This post is a bit of an experiment but I have been thinking a lot about the way a photo can tell a story a about specific time and place. The photograph becomes an embodiement of an idea that is sometimes separate from the work itself. This essay is a study about the way that certain photos become more than just about the visual records of experience that exist in the worlds of art and architecture.

At the same time, I would like to add that the photograph undermines any emphasis on any geographical location outside of the field of view of the camera. Images are one of the few things that available to everyone because all you need to have is a camera and access to the internet. The reason that I chose these images in the post is that they all convey a story. They seem to be closer to conveying an idea about a person or work rather simply documenting an experience. The ideas in these photographs seem to me to be essentially about place.

A camera is extremely specific, it can only record what is in its field of view. If it is outside the field of view of the lens, it wouldn't be recorded. For me, that means that a camera is essentially about a specific place at a specific moment. The great thing is that that place can be anywhere now and availible to anyone. Everybody has the opportunity to participate. In a world that is becoming increasingly universal, there is still something compelling about the specific. The camera also separates the viewer from the event. The image can be used to convey a specific idea which might be different than the experience of the actual event.

This post is probably closer to a slide lecture that happens to be on the internet rather than a normal post. There are plenty of artists with a few architects and architecture thrown in. It is worth noting that a piece of architecture is not easily relocated. Unless people make the effort to visit it, it will only exist for most people as an image. For me that is important lesson for artists. Within the confines of a camera you can create your own world that may or may not have anything to do with where you live on the planet. The camera is a great equalizer.

As I was doing research for this post I was surprised that artists and architects have been using images this way since the very beginning.






A self portrait of Brancusi in his studio. The idea behind the photo is the integration of a man and his work. In this photograph he is completely subordinate to his work, his figure barely fills up a third of the image. It is a photograph about the juxtaposition about his sculpture Bird in Space and himself. The rest of the studio comes into focus through our periperal vision and the long exposure also gives the studio an otherworldly light. He is literally one with his work. More...

It's Disjecta, again... and again... and again. Long time Portlanders are probably pretty familiar with this promotional routine, and have already formed their opinions. For those of you who don't know the history, PORT takes a look back and a look forward after the jump. (More.)

"It isn't necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are more intense, clear and powerful." -Donald Judd in his essay Specific Objects



Donald Judd rafting down the Clackamas River with Bob Peirce
Photograph taken by Bruce West at the Bottom of the Carter Bridge
Rapids
November 1974


The Portland Center for Visual Arts (PCVA) was based on a very simple premise: artists talking to artists. The PCVA was founded in 1971 by three artists Jay Backstrand, Mel Katz, and Michele Russo. The exhibition space was located on the third floor of 117 NW Fifth Ave. Katz wanted to give something to the community as well as bring to Portland some of the things that he missed from New York. Usually, the PCVA sent a letter to an artist explaining that they wanted to have a exhibition of the artist's work in the Northwest and could they follow up with a phone call the following week. This was a strategy that proved to be tremendously successful and they were soon able to attract some of the best artists in the country to come to Portland and have a show. The PVCA was unique in every sense of the word. The artists liked working with the PCVA because although there was a limited budget for each of the shows, there was never any limit to an artist's ideas. After the first few New York artists had a good experience working in Portland, the PCVA had an excellent reputation and the original artists often recommended other artists who might be willing to come out here.

The founders set three objectives for the PCVA. First, they wanted to exhibit the best contemporary art that was being done in all regions of the United States. Second, they tried to stimulate commnuntiy awareness of the diversity and excellence of contemporary art through both exhibitions and others programs. Last, they wanted to bring the artist themselves to Portland to discuss their work. Over the 17 years they were able to put on an exhibition schedule that would have been successful and relevant even to MoMA. To give you some sense of the caliber of artists that have spent time in Portland because of the PCVA: Carl Andre, Yvonne Rainer, Lynda Benglis, Sol LeWitt, James Rosenquist, Daniel Buren, Ed Moses, Allan Kaprow, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Alice Neel, John Baldesari, Chuck Close, Richard Serra, Chris Burden, Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Lucinda Childs, Andy Warhol and Agnes Martin just to name a few. It is hard to think of an arts institution that would have been more dynamic and relevant during that time period. The PCVA put on ten to fifteen visual arts exhibits every year as well as equal number of dance, music, and theater performances. There were a lot of things that were different about the PCVA and a comparable institution would not be created on the East or West Coast until the Dia Center was created in the late seventies.


Donald Judd
Untitled, 1974 (Detail)
3/4" Plywood on 2" x 4" subframe
65'-4" x 46'-3" x 40'-6"
Installed at the Portland Center for Visual Arts in November 1974
(c) Donald Judd 2008


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Polykleitos
Doryphoros
450-440 B.C.


When we look at art, are we only seduced by what we think is beautiful? Do we only respond to things that resonate with our sensibilities, our taste, or our history? As an artist is it our role to make beautiful things (paintings, sculptures, film, ideas etc...)?



Janine Antoni
Saddle
2000


Everyone has their own path, so everyone will have to choose for themselves but for me, I do not think that art has anything to do with the beautiful. In my own experience, my tastes are constantly evolving as I am interacting with the world and learning new things. How can I stand in judgment of what is beautiful and what is not? What I find ugly today, I might that I find that is urgently needed and beautiful tomorrow.

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"The Kwakiutl artist painting on a hide did not concern himself with the inconsequentials that made up the opulent social rivalries of the Northwest Coast Indian scene, nor did he, in the name of a higher purity, renounce the living world for the meaningless materialism of design. The abstract shape he used, his entire plastic language, was directed by a ritualistic will towards metaphysical understanding. The everyday realities he left to the toymakers; the pleasant play of non-objective pattern to the women basket weavers. To him a shape was a living thing, a vehicle for an abstract thought-complex, a carrier of the awesome feelings he felt before the terror of the unknowable."

-Barnett Newman , The Ideographic Picture 1947


Haida Totems Queen Charlotte Island 1890's

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