DOI article:
[Joseph] M. [Moore] Bowles, Photography: What D’Ye Lack?
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30587#0032
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the way for a campaign of publicity upon points regarding which the
genuinely interested should be informed.
Let me also state that I disclaim and dislike the title of art critic. I
should prefer and should like to deserve the fine old title of student; but
who in the storm and stress of active business life can pretend to do that ? I
am more an observer of things artistic. I study the objects of art I like, I
compare, and I read books on art subjects occasionally, when I have reached
them in a logical manner, i.e., through my eye. But when I do read a book
on a master, or an epoch, or a special manifestation of art—I devour it! No
schoolgirl reading her first love-story could be more absorbed.
I am fundamentally interested in the education of the eye, in the
education of my eye. A Japanese appreciator—not a critic—once wrote : " In
my young days I praised the masters whose pictures I liked, but as my
judgment matured I praised myself for liking the master’s pictures.” All of
which leads to the matter of taste; to this final test must all works of art
submit themselves. Someone has said, " Everything that Velasquez did was
right,” which does not mean that everything he did was impeccably drawn,
or absolutely correct in color or perspective, or what not; but that it was
right in the final essence—in short, that he never did anything that was not
in perfect taste.
So as a too-general student I may not know photography intimately, but
I am at least a very interested looker-on in Vienna, and I propose to measure
photography by all the qualities found in all the other arts. If it is a fine
art, it should give us everything, all that any other art can give, all that all
the arts can render. Although it is the youngest of the arts, I propose to
compare it, in my own mind, with one of the oldest and apparently farthest
removed of the arts, that of Chinese porcelains; even with music. But
photography has already given us much music, especially adagio.
We find in modern photographic prints so much decorative quality, so
much charm of composition, so much charm of model (or in landscape,
selection of subject) that these virtues are taken by us as a matter of course.
But do we get solidity, weight, massiveness (the qualities inherent in the best
Egyptian art—the Sphinx, the pyramids)—do we get enough of a certain brisk,
masculine vigor and the freshness of virility ? Does photographic work need a
harking back to a little outdoors, a little more backbone in composition and exe-
cution, a little rudeness ? Would even a touch of crude brutality do it harm ?
Wonders have been accomplished in a short time, and photography has
certainly been cleverly introduced by means of these " carefully edited ”
exhibits, whose decorative arrangement is far above that of any of our picture
exhibits, large or small, being more like the Whistler shows in London, which
were prepared under the direct supervision of the master—those exhibitions
(as " A. E. G.” has written) " in which a dozen etchings or slight pastels were
given all the glory of a room to themselves, a room specially decorated to
receive them.”
In photography there has been too much insistence—too much success
in the decorative. Is there now another way to go? One day I happened
18
genuinely interested should be informed.
Let me also state that I disclaim and dislike the title of art critic. I
should prefer and should like to deserve the fine old title of student; but
who in the storm and stress of active business life can pretend to do that ? I
am more an observer of things artistic. I study the objects of art I like, I
compare, and I read books on art subjects occasionally, when I have reached
them in a logical manner, i.e., through my eye. But when I do read a book
on a master, or an epoch, or a special manifestation of art—I devour it! No
schoolgirl reading her first love-story could be more absorbed.
I am fundamentally interested in the education of the eye, in the
education of my eye. A Japanese appreciator—not a critic—once wrote : " In
my young days I praised the masters whose pictures I liked, but as my
judgment matured I praised myself for liking the master’s pictures.” All of
which leads to the matter of taste; to this final test must all works of art
submit themselves. Someone has said, " Everything that Velasquez did was
right,” which does not mean that everything he did was impeccably drawn,
or absolutely correct in color or perspective, or what not; but that it was
right in the final essence—in short, that he never did anything that was not
in perfect taste.
So as a too-general student I may not know photography intimately, but
I am at least a very interested looker-on in Vienna, and I propose to measure
photography by all the qualities found in all the other arts. If it is a fine
art, it should give us everything, all that any other art can give, all that all
the arts can render. Although it is the youngest of the arts, I propose to
compare it, in my own mind, with one of the oldest and apparently farthest
removed of the arts, that of Chinese porcelains; even with music. But
photography has already given us much music, especially adagio.
We find in modern photographic prints so much decorative quality, so
much charm of composition, so much charm of model (or in landscape,
selection of subject) that these virtues are taken by us as a matter of course.
But do we get solidity, weight, massiveness (the qualities inherent in the best
Egyptian art—the Sphinx, the pyramids)—do we get enough of a certain brisk,
masculine vigor and the freshness of virility ? Does photographic work need a
harking back to a little outdoors, a little more backbone in composition and exe-
cution, a little rudeness ? Would even a touch of crude brutality do it harm ?
Wonders have been accomplished in a short time, and photography has
certainly been cleverly introduced by means of these " carefully edited ”
exhibits, whose decorative arrangement is far above that of any of our picture
exhibits, large or small, being more like the Whistler shows in London, which
were prepared under the direct supervision of the master—those exhibitions
(as " A. E. G.” has written) " in which a dozen etchings or slight pastels were
given all the glory of a room to themselves, a room specially decorated to
receive them.”
In photography there has been too much insistence—too much success
in the decorative. Is there now another way to go? One day I happened
18
