A Question Of Art

My previous post on the photographs of the great landscape photographer Ansel Adams brought to mind a discussion of a year or so ago concerning the color landscape photographs of Galen and Barbara Rowell, in which, to the displeasure of all present, I declared the photographs to be "trash art." I used that term due solely the context of that particular discussion as ordinarily I would have referred to the rather spectacular landscape images of both these photographers (both of whom died in an airplane crash in 2002) as kitsch, pretty and appealing though they are; the sort of stuff one might find as original illustrations for commercial wall calendars sold at mainstream retail outlets. In other words, not really art at all, except by using the term either carelessly or informally.

But what made me so certain — instantly certain, as a matter of fact — these images didn't qualify as genuine art? What criterion (or criteria) was I using to instantly and subliminally make that judgment? And were real criteria involved at all, or was it simply a matter of my tastes and gut-level prejudices at work?

These were questions that occurred to me the next day, and as it turned out, I'm pleased to relate, real criteria were indeed involved, although it's easier to know them than it is to tell them.

But I'll risk the attempt.

First, and easiest to tell and understand, is that, unless something abstract (i.e., non-"straight") is intended, by the very fact of a natural-light nature photograph being in color it's incapable of nuanced manipulation for expressive purpose, and the color image rendered is pretty much guaranteed to be hyper-real in both saturation and hue, and therefore pretty much guaranteed to be irredeemably untrue and vulgar as photographs of nature. "Straight" color photographs of nature subjects almost always are (I say almost to allow for the unlikely possibility that somewhere, by someone, there exists a "straight" color photograph of a nature subject that's not irredeemably untrue and vulgar).

Further, because the color rendered in the image under any given natural lighting conditions is determined entirely by the manufacturer's "build" of the emulsion and its subsequent absolutely rigid processing, the color results are exactly the same for all users, only extremely limited post-processing alteration of the color rendering being permitted with color prints from negative stock, and none at all with positive transparencies,* again, unless something abstract is intended.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, brightness ranges in natural-light landscape are the most extreme of any location, and color stock, both negative and positive, but especially positive, can handle only a very limited portion of that range (as compared with black-and-white stock), brightnesses at the top of the actual scale going very quickly and abruptly to detail-less and texture-less off-color whites in the image, and at the bottom of the scale, to detail-less and texture-less blacks.

And so the final image color and capturable brightness range are, ultimately, unalterably determined by the manufacturer of the film (and of the paper as well in the case of color prints from negative stock), the photographer being entirely at the mercy of the fixed characteristics of the emulsions he uses, as is not the case with black-and-white materials, and therefore having to accept whatever image those emulsions and their rigid processing produce, unless he chooses to go an intentionally abstract (non-"straight") route, in which case the nature photograph becomes not a nature photograph at all, but something quite different.

Less easy to understand for many is the fact that every "straight" color photograph pretends to reality; that is, pretends to render with fidelity things in the natural world as seen normally by the eyes of Homo sapiens, and it's due that very fact that the messing about with the color image for expressive purpose is so severely limited. Go beyond that severely narrow limit and the color rendering is perceived instantly as in some way "wrong" or, worse, inept.

This problem with color stock is, again, not a problem when working with black-and-white materials, negative and print, as a black-and-white print — the invariable final form of all black-and-white images — of even a "straight" photographic image is instantly perceived from the get-go as an abstraction, and therefore the range and degree of manipulation of even a "straight" black-and-white photographic image for expressive purpose — both in- and out-of-camera, and at just about every stage of production for both negative and print — is, within widespread boundaries, limited in practice only by the expressive gift and technical skill of the photographer.

The upshot of all this is that any "straight" color photograph of a nature subject (again, allowing that an exception might exist, even though I've never encountered such an exception) is guaranteed to have about it a sense of sameness with other such color photographs, and have about it as well a sense of the aesthetically constrained, both of which are art-destroying at the most fundamental level.

And such is true of all the Rowell photographs I've seen, both on their website, and at firsthand.

But there's even more to it than that in the case of the Rowell photographs.

Like all non-art, the Rowell images have no secrets, or having them, give them up all at once on first apprehension. That's a virtual hallmark of non-art. No genuine work of art does that — ever. Genuine art, whatever its medium, always possesses secrets, and gives them up slowly, little by little, only to the most searching and probing eye or ear, the greatest works seemingly having an almost limitless store which are never divulged entirely no matter how long and deep the searching and probing.

Which brings me to my rule-of-thumb, my initial criterion, for judging whether a work is genuine art or not whatever its medium. I call it the Jabberwocky Test. If a work fails that test on first and repeated apprehensions it's unquestionably and irredeemably non-art, and to the extent it meets the test is it genuine art of greater or lesser degree.

"Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas — only I don't exactly know what they are!" exclaimed Alice after reading Jabberwocky for the first time. The capacity of a work to provoke that feeling in an informed and experienced receiver is almost a very definition of genuine art, and, regardless of its medium, any work absent that quality is most assuredly non-art.

The Jabberwocky Test in no way depends on the tester finding the work under test to be personally appealing. What it does depend on is the depth of the tester's knowledge of the domain to which the work belongs, and his ability to put aside his personal likes and dislikes, and make his judgment based on the qualities of the individual work itself.

For instance, I've a marked antipathy to 19th- and 20th-century French music, but that doesn't in the least prevent me from at once recognizing that the works of, say, Debussy (a composer whose works I particularly loathe) most decidedly pass Jabberwocky muster. My knowledge of music permits me to make that determination with some measure of confidence. Similarly, but on the flip side, I positively adore the Sherlock Holmes stories of Conan Doyle (see my previous post on this), but my personal love of that classic canon, and as enduring as that canon has been for the past 100 years or so, does not in any way prevent me seeing clearly that it most decidedly fails Jabberwocky. Again, my knowledge of literature permits me that judgment with some measure of confidence.

So, neither a matter of being personally captivated by a work, nor of "I know art when I see it," but rather a matter of sufficient knowledge brought to bear on a work in cool detachment from one's own personal quirks, prejudices, likes, and dislikes.

Not as difficult as it sounds, strange to tell.

As a first determiner of art and non-art, I've found the Jabberwocky Test virtually infallible, and the Rowells' spectacular landscape photographs fail that test most resoundingly. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum said the ancient sage. But in matters as important as art, truth trumps ... everything.

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*In the case of positive transparencies, one can, of course, go to a third-generation color print from an internegative made from the positive, in which case the extremely limited post-processing alterations possible with color prints using original negative stock would obtain, but with all the deterioration of image quality that third-generation guarantees.