It’s surprising how much discussion my blogs have engendered about the object composition of the Los Angeles Antiques Show. As my partner Keith McCullar will gleefully point out, I am prone to error. In this case, given how many people have responded, my earlier estimation numbering my loyal readers at 10 or so was a mistake: I now believe I have at least 20.
The latest blast centers on a discussion of photography, a feature in the upcoming show, and specifically a consideration of photography as art. As long as art has existed as a conscious construct, critical debate has attended it. I think about the notion of paragone that waxed and waned throughout the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy, weighing whether painting or sculpture was the superior art form. Not until the astonishing mid 17th century speaking likenesses of Bernini, who, with his bel composto blended into his vivified sculpture the subtle gradations of color and narrative content, both formerly the sole province of painting, did the debate die out. Maybe it just grew tiresome.
More recently, Clement Greenberg in the 1950’s prominently sought to establish a notion of what was appropriate, and defining, for an art form. Greenberg argued that, with the advent of photography, figurative painting was rendered superfluous, as painting could never do, in capturing a likeness, what photography could. In fact, Greenberg thought painting was only effective as art if a painting’s sole purpose was to declare itself as an art object. Any figurative or narrative content in a painting, features that could be better performed by other means, depleted its import. Of course, Greenberg was trying to establish a critical framework the understanding and acceptance of the new and recondite abstract expressionism, and in particular, the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock. It is no surprise, then, to find that, for Greenberg, the quintessential art work was that of his buddy Pollock. On the flip side, however, photography seems to have got short shrift only as a useful technical process, and not art in the same way ab-ex painting was.
Someone who moved general and critical acceptance of photography ahead significantly was Sam Wagstaff, whose aesthetic sense, as well as social prominence and length of purse, resulted in greater visibility for photography initially as a collecting genre. Like it or not, collectiblity, and cash value, are elemental features in the movement toward a place within the canon. Sounds banal, but this is important, as cash value implies demand, and demand implies acceptance- even amongst critics. And, of course, acceptance and general assent of any item of material culture as an art form is what establishes its place within the art historical canon. Wagstaff is possibly best remembered as Robert Mapplethorpe’s first patron, and much of the envelop pushing subject matter of the photographer’s work was the result of Wagstaff’s encouragement. Certainly, the in your face subject matter, together with the prominence of its exhibition, made it impossible to ignore Mapplethorpe’s work, forcing thereby its critical acknowledgement.
Frankly, certainly post-Mapplethorpe and Wagstaff, it would be pretty difficult to argue that photography hasn’t made a place for itself in the canon. Bonni Benrubi Gallery from New York will be exhibiting photography at the Los Angeles Antiques Show.