Week 4: Image and Art

At first glance, an entire chapter dedicated solely to cataloging cultural objects seemed a little unnecessary, since the act in itself seemed so much like common sense. However, Baca surprised me with a ton of situations that I had never thought of before. One of which stuck out to me was the distinction between an image and a work of art. I had never realized that there was such a distinction between the two until he provided the example with the Eiffel Tower:

The photograph La Tour Eiffel by the well-known French photographer Brassaï is a popular image that shows the Eiffel Tower standing majestically at night. In this case, La Tour Eiffel is considered a work of art, not just an image of the Eiffel Tower.

I had always known the photograph and considered it a work of art because of how it was displayed and revered in the art world. I never really thought that at the end of the day, it is what it is—a picture of a building. There was no clear distinction between this photo and a photo I could take of the Eiffel Tower at night other than the fact that somewhere down the line, an art connoisseur deemed it to be a work of art.

This distinction definitely stuck out to me, especially when I think of myself or others taking pictures with art at the museum. Sometimes, people like to pose in a way that reflect their own understanding of the piece, which I feel, when photographed, shapes the way that others understand the same piece.

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The Broad

For example, taking this picture (see above) makes it a photograph just like any other. But if some art curator were to deem that this was a work of art, would it be mounted and revered as one? What are the ‘standards’ to which something is considered art? And who takes the credit—the secondary producer of the art or the individual whose work is encapsulated?

 

4 thoughts on “Week 4: Image and Art”

  1. I really enjoyed your analysis on Baca’s reading and placing it with your own instances of photography versus documentation. I appreciate how you leave us, the readers, with a variety of questions that lead to further discussion on this topic. The questions really encapsulate the ideas that Baca points out, yet help us look further within ourselves/our societies to push forward more answers to these growing existential questions of what even dictates art.

  2. Perhaps for something as nuanced and subjective as art, there is no specific standard. If the creator him/herself claims that the photo he has taken, for instance, is a work of art and gives reasons for why he considers it so, then other people will also look at it as a work of art. And there is no right or wrong reason because art is a mode of expression. As long as a piece or endeavor, which the creator deems as art, has a specific message that he/she is trying to convey to an audience, I think it could be considered an artwork.

    1. I think the fact that art is so nuanced and subjective is part of why it’s so hard to catalog in a unified manner as well. Each person has a different feeling/opinion/interpretation of an object, which can make it really hard to boil the object down to a list of terms that everyone can agree upon. Even having a common vocabulary can be problematic, because there are a lot of inherent politics and power relationships involved in the creation of that vocabulary (I.e. Who gets to decide and why?)

  3. I took a Philosophy of Art class, and Hume basically responds to the question about the “standards” of art by saying there has to be consensus among qualified critics about what art is good. It makes sense to say that it’s good if enough people can agree on it, but at the same time it seems that truly groundbreaking art always defies the common consensus in some way.

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