lucrezia's+EE+proposal

EE PROPOSAL

As a first choice, I would like to do my extended essay on Visual Arts, not least because I plan to study either photography or fine arts at university. As for the topic, I’d be interested in the impact of technical progress on the development of (western) art. From prehistory into the nineteenth century art was primarily representational; it served variously to document and inform, to propitiate, to exalt. Technical progress has brought us photography, which allowed representation without traditional art (and pushed artists to explore non-representational, abstract forms); computer design, which allowed art without the once necessary technical skills; and also new materials, which conversely allowed a novel, hyper-realistic form of representational art. Is traditional ‘paintbrush and pencil art’ now simply obsolete? Or does it retain a fundamental though subtle and much less evident role in today’s frantic and machine-like working society? To narrow the area of investigation, I could compare the works of a photographer and a painter, and analyse what makes them different in terms of meaning and function. I do know artists in both fields (painting and photography), and could personally discuss the issue with them and use their experience to draw my own conclusions.

Hi Lucrezia.

A few years ago I had a student do an excellent EE considering the reasons why an artist might use traditional media to respond to the work of dancers whilst living in an age of digital, time based and lens based media. She began by looking at Degas as an example of an artist who had used photography as a starting point for drawing and paintings and compared his approach to a contemporary photographer and a contemporary painter, both of whom she was able to interview and see examples of work from (she had seen the work of Degas during her Y12 trip to Paris) You now need to find a similarly specific focus or area of visual investigation that unifies 2 or 3 artists who choose to work in different manners. GM 08/05/12

====Hi Sir! I might have finally found a "focused" topic for my EE: I found a book at home talking about Pictorialism (or pictorial photography), which I thought could relate well to my interest on the impact of technology on art. I came up with two ideas: the first, which is probably more "typical" is to discuss how the work of a pictorial photographer (such as Federico Maria Poppi or ...) exemplifies the changing role of art after the Industrial Revolution. The second (which is frankly the one that would interest me the most, though i'm not sure i can do it) would start from the definition of Pictorial Photography (which is limited to a period of time between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century). It would develop as a discussion on the limits of giving such a movement a definition. I could start by focusing on the work of a particular pictorial artist and compare it with the work of previous and successive artists (and i could interview that photographer i know, Marco Biondi). For example i could bring in how the works of many painters could be now considered 'photographic paintings', or how more recent works of photography (with the aid of technology, e.g. Photoshop) can still be considered pictorial photography. It would also be interesting to discuss why such movement was born. Why would photography, which thanks to technology has means that go far beyond those of painting, use such means to 'recreate' painting?====

Hi Lucrezia

My first thoughts were - how has the availability of digital image manipulation (photoshop etc) enabled a rebirth of pictorialism? Conversely: many painters from Don Eddy to Gerhardt Richter have sought to paint photographs as a theme. I'm still worried that you won't have enough access to actual artworks though. The EE should be built upon direct original research - not drawn solely from books and the internet.

There is perhaps a parallel question as to why Pictorialists from the past or present are not generally accorded high status as artists - but I don't think that would ,make a good VA EE.

Generally you need to find specific, researchable, artists and accessible artworks that can be linked and compared through the filter/focus of your research question. The idea so far is a very interesting one, but I need more information on what you are going to see/visit/investigate at first hand before I can give you further feedback (so please complete and upload the info/outline that I emailed to you - see Riko's page for an example)!

Mr M



Hi Again Lucrezia
I have added a few thoughts;



Hi Sir! Sorry for disappearing most of the past month.. I have done some research and have more or less finalized my EE topic: Gaspard Felix Tournachon, also known as Nadar is considered one of the fathers of photography. But at the time when he stareted his career as a pohotographer, photography was despised by the artistic and litterary world. Baudlaire writes: "by invading the territories of art, [photography] has become art’s most mor­tal enemy, and the confusion of their several func­tions prevents any of them from being properly fulfilled. Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place. If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally." But nevertheless, Baudlaire admired Nadar, and had many portraits taken from the artist. Now what I would like to look into is "how" Nadar was able to get his work to be considered art, by analysing some of his works in comparison with those of his contemporaries. Also, I could compare his work to an artist of our days: in my opinion, with the development of tecnology (-> incredibly simple, digital cameras and programs such as photoshop) for a photograph to be considered a true piece of art gets more and more difficult. How could a photographer give to his work the formal and technical originality that characterized Nadar's work? I thought that a good example is that of the italian photographer Maurizio Galimberti, also known as "il papà della polaroid". Once he mastered all of the 'traditional' photographic techniques, he discovers the polaroid. It is an extremely limited medium, but has the power of creating a direct contact with people. He works especially on compositions, and this is an example of his work: As for the research, on Nadar I have read Pierre Sorlin's 'Son's of Nadar' and ordered the following books: Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, by James Henri Rubin Felix Nadar by Collectif Quand j'etais photographe by Felix Nadar Portraits by Felix Nadar The Art of Portraiture by Felix Nadar

Unfortunatly, most of Nadar's works are in the Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and in the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, and I won't be able to see those directly. What I could do is ask for an e-mail interview with some expert on the artist. A few works are in the Musèe d'Orsay in Paris. I will go and see those and ask for a direct interview. As for Maurizio Galimberti, he is a friend of one of my photography teachers, so I should be able to ask for an interview with the artist and a studio visit.

I really hope I am on the right track this time Lucrezia


 * Hi Lucrezia **


 * This sounds very solid. The 'what is Art? ' conundrum is a tricky one anyway. I always go the Joseph Beuys route myself (anything is Art if that is the maker's intention) **


 * 'Man is only truly alive when he realizes he is a creative, artistic being.. ..Even the act of peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act' **
 * ** interview with Willoughby Sharp, 1969; as quoted in Energy Plan for the Western man - Joseph Beuys in America compiled by Carin Kuoni, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1993, p. 87 **


 * As long as you keep referring to visual evidence and issues it will be great. I agree that the proliferation of technology removes that sense of elite technical magic from the photographer - hence the tendency towards ART photographers who take gritty, technically mediocre images of the ordinary, accidental, incidental and bleak such as Richard Billingham **


 * [] **


 * or Wolfgang Tillmans **


 * https://www.google.it/search?q=Wolfgang+Tillman&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=bYq&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=YGohUP_YH8njtQbT74CACA&ved=0CF0QsAQ&biw=1600&bih=676#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=xZq&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB%3Aofficial&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Wolfgang+Tillmans&oq=Wolfgang+Tillmans&gs_l=img.3..0l9.2885.2885.0.3269.1.1.0.0.0.0.72.72.1.1.0.ekwcph..0.0...1.YMFjir_sCdI&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=91e98ce70d904127&biw=1600&bih=676 **


 * The technically flashy, appealing or 'good' may seem to have become be the preserve of the dilettante or hobbyist photographer. If you have a €3000 Nikon or Canon DSLR it is actually very difficult to take a //technically// bad photo - and if everything is Art anyway should we worry about who the artists are? Perhaps the Art only exists in the mental act of recognising the interesting stuff amongst a billion Flickr images? **


 * How does Galimberti's work become Art rather than say, fashion or editorial photography? Do you have access to Galimberti ?(interviews etc) **

Hi Sir!! I have news about the interviews: -Karen Hellman, expert of the Department of Photography at the Paul Getty Museum has accepted my request for an e-mail interview -I contacted the Musee d'Orsay and will go to Paris to see some of Nadar's works. There I will be able to talk to Gerome Legrand, "en charge de la photographie" -I found Maurizio Galimberti and will go to Milan at the beginning of september for a studio visit and an interview with the artist I am now preparing the interviews.. any particular suggestions?

Nice work Lucrezia

Post a set of questions that you are considering here and I will feed back to you. Generally though - avoid cramming two questions into one, avoid leading questions (ones that suggest your own opinion or a particular viewpoint)

Record the live interviews (we have excellent compact digital recorders in school) You don't need to transcribe everything, but it would be useful to have a few of the most pertinent quotes in your appendices.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what you bring back from these interviews!

Mr M 28/08

Hi Sir! I am going to Milan on monday so here's what I'm planning to ask to Maurizio Galimberti.. Sorry for sending it at the last minute but I wasn't expecting to meet him so early

PS: I prepared the interview in Italian (since i will interview Galimberti in italian), and the translation below is not that good.. PPS: I find avoiding 'leading questions' quite difficult

" - Nadar is considered today as the "father of photography", he who made "photography a form of art". Now, a century later, you are known as the "father of Polaroid", and he who made Polaroid pictures "pieces of art". And just as photography was then despised as an art, the Polaroid definitely isn't the favorite medium for the majority of photographers. Don't hide value judgements in your questions! (says something like 'it might be said...' - at the very least!) What makes it different from other cameras? In other words, what made you choose it as your primary medium of work?

- The most original aspect of your portraits is probably their 'fragmentation'. - again, do discuss the fragmentation, but don't tell teh artist the most original aspect of their work! When painting ran out of any form of 'traditional' experimentation, it felt the necessity of a radical renovation. So canvases started beig object of a gradual 'breaking up' of light, then of forms, finally of substance itself; Can your work be considered in this sense the beginning of a similar evolution in the field of photography?

- And what do those fragments represent? good! Seeing them for the first time I automatically thought of kaleidoscopes, whose mass of crystal fragments create different forms according to how and how much you shake it. So is there a relationship between the fragmented compositions of your portraits and the fragmented changeability of each of us? nice question/metaphor

- The greatest difference between polaroids and traditional photography is probably the TIME needed for pose and printing. But what makes polaroids so quick and simple, becomes extremely complicated in your portraits. What's the result: a fragmented whole of moments, or the fragmentation of a moment alone?

- In your works, there is an evident contrast: the portraits themselves aren't complicated, the tones soft and the composition plain, just as in Nadar's portraits. But the simplicity of those works is then 'broken', its sections clearly cut and recomposed, as in a cubist work. Is this combination coincidental?

- And is the recomposition of those 'sections' merely aesthetic or is it the related to the subject depicted? (and i have specific examples here) This is a key question - the arrangement may even be a lucky, chance arrangement dependent on the order in which they shoot out of the polaroid camera -and artistic use of chance is vital - as Louis Pasteur said 'fortune favours the prepared mind' - the good artist recognizes the lucky accident and preserves it

- Nadar's works, as said above, were of an absolute simplicity. What impressed the most was his ability in understanding and reproducing his subjects' 'soul'. In your portraits too there seems to be an interest beyond the mere compositional beauty. What do you seek in the person you portray? Long, but nice question!

- A recurrent theme in your works is that of hands; again: is it a merely aesthetical element, used to increase the image's equilibrium, or does it have a particular meaning?

I will also ask what artists have influenced his works the most.


 * An eloquently worded and comprehensive set of questions and ideas - Don't worry if you don't get through all of them, or he ignores them, or goes off track. I went on an interview with Robin B-L last year and we could hardly get the subject to answer the planned questions over nearly two hours - but the results were fascinating anyway! **


 * Mr Morgan 01/09/12 (22.55pm!) **

Hi Sir! Here's the interview i have prepared for Karen Hellman (expert of photography at the Getty Museum):


 * At the time when Nadar started his carreer as a photography, this new form of art was incredibily despised by the artistic and litterary world. Baudelaire, particularly, wrotre on the sarguement defining photography “the refuge of every would-be painter”, an “empoverishment of the French artistic genius”. He said: “By invading the territories of art [photography] has become art’s most mortal enemy”. But nevertheless, Baudlaire had himself portrayed several times by Nadar, who he considered “the most amazing manifestation of vitality”. Why? What, to his eyes, made Nadar’s work “an art” compared to that of his contemporarties?
 * Nadar is today considered the “father of photography”. Why? Is it just a matter of technical innovation?
 * Might his work (looking at his portraits especially) be considered the definite “parting” of photography from painting?
 * Nadar was said to be able to “bring to life” the soul of his subjects, to make a moment become eternal. In your opinion, how?
 * Might his past as a caricaturiste for political satire have contributed?
 * Or might the simplicity of his backrounds, in contrast with the complexity of the portraits of pictorial photographers such as Juliet Margaret Cameron emphasise the subjects and their character?
 * Might we say, in this sense, that in nadar’s portraits it’s the subject to create the context and not the context creating the subject?
 * Looking at his aerial photography and his work in the catacombs, in contrast with his predecessors and contemoporaries, used to portray what was “around them”, nadar seems to be interested in what is “below” and “beyond” him. Could we consider his a “Da Vincian” love for experimentation?
 * And could his portraits, in this sense, be considered a “scientific2 analysis of the human psyche?
 * Or could we see in these works a veil of irony? A reflection of what we truly are (in his aerial photography, even the majesty of a city like paris seems insignificant, and we are little more than tiny, scurrying dots) and what we are boun to become (nameless bones piled in the underground of this ant-hill)?
 * So would you consider Nadar’s work more of a portrayal of the individual,or of humanity itself?

And here's what I got from the interview with Galimberti: (again, it is a translation that i'll have to fix)

--Nadar is considered today as the "father of photography", he who made "photography a form of art". Now, a century later, you are known as the "father of Polaroid", and he who made Polaroid pictures "pieces of art". And just as photography was then despised as an art, we might say that the Polaroid isn't the favorite medium for the majority of photographers. What makes it different from other cameras? In other words, what made you choose it as your primary medium of work?

Initially, it has been a "physical" need. I enjoyed printing but I was an orphan, and I seriously feared the dark. So unwilling to print in the "camera oscura", the only way to avoid it was using polaroids, that print directly in the light

-- An original aspect of your portraits is probably their 'fragmentation'. When painting ran out of any form of 'traditional' experimentation, it felt the necessity of a radical renovation. So canvases started beig object of a gradual 'breaking up' of light, then of forms, finally of substance itself; Can your work be considered in this sense the beginning of a similar evolution in the field of photography?

Definitely. I think my work represents a very strong evolution of portraiture in photography (which has now totally supplanted painting becoming the most important form of art).

-- Where do those fragments come from?

Those fragments initially come from the influence of mosaics, from the Byzantine ones in Ravenna to those of the Hume Fluxus group at the Bauhaus David Hockney too had quite a big influence, with his "decomposition" technique. I felt that of "fragmenting" a physical need too, but I knew that i wouldn't get anywhere repeating what Hockney had already done. And now, if he is considered halfway between Braque and Picasso, I am definitely a futurist, just like Duchamp I look for dynamism. My subject is still and i walk around him and portray him in every section. Each shot is part of the project, there is no further selection. It is therefore a very " direct" work, a bit like when Lucio Fontana cuts the pear: he decides how many cuts to do, and then starts. And what's fundamental is movement. A frequent element in my works is that of hands. They too have to give "rhythm" to the work. As Boccioni said: " We have to set dynamic lines of strength"

-- In your works, there is an evident contrast: the portraits themselves aren't complicated, the tones soft and the composition plain, just as in Nadar's portraits. But the simplicity of those works is then 'broken', its sections clearly cut and recomposed. Is this combination coincidental?

The simplicity of the light comes from a technical reason. Using a support called "collector", that creates a 1:1 scale, i portray at natural size. Plus I don't use artificial lights other than the camera's own flash, so I don't have depth of field (profondità di campo?). Johnny Depp's portrait, for example, has a white backround. That's simply because it was taken in an open space. Then on these technical "problems" I build my work: for example, I usually ask for light colored clothing, because the more soft parts you have, that don't contrast with the white of the polaroid, the better result you get

-- Nadar's works, as said above, were of an absolute simplicity. What impressed the most was his ability in understanding and reproducing his subjects' 'soul'. In your portraits too there seems to be an interest beyond the mere compositional beauty. What do you seek in the person you portray?

Not only i decompose my subjects. I recompose the fragments too. I play on the aesthetic factor, yes, but as a way to highlight my subject's character. In other words, I represent the subjects and their world, their being, their personality. And the more the subject's character is strong, the easier it is to show it and the better the portraits are. Usually the best works are those on actors

-- Why? Shouldn't pulling out the actors' true being be more difficult because they are used to acting?

No. Because they have a stronger personality. Obviously, the most important thing is to create a feeling with the subject. First of all, you have avoid any kind of reverence, even if you're dealing with a subject of the importance of Robert de Niro. Then the camera does most of the rest: the technique i use, with the camera laying directly on the subject's face, totally dazzles them, so they're forced to throw the 'superficial crust' away and bring out their true selves. Also, since i portray my subjects "in pieces" it is very difficult for the subject to act. Surely you cannot give a particular pose to a cheek! So the result must be "naturalistic".

-- And would you consider these fragments as a reflection of the human condition of continuous, fragmented changeability?

Yes, absolutely

-- (On the portraits of 2011) What about those portraits? Why did you decide to use a more "traditional" photography?

I took those with a film called "impossible", 20x25. With those portraits i wanted to show what my vision of portraiture is, beyond fragmentation. I used the subjects as a mean of experimentation, and felt like one of the avant-guardes of the Bauhaus. I brought forward myself with all my points of view, i tried to show my way of seeing and of doing things.