Artists trying to be poets…
Please, I can’t take much more hilarity! I’m still chuckling, hooting and grinning whenever I think of the latest issue of Black and White magazine – it’s Special Issue/2010 Single Image Contest Awards. The SEASCAPE/WATER section has some doozies.
No, it’s not the images… it’s the titles many of the artists have given them! It’s just plain perplexing why artists work so hard at being poets and writers. I must protest. Isn’t it enough that you are a talented photographer or painter or sculptor? Must you play at being a poet or writer as well? Lemme tell you, give it up. There are experts out there.
Make a New Year’s resolution for 2010: I will not write artist statements. I will not title my images goofy things like: “Life’s Journey” or “Goodbyes Are Never Easy” or “Eternity of the Moment”. Holy Smokes, nothing ruins a piece of artwork faster than a ridiculous or clever or sappy title.
If you feel the need to give the viewer narrative context for your work, go out and keep shooting. Or become a filmmaker. Your photograph doesn’t need a narrative context if it’s your best work. Please… let me bring my own self to your work – make room for ME, the viewer. If you think your picture is about “goodbyes”, fine. I may think it’s about terrific design or I may not think it needs to be about anything at all. And if you need to tell me water is “fluid”, I must be cross-eyed.
In the Photojournalism/Documentary section there is a searing photo of Auschwitz. It’s title? “Sad Landscape #7″. Thanks for the help, but I don’t think there is a person in the world who needs to be nudged in the feelings dept. when viewing Holocaust prisoner camps.
It’s also surprising how many artists name their work with the exact description of what you are looking at. Why do you do this? There’s a photo in the Photojournalism/Documentary section titled “Man in Wheelchair with Flag, New York City, New York”. Yep, the artist got it right! That’s exactly what the photograph depicts. I can see if for myself, so I know he/she got it right! How about just “New York City” or “Madison Avenue” or “Independence Day” if those are the simple facts?
You should really order a copy of this Special Issue if you don’t already subscribe to Black and White because there are some great photographs in it worth studying. But artists need to leave the clever wordsmithing to someone else and stick to what they know – creating art.
Jeanne-Claude, Cristo’s wife and artistic partner since 1960, just died. Here’s a quote from the obituary as written in The Week, the news magazine I read from cover to cover immediately upon receipt: “Our art has absolutely no purpose, except to be a work of art. We do not give messages.”
Thank goodness for that. If their work can speak for itself, so can yours.
Photo: Bryan Obrien, The Sydney Morning Herald
