is one prob­lem: art’s “ter­ri­to­ries” have mul­ti­plied. Art [styles] grow out of par­tic­u­lar social and aes­thet­ic con­texts. As they mutate, they grow in com­plex­i­ty. It is some­times dif­fi­cult to read these styl­is­tic dif­fer­ences because they are con­text-bound.

Here’s a hap­haz­ard con­coc­tion of styles, grouped by his­to­ry, form, tech­nique, etc:

Since mod­ernism: Impres­sion­ism, Post-Impres­sion­ism, Mod­ernism (Cubism, Sur­re­al­ism, Expres­sion­ism, Futur­ism, Dada, Abstract, Con­struc­tivism, etc.), Contemporary/Postmodern (Pop Art, Min­i­mal­ism, Con­cep­tu­al Art, Street Art, Dig­i­tal Art, etc.). Then there’s “the cul­tur­al.” Islam­ic geo­met­ric art, Japan­ese Ukiyo‑e, Chi­nese ink paint­ing, Indi­an Mughal minia­tures, African trib­al sculp­ture, Indige­nous Amer­i­can art forms. How about medi­um-based styles (from tech­niques or mate­ri­als): Fres­co, Mosa­ic, Graf­fi­ti, Col­lage, Instal­la­tion, Per­for­mance Art, Dig­i­tal & AI-gen­er­at­ed art?

Pret­ty ter­ri­to­ri­al­ized!

What holds the total­i­ty? Rhythm? The pos­si­bil­i­ty of transforming/perverting life.⁵

Hmm.

Robert Capa’s photo “Fallen Soldier ” was published in the July 12, 1937, issue of Life magazine. It had actually appeared on two French publications, Vu and Regards, in 1936.* Anyone who has browsed through a textbook on the Spanish Civil War or a collection of outstanding twentieth-century photos may have seen the picture above. Then, I found this interesting piece by Larry Rohter in the New York Times.

From the for­mal point of view, Tabard’s mon­tage seems a more rad­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion than Mur­ray or Sander’s pic­tures.  Each pho­tog­ra­ph­er uses the cam­era to sig­ni­fy a con­stant­ly mutat­ing phe­nom­e­non, if not, there would be no use in rep­re­sent­ing it. (the medi­um of) pho­tog­ra­phy sub­verts human inten­tion­al­i­ty. Here is a sim­i­le, which I think Orte­ga-Gas­set would sub­scribe: More than a nov­el, Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote is a “shot” of the Span­ish cul­ture. Just as a lit­er­ary work can be rein­ter­pret­ed, the cam­era “shot” can con­tin­u­al­ly expand its fit.  Put dif­fer­ent­ly, pho­tog­ra­phers don’t “manip­u­late” any more than real­i­ty is being con­stant­ly manip­u­lat­ed by our vision.

In Visu­al intel­li­gence: Per­cep­tion, image, and manip­u­la­tion in visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion (1997). A. M. Bar­ry iden­ti­fies three dif­fer­ent kinds of vio­la­tions: Active decep­tion, when reporters stage events to expose wrong­do­ing or using hid­den cam­eras and micro­phones; mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, with reporters imper­son­at­ing non-reporters—doctors, police­men, vic­tims’ kin, and so on; and pas­sive decep­tion, by which reporters allow them­selves to be tak­en for mem­bers of the pub­lic.

No one real­ly knows why some images are des­tined for great­ness.  Imag­ine a kind of pub­lic con­scious­ness muse­um where they end up, after going through a process of exhaust­ing diplo­mat­ic nego­ti­a­tions. To alle­vi­ate our human curios­i­ty, we are giv­en to fill the casu­is­tic holes with all sorts of made-up fac­tors.  At this point, I don’t care if “Falling Sol­dier” is authen­tic. The back-and-forth of the con­tro­ver­sy miss­es the rel­e­vance of the image as a haunt­ing and mem­o­rable token of the beau­ti­ful ideals and hor­ri­ble atroc­i­ties of the Span­ish Civ­il War.  With all this atten­tion, Capa’s pho­to has become one of the most crit­i­cal war sym­bols of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. One way or the oth­er, he should be proud.
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^*The cap­tion reads, “Robert Capa’s cam­era catch­es a Span­ish sol­dier the instant a bul­let drops him through the head in front of Cór­do­ba.” ¹ Though Ser­ra­no Esparza­’s account is a bit wind­ed ‑and not my con­cern here- a cru­cial aspect of the dis­cus­sion is whether (Moroc­can pro-Fran­co) rebel snipers were present at the cer­ro that morn­ing. ²In his book, along with Gal­lagher’s tes­ti­mo­ny, Knight­ley reports what peo­ple say Capa said. His final ver­dict is that the pic­ture is an “ambigu­ous image.” ³ The Span­ish film’s trail­er clev­er­ly uses Capa’s iden­ti­ty cre­ation right dur­ing the war from Endre Ernő Fried­mann (aka André Fried­mann). Sure­ly, Capa’s life seems out of a movie. Accord­ing to the Wikipedia entry, “In 1934, André Fried­man, as he called him­self then, met Ger­da Poho­rylle, a Ger­man Jew­ish refugee. The cou­ple lived in Paris, where André taught Ger­da pho­tog­ra­phy. Togeth­er, they con­trived the name and image of “Robert Capa” as a famous Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Ger­da took the name Ger­da Taro, becom­ing suc­cess­ful in her own right. She trav­eled with Capa to Spain in 1936 to doc­u­ment the Span­ish Civ­il War. In July 1937, Capa went on a short busi­ness trip to Paris while Ger­da remained in Madrid. She was killed near Brunete dur­ing a bat­tle. Capa, who was report­ed­ly engaged to her, was deeply shocked and nev­er mar­ried.” ⁴ The Broth­er­hood of the Linked Ring was an asso­ci­a­tion of late 19^th and ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry British pho­tog­ra­phers who pledged to pro­mote Pic­to­ri­al­ism. Found­ed in May 1892 by Hen­ry Peach Robin­son, the Broth­er­hood was “a means of bring­ing togeth­er those who are inter­est­ed in the devel­op­ment of the high­est form of Art of which Pho­tog­ra­phy is capa­ble.” ⁵ Lom­broso stat­ed in 1871: “Only we white peo­ple have reached the ulti­mate sym­me­try of bod­i­ly form.” ⁶ For details of these and oth­er recent pic manip­u­la­tions, click here. ⁷ Accord­ing to William Hatch­en and Lawrence Earl­baum, we are expe­ri­enc­ing “a col­lec­tive sense of the end of an era.” A Nie­man poll on 304 jour­nal­ists who had stud­ied at Har­vard for one year dis­closed the fol­low­ing: 1‑The dis­tinc­tion between news and enter­tain­ment is increas­ing­ly obscure.  2‑Television and radio are gain­ing in influ­ence but declin­ing in jour­nal­is­tic qual­i­ty, where­as news­pa­pers strug­gle to main­tain qual­i­ty and are los­ing ground.  3‑Media pro­pri­etors are more con­cerned with prof­its than prod­uct qual­i­ty.  4‑The pub­lic is los­ing con­fi­dence in the media.