Page 54 - Studio International - January 1973

artist would have looked through the available ? Coke cites the manifold ways in
steel girders as they thrust up
toward him in the sky and would which photographs have indirectly triggered-off
have seen the tower as a distinctly artists' imaginations, the resultant images only
three-dimensional form, not
flattened as in the photograph. This remotely, or in a fragmented form, related to
is a clear demonstration of the the source of inspiration. The fact that a
difference between the two kinds of
vision. Delaunay accepted the photograph, unlike a view of Nature, is
vision of the lens and thus his two-dimensional, and perhaps even more
painting was shaped by the ready-
made flat patterns already abstracted important, that all the peripheral distractions of
from direct experience by the Nature's marginalia are eliminated by its
photographic process'. I would add
that Delaunay had already been isolating frame, must consequently increase the
made receptive to such flattening of photograph's potential formal yield.
form by conventions established in
modern painting which in some Another interesting thing that emerges in
degree were themselves conditioned Coke's book is the large number of painters
by photographic form.
who, for their 'studies', took their own
photographs : Robinson, Breitner, Munch, Zille,
Sickert, Shahn, and a lot of others. Delacroix,
who at least helped to pose the models, could be
Fig. 4 Photograph by Andre included in this category too. Painters have
Schelcher and A. Omer-Decugis ( ?)
La Tour Eiffel c. 1908-9 often preferred to use the more obscure works
Reproduced in 'Paris vue en of anonymous photographers for apparently
Ballon et ses Environs', Paris,
c. 1908-9 obvious reasons, and one might therefore
suppose that in taking his own photograph the
painter by hiding the fact could avoid the
does well to publish it here : 'My studying stigma that attended this practice, or simply to
photographs . . . has made me realize that they save time. But surely more positive reasons
have produced or helped to bring about new may be advanced: that painters out of an
images in people's "seeing vocabulary". For independence of mind might more easily
instance, a blur can be a moving hand — a black circumvent iconographical stereotypes
shape on white can be an eye on the face of a man insisted upon by convention, and because there
— and often express much more than one could is a double feedback, a greater fermentation of
produce drawing the detail of eye, eyebrow, etc. the artist's ideas through the agency of two
There is also a new vocabulary of foreshortening, media.
perspective and space created by photographs — In his conclusion, Coke counters the
which hasn't existed before. When I come simplistic views of many critics that it was
across a photograph which particularly appeals photography, in the first place, which caused
Undoubtedly, the artist wanted in retrospect to to me, I study it — analyse it — try to isolate the painters to reject the outer world, turning
call attention to the tragedy of the situation, to properties which give it a special quality. These them in on themselves. He is right, I think, in
project the two hapless defendants as victims of things I become aware of are then at my refuting these statements. The single-cause
an enormous judicial crime. Shahn (a disposal to use in my painting.' explanation is seldom sufficient in unravelling
photographer himself in the thirties working The copious presentation of documentary such complex things. What photography did,
with the Farm Security Administration) was material in this book seems regrettably to have for those who remained alert to all visual
obviously attracted to this particular photograph made it necessary for Coke to truncate many of phenomena may be stated, in Coke's words; the
because of the ways in which its formal accidents his more analytical passages. But the material first passage in the book: 'The camera created a
(or were they simply accidents ?) again and he provides is of itself so rich that the doors of new way of seeing and opened to artists a range
again ram home the subject's essential content. perception are constantly thrown open to us; of pictorial imagery quite unlike that of direct
Yet despite the impact the photograph must questions continually spring to mind. experience'. Moreover, I should add, by means
have made on him, despite the eloquent Something that has disturbed me for a long of the photograph, visual experience could be
incongruities of its imagery, far transcending time is the way the term aide-mémoire has sustained. This becomes especially important
mere description, the exigencies of Shahn's traditionally been used (myself included) in when, through scientific and technological
personal style somehow contrive to supersede all ascribing to photography a rather passive and vehicles such as the microscope, telescope and
the powerful formal devices which might have subservient role in painting. It seems to me a the aeroplane, the iconography of the natural
been extracted from the photograph. Shahn is distortion of what the photograph really meant world is enlarged (Figures 3 and 4). Leger's
victimized, certainly in this instance, by his to most painters, and as I thumb through the `new realism', Moholy-Nagy's 'New Vision',
own stylistic commitments. pages of Coke's book and study the illustrations Kepes's 'New Landscape', all refer to the
Perhaps only painters whose stylistic I become increasingly convinced of this. extra-perceptual world revealed by
techniques are made to coincide with special Surely, for all but the most desiccated copyists, photography. But it had a spiritual significance
characteristics of the photographic image, or photographs have always been in one degree or too as Paul Klee so vividly recognized. It
who take these further along a stylistic path, can another, 'catalysts', a term which Coke confines offered a new and more penetrating
successfully exploit the photograph. This to his last chapter, and to more recent painting, consciousness of nature by which a greater
happens, as one can see in Coke's illustration of but which I'm sure he'll agree has a much depth of feeling becomes possible. q
a painting by James Gill, and certainly Francis wider relevance, in the naturalistic painting of
Bacon (as many examples here show) does it the nineteenth century for example. Were the
with a terrifying consistency. many photographic portraits of Lincoln from 1The Painter and the Photograph from Delacroix
Gill's statement on his exploitation of the the Mathew Brady studio, or those of to Warhol, by Van Deren Coke, University of
visual lingua franca with which the photographic Baudelaire by Nadar, so readily employed by New Mexico Press, Albuquerque (1964),
image has endowed the modern world is painters, as Coke amply demonstrates here, revised and enlarged edition (1972). $32.00.
straightforward, pertinent and sensitive. Coke merely because these photographs were easily 324 pp, 568 black and white illustrations.

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