Some rambling thoughts about art and photography.
The Leang Tedongnge cave is located in a remote valley on the island of Sulawesi and was discovered to contain what might be the world’s oldest known cave painting: a life-sized picture of a wild pig that was made at least 45,500 years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/13/worlds-oldest-known-cave-painting-found-in-indonesia
Research co-author Maxime Aubert, of Australia’s Griffith University, reported that it was found in 2017 by doctoral student Basran Burhan, as part of surveys the team was carrying out with Indonesian authorities. What an amazing experience that would have been… I have referenced the Article in the caption if you are interested in reading it.
There are other famed examples of cave art found in Australia, Spain, and France… in fact where ever there have been modern humans, there are artifacts and evidence of their historic presence. Yes, modern humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, and the term modern just means Homo Sapiens as distinct from Neanderthal and Denisovan humans who are no longer with us. Imagine then that current day Graffiti will one day in a distant future be regarded as the ancient art of long lost generations.
Wall art in East Victoria Park… celebrating the wearing of masks…by Edgar (Saner) Flores 2014
I did share this image in a previous weblog and please note that the title is of my own making as seeing this coincided with a week of mandatory mask-wearing to ward off the dreaded Covid 19…
The whole point here is that as humans we will at some stage in our lives create images. Making marks on paper, rock, or anything that will allow us to render and record an image is an intrinsic part of the way in which we communicate. The earliest writings were pictographic for example, Chinese characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
Childrens’ artwork displayed in an office window in Victoria Park.
The word “art” is derived from Latin and literally means skill or craft hence words like “artisan” and “artifact” describe people who use their skills to make things. Of course, other sentient beings like insects and apes also spend a great deal of their lives making things and the making of things is all purposeful. We live in a world enriched by human and non-human artists.
If I look at my untidy and cluttered workspace, everything I see that was manufactured is a work of art designed by and made by a skilled human being, an artisan. Every artificial thing is a form of art. I hope I have your attention now… because I can with some confidence suggest that organic things such as plants also within their generative life spans are creations of art in themselves. That to me is not a mind stretching concept.
Even as it wilts this bloom has beautiful artistic form… From Ruth’s garden, Colchester, UK, May 10, 2017
What distinguishes visual art from other forms of art such as writing, is that it is visual. Most things that are labeled as art are representations of real world objects and living things. Commonly when we speak about art we are more than likely talking about paintings or sculpture. There has historically been controversy as whether photography is “art” in the context of the types of art I am talking about. In my opinion it is a form of art and in fact some of the most renowned photographers of the last century such as Henri Cartier- Bresson were painters before they embraced photography.
“…Toward the end of his career, Cartier-Bresson cut ties with Magnum to return to drawing and painting. “Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation,” he once described of his dual practices….”
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-henri-cartier-bresson-remains-one-photographys-figures
The art created on cave walls by early modern humans is priceless. It is amazing good fortune that it has survived for millennia so that today we can continue to be privileged to see and enjoy it. So since those early times and spanning through to the present, there has been continuous artistic creation. Since around 1830, photography has become and evolved into its own branch of art and as I said earlier on even though there remains controversy about photography as an art form, we would be narrow-minded to believe that in some fundamental sense that it isn’t art.
Click on these images to enlarge.