Ta Nea (Persona Supplement – 1999)
When entertainment merges with art
The boundaries between art and entertainment, or as commonly referred to, amusement, especially in our times where everyone invokes art while seeking entertainment, are not always clear. Economic interests, always first in foresight, have timely noticed this confusion and exploited it, aiming to reap benefits from both sides of the coin.
Entertainment, or what Anglo-Saxons call entertainment, aligns and reconciles with something lighter and more digestible, something that pleases without causing concern, and, mainly, something intended to satisfy the broadest audience, whose demands are guessed, certified, or cultivated. In this role, entertainment producers have developed sophisticated and effective methods. The phenomenon is obviously more intense and noticeable in the art and entertainment of spectacle, and above all in cinema, but it affects every other artistic/entertainment activity.
The indistinct boundaries create problems mainly for those involved with art rather than entertainment. The contradictions between the two activities relate to intentions and methods, but, although fundamental, they do not clarify the distinction. Entertainment has specific rules and goals. Art requires abstract rules and goals to engage in their pursuit and sometimes their challenge. One generates money, the other typically absorbs it. Both produce pleasure, but while entertainment offers it impersonally to every interested party, art awaits the one who, regardless of the cost, will seek in it the hidden and more enduring pleasure.
We need both in life. The lightness of one is different company from the contemplation of the other. The danger lies in the ease (and cunning) with which many try to put them in the same basket and weigh them with the same scales, looking for the validation that art brings and the large audience promised by entertainment. The “product” thus becomes also a “creation”. But this attitude ultimately does injustice to both art and entertainment, as praise or criticism is not given based on the criteria suitable for each.
In the world of books, there has been a boom in “living room books” or “coffee table books” in recent years. These are books based on Fine with a capital letter photographs, digestible, pleasant, well-arranged, depicting topics of general interest. The accompanying texts are limited and equally harmless. These books sell in relatively large numbers and are considered particularly welcome as gifts. In the world of photographic books, they correspond to the best sellers in the world of literature. And it may be unfair to classify them as purely photographic books, since both their intentions and their topics are more significant than the possibly “artistic” result.
In our country in recent years, there has been such a photographic/publishing production with decent and respectable samples. The presentation of the books, the accompanying texts, even the pagination, convey that these are books with tasteful images supporting and describing a specific subject, usually of tourist or historical content. Some of them could undoubtedly be included in an artistic photographic portfolio, but it is obvious that this was not within the capabilities, intentions, or desire of the photographer, the author, the publisher.
Photographers Liza Evert, Dora Minaidi, and Maria Fakidi worked together for a long time until the first went her own way and even engaged in self-publishing her books. Their travels led them to places where Hellenism flourished, and their topics mainly revolved around areas with topographic and monumental interest. The titles of their books, honestly referring to the content (Pontos, Cappadocia, Castles of the Peloponnese, Constantinople, etc.), are straightforward. Their photographs, merely descriptive, approach their subjects with integrity and without a tendency to embellish or emphasize, thus accurately illustrating a text that also aims to be explanatory and informative. I don't know the deeper desires and ambitions of these photographers, nor can I tell if the apparent integrity with which they photographically treat their subjects truly reflects sincerity. What is certain is that these specific photographs neither “make art” nor “artisticize”. Critics who undermine the value of their photographs with artistic arguments and criteria make the mistake of engaging with something that the photographs themselves do not permit, as they do not seek any artistic commentary.
I have always felt the opposite with the series of albums by Dimitris Talianis. Here the titles “poetize” (Rust and Brine, Tuesday Day, Orientations, Land of Macedonia, etc.). The same goes for the texts. Our poets are recruited once again (unfortunate Elytis, doomed to accompany every reference to the sea and the blue!), even the Holy Scriptures. The photographs themselves, with a superficial color abstraction, arbitrary close-ups, and a primitive (artistically referential) demand, seek artistic anointing. These images lack the honesty of description, even the sincerity of a postcard, where the standardized beauty, the "cliché," becomes a symbol. Even the promotional campaign for the books plays the “artistic” argument. If I remember correctly, the press releases for the first album informed us that it was printed on “art paper” with “art ink,” providing some more precise information about the origin of these materials. Meanwhile, the presentation of the books was provocatively and unjustifiably made through prominent museums and ancient theaters.
One could argue that none of this is inherently bad and that we often see an exceptionally precious wrapper containing a completely uninteresting gift. Nevertheless, love for photography and art compels us to think that the well-intentioned yet naive public cannot distinguish the precious from the valorized in art, nor the sincere from the pretentious. No artist is sure they can offer something valuable, but they can move in that direction. Honesty, which they can offer us, will help them avoid dangerous beautification. Our life needs “living room books,” just as it needs “light music,” “entertaining movies,” and “detective novels,” only the intentions and goals must remain pure.
Plato Rivellis