Baltz – Brief Read

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, book shelf, old bones, on photographersTagged 1 Comment

Views enlarge what they engage. Whenever primates look in one direction, they see two views, one through each eye. The camera blocks parts of the world; words the other.

“Untitled” Baltz : (1974 ) first published in  Image volume 17 number 10 June 1974 . George Eastman House. This was published the year before ‘New Topographics,’exhibit held at Eastman. In this short essay of 8 paragraphs Baltz provides summary estimates of “typical” industrial sites; where, why, how. Reading it all these years later, I don’t remember it from then, though I subscribed to Image, there is a desolate tone. And, the final paragraph does offer a (mild) condemnation, as well as an erroneous assumption about likely economic actions.

“Panegyric” Baltz. The praise is of Larry Sultan, from the “Larry Sultan” book. A brief, but strong statement of appreciation of Larry as the person. Recalling time with Larry, Henry Wessel, and Baltz playing racquetball; avoiding talk of their different work.

These are pieces of Lewis Baltz, discovered as I was looking for something else. I knew Larry – I went to school at SFAI in the same class as him, Mike and 6 other people.

I never knew Lewis Baltz, but feel I know much more about him now. We are lucky he left us so many words.

  • Sultan July 1946- December 2009  (aged 63) cancer (wife Kelly)
  • Baltz September 1945- November 2014 (aged 69) cancer & emphysema

ISBN-10: 1934105295 &  ISBN-10: 3735600697

Eat your vitamin A, C, D, exercise doesn’t prevent cancer.

Lewis Baltz (September 12, 1945 – November 22, 2014) was a visual artist and photographer who became an important figure in the New Topographics movement of the late 1970s.[2] His work has been published in a number of books, presented in numerous exhibitions, and appeared in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.[citation needed] He wrote for many journals, and contributed regularly to L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui.

Publications

  • Landscape: Theory, Lewis Baltz, Harry Callahan, Eliot Porter, Carol Digrappa and Robert Adams, 1980 ISBN 0-912810-27-0
  • The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California, Lewis Baltz and Adam Weinburg, 2001 ISBN 0-9630785-6-9
  • The Tract Houses: Die Siedlungshauser (English and German Edition), Lewis Baltz, 2005 ISBN 0-9703860-4-4
  • The Prototype Works, Lewis Baltz, 2010 ISBN 3-86521-763-X
  • Mario Pfeifer: Reconsidering The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974, Lewis Baltz, Mario Pfeifer, Vanessa Joan Mueller, 2011 ISBN 1-934105-29-5
  • Lewis Baltz: Candlestick Point, Lewis Baltz, 2011 ISBN 3-86930-109-0
  • Lewis Baltz: Rule Without Exception / Only Exceptions, Lewis Baltz, 2012 ISBN 3-86930-110-4
  • Lewis Baltz: Texts., Lewis Baltz, 2012 ISBN 3-86930-436-7
  • Lewis Baltz, Lewis Baltz, 2017 ISBN 3-95829-279-8

References

O’Keefe Cooks?

Posted on Posted in art stuff, book shelf, minimum daily requirement

okeefeKitchenA Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe Paperback use pre formatted date that complies with legal requirement from media matrix – August 16, 2009 by Margaret Wood

 

O’Keefe on cooking is one of the funniest ‘cook books’ ever. Not intentionally, I think, but it is in its content. The recipes are spartan, and often leaving much more to the imagination and ingenuity of the cook than most cookbooks. This is certainly not an escoffier, nor a Betty Crocker mannered book. None of the books of my previous post on artist cookbooks is as open ended. I suspect this is a revelation of lifestyle as well as art ages. Perhaps it is a revelation of the mind of this particular artist.

A Recipe (of Life?)

choose several fresh leaves, those of best size. season to taste.

And So

I think that all actions of a creative person have pathways in common with their aesthetic path.

Many paths up the same mountain.

The recipe replaces the ingredients. The fewer ingredients the better they must be, to satisfy the diner. Most seasonings are elements that consume the ingredient, the main content of the dish, covering its taste with reciped flavor – taste made standard.

This kitchen book, I choose to call it that instead of ‘cookbook,’ leaves much to the kitchen of the reader-preparer, as does the best of art- art that lives within your aesthetic life.

Meaning Beyond Method

Posted on Posted in art stuff, book shelf, The Other

Is the title of a book a promise? It isn’t a contract; maybe only an expectation.

  • Photography Beyond Technique
  • The Mind’s Eye
  • Looking at Pictures

 

richard.L7383
books from my shelf

is photography ever beyond technique 

Of course the work exceeds the method used to produce it.

Hope From The Title

The book that purports to be “Beyond Technique” spends more space on words than on pictures. Words about technique more so than about imagery. I bought the book hoping that it would be more than that. Just a hope. This book is the result of the burst power of the internet; able to propel small boats far out into the stream.

richard.L4599
2009, Un-met Challenge

There is only one chapter worth a flip through, just as the 2009 conference was so controlled, and confining that the group that I attended with left before lunch. The venue was SF State, a college that once had one of the best photography programs. During the Silver Expansion, the Visual Dialogue Foundation held frequent meetings outside the buildings so that we wouldn’t disturb the ‘standards’ of instruction expected of a State School.

The “Alt Photographers” of the 21st Century would have been well suited to uphold those educational standards. “Beyond Technique” isn’t beyond technique. It doesn’t take itself further, and only one author seems aware of what taking themself beyond technique entails. The editor has the correct aphorisms, but doesn’t understand them, I think, because he can’t get himself beyond Technique — his world began with an F-Stop, and ended there.

aphorism
reproduction isn’t understanding

Elsewhere

The other two books are composed of short, finely tuned responses to the circumstance of artist and photographer. The Bresson book (The Mind’s Eye), offers mostly memories. With one stand-out that provides the opportunity for Bresson to enlarge his reflection on art; he does this using the Sarah Moon movie as prompt and plinth.

sarah moon
worth a dog ear

“The segregation of photography, the ghetto into which this world of specialists has placed it, really shocks me. Photographers, artists, sculptors…You either have a feel for the plastic, or else a conceptual thought.”– Henri Cartier-Bresson

Getting to Meaning

Looking At Pictures – Robert Walser

The third book satisfies enough, just enough, to be worth the disappointment of the “Beyond Technique” book. I am particularly drawn to the chapters translated by Lydia Davis. The key chapter is “A Painter” —

“Great art resides in great goings-astray.”

Writers write less, but mean more. The better responses encompass what is there, what the pictures contains and what contains the picture. They are merely looking at pictures.

How do we get to meaning; is it possible to work beyond technique in what most consider a technical art? We get there by working harder; by ignoring more; by directing our attention toward one thing — and away from the easy things .. music, not scales.

Steps along a path: no knowledge, knowledge that is misunderstood, knowledge that diminishes, then knowledge that expands, and finally that which frees us from our teachers