Hi Neil, this is a really fascinating topic! I agree that at times we have to take contradictory stances in order to survive the tension of growth versus opportunity. You said that in order to communicate with others, it requires ruthless selection. I embrace a more postmodernism stance, but I’m certainly not going to impose that on anyone else. I believe that to be ruthless about anything is to inhibit and constrain, and when I inhibit or constrain anything, I’m not giving room to alternate possibilities. That is just me and what works for me and what has allowed me to grow. In the past, my approaches were 1000 times more stringent, calculated and precise. I feel strongly though, that that this kept me back from both enjoyment and growth. Today, I’m enjoying myself way more than ever in all my art forms. My goals are simply to enjoy and learn. I no longer long to be anything specific. Again, different strokes for different folks. By the way, I’m very interested in looking more into Perry‘s work. I’m a huge fan of Martin Parr as well! Thank you for the provoking thoughts.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Ultimately, we end up oscillating in order and chaos. Each is appropriate to the moment we are in. Although as Jon implies above, there is also the market which influences what we do.
It feels like Grayson Perry may be getting a little old and grumpy (I am familiar with the feeling). The list of cliches may now be a formula for creating generic content, but they started as meaningful work with something to say. What I want is for someone to tell me what the content cliches will be in 10 years' time so I can get in early!
As always, a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece. Thanks for sharing 'The Painted Protest' which I didn't know. I'm afraid I don't like the work of either Martin Parr or Grayson Perry, although the list of photography 'clichés' (I would prefer to call them themes/subjects) is witty. There's a similar list (by David Campany, I think) in Fulford and Halpern's endlessly fascinating 'Photographer's Playbook'. You write 'It’s only by occupying a niche that we can make any visual impact at all.' Why is making an 'impact' important? Surely by worrying about the 'impact' of your work, by trying to guess what will sell or get 'likes'/subscriptions, you are less likely to be concentrating on making anything good (authentic, meaningful, true). There's a real tension on Substack (which I like a lot) between amateur enthusiasm and professional content-creation. I've noticed a fair bit of hand-wringing recently about the importance of engagement, comments and community. Is this also about carving out a niche and making it pay the bills?
I find this obsession with 'personal style' exhausting. You list four painters. No photographers. And on some level, is as it should be. Because when one tailors work to an audience... we are lost.
I could have chosen four photographers - off the top of my head … Todd Hido, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, Cindy Sherman - but was making the point that with photography it is easier and more inevitable to be unoriginal. I don’t think it is about tailoring work to the audience but acknowledging the canon and becoming oneself.
At the level of the four you mention, it is now a dialogue with their galleries. Stray too far and you get hauled back in. Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, etc… these are the big boys. Even Annie Leibovitz had to make a collage of many prints to get to a big enough object that could command the six figure price point Gagosian needed from her. You get booted by these dealers and your career is pretty much done. There is enormous pressure. And, it is all about sales and satisfying the audience.
A lot of these artists are trapped in expectations from their clients, galleries and I am not convinced they are having much fun. Gallery contracts are brutal, if you are with the big ones.
Gianni Berengo-Gardin - my hero - showed up at his gallery with a box of new work he was super proud of. 100 prints of monuments from cemeteries all over Italy. He was so proud. The gallerist opened the box, looked at the top 10 photographs and handed back the box with a dismissive gesture and a flippant comment that nobody would buy a photograph of a cemetery monument. No show, no sales, no book. He will be licking his wounds for a very long time. He did what he wanted to do as an artist, and his market said ‘no’.
There is only ‘oneself’ if you have economic freedom. Very few do.
Very good point. Managing supply and demand for photography is especially challenging. Maybe Helmut Newton and Martin Parr are good examples of people who strove for independence ... and have their own Foundations..
I was actually reading about W Eugene Smith today who managed to alienate everyone with his desire for a specific look, yet the spreads in Life look great to me.
This is a great article and Grayson Perry’s ceramic is really thought-provoking if not a bit caustic or supercilious. My overriding feeling when viewing it is a feeling of, somehow, shame. There are so many categories of photography covered here, and we must all have fallen into at least one of them at some point.
Photography as an art, for good or bad, has been popularised with social media if not democratised exactly. Thus we see the trends more clearly. We see photographers at different stages of their photographic journeys, not just the carefully curated museum or gallery exhibits.
I quite like Grayson Perry but this piece of work feels a bit elitist: “look at me: I’m above all of this”.
In my opinion, irony seems to be the most relevant tool of the language of postmodernism. But irony is very difficult to achieve, cause it has on one border, a tribute or homage (many artists have wanted to make fun of a subject and it turned out unporposedly a tribute), on the other, reactionary cynicism as you say (the audience cannot be sure if you are falling into the trap of believing everything is doomed or you are just saying look at this funny contradiction)... It's a very delicate balance. On the other hand, if you don't use irony in your artistic language, you are accused of being modernist. Of course, avant garde artists believed firmly in what they proposed, no irony involved. But it seems now we can't believe in anything cause to believe is naive. So it seems to me we are stuck between these two options, modernism or postmodernism, as if we were unable to image something beyond both. Very interesting article, thanks for your writing!
Hey Neil, thanks for the article you sent me!! I had heard about metamodernism. It's just.... I'm not sure I'm fully convinced by it being something, apart from just calling postmodernism differently. First of all, we can add any prefix we want to modernism, we can call it post-, meta-, trans-, over- or what have you. But we can't seem to get over modernism as such. And then, I'm also skeptical of postmodernism itself as getting over modernism, cause that's not true. Irony is the domint tool of postmodernism, but that doesn't mean we invented irony during postmodern times... Modernism also involved irony, although maybe it was not that relevant or we don't read it as important in that period when we look at history a posteriori. So I don't know... I believe if you grab the characteristics of metamodernism, you can apply them perfectly well to modernist works of art or artists and postmodern works of art or artists, like say David Lynch for instance. Lynch is a modernist, postmodernist and metamodernist.... But interesting conversation! Thanks for the time it's giving me to think about it. What do you think?
I admire everyone who attempts to take a meta-position on the chaos of existence - even as they add to the chaos!
Lynch is a good example of someone who wouldn’t take any label. He is too busy making. From a critical perspective, he is in the postmodern moment. He is referential, ironic, pastiche etc. Can we separate the artist from the age?
Your detailed analysis and set of photos shows the advantage of there just having been the one Perry pot (pot Perry?). Usually my focus goes onto the next pot long before having properly looked at and thought through the first one.
on another note: people accused parr of being cynical. so what? that didn't stop him. is perry cynical? again, so what? that is his way of seeing the work exhibit by others. simples!
It certainly hasn’t stopped their progress to the summit of photography/art!
I guess many of us look for a generosity of spirit. When I look at Salgado, for instance, I see a deep love for humanity and the earth which makes me feel good.
hold on a second: did you get the magazine? 😁
Sadly not. It is free in London so goes quickly. £6.50 plus postage elsewhere!
😕
Hi Neil, this is a really fascinating topic! I agree that at times we have to take contradictory stances in order to survive the tension of growth versus opportunity. You said that in order to communicate with others, it requires ruthless selection. I embrace a more postmodernism stance, but I’m certainly not going to impose that on anyone else. I believe that to be ruthless about anything is to inhibit and constrain, and when I inhibit or constrain anything, I’m not giving room to alternate possibilities. That is just me and what works for me and what has allowed me to grow. In the past, my approaches were 1000 times more stringent, calculated and precise. I feel strongly though, that that this kept me back from both enjoyment and growth. Today, I’m enjoying myself way more than ever in all my art forms. My goals are simply to enjoy and learn. I no longer long to be anything specific. Again, different strokes for different folks. By the way, I’m very interested in looking more into Perry‘s work. I’m a huge fan of Martin Parr as well! Thank you for the provoking thoughts.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Ultimately, we end up oscillating in order and chaos. Each is appropriate to the moment we are in. Although as Jon implies above, there is also the market which influences what we do.
Absolutely... and most of us are gifted with a lifetime or at least several decades to play around with all this "stuff". :)
It feels like Grayson Perry may be getting a little old and grumpy (I am familiar with the feeling). The list of cliches may now be a formula for creating generic content, but they started as meaningful work with something to say. What I want is for someone to tell me what the content cliches will be in 10 years' time so I can get in early!
Thanks for commenting and reminding me of your post, which was also an inspiration to think about this subject.
Thanks for the mention Neil - this is a topic that's not going away anytime fast!
As always, a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece. Thanks for sharing 'The Painted Protest' which I didn't know. I'm afraid I don't like the work of either Martin Parr or Grayson Perry, although the list of photography 'clichés' (I would prefer to call them themes/subjects) is witty. There's a similar list (by David Campany, I think) in Fulford and Halpern's endlessly fascinating 'Photographer's Playbook'. You write 'It’s only by occupying a niche that we can make any visual impact at all.' Why is making an 'impact' important? Surely by worrying about the 'impact' of your work, by trying to guess what will sell or get 'likes'/subscriptions, you are less likely to be concentrating on making anything good (authentic, meaningful, true). There's a real tension on Substack (which I like a lot) between amateur enthusiasm and professional content-creation. I've noticed a fair bit of hand-wringing recently about the importance of engagement, comments and community. Is this also about carving out a niche and making it pay the bills?
Thanks for a thoughtful and thought-provoking comment!
By impact I was suggesting cutting through the noise.
As in optimising your content?
No more a kind of Nietzschean “becoming who you are!”
I like the idea of Substack as an existential arena of formless chaos. How to monetise your true self seems to be the central issue.
This is so interesting. Like, really interesting. I'm a cliche. Who knew? : )
Definitely subscribing.
PS: Pittsburgh and Minamata are my favourite bodies of work by Eugene Smith. He pissed off every editor he ever had! 😂
I find this obsession with 'personal style' exhausting. You list four painters. No photographers. And on some level, is as it should be. Because when one tailors work to an audience... we are lost.
I could have chosen four photographers - off the top of my head … Todd Hido, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, Cindy Sherman - but was making the point that with photography it is easier and more inevitable to be unoriginal. I don’t think it is about tailoring work to the audience but acknowledging the canon and becoming oneself.
At the level of the four you mention, it is now a dialogue with their galleries. Stray too far and you get hauled back in. Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, etc… these are the big boys. Even Annie Leibovitz had to make a collage of many prints to get to a big enough object that could command the six figure price point Gagosian needed from her. You get booted by these dealers and your career is pretty much done. There is enormous pressure. And, it is all about sales and satisfying the audience.
A lot of these artists are trapped in expectations from their clients, galleries and I am not convinced they are having much fun. Gallery contracts are brutal, if you are with the big ones.
Gianni Berengo-Gardin - my hero - showed up at his gallery with a box of new work he was super proud of. 100 prints of monuments from cemeteries all over Italy. He was so proud. The gallerist opened the box, looked at the top 10 photographs and handed back the box with a dismissive gesture and a flippant comment that nobody would buy a photograph of a cemetery monument. No show, no sales, no book. He will be licking his wounds for a very long time. He did what he wanted to do as an artist, and his market said ‘no’.
There is only ‘oneself’ if you have economic freedom. Very few do.
But, still, I take your point.😁
Very good point. Managing supply and demand for photography is especially challenging. Maybe Helmut Newton and Martin Parr are good examples of people who strove for independence ... and have their own Foundations..
I was actually reading about W Eugene Smith today who managed to alienate everyone with his desire for a specific look, yet the spreads in Life look great to me.
Thanks for the Gianni Berengo-Gardin mention!
Did you see the cruise ship work by Parr in The Guardian.... Very underwhelming?
Indeed. Embarrassing.
😮
This is a great article and Grayson Perry’s ceramic is really thought-provoking if not a bit caustic or supercilious. My overriding feeling when viewing it is a feeling of, somehow, shame. There are so many categories of photography covered here, and we must all have fallen into at least one of them at some point.
Photography as an art, for good or bad, has been popularised with social media if not democratised exactly. Thus we see the trends more clearly. We see photographers at different stages of their photographic journeys, not just the carefully curated museum or gallery exhibits.
I quite like Grayson Perry but this piece of work feels a bit elitist: “look at me: I’m above all of this”.
I hadn't realised how widely hated he is in the art world before speaking to a couple of people. They just think he is an old Tory.
He has something to say and it's at least thought-provoking. But so is Nigel Farage ha ha
In my opinion, irony seems to be the most relevant tool of the language of postmodernism. But irony is very difficult to achieve, cause it has on one border, a tribute or homage (many artists have wanted to make fun of a subject and it turned out unporposedly a tribute), on the other, reactionary cynicism as you say (the audience cannot be sure if you are falling into the trap of believing everything is doomed or you are just saying look at this funny contradiction)... It's a very delicate balance. On the other hand, if you don't use irony in your artistic language, you are accused of being modernist. Of course, avant garde artists believed firmly in what they proposed, no irony involved. But it seems now we can't believe in anything cause to believe is naive. So it seems to me we are stuck between these two options, modernism or postmodernism, as if we were unable to image something beyond both. Very interesting article, thanks for your writing!
Thanks Maria!
Did you ever hear about Metamodernism?
https://neilscott.substack.com/p/book-review-always-open-always-closed
Hey Neil, thanks for the article you sent me!! I had heard about metamodernism. It's just.... I'm not sure I'm fully convinced by it being something, apart from just calling postmodernism differently. First of all, we can add any prefix we want to modernism, we can call it post-, meta-, trans-, over- or what have you. But we can't seem to get over modernism as such. And then, I'm also skeptical of postmodernism itself as getting over modernism, cause that's not true. Irony is the domint tool of postmodernism, but that doesn't mean we invented irony during postmodern times... Modernism also involved irony, although maybe it was not that relevant or we don't read it as important in that period when we look at history a posteriori. So I don't know... I believe if you grab the characteristics of metamodernism, you can apply them perfectly well to modernist works of art or artists and postmodern works of art or artists, like say David Lynch for instance. Lynch is a modernist, postmodernist and metamodernist.... But interesting conversation! Thanks for the time it's giving me to think about it. What do you think?
I admire everyone who attempts to take a meta-position on the chaos of existence - even as they add to the chaos!
Lynch is a good example of someone who wouldn’t take any label. He is too busy making. From a critical perspective, he is in the postmodern moment. He is referential, ironic, pastiche etc. Can we separate the artist from the age?
Your detailed analysis and set of photos shows the advantage of there just having been the one Perry pot (pot Perry?). Usually my focus goes onto the next pot long before having properly looked at and thought through the first one.
There is one in the a Kelvingrove about masturbation that is worth lingering on.
on another note: people accused parr of being cynical. so what? that didn't stop him. is perry cynical? again, so what? that is his way of seeing the work exhibit by others. simples!
It certainly hasn’t stopped their progress to the summit of photography/art!
I guess many of us look for a generosity of spirit. When I look at Salgado, for instance, I see a deep love for humanity and the earth which makes me feel good.