Art and its Limits
Whenever we decide to analyze a question related to art, it is natural to encounter its abstract content and vague boundaries. However, these elements are simultaneously considered necessary for defining the tools and criteria with which we approach each artistic query. Therefore, it does not harm, with all the necessary caution when we arbitrarily define the indefinite, to attempt a mapping of the artistic area of interest.
Art can be considered, if we agree, to cover any human activity that is carried out with care and possibly passion, aiming for a quality and aesthetic result, addressing the largest number of people for their pleasure and satisfaction.
Such an approach has the advantage of simplifying distinctions, to the point of (almost) erasing them, and facilitating common acceptance at the level of human communication, since it covers the majority of human activities. Thus, it would lend itself to the application of understandable and specific criteria, regarding the intentions and results of each quality action, but it would fail to cover that more narrowly defined artistic area, which exists only because the spiritual personality of a creator is connected and combined with traces of his presence in the world, and which is all the more necessary as it appears more inexplicable.
For a more effective analysis, we can accept as (vague and flexible) boundaries of art, those that enclose an area where human creation, without a dominant but only incidental utilitarian and material goal, attempts to convey through the senses the spiritual image that the artist-creator has of the world, and at the same time an image that he himself has for the specific artistic medium he uses. It is noted, therefore, the conscious collaboration of the senses, emotions, and concepts with the complex goal of conveying the spirituality of the world through the materiality of the specific work and the filter of the artist's presence.
This complex quality of the artistic creation, which escapes what we are used to considering as the origin, direction, and treatment of our actions, raises questions, conflicts, and misunderstandings. All the more so because art presents the additional peculiarity of concerning an abstract concept, which is expressed, however, through the specific presence of the work of art.
THE ARTIST FACING ART
The artist may limit himself to the manual work of producing his artwork and avoid any further engagement with the reasons that caused it or those that justify it retrospectively. Such an innocent, and at the same time wise, approach would save him from doubts and deviations, while focusing his attention on the materiality of his art would protect him from dangerous wanderings outside it. After all, such an innocent and wise creator could only give us his unaffected view of the world and art. In the same way, creators of the past created for the greater glory of God. All that remained for them was to solve specific technical problems and thus conquer spirituality through the material.
In our days, however, the role of art is open to every interpretation and challenge, and the positioning of artists or the public against it can give different answers to the same questions. A creator is thus inevitably faced with the need for a personal stance in front of the fundamental questions about art. He must understand for whose glory he creates today. This positioning will help him find his artistic directions, imagine the audience with whom he develops his secret conversation, and rid his creation of unnecessary anxieties, except those that its pursuit must provoke.
Photography always presents greater problems than other arts. Problems due to its short history, its non-existent or late acceptance, its almost immediate integration into the world of commercial applications, and of course the speed and ease of its production.
The artist who expresses himself through photography hopes for the same gifts as any other creator and is threatened by the same curses. Nonetheless, the answers to eternal questions may be similar but not always identical.
The photographer (like any artist) is not pre-emptively required to decide on his stance towards art, nor is such a prerequisite for starting the creative process. However, during the course of artistic production, he will be forced to invent work methods and devise motives that will propel him to photograph, and which will confront him with dilemmas and ambiguous exits.
In a curious and fascinating way, these inventions, which are simultaneously part of a photographer's virtues, are precisely those that risk being transformed into threats and traps. Thus, every attempt by the photographer-creator to conquer something must be accompanied by corresponding caution, to avoid the traps that this conquest will have set for him. And in this process of vigilance, the general artistic positioning can significantly help, because traps existed in every era, only today they are more threatening, since the boundaries and values of each work and behavior are not clearly distinguished. Let us then attempt to identify some of the most common creative motives or inventions of photographers, which can easily be transformed into traps.
TIME AS ENEMY AND ALLY
The artist dialogues with time. He confronts it, he utilizes it, he avoids it. The sense of temporal flow and threat is a significant motive for creation.
However, the trap that threatens every creator is to be swayed by the socially established conception of the value of time, a value judged with clearly quantitative and economic dimensions, and which, therefore, cannot concern, much less benefit, the artistic work. This adoption leads to two branches: First, that whatever can be done in less time (thus with less effort) should be preferred, or otherwise, that the relationship of time and effort should be assessed with the performance of the result. It is, therefore, a combination of the principle of "least effort" with the principle of value for money. And secondly, that with the same expenditure of time, effort, and energy, more than one desirable result must be achieved. That is: "Two birds with one stone."
But if time is treated as a value of art and not as a quantitative measure, then it operates in the following dual, and seemingly only contradictory, manner. It is an enemy, as the artist wants to preempt embodying his visions. And it is an ally, as the artist has reason to create only because of the threat of time. It is sufficient, therefore, to realize that his work will benefit if it flows along (and not against) time, and that consequently the time required to realize an infinitesimal part of the work, if it is organically necessary time, can justify the entire work and the whole life.
The second utilitarian positioning about the economy of "stones" clashes with the broader principle that any human action, when fragmented, shatters the power of the result. And this is exacerbated when the goals are (as usually happens) different, and often contradictory, among themselves. Thus, they target not only "pigeons" but other birds as well.
Therefore, if the photographer, in his effort to build a personal artistic language and to express through it his own obsessions, hopes, with the work he creates, to achieve something more than this, there is nothing blameworthy, and everyone would wish him even greater success. But if the verb "hopes" is replaced with "pursues," then it is probably certain that the multifaceted and vague pursuit will bring equally vague, hence pale, results.
AMBITION-COMPETITION-PUBLICITY
It is doubtful whether there is a more dangerously undefined or provocatively ambiguous term than ambition. And this is because ambition is the necessary condition for the production of work with value and duration, but at the same time, it is capable of destroying the genuineness and integrity that also go hand in hand with every great creation.
Ambition changes its mode of operation whether it drives or attracts the artist. In the first case, it constitutes a driving force; in the second, the artist is transformed into its servant. Because the fame that the creator envies imposes its own laws on him.
In our era, ambition can be decisively influenced by two other, dominant in today's social practice, parameters: competition and publicity. It is expected that a person as vulnerable and sensitive as the artist will easily succumb to these two sirens, and then he will not be in a fruitful competition with himself and his models, but with others, each of whom is fighting his own battle with possibly different goals. And he will do this only to achieve the maximum common acceptance.
However, competition is fruitful if it serves the creative goals of the artist and not his social climbing. And publicity is useful if it supports the production of work and not the promotion of the artist as the final goal. Publicity must indeed contribute to attracting the audience to the artist and not to the attraction of the artist to the audience. Because in this case, the artist's need for communication, a secondary but important goal of creation, turns into a battle of proselytism and a hunt for charm, where the creator will be forced to use the most effective weapons for this purpose and not those that help his creation.
The pressure exerted on a new creator is indeed unbearable. He wants to generate work like his idols and to gain an audience, as he was for others. He was taught that everything must happen quickly because, on one hand, time runs faster than him, and on the other, someone else will beat him to it. And they set as a measure of success the opinion of the many, acceptance from the prominent, and, naturally, money. The combination of these demands exhausts even the most capable, leading them to resignation or compromise.
Creation has many and difficult demands, which become more difficult if one considers how difficult it is to determine the measure by which the success of these goals is judged. For the other, extra-artistic goals, however, that the creator could pursue and achieve through the production of his artistic work, the difficulties are many, but the measure for judging is known and even familiar to all. Therefore, the tendency towards these and the defe ction from the others are reasonable.
But if it is understood that creation is a path of endurance and not speed, that someone is always running alongside us and that this is good so as not to feel alone, that the measure of success is defined by ourselves and based on it we choose our publicity, then there is hope to use ambition creatively and not be absorbed by it.
TECHNICAL EASE AND EXCESS
Technique is the comfort of the artist. The effort to improve it allows him to spend hours near creation when the artistic deadlock paralyzes him. Solutions to technical problems often refer to solutions, puzzles, or new findings of creative processes. The relatively easy technique of photography is a blessing, but also a curse, for the creator. It does not allow excuses, nor does it accompany him when he crosses his artistic desert. If he dares to attribute greater importance to it than necessary, he will lose his goals; if he ignores it, he will find himself exclusively facing the theoretical and insoluble problems of content, without the support of technique. On the other hand, this ease leads directly, without a vestibule, to the arena of creation. And this is a sensation that causes terror and intoxication. Anyone can create. Today. Now.
At this very point, ease can be transformed into a slippery trap. The intoxication to absorb the terror. And the new creator to interpret the ease of producing work as a passport of impunity, which opens all the doors of creation wide for him. The photographer does not have to go through a bloody and laborious process of conquering tools and language. He needs only the user manual and a dictionary. However, this bloody process introduces every artist to the realm of respect and discipline, dimensions that the photographer must discover on his own through the sharpness of his self-criticism. Because if he does not do so, his work will not acquire language and style, but will remain inelegant, just like sentences composed with the help of a dictionary.
It would be absurd to transform an easy technique (which becomes easier over the years) into a difficult one, just to lend seriousness to the work and the process. But one must realize that there is always difficulty and something always needs to be conquered. Only that in photography (as in poetry), this does not translate into specific exercises of word or image. In photography, our eye is exercised, which constitutes, in this case, the primary tool of creation. And this requires time, patience, knowledge, and, above all, rigor. If, swayed by ease, we consider the stages of this learning process as completed photographic works, then we have flattered ourselves and lulled the viewer to sleep. If, on the other hand, from fear of ease, we are driven to the other extreme, denying our first artistic propositions, then we will remain sterile from an excess of virtue.
Technical perfection has the limits imposed by the work itself. The excess towards technical acrobatics buries the work under mountains of vanity, narcissism, and hypocrisy. The content disappears in favor of a consumable surface that transforms photography into a precious object. In the work characterized by balance and clarity - characteristics that must be present both in the final art piece and in the intentions - technical perfection has served the work by disappearing under the image.
A good photographer must know the technique to be able to make it disappear behind the photograph. A bad photographer highlights the little technique he possesses to make his artistic weakness disappear. The intelligent viewer senses the perfection of the technique behind the work that moves him. The naive viewer succumbs, along with the photographer, to the feats of technical sleight of hand.
TALENT AND HOW TO IGNORE IT
The presence or absence of talent has tormented almost all artists. This is a mistake. First, because even if someone lacks talent, it would be a shame to abandon something that brings them joy and fulfills a need. Second, because even if someone possesses talent, it is not logical or effective to engage in something that does not bring them joy. Third, because there are very good works created by people without talent, while it still takes talent to create something very poor. And fourth, because no one will ever be satisfied with their talent, always having less than they desire.
It is a fact that behind every significant work of art there is a talented individual. Yet no one can definitively quantify the proportion of innate ability versus that gained through persistence. Often, the sense of ease and quicker, broader perception that talent provides to the creator-photographer distances them from the laboriousness and perseverance that another invests in their work, suspecting they possess far less of the divine gift of talent. One might even observe self-destructive tendencies in highly talented artists, as if they cannot bear possessing something they have done nothing to acquire.
Talent, along with intelligence and inspiration, are factors an artist should disregard. Intelligence (necessary for any significant work) will never torment them, as they can only comprehend up to the level of intelligence they possess. They will seek inspiration and talent in the finished work, always accompanied by doubt, since their presence makes them desire a larger share than they themselves can discern. Regardless, none of these factors should motivate creation, as they often pose obstacles.
Creation should not serve to alleviate an individual's doubts about their own special abilities. The artistic outcome should not aim to cover the creator’s insecurities. Such a function of art turns the artistic process into a psychotherapeutic treatment, the produced work into proof, and the recipient from a communication partner into a judge.
All artists tend to overestimate and simultaneously underestimate themselves. A complete lack of self-confidence prevents an artist from creating. Conversely, excessive arrogance prevents them from exploring and progressing through self-doubt. Even the often admirable humility often hides nothing more than arrogance, or rather, excessively high goals that ultimately exceed the artist's endurance and lead to non-creation.
CARE OF DETAIL, CONSCIENTIOUSNESS, AND THE MATERIALITY OF THE IMAGE
The attention to detail, which in life distinguishes the conscientious and responsible from the sloppy and hasty, is an essential companion of the creator, to emphasize the seriousness with which they approach their art, but also the viewer. Especially in photography, the heavy shadow of easy and simultaneously mechanistic production, which escapes personal responsibility and craftsmanship, generates meticulous perfectionism, aiming to compensate for the complex caused by a product produced at industrial rates by anyone with basic knowledge. We thus observe the phenomenon of novice photographers who, to a hysterical degree, attach tremendous importance to the impeccable and flawless presentation of their photographic images, to the extent that this presentation replaces or obscures the truth of their work, just as the display of dexterity in other arts betrays a lack of content.
This reaction is also related to the fundamental complex photography has towards painting, whose value (artistic and economic) is also linked with the material presence of the visual work. The more importance we place on the method of presenting photographic work, the closer we feel to the visual creator already recognized for centuries. But at the same time, we move further away from the authenticity of our photographic expression, since at some point the tree will cover the forest, and we will be satisfied with the jewel-like shine of our photography and the dazzled admiration of the usually uninformed audience in front of the display of skill, which the surface, not the depth of our work, has caused.
PRESENTATION OF THE WORK AND PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTITY
The photographer, in their artistic journey, poses questions regarding their identity as a photographer. That is, when they are entitled to invoke it. The ease of technique, combined with the fact that photography as a practice is now exercised by everyone, generates doubts about the element that will contribute to someone being considered a photographer by society, but also by themselves, since usually the image that society has of us precedes the image we have of ourselves.
The seriousness and passion that the photographer invests in the photographic process are not in themselves enough to convince them that they can consider themselves a photographer and expect others to do the same. At the same time, they wish to communicate with these others, so as to measure their work through their eyes.
These desires justifiably lead them to the presentation of their work through exhibitions and publications, as these are the only appropriate ways to publicize a photographer's artistic work. At this point, however, the cart is often put before the horse, and instead of the exhibition being necessary to promote a job, the job is generated to make an exhibition. The difference is very significant, considering we might reach the point where there is no work if there is no exhibition.
But just as with meticulous perfectionism, the method of presentation (exhibition or publication) underscores the integrity of the photographer's stance towards their work. There is a measure, a balance, that connects the type and level of the work with the way it is presented. Otherwise, we do nothing more than use widespread advertising methods to promote a work that needs more obvious support, the weaker and shallower it is. The seaweed and silk ribbons would not then be far off.
THEMES AND PRETEXTS
The verbose search for photographic images and the game of integrating the entire visible world into them accompany the early period of every photographer, something not only natural but also beneficial for cultivating their vision and exploring their sensitivities and preferences. Over time, however, the first samples of their thematic or morphological obsessions are formed, which of course do not remain immovable but evolve, intersect, and are complemented. The choice of specific directions in photographic creation, either in the form of limited themes or the choice of compositional idiosyncrasy, promotes artistic creation in depth, as it protects the photographer from pointless and time-consuming wanderings in superficial varieties.
This specific choice, however, simultaneously generates a security, perhaps even a complacency, both in terms of the creation process and in terms of the reception of the work by the public. Thematic unity, for example, can justify even images with dubious artistic value simply because it connects them with their similar ones, while simultaneously imposing them on the eyes of viewers because the whole will cover any weaknesses. Often, it has been observed that the theme itself constitutes the final interest and content of the photographic work, replacing the photographs themselves, whose artistic value no longer seems to interest anyone. This has often been observed over the past decade, and it has frequently been felt that the artist was limited to the discovery of thematic originality and that execution was no longer anything more than an event of secondary importance, which could have been abandoned to the hands of a simple tool.
Thus, what begins as a source of the creative process and clarifies the space within which it will move ends up replacing and erasing it. We eventually reach the point where the unified and specific theme, from being stimulating, turns into a hypnotic for the photographer.
WORDS AND IMAGES
Part of the artistic process also involves its reflective element, since in art neither the intellectual contribution can be excluded nor the also necessary instinct deified. The thought, therefore, that precedes and follows the photographic act benefits because it guides the artist and defines areas that interest them and within which they will move.
The articulation of these thoughts as an accompaniment to the artistic work constitutes a different problem. Because then it either becomes an interpretive crutch for the viewer's use or an integral component of the image, which most often operates in a very pale manner, since a significant thought for the photographic process cannot also constitute an autonomous value in poetry or philosophy.
In these cases, the theoretical accompaniment, or support, of photography tries to add value to an otherwise insignificant image. Sometimes, however, the seriousness of the written word ensures the serious treatment that photography also anticipates. Always, however, it helps the viewer by offering logical and comprehensible approaches where artistic abstraction confuses them. It is, however, misleading help because it essentially excludes the viewer's creative self-activity in front of the complex aesthetic-real event that constitutes the photographic image.
In any case, if a photographer wishes, even for tactical reasons, to accompany their photographs with texts and thoughts that may indeed have dominated during the image production process, then it would be good to ensure through these texts the abstraction that every art seeks and to protect the space of their photographs. Otherwise, even if it appears as a beautification process, in essence, it will not deviate from the simple illustration of a thought (the photograph usually cannot withstand the text), or from a series of comic sketches, or from a collage-like stitching.
Unfortunately, however, something that could only be accepted as an exception has become the norm. Exhibition organizers, teachers, theorists found the easy solution in the presence of accompanying, explanatory, supportive text, since it facilitates (or so they think) both criticism and the reception of the work. They usually require its presence, and often they wish it to be presented chronologically first. The aesthetic poverty of the photographs that accompany it does not seem to cause them sadness or anger, as long as the text covers the sought-after seriousness of the intentions.
One would only need to think that a text supporting the birth of a specific photographic process cannot fully correspond to its result, since it is known that the artistic starting point rarely coincides with the artistic outcome. And if again the text reflects the outcome, it essentially constitutes a critical text. The photographer should also consider whether the text covers all (and only) the aspects of their photographs. Then why would it be needed? Unless it functions as a code for decryption, something that constitutes an insult to both the viewers and the photographs. If, on the other hand, the text adds interesting aspects to the photographic work, then the photographer should wonder why they did not want (or manage) to express them in a photographic way. If, finally, the text constitutes an artistic element of the work, then music, sculptural objects, and anything else that would contribute to its multimedia function could be added. Then, however, the critique would deviate from the goals and capabilities of this article.
LIFE OR BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
The habits that prevailed in recent years in the world of science and art had, among other consequences, the elevation of the curriculum vitae to a dominant position, often surpassing the substantive contribution of the scientific or artistic work.
Our identity is equated with the annual listing of our activities. And these activities are limited to their mere proclamation. And ultimately our life seems unfinished if the succession of these activities in the much-discussed CV is not continuous. We might wonder if we lived a year if we are not able to briefly specify which activity characterized it.
We are, it seems, as good as our resume proves. From this realization, until the point where our life turns into a process of filling out our curriculum vitae, is not a long way. And for the artist, the awareness of this function of the resume is extremely dangerous because it makes them deviate towards the side of social indicators, overlooking the values they set for themselves.
While the creator must have the desire to fill their life with action and experiences, even with failures, since these also constitute a most fertile element for creation, they end up considering only those actions that would add a line to their resume and moreover a line with socially acceptable content.
EXTERNAL INNOVATIONS AND OLD ORIGINALITIES
In the difficult path of artistic search, the road is full of dead ends, which the photographer must overcome, since regression is equivalent to resignation. It is not unusual in these cases to adopt purely external innovations related to the tools of work production or the way of presenting the result. Changing cameras, printing methods, types of film, or even the size of prints, types of framing, or projection processes are findings capable of giving a new start to a creative machine that has temporarily short-circuited.
It is easy, and unfortunately quite common, for the finding, being a spark, to be considered the final fire. Besides, contemporary art criticism is characterized by particular leniency when the work presents obvious innovations, which any critic can recognize, unlike innovations that relate to more substantive, and therefore more hermetic, areas of the work. Thus the photographer does not hesitate to take their desires for reality and to rush to consider the cause for conclusion.
External innovations can be included in a broader chapter of traps for the photographer, which constitute all kinds of originalities. It is a fact that the new constitutes an attractive lure for both the viewer and the creator. This lure is decisive in our era, now that generalized communication and information make the individual increasingly part of a huge society, where uniformity tends to erase their personality.
The consciousness of the artist's uniqueness expressed through the uniqueness of the work ensures an identity. Only again, they do not seek this identity from an artistic need, but (internally or avowedly) for social reasons. If, therefore, the originality emerged as a need to formulate an artistic proposition or language, then it would never be at risk of being fake. However, when the (usually young) artist seeks originality, they do it mainly because they fear the leveling that their work may undergo through the plethora of artistic propositions in history. Then it is inevitable for the originality to concern apparent superficial choices, which, with the advertising immediacy that characterizes our era, will ensure the artist a uniqueness just as superficial.
However, there is a consolation, which young creators, with their agonizing desire to conquer the present that characterizes them, do not seem to recognize. It is the realization that everything has been done before. This realization alone would be enough to free them from the anxiety of the new. After this, nothing remains but the engagement with the artistic subject, with merely a possible result of discovering a slightly new perspective on something already known. And that would be enough satisfaction for a creator. Perhaps, however, not enough to catapult them into the realm of projection, to which the advertising society has accustomed them.
EPILOGUE
If someone considers the slippery paths of the artistic process, the dark dead ends, the misleading sirens, the threatening traps, and the permanent disappointments, they might stop the journey before even starting it. It is therefore better to keep the taste of adventure, surprise, play, and challenge. Thus, the journey promises and enchants.
However, along the way, to strengthen and face whatever difficult and adverse they will encounter, they must be armed with the compass of their opinions. This code of conduct, which one develops over the years and which is based on personal values gathered from respected teachings, valuable experience, and beloved individuals. There is no reason for art to be exempt from the scrutiny of these values, especially since that way we will have an automatic and personal response to the difficult turns of our artistic journey.
Plato Rivellis