A POTATO AS A PROXY FOR THE ONTOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. 

[Albert Einstein]

What we have: A photograph of a potato, titled Potato #345. Made by "celebrity photographer" Kevin Abosch. In my opinion quite a bad photograph, technical and in a creative manner. This photograph was sold recently for $1.08 million. Is a photograph of a potato worth a million dollars? That’s not for you or me to decide, ultimately. It’s for the buyer. But it is a prime example how crazy the art market can go from time to time (not to talk about collectors) - the art market has been operating at borderline insanity levels, price-wise, for decades. Or, as one commentator stated: "It's what happens when the inmates are in charge of the asylum".

The One-Million-Dollar-Potato

Kevin Abosch is not the first photographer making pictures of vegetables. Actually every student of photography has to do such exercises in his first term at art college. Great photographers like Edward Weston made a lot of them (though not of potatoes). You can get one of his famous Pepper #30 vintage prints for around $15,000 at the moment. But ok, it only took Weston 30 tries to get his famous photo. Potato #345 is the result of an order of magnitude more effort. But just imagine the collection of really good photographs you could put together for $1.08 Million...

Pepper #30 by Edward Weston

Maybe the buyer of Potato #345 was convinced by the profound philosophical thoughts of the „artist“: "[...] potato as a proxy for the ontological study of the human experience. I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species ... Generally, the life of the harvested potato is violent and taken for granted." If so that would at least proof that Einstein was right...

Potatoes #1 by Chris deMatté

The whole story is, for me as an artist, not very funny. Others found at least some comical aspects in this story: In a comment somebody noted: "I'm just disappointed the potato photo wasn't an autochrome*. And just wondering: can one distill vodka from autochrome prints?"

* Autochromes, an early color process developed by the Lumière brothers in France, were made using potato starch.

YES. IT IS ART.

Documentary photography can be art photography too...

“Pictures which are going directly from the eyes to the heart...“

(An inscription in the visitor‘s book of my 2015 „Leftovers“ exhibition in Lucca)

   "Is photography art?" may seem like a silly question to some (or many, or most) but it has been a debate which started more or less right at the moment when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce made the first photograph in 1826 or 1827 and this debate is still going on. If I would get 10 Euro every time I had this discussion over the last 30 years or so I would be a very rich man...

  The invention of photography had an dramatic impact on the careers of illustrators and painters. The livelihood of many artists was jeopardized by the camera, which they often viewed as a mechanical device or passing fancy, rather than as an artist's tool. Few denied that photography was an ingenious invention of the modern age but many saw it as a threat to the traditional values associated with art. The public debate on whether images were photography as art or mere documentation began back then, often centering on the camera, rather than on the talents and intent of the photographer.

Let‘s start with a definition of "Art Photography" - that is how Wikipedia is defining it: 

• Fine art photography is photography created in accordance with the vision of the artist as photographer.
• Photography that is done as a fine art - that is, done to express the artist's perceptions and emotions and to share them with others.
• The production of images to fulfill the creative vision of a photographer
• Creating images that evoke emotion by a photographic process in which one's mind and imagination are freely but competently exercised.

   Photography is an art when the photographer is an artist. It is immaterial that the photo can be replicated a thousand times (thus depriving the 'original' of its unique status). A photographer's art is his ability to capture a moment of reality and turn it into viewable image of interest and/or beauty. At the end of the day a camera is not so very different from a painter's brushes and paints. It is no more than a set of tools with which a photographer tries to create an image: an image to stir our soul, in the way that images do.

An Artist's Statement: 

Every time I take pictures, I don't photograph a motive, but the picture of a motive. To transform this motive into a picture, one must convert it into the "medium photography", meaning that everything you observed at the motive, experienced, felt you have to express with the given characteristics of the medium - the whole pallet of the grey tones . The more exactly one knows the tools, the more successfully the conversion is. The successful picture - and not the motive itself - then represents the photographic correspondence, the photographic equivalent of the experiences with this motive. In this doing the artistic photography arranges itself into a row with all other representing arts.

Only the picture contains the message.

  One could say that when the one of the leading institutions in modern art, the MoMA in New York, has a separate department for photography (as it has since 1940) the question „Is photography art?“ could be seen as solved. Today, fine art photographs can be seen in many leading museums around the world, even such revered and conservative like the Albertina in Vienna...

"I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn." 

Pablo Picasso

"I have always been very interested in photography. I have looked at far more photographs than I have paintings. Because their reality is stronger than reality itself."

Francis Bacon

Posted in: Oppinions

THE SHALLOWS OF THE CONTEMPORARY ART WORLD

Last Friday a strange think happened at Art Basel Miami Beach:

Two women - visitors of the art show, not exhibitors - got into a fight and one stabbed the other with a knife (the injuries are not life-threatening, as the Miami Beach Police later confirmed)

Some patrons thought the stabbing and the blood-covered woman was an art performance art. Others believed the police tape cordoning off an area of the convention center was part of an art installation...

Crazy because of art? 

[Read the Miami Herald Articel here]

MORE MONEY THAN SENSE?

  A year ago, the art world was startled by the following message:

Peter Lik Print Sells for $6.5 Million, Shattering Record for Most Expensive Photo

Australian landscape photographer Peter Lik has taken the crown for most expensive photo ever sold. “Phantom,” the picture shown above, was sold to a private collector for a staggering $6.5 million. The record was previously held by Andreas Gursky’s “Rhein II”, which sold for $4.3 million back in 2011.[http://petapixel.com]

But soon there emerged a lot of doubts about this deal. As with his 2010 piece, "One", the purported sale was to a private collector, and therefore there was no way to verify the claim. Rumors have swirled for years that Lik’s investors "buy" his works at absurd prices as a marketing stunt to generate interest in his work. And soon the whole "business model" of Peter Lik has been questioned. Renowned media such as the New York Times or The Guardian dealt extensively with Peter Lik. "Is that $6.5 Million Photo Sale for Real? Probably Not!" an article on artnet news is titled. "Buyer beware: Treat Peter Lik photo sale with skepticism", "Those $10m Photos May Not Be Art—and Now There Are Doubts About the Truth of the Sales", "The Most Expensive Photo in the World, or the Best Marketing Stunt?" where other headlines.

There was also a significant backlash to this news on Twitter, where @LarryWasser called it "the sad story of uneducated buyers" and @polarapfel saw Lik's business as a guide to "how to run a successful scam on novice art buyers." On Facebook, Ken Micallef called Lik's practices "sickening and hilarious".

If you consider that, according to the artnet Price Database Lik‘s work has only topped the $3,000 mark (on the secondary market) once for a 2008 sale of a color version of "Phantom" (named "Ghost" then which is, as you can see above,the same picture, just converted to b&w, also nothing is known about the size), which sold for $15,860, these doubts are more than justified. 

So what is Peter Lik‘s "Business model" then?

His editions are in lots of 995—950 „limited editions“ and 45 artist’s proofs. Each print is identical but the proofs have a bit more prestige to them so they start at $10,000. His business model is that as a print is selling, the price will increase. Once he has sold 10 percent of a limited edition, the price increases. So, an image that would cost $4000 if you bought the first one, could reach as high as $200,000 when it’s down to the last few.

(Note: Most photographers offer their work in very limited editions. A large format print is often limited to ten or less. And they all sell for the same amount.)

For the record-setting Phantom, Lik employed a new tactic, putting the word out to his most prolific collectors that his latest work would be one-of-a-kind. The $6.5 million sale was widely reported, but the backlash was swift, both against the photo's artistic value and the validity of the astronomical price tag. As the New York Times points out, the sale was both private and anonymous, so "it's hard to know what's 'official' about it."

The Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian newspaper, has taken Lik's unlikely sale to task, citing the lack of documentary proof of the sale aside from the press release  and advices to be skeptical of the sale because

• The work was sold privately to an unknown buyer and no documentary proof beyond a press release of the sale appears to have been provided.
• Lik's work has been ignored by major public art galleries and dismissed by critics.
• When his photos have gone up for public auction, they have not sold well.

Art consultant David Hulme, who in 2012 warned against collecting Lik "because Peter Lik's photographs have no secondary market presence or value," routinely fields calls from Lik owners who are hoping for a profitable resale. He told the New York Times that he worries that Lik's tiered pricing structure is "misleading" customers, understandably causing them to assume that the outside market will reflect the ever-rising prices charged by the artist. And Michael Hoppen, a gallery owner in London, was quoted by The Independent in England, "[Phantom] is an abomination. Art, whatever, the medium, is something that moves and informs you or changes your opinion. This has nothing to do with art or creative photography, and the tragedy is that it brings the whole business down."

The art world is full of ridiculous egos.

Peter Lik's claims to be the "world's most influential fine art photographer" and "one of the most important artists of the 21st century". But there are not many who would follow his view...

So here is my conclusion on this whole even episode:

If you have enough money and like Peter Lik‘s work - go for it. But don‘t expect that the worth will rise. (And maybe you should also take into consideration that there are hundreds of photographers that to much better work then Lik ever will do).

If you want to invest your money in art, hoping do get more out of it - don‘t buy Lik‘s work. You only would lose money...

This is a follow up of my 2014 articel at my art connected blog.