Build a Lookaround! The Lookaround Book, 2nd ed. NOW SHIPPING http://www.panoramacamera.us > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: [SPAM] We Can't Trust Photographs > From: "John Palcewski" <palcewski@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Date: Thu, March 04, 2004 1:36 am > To: "List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students" > <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > Here's the latest about photography from the UK... > > John Palcewski > Forio d' Ischia, Italia > http://www.palcewski.com/JP > > > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1161451,00.html > > > More by Jonathan Jones > Disposable cameras > > We can't trust photographs. In fact, we never could. In an exclusive > interview, David Hockney tells Jonathan Jones why painting creates a > more > reliable record of the truth > > Thursday March 4, 2004 > The Guardian > > "Do you know what Edvard Munch said about photography?" David Hockney > asks > me. "He said photography can never depict heaven or hell." We're > talking > about Hell at the Fine Art and Antiques Fair in London's Olympia. > Hockney > recently drove to Spain from his current home in west London - "Those > autoroutes are empty. It's fabulous, like driving in Arizona" - and saw > > Goya's Third of May in the Prado. He noticed that Goya had painted this > > horrific scene of a mass execution in Madrid in 1808 from a viewpoint > no > photograph could have achieved. > > It adds fuel to his belief that painting can do things photography > can't, > even when it comes to telling the truth about war. Everyone used to > assume > photographs of war were "true" in a way photography can't be. But > Hockney > argues that the digital age has made such a conception of photography > obsolete. You can change any image now in any way you want. He once saw > what > a famous LA photographer's portrait of Elton John looked like before it > was > retouched. The difference, he says, was "hilarious". And now everyone > can do > this. > > "My sister, who is just a bit older than me, she's a retired district > nurse, > she's just gone mad with the digital camera and computer - move > anything > about; she doesn't worry about whether it's authentic or stuff like > that - > she's just making pictures." > > If photography is no longer blunt fact, why not accept that painting > has > equal status? War photography is as fictional as painting, but painting > can > express profound insights denied photography. The famous photograph of > a > Russian soldier placing the red flag over Berlin is an example: "With > the > man putting the flag on top of the Reichstag - how did the photographer > > happen to get there first?" wonders Hockney. By contrast, Goya's image > of > the executions of May 3 1808 has a truth that transcends whether or not > he > was an eyewitness. Hockney thinks Picasso, when he painted his > extremely > anti-naturalist Massacres in Korea in the 1950s, was making this very > argument against photography: instead of random glimpses of violence, > Picasso's painting presents his understanding of the war. > > It's funny, talking about war and politics with David Hockney. Gloom > and > doom was why he left first Bradford, then Britain. "I grew up in > austerity > in the 1940s and 1950s. You didn't know at the time, of course - you > didn't > know any different." > > Hockney talks about his father, in the Bradford accent that has never > deserted him after decades of living in Los Angeles and now London. "He > was > a very eccentric man. He was constantly writing to Stalin - every week. > He > used to tell us how important these letters were. We didn't think so. > We > didn't think Stalin would be waiting for them." What were the letters > about? > "Peace, war. I've given up on all that, I think. I think the > Enlightenment > is leading us into a dark hole, really. Goya saw that. A lot of people, > > given the chance, would blow up everything, and you and me." > > We're talking about Goya's visions of hell, but I'm thinking about a > vision > of heaven: David Hockney's A Bigger Splash, painted in 1967. In it, the > sky > is different from the water only in that it is a paler shade of blue. > Between the luxuriant nothingness of the pool and the empty, warm sky > is a > low pink house with a reflecting glass wall, a canvas chair and two > palm > trees. In the foreground is a yellow diving board, and beyond it, the > only > motion in this eternally afternoon world, are explosions and curlicues, > the > aftertrace of a diver. > > Hell is not Hockney's subject. Paradise is what his eye has pursued. "I > > always wanted to be an artist because I like looking - scopophilia, is > it > called?" he says. > > In the 1960s, Hockney did as much as the Beatles to end the British > culture > of austerity he grew up with, to assert that pleasure matters. The > postwar > painters were severe chroniclers of ration-book misery. We're here at > Olympia to celebrate one of them: Prunella Clough, whose first > retrospective > since her death in 1999 includes her 1950s realist portraits of workers > as > well as her later, more playful and sometimes gently lovely > abstractions. > "It's very good that you're doing this," Hockney tells the exhibition's > > curator, Angus Stewart, who says Clough was suspicious of people who > lived > too comfortably. Hockney says that's typical of a lot of British > people. > "But I'm not like that." > > He also remembers, among the leading painters when he came to London, > the > Scottish duo Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, who "always wore > these > shiny suits - never wore anything else. They were shiny from never > having > been off - that kind of shiny." David Hockney wore a shiny jacket to > graduate from the Royal College of Art - but this was the other kind of > > shiny: superstar shiny. It was made out of gold lamé. > > Hockney is so famous, so popular, such a great talker and character > that > it's easy to take him for granted as an artist. If you're a critic, > it's > tempting to give him a bash. But Hockney is a significant modern > painter. He > is one of only a handful of 20th-century British artists who added > anything > to the image bank of the world's imagination. Francis Bacon's screaming > > popes, Richard Hamilton's Mick Jagger and Damien Hirst's shark are > icons of > irony, and grimly Hogarthian. Hockney is something very different, a > modern > Gainsborough, whose eye is entranced by beauty. This is a very radical > thing > to be. > > He was by far the most hedonist of the 1960s pop artists, the only > painter > who put sex and utopianism at the heart of his decade. He was British > art's > first pop star. But this was not because he made easy images. His > paintings > unequivocally praised gay sex - for example, Two Men in a Shower > (1963). > They were so innocent they disarmed everyone. > > Hockney's utopia was America. "I went to New York in the summer of > 1961. I > thought this is the place, this is it. It ran 24 hours a day for > everybody. > Here in London everything closed early. I used to complain about that > like > mad. I don't care now - I go to bed at 11." In his 1961-3 series of > prints A > Rake's Progress, "The 7-Stone Weakling in America" for the first time > visits > gay bars until "The Wallet Begins to Empty". > > American freedom entranced him a lot more than Swinging London. "Girls > in > small skirts, it's OK. You know I'm not that bothered about them. I > preferred the white socks in California, actually. I did." > > > Hockney now berates photography and yet, famously, a lot of his art has > been > made with photography. Like his friend Andy Warhol, he was interested > in the > world you see through the lens. His series of images of the pursuit and > loss > of heaven on earth - the swimming pools, Beverly Hills Housewife > (1966), Mr > and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-1) - are paintings that superficially > resemble > photographs. > > When I look at A Bigger Splash again, I am surprised how much the > quotation > he dropped on me from the symbolist painter Edvard Munch applies to his > own > work. Hockney doesn't paint hell, but the heaven on earth, at once > blissful > and unattainable, that he found in California and mourned in the > aftermath > of the 1960s is a vision photography could never quite create. A Bigger > > Splash is a painting about an inner state, an emotional state, > somewhere > between intoxication and death - it is the perfect invocation of a > beauty so > powerful it hits you like a wall, so empty it has no solid lines. Blue, > > pink, white. > > Hockney says beauty is the thing none of us can resist. He saw a > picture of > a Colorado University football player accused of rape and the man's > face was > so incredibly beautiful, he found it impossible to believe he was > guilty. > "Human beings always recognise a very beautiful creature, and open the > door > for them." > > The libertarianism of the 1960s is still there in Hockney, and still > challenging. When the Guardian commissioned and printed Gillian > Wearing's > Cilla Black on the cover of G2 last year, which carried the words "Fuck > > Cilla Black", he "thought it was quite funny. I had no idea Cilla Black > was > alive or anything." He was amazed that so many letters attacked it. The > > paper's art critic defended this as a work of art. Fine. Then Hockney > read > an interview in the Guardian with a man who spent two years in prison > for > downloading images from the internet. The man claimed he did not think > the > pictures were wrong, but innocent and beautiful. "This man who, from > human > curiosity, looking for innocence and beauty, gets some pictures from > the > internet and does two years in prison for that. Why don't you art > critics > talk about that?" > > This is why he wants to get people thinking about photography - the way > we > see, and the power of images. "It's time to debate images, especially > when > someone's going to prison for downloading them." > > Photography, with its claim to truth, is a discipline, he thinks, and > he's > glad digital technology is ending the rule of the one-eyed monster that > > never lied. "I suppose I never thought the world looked like > photographs, > really. A lot of people think it does but it's just one little way of > seeing > it. All religions are about social control. The church, when it had > social > control, commissioned paintings, which were made using lenses" - as > Hockney > has argued in his book Secret Knowledge - "and when it stopped > commissioning > images, its power declined, slowly. Social control today is in the > media - > and based on photography. The continuum is the mirrors and lenses." > > Hockney is an artist who, at his best, broke free of all disciplines, > of > photography or politics or anything else, to paint his own paradise. > He's > still looking for enjoyment. He left America because it has become so > prissy > about smoking and drinking - but he'll go back, he says. He smokes with > > evident pleasure. "I was born in Bradford in 1937, it was the smokiest > place > on earth. We all survived - some people might have coughed a bit and > fallen > over." > > Having been so long in America, there's a lot of Europe he hasn't seen. > He's > just been to Andalusia for the first time. The Spanish, he says - they > know > how to enjoy themselves. > > > > · Prunella Clough is at the Spring Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fair, > > London W12 (020-7923 3188), until March 7. > John, Nice article about Hockney - lots of areas for discussion. Rather old news, though, that a photograph as witness is no more reliable than a painting and only renders, at best, the artist’s personal accounting of things. An interesting side-bar RE Goya: his portrait can be found in his works including “The Third of May, 1808". AZ
