Paper II, Semester III

Organic Self-Sufficiency in Contemporary Painting
Cameron Bennett

Recently, I shared a deep conviction of mine with several fellow painters which left them aghast: that so-called “perceptual” painters should not use photography as reference for their paintings. At this point, you the reader will either roll your eyes, put down this essay and move on to something else, or you will read on, out of curiosity, perhaps, but most likely not out of sympathy.

Why do I have such a strong reaction to realistic painting when I know, or suspect, that it has been done using photography? Why do I have such an urge to ascribe a right-and-wrong morality to Art, which is, ultimately, completely amoral? Is the guilt I feel about using photographs in my fine art a kind of anal-retentiveness, the unhappy result of a strict upbringing? Whatever the reasons, I can not free myself from the feeling that something is wrong with the general praxis of representational painting today, and I seem to be very much in the minority in this belief. 1

In this essay, I will make several points, each one subject to the overarching idea that there is a general trend in our society which is this: the human organism is becoming mechanized.2 I will try to show that painters are in denial about the extent of their reliance on photography, which, I argue, is a kind of mechanization, and will discuss what is lost when the painter relies too heavily on the camera. Further, I will discuss certain philosophical differences between photography and painting and how they relate to perception. Lastly, I will share my own personal reflections on current artistic quandaries relating to the themes in this essay.

I submit that if photography, digital or otherwise, were to evaporate from the universe, most painters would not be able to function. If forced to rely on their own powers of draftsmanship, memory, and imagination, their products would be vastly inferior to, or at least vastly different from, what they had been doing with photography.

I believe that two things are sacrificed when painters use photographs:

1. the essence of the original subject which will become the subject of the painting 3
2. the self-sufficiency arising from the powers of the artist found in its own organism: draftsmanship, memory, and imagination 4

Walter Benjamin’s idea of “aura” is similar to my thinking about the first instance. Benjamin writes: “…every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction.”5 Digital photography has arrived and it is ubiquitous, attached even to cell-phones, and the internet has given us almost total access to reproductions of everything under the sun. Benjamin: “…that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.”6 My thinking about Benjamin’s “aura” is that it is a concept which can be applied to every original thing that is reproduced, not merely the work of art. So, as in the first instance of what happens when painters work from photos, if the aura is lost or diminished in the mechanical citing of the original subject, as in the photo, the painting done from that photo will capture even less of that aura. This is undesirable. And if it can be argued that the painter who works without photos still diminishes aura, he or she at least does so organically, self-sufficiently, which is more desirable.

A painter like Eric Fischl might be a very good example of an artist who exhibits the phenomenon I mention in the second instance. Fischl, a painter working in a realistic style, relies heavily on photographs for his paintings. He does this for a number of reasons. For him, looking at nature, which is not in an enclosed rectangle, is more difficult to process than looking at a photograph of nature, which is enclosed in a rectangle. “Even more so than a square or an oval, “ he states, “ the rectangle seems to be the way our heads interpret space.”7 Fischl also is more at ease working from photographs, at least in the use of the human figure, than he is in working from the figure itself. “I’m not able to distance myself from real people…When I work from photographs, there’s a neutrality…and then I can feel much more relaxed about using them in ways which fit my vision.”8 Further, on the subject of attempting to work without photographs he says: “When I first started I was trying to paint from memory, but the complexity of the body---the shape, the shadings, the gesture---kept showing my memory had failed.”9 I use Fischl as an example because he is a well-known artist who is highly reliant on photography, he is an organism reliant on the mechanism. I am arguing that he and many, many like him, are not self-sufficient as painters because of this reliance. This, to my mind, is undesirable.10

Photography is a self-sufficient medium. Photographers do not need paintings to make photographs. The average realist painter of today is not self-sufficient because photographs are essential to his or her paintings. Painters who use photographs defend themselves by calling photography merely a “tool” or an “aid,” adding that they really could do without photographs if they had to, as though photography were dispensible.11 This is interesting to me because this mentality of so many painters is, actually, an insult to photographers. Would any artist working in any medium like to be told that his or her medium is a “mere” this or that, or that it is dispensible, inessential? The insult is magnified, too, because most realist painters who use photography are completely in denial of just how essential the photograph is to their painting. Clearly, if the painter were to rely on the powers of his or her own organism and not lean so heavily on the camera, then uncomfortable situations like this would be completely avoided. I have been saying for years now: let painters make paintings and let photographers make photographs. This would be desirable.

There are painters whose work is conceptually vested in photography, like Gerhard Richter. Richter, then, if viewed through the lens of my arguments, is above reproach because his work is completely honest about its use of the photograph. Richter, unlike realist painters who are dishonest about the extent to which they rely on a separate mechanical device for their paintings, does what all these painters ought to be doing in the first place: he makes himself the mechanical device. “I am not trying to imitate a photograph: I’m trying to make one. And if I disregard the assumption that a photograph is a piece of paper exposed to light, then I am practicing photography by other means.”12 In other words, by “making” the photograph himself, he makes himself (the painter, the organism) become the camera. This is what I have been saying for years: The painter must be the camera. This is desirable. Of course, in this instance, it is what Richter says and not what he does to which I respond positively. When Richter makes a photo-realistic painting, he still relies on the photograph in a way which is not self-sufficient. Of course, he, and other photo-painters like him, may do this because it is central to their concept.

Ultimately, I am aware of the differences between the camera’s recording capabilities and those of even the most highly trained artist. The camera can do things that the painter can’t. The painter can not compete with the camera’s speed at capturing actual shape, value, and color. Also, according to philosopher Kendall Walton, photographs are “transparent” because we actually “perceive” the objects in them, while paintings are not because they exhibit “intentional dependence,”13 that is, they are mediated by the flawed vision of the painter.14 Richter, turns the entire issue on its head. He argues that photos and paintings are both merely representations, and that “…all representational practices are similarly inadequate.”15 He says: “ Most images would have us forget the fact that what we see when we see an image is the curtain, or veil, or screen, or canvas of representation, its very fabric.”16 This concept is central to Richter’s photo-paintings, but he fixates on the inadequate aspects of both mediums, and ignores the fact that photos and paintings can record faithfully. I argue that the human organism, under proper circumstances, can record as faithfully as a camera. The painter is able to strip away the self, to a certain extent, and become an indexical channeller of nature. This is what real draftsmanship is: it is a Buddhist-like elimination of the personal to get to the truth of vision. Believe it or not, this is what the academies used to teach: this Buddhist-like enterprise called “seeing.” “Seeing” is necessary for faithful drawing.17

Even so, I feel it’s pointless to pit the camera against the artist; the purpose of art is not to merely record natural visual effects as well as a mechanical device can. For the perceptual painter, I feel, it should be about transforming those effects into something else. This should be done, preferably, as organically as possible. As I mentioned well above, if this organic artistic process involves the making of many studies from which the final work is produced, the essence of the subject may in some ways be compromised.

Here is where I second-guess myself: cannot the photo actually allow a certain essence of the subject to be retained, where a drawing or painting might not, as in the likeness of the sitter in a portrait? Barthes would answer in the affirmative; photos posess for him the punctum, the emotional response. Perhaps in losing one kind of essence in the painting made from a photo, another kind of essence is gained. Perhaps aura is exchanged for punctum. But then, on the other hand, why make a painting if the photo does it all?

Being a lover of naturalism in art, I am often completely seduced by quality paintings which have been done from photographs, even traced from them. I used to think that if the photo allowed the painter to do beautiful paintings, then those paintings are better than lame paintings done from life. Now I am not so sure. Perhaps I am standing at a philosophical crossroads between representation and non-representation. Non-representational painting, at least, relies far less, if at all, on the mechanism, arising from something inside the artist which is not tempered by the appearances of nature, as is the case with the representational painter.

I love representation in painting, perceptual realism. Unfortunately, my enjoyment of realistic painting will now always be tainted by not knowing the organic/mechanic ratio of a work. For me, I feel gypped when that ratio is not 100%/0%,18 and this ratio is what I strive for in my own painting. Of course, owing to the direction in which the winds of change are blowing, that ratio probably won’t always be, at least not for every work.

Notes:
1 I may be in the minority among painters with these ideas, but I am not entirely alone. The Art Renewal Center, headed by its Director Fred Ross, has created a forum in which he and other contemporary traditionalist painters seek to refute the arguments put forward by David Hockney in his book “Secret Knowledge, Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters.” Hockney postulates that many of the so-called great masters used lenses and photographic apparati in their work. Ross and his coterie argue that these apparati were used for purposes other than painting, and that nothing more than sound draftsmanship is behind the works of the masters.
2 I’m not a great fan of science fiction, but I think the concept of the “cyborg” (part man and part machine, think Robocop, Six Million Dollar Man, Terminator, Star Trek, etc.) is very useful in communicating a point about where our society is heading. Do we not see a greater and greater dependence on gadgets, especially those which are attached to the human body, or inside it? Do people not walk around in public with telephone headsets permanently attached to the sides of their heads and i-phones in-hand? This is what I call the “cyborg phenomenon.” The other term I will coin here is “screen worship,” that is, a growing necessity to process and partake of our three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional screen.
3 In the first instance, a painting from a photograph is a response to a response. This is undesirable. The essence of the original subject is overly reduced. A painting direct from the subject is desirable. More of the essence is retained.
4 In the second instance, a painting from a photograph lessens the organic input of the organism, the living artist. It is lessened because of the reliance on the mechanism, the camera. When this becomes general praxis, the powers of the organism, the artist, are diminished if not completely lost. This is undesirable. A painting made without reliance on a mechanical device would call upon more of the powers of the artist. When this becomes general praxis, the powers of the artist strengthen. This is desirable.
5 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, The Nineteenth Century Visual Culture Reader, (New York and London, Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2004)p. 66
6 Benjamin, 65
7 Neena Beber, “The Heat of the Moment,” American Theater, Nov. 2005, p.49
8 Beber, 49
9 Beber, 50
10 Even though I use Eric Fischl as an example of a worst-case scenario contemporary cyborg artist, I completely sympathize with him. Painting from photographs is truly much simpler than painting from life, especially if one cannot afford to hire models or find time for the hours necessary to make, and then synthesize, multiple drawings and studies into finished works. I speak from experience. For some of us, the temptation is then to not even draw from the photo, but to trace it, which for me is the most inexcusable kind of crime of which an artist can be guilty. It certainly saves time, but, I believe, it is tantamount to selling-out. For the full potential of the organically driven, self-sufficient artist, drawing is sacrosant. Ingres is known to have said: “Drawing is the probity of Art.”
11 Predictably, on the blogosphere, I have found blog after blog revealing just the kind of attitudes described above. Incredibly, I have even found at least two or three places where comments are made to the effect that it is only the neophyte of painting who feels strongly that photographs should not be used in painting. I am, first of all, completely insulted by that, and secondly greatly troubled by it because it reveals the extent to which, to my mind, painters have really ceased to think about what they do.
12 Hawker, Rosemary, “The Idiom in Photography As the Truth in Painting,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, Summer, 2002, p.543
13 Currie, Gregory, “Photography, Painting, and Perception,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Winter91, Vol. 49 Issue 1, p.24
14 Even Victorian discussions drew parallels between the personal aspect of memory and vision. In her article “Painting Memory,” Kate Flint writes: “Strikingly, these two versions of memory---on the one hand physiological, on the other, subjective and personal---correspond to the two co-existing versions of vision… with their internal variables… the variations in vision which are produced by the optical differences to be found between different people’s eyes,and the subjectivity inherent in every act of processing one’s visual impressions.” Textual Practice, Winter, 2003, Vol. 17 Issue 3. p.530
15 Hawker, 547
16 Hawker, 551
17 The academies also used to place strong emphasis on training the memory of the artist. Le Coq de Boisbaudran taught in France in the mid 19th Century. His “The Training of the Memory in Art and the Education of the Artist” is a perfect example of this emphasis put on strengthening memory for better drawing.
18 In her article “What Can We Do With Photography?”(Art Monthly, Dec, 2007, Issue 312, p.1) Sarah James relates the gallery-going public’s shift from a feeling of being “gypped” by galleries holding only photographic exhibitions to being “…more comfortable with the photograph-and its artistic status-than it ever has been.” My interpretation of this remark is that the public likes to see art which reflects the hand of the artist, be it in painting or other media, and that, for a time at least, the mechanical aspect of photography did not satisfy. Now, however, with the public’s broader acceptance of photography in the realm of art, we are seeing a broader reception of the mechanical, the photoraph, over the organic, that is, the thing made by the hand of the artist, the organism.
I confess, that I almost always feel “gypped” in the presence of a photograph. When looking at images, I always prefer to see the organically produced work. This is completely personal and not a judgement of photography as an art form, and I am totally aware of arguments which could be made about photography qualifying as “organic,” though I will not address this here.
In the seventies and eighties, my childhood friends and I were acutely sensitive to the use of synthesizers, drum machines and samples in pop-music. They were not the “real thing.” Entire genres of music were dismissed by us because of this conviction. Often, I would turn on the radio, get excited about a favorite song just beginning, and then groan with disgust because it was actually the sampled original tacked-on to the beginning of, and used through, a piece of music by an altogether different artist. The postmodernist would validate this practice by calling it appropriation. For me, I felt “gypped.” In college, synthesizers which used samples of recorded acoustic instruments and then made them playable on an electronic keyboard were decried as sounding “canned.” In short, the organic original was replaced with a mechanical simulation. People felt “gypped.”


Bibliography:

Beeber, Neena. “The Heat of the Moment,” American Theater, November, 2005, Vol. 22 Issue 9: 48-52

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” The Nineteenth Century Visual Culture Reader, Ed. Vanessa Schwartz and Przyblyski, Jeannene M. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, NY and London, 2004, 63-70

Currie, Gregory. “Photography, Painting, and Perception,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Winter91, Vol. 49 Issue 1: 23-29

Fischer, John. Review of “Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature,” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15286

Flint, Kate. “Painting Memory,” Textual Practice, Winter, 2003, Vol. 17 Issue 3: 527-542

Hawker, Rosemary. “The Idiom in Photography As the Truth in Painting,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, Summer, 2002: 541-554

James, Sarah. “What Can We Do With Photography?” Art Monthly, Dec, 2007, Issue 312: 1-4