Pictorialism and Modernism - Essay Example

Modernism vs. Pictorialism Artwork has evolved over the time from the age of sculpting to the era of painting where landscapes and other phenomena were represented through paintings. In the last part of the 19th century, sculpting, printmaking and photography became the legitimate artistic forms that represented diverse views according to the artist. The use of sculpting was mainly employed during the rapid spread of public and private buildings where artists made it their duty to beautify the buildings through creative artistic works. The availability of printmaking machinery and materials that were previously reserved for illustration and reproduction allowed the artists to venture into the new artistic era. This led photographers to experiment their divergent techniques, which included the documentary style that involved capturing memorable events and representing them in documentaries. The era of documentary photography raised the need to respect people as humans rather than stereotypic images that had less resemblance to the represented being. This gave rise to the era of modernism, which made a large leap from the previous documentary photography. Therefore, it was during the pictorialism era that real artistic work could be accurately represented, and this was the era that revolution in artistic work was achieved. However, due to the closeness between the two artistic works, pictorialism may be argued to be a modernism approach to photography with the feelings of the artist embraced in the art work. Photography vs. Modernism Rocco (2009) argues that the era of photography dates back to 1888 when George Eastman introduced the first Kodak camera and this changed photography to the better since then. The first camera made photography to be available for the common man in the street, instead of being a preserve of a few artists. This intervention of the camera greatly reduced the apparatus used in films, and was available to many casual amateurs with no particular training in technical expertise in an art field. However, (Becker, 2005) argues that the difference between pictorialism and modernism has a thin line that is in most cases ignored without a good focus attention. In today’s art, pictorialism and modernism have a thin boundary and a few characteristic that differentiates them, and which are only clear to the technical knowledge in artists and not to armatures. In most cases, any art photography is considered as pictorial and this led the modern photographers to emphatically differentiate themselves from pictorialism. Comparison between pictorialism and modernism artists Adolf Fassbender vs. Ansel adams Fassbender was a renowned pictorialism photographer whose work was done with a high degree of clarity to an extent that there was little difference between the work of Adolf and the work of the modernism artists such as Adams. The most renowned photograph that was done by the two artists was a photograph that depicted water and hills on the background with a mist cover in the vicinity and a tree branch on the foreground (Becker). Fassbedner represented this photography in pictorialism while Adams represented it in modernism. In this photography, there are distinct similarities between the two artists to a level that it might be not possible to differentiate the two artistic works especially to an amateur in art work. The similarities portrayed a high degree of likeness between the methods of artistic work to an extent that one representation might be considered to be the other and vice versa. In this particular photo, the only difference that might be attributed is the focus. While Adams’ focuses sharp and portrays a high degree of natural reality, Fassbender’s focus is softer and portrays some degree of modification on the photo to present the desired impression. This little similarity as Backer (2005) further elaborates makes Adams to be a strict critic of pictorialism and dismisses the pictorialism representation particularly by Fassbender as “fuzzy-wuzzies”. The fuzziness might be argues to result for the modifications that are carried out on the actual photography to present the required impression and the textural paper that brings out the photography as soft and lacking a deep focus that characterizes modernism. The slight difference led modernism artists to wage a lot of criticism to pictorialism arguing that their works were grounded on the real, and like silence, it was predicated on portraying the nature’s truth his led Adams to coin the word transcendental perhaps to describe the mode of photography in modernism and to portray a significant difference between his work and that of Fassbender . Alfred Stieglitz vs. Dorothea Langes Stieglitz was a remarkable pictorialism artist who left a remarkable impact in the artistic work in America. It was through Stieglitz that photography in pictorialism became to be accepted as an art form. He had a gallery that produced hundreds of his work in addition to being a dedicated and audacious photographer (Metropolitan Museum Art, 2011). Stieglitz had strict artistic policies that had to be followed in his art work and this brought him to collision with his the camera x club that had established to pushed photography work, making him to break away from the club to form the photo secession. The photo session as established by Stieglitz had strong advocacy for on the craftsmanship involvement in photography. They use deliberate and labor intensive techniques that well underscored the role of a photographer’s hand in making photographic prints that led Stieglitz to favor a different approach in his photographic work (Metropolitan Museum Art, 2011). Stieglitz typical pictorialism was characterized by the use of studios, where between 1902 and 1917 he organized multiple exhibitions helped by Steichen. The studio became a little gallery of photo sessions in 1905. Stieglitz had a careful choice in arrangement of tone belies and shapes and photographs such the steerage portray a well crafted artwork. Another amazing work; the back window portray a well organized work in which Stieglitz internalizes the avant-garde art to combine with his expertise in extraction of aesthetic meaning from ten urban atmosphere (Metropolitan Museum Art, 2011).The pictorialism by Stieglitz defined another chapter in American artistic work and his belief that photographs were an expression of the photographers feeling for the subject and a reflection of the subject depicted explained his advocacy for pictorialism as compared to modernism photography that did not allow the artist to manipulate the photo to represent their feelings. Lange represents the best example of modernism in photography as her work was mostly centered in the modernist era. As an acclaimed documentary photographer of the twentieth century, Lange was most renowned for her photography in the plight of sharecroppers, migrant workers and displaced farmers and the portrait of Florence Owens Thompson (Art Story Foundation, 2011). The most remarkable difference between her work and that of Stieglitz was that while Lange was working for the government bodies that required actual photography representing the real pictures with a focus that could only be achieved in modernism, Stieglitz insisted on expression of feelings through photography in pictorialism. Lange photography as Metropolitan Museum Art, (2011) argues borrowed almost every technique from the Lexicon of modernism that consisted dynamic composition and dramatic angles. These were the critical differences between modernism and the pictorialism artistic work. Her contribution was therefore purely in modernism and contrasted reality with the work of Stieglitz, a pictorialism advocate. Paul Strand vs Lewis Hine Strand as Cahill (1998) argues was an influential advocate of pictorialism, in which he described the art works as the self consciously artistic photo style. Stieglitz, a strong advocate of pictorialism was the influential figure behind Strand as he had warned strand to watch the world more closely and the feelings that it emits instead of simple artwork represetaiotn. This was aimed at discouraging Strand from adopting modernism to the more felling attached pictorialism, that strand adopted in his artistic work. Cahill further elaborates that Strand struggled to find the abstract order in life through his artistic work as he had been instructed, though he later embraced modernism due to the influence of his teacher, Hine. This made him to leave the pictorialism to the more simplified and dynamic modernism. On the other hand, Hine was a purely modernist photographer having bought a 35 mm camera and Tri-X film that clearly defined his skills and passion as a photographer in the modernism era (Baker,) Hine photography was more influenced by the influx of immigrants from all directions that marveled Hine and elected a thought of capturing the different outlooks of people into artistic work though photography. This photography mostly encourages the observers to look through different periods from slaves, and people who crossed oceans to look for better beginnings in the new worlds. Hine did not regard his work as artistic and chose to portray his work as regarding a moral responsibility such as child workers in plantations, and the exploited workers were his target. This dedifferentiated his work from the earlier work of Strand. However, the passionate work of Hine greatly influenced Strand who left his pictorialism approach to modernism approach as a result of the reality that the latter portrayed. Part 2 Relevance to today’s photography Well trained art photographers have been able to overlap the boundary between modernism and pictorialism this makes it harder for untrained eyes to differentiate between the two. The major features that characterize pictorialism were the use of negatives and the making of portraits that were the major defining features of pictorialism in the late 19th and early 20 the century. Cahill (1998) argues that landscapes were the major concern for pictorialism, with many of the photographers making hundreds of photography that represented different landscapes. The early pictorialism according to Cahill had well articulated photographic symbolism that they used to communicate different sentiments of emotions. An example is the 1889 photograph of Paula Berlin that portrays a woman seated down and writing a letter. This might be read to mean a farewell letter or to denote other emotional representations. Another major element of pictorialism was the use of studios, where the artists used to make and display their artistic work. The Paula Berlin studio as seen in this photography represents many studios that were used by the pictorialism artists. The effects of light as Cahill further elaborates demonstrate the settings in which the pictorialism art were taken. The Berlin’s studio show s some rays of light from the upper left, and cutting diagonally distinct stripes that are filtered by the shutter to bring about a composition that portrays a Vermeer eye. The earlier pictorialism according to Becker (2005) was mainly aimed at mimicking the impressive paintings that were popular at the time and emphasized the personal skills of the artists in portraying a highly artistic vision rather than reproduction of mechanical reproduction. This led the pictorialism artists to employ soft focus techniques, darkroom manipulation and roughly texturised papers. Era of pictorialism was eventually revolutionilized in 1910 when the Albright gallery bought about 15 photographs from the renowned Stieglitz gallery, making the start of an era when photography could be considered as an art. However, there emerged another problem in pictorialism that led to more revolutionaries in artistic work that led to modernism. Most of the pictorialism works were vague, impressionistic pictorial styles that clearly called for improvement in the artistic work (Becker, 2005). It was in 1920 that Stieglitz a renowned pictorialism photographer turned away from this type of photography and to embrace a more clear and advanced pictorial representation. Rocco (2009) elaborates that the modernism in artwork was therefore marked in 1932 when eleven photographers who included great artists such as Adams Ansel and Weston Edward embraced the smallest aperture at f/64. The camera was able to solve the previous challenges faced by the pictorial photographers that included sharp representations, the greatest sharpness ever, and the depth of the field in photographs. Through this aperture the photographers could represent the world as it real was and capture the greatest degree of reality in the world. The darkroom manipulation was therefore abandoned in photography to redefining the nature of photographs to more subject based photography that needed no modification. From the texturised technologies and soft focus that marked the pictorialism, the new art work was later turned to more technical based precision that powerfully represented the essentials of the particular subject. Baker (2005) argues that though the modernism photography presented sharper images and a good focus. The pictorialism work of highly skilled artists such as Adolf Fassbeder still caused problems to many who could not differentiate between the pictorialism and modernism work by the artist. The work of Adolf Fassbeder and Ansel adams became very difficult to differentiate; the difference being only in the degree of focus. While Adolf portrayed a soft focus, Adam’s focus was sharp, and this degree of focus became the only way that one could differentiate between modernism and pictorialism artist work, but only to the trained and experienced artists. This led Adams to use the term transcendental to describe his work in manner that was used to portray the opposite of pictorialism. In the current modernism era in photography, the camera process is internalized such that what the artists envisions and the image presented by the camera are as closely aligned as possible. This is contrary to the pictorialism that has to personalize their photography after taking them in applying craft and classically artistic effects. The modernists argue that a photo does not have to be touched and it has to represent the artist’s vision to the largest degree possible. It has to minimize the discrepancy between the creative idea and the image manifested. These differences clearly attribute the pictorialism and modernism as artistic work and the representation that each work offered to the best degree possible. Though there is a thin boundary between pictorialism and modernism, the advocates of pictorialism advocate for an attachment of feelings in communicating through photography, and this lead them to make a few touches on the photography work to communicate and express their feelings. This idea has been rejected by the modernism advocates who prefer to present art work as a real representation of what was captured with the camera. This is the main difference of the two artistic works in addition to the degree of focus. Modernism has a sharp and deep focus while pictorialism portrays a soft focus. However, to untrained eye, the difference between the two incase of art work from experienced artists might not be evident. Pictorialism can therefore be explained to be modernism that portrays the artist’s feelings and emotional attachment to the subject of artwork. References Becker, V.P., (2005) shooting from the hip: photography, masculinity and postwar America. MN: University of Minnesota Press. Cahill, T., (1998). Paul Strands imprint on photography. Christian Science Monitor, 90(173). Available through Ebscohost. Metropolitan Museum Art (2011) Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and American Photography. Hellbrun Timeline of Art History http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgp/hd_stgp.htm Rocco, V., (2009). Pictorialism and Modernism at the Dresden. Internationale Photographische Ausstellun, 33(4), 383-402. The Art Story Foundation (2011). Dorothea Lange. The Art story Org. http://www.theartstory.org/artist-lange-dorothea.htm Read More