Suburban Study, 2008
I normally try to avoid a matched up diptych; in other words the pieced panorama. If you look closely at the two part photos I've been posting, many of these diptychs do not literally match up to form a continuous image. What I am playing with here is the idea that certain textures, colors, forms & shapes have what I like to think of as a visual affinity, encouraging the eye to move back & forth between the two photographs. (Eye movement is very important in art, but I'll discuss that another time.) The brain then constructs a visual bridge that creates a single unit. It's not an accurate reality but rather a manipulated & invented one, constructed more to evoke (only in the most abstract sense) a particular experience, rather than provide illustration. (Sounds a bit like old-school analytical cubism, doesn't it. Could this be the result of the fact that I was trained as a painter & not as a photographer?) I suppose one could call this a kind of gestalt but that's making it far too complicated. Besides, when it all works, most of this stuff should initially occur on a subliminal level, only be noticed after repeated viewing & analysis. Simply, fundamentally, I believe this instinctual need for closure is what makes us sentient, it's what our humans brains do: intuit, interpolate, invent, make the implied connections, connect the dots, fill in the blanks…
Naturally, having shoveled out all this bullshit, the two photographs above match up almost perfectly. Hey… Sometimes reality does not need to be mucked about with & the quiet, rather ordinary sunset was the perfect end to the meteorological roller coaster we experienced today.
2 comments:
Very Nice pictures in your blogg. Greets from México.
Yes, this is the lesson I learned as a college art major that seems to have had the most influence on my taste in art: an image will be most compelling if it engages the viewer by giving the viewer's mind/imagination a task. And, as you say, the more subliminal the better -- I'm not thinking about the "task", I just feel fascinated; I can't stop looking. How generous of the artist to invite me to participate...(Never, of course, in the "leaving my lipstick print on an immaculate white Cy Twombly canvas" sense of that word...!)
Here's a Wayne Thiebaud quote you might like:
"It is primarily an intuitive process that can give the work of art a life force.
In contrast, 'finishing off' demands an intellectual process, a neat tying together of things in a way we 'think' is correct. This tends to deaden a work because it's difficult to enter into a form that is totally stabilized and finished off. Absolute resolution can be dangerously close to the art of taxidermy."
Post a Comment