Posts tagged Art
by Paul Strand
“Wall Street, 1915”
While agreeing with photographers like Stieglitz on the idea that photography was indeed an art form rather than a hand maiden or visual aid to painters, Paul Strand disliked soft focus and other manipulations that were typical of the Pictorialist movement. Instead, he proposed what he called “straight photography.” Strand’s pure and direct style, with a keen eye for geometric patterns and perspective, took photography into its next phase: modernism.
While the aesthetic aspects of Strand’s images are so striking that they cannot escape our attention, Strand was convinced, like Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine before him, that photography could serve as a tool to initiate social change. He believed that maintaining a balance between the rational or objective on one side and the emotional on the other was essential in attaining such goals.
This 1915 picture of Wall Street is a perfect example of this balance. The unadorned building with its austere shapes takes up most of the space. With its repetition of lines and shapes, the image borders on the abstract. The giant rectangular holes do not reveal what goes on behind them; rather, it looks like the small figures could be swallowed up by them at any given moment. People are reduced to subordinate, indistinct puppets, their shadows nothing more than parallel lines in the overall pattern. In all, the image confronts us with the realization of how insignificant the individuals are in comparison to the huge J.P. Morgan Bank, a symbol of capitalism. Thus, while the first impression may be very factual, if we pause and ponder we can discover its implied personal message: a warning against greed and the power of money, and the loss of humanity that this may lead to.
Title: Modern Times
Artist: Alan Butler
(Featuring Creative Commons Balloon Dog by Rob Myers)
“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best. ” Frida Kahlo
(Source: incenses)
I feel fine/nothing
Gale Antokal, photographs from We Are So Lightly Here
(Source: growing-orbits)
Joseph Kosuth
jenny holzer.
Tomas Libertiny, The Unbearable Lightness, 2010 - stainless steel, glass, plastic, resin, and covered in honeycomb produced by a swarm of over 40,000 bees
Image of Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs, 1965 (on display in various versions around the world). The artwork consists of a chair, a photograph of the chair, and the dictionary definition of ‘chair’.
1931 notebook entry from Ludwig Wittgenstein (Culture and Value 10e):
The limits of language is shown by its being impossible to describe the fact which corresponds to (is the translation of) a sentence, without simply repeating the sentence. (This has to do with the Kantian solution of the problem of philosophy.)
Jenny Holzer, “Survival Series”
Image of Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs, 1965 (on display in various versions around the world). The artwork consists of a chair, a photograph of the chair, and the dictionary definition of ‘chair’.
1931 notebook entry from Ludwig Wittgenstein (Culture and Value 10e):
The limits of language is shown by its being impossible to describe the fact which corresponds to (is the translation of) a sentence, without simply repeating the sentence. (This has to do with the Kantian solution of the problem of philosophy.)
via beetleinabox
Bruce Nauman.
Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer- Projections, New York 2004
