what is the new black?

Last week I discussed two thoughts. One involved technology and the other roles for women. I have further thought about these topics this week because I have been more in tune to them while I have been out.

            I must first bring up the show that we went to as a class at the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery, titled A New Photograph. I know I shared a bit at the gallery, but I always feel that I am unable to clearly communicate my thoughts or reactions verbally. I think that I am making a point, but I do not really know if others are hearing that intended point. 

Upon previewing the exhibit, and reading Susan Sontag’s book for class, I just began thinking about painting and its history, its validity as an art form, and how it functions in today’s society.  Then I did the same for photography. It is interesting to me the way Sontag talks about painting. I feel that I can hear animosity in her words as she discusses the rivalry and distinct differences between the two forms of art. Without listing a list of pros and cons of each one, I just wanted to point out the obvious change of roles.

When painting began, it was heavily driven by the importance of documenting events, people and stories of land and culture. There was a need for it to look real. To replicate what the eye can actually see. It was needed to tell the story of the people and culture of the time so it could be remembered. After photography came along, this major role of painting became unimportant. The technological advancement for this time, the photograph, took away that need for a person to replicate the ‘real’. Photographic process made it quicker and more accurately ‘real’. 

            After this, painting became abstract and about feelings, thoughts, and concepts, etc. freeing a painting to become more in depth than just a study. In present day, (my impression of people I have met) painting seems to be in a state of confusion, having an identity crisis of sorts with what its function is today accompanied by fear that the art may have reached the dreaded, dead state. Losing its throne of ‘high art’ to not a relevant art form at all.

            Photography came along not only as technology, but also as an art form. Granted, it did struggle for a bit in time to reach a level at which it was taken seriously.  I found it equally as interesting in the book Looking at Photographs that photography as a process was solely for the inventor to operate.  The technician, scientist himself was the one to operate his invention. Today, I feel that a “photographer” has the demands to be a great technician, inventor, and artist all at the same time. Talk about roles.

            This leads me to my point that connects all this background knowledge together. Where are the boundaries between art forms? Dare I suggest that the contemporary view of painting has made way into the technological realm and that paintings can be made with computers and/or machines? Is photography the new painting? Is design the new drawing?  Is architecture the new sculpture?

How do line, color, composition work differently to be able to have all these subcategories of  ‘art’. What makes one higher than the other?