Here's something I think about, a lot. When someone makes art that's niche-popular, in a certain time period, does the process automatically confer elevated "artist" status for the artist and the work for all time? If we thought an approach to art was new and innovative in 1965 are we duty bound to maintain our appreciation for that piece or portfolio for as long as we may live? Or do some pieces not rise to the lofty heavenly tier of art which allows them to be declared timeless?
Using everyday fashion as an analogy we have some sort of consensus that fashion is temporally contextual. What's "in" this year is not necessarily something that has continued art of fashion value as the months and years roll onward. Some pieces rise above the general marketplace of art and defy the academic idea that fashion is more transitory than the other arts. An example is the Chanel, little black dress. If there was not a general decay in aesthetic value assessment that clicked in after the shock value of the newness wears off most fashions we'd be flooded with a confusing and unfathomable infinity of daily choices before we even leave our houses. And we'd live in a nauseating kaleidoscope of endless trash fashion.
Do you remember elephant leg pants? How about bell bottom blue jeans? Puffy sleeved pirate shirts? Platform shoes? Mutton chops? Nehru shirts? How about culotte shorts for men? Don't ever want to admit that, right? How about droopy, bright bow ties? Ascots? Or the blue collar version = Dickies? And then there are the colors that come in and out of fashion. Sure, in one form or another fashions seem to come back around ---- but they are changed and morph into something new. Just ask the guy who invented the piano keyboard necktie.
My point being that all these things were popular in their moments and then were bypassed or dethroned by newer stuff that is or was more contemporarily popular and coveted. When the newness wore off the perceived value declined.
I'll stop belaboring my point. There is a photographer who has been around since at least the 1960s, anointed along with Garry Winogrand by the great "Oz" of museum curators, John Szarkowski, and rampantly published because of that, and I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea why people in our current time continue to find some sort of deep artistic value in his work. Unless it's the counterintuitive worship of drollness. And that would be photographer, Lee Friedlander.
Oh, I've tried hard to catch even a whiff of appreciation for his work and even went so far as to purchase a first edition copy of what many claim to the best book of his work, "Like a One Eyed Cat." But after many wasted hours staring at the amazingly banal and non-riveting images packaged between the covers I have to confess that I can only vaguely remember one or two images from the entire collection of photographs that held my attention for more than a moment, or were tattooed into my image-oriented brain. In the book of a real contemporary master of the same era, Robert Frank's, The Americans, are featured energy-charged images at the turn of every page. indelibly printed on my memory.
In the same time period Richard Avedon was cranking out absolutely riveting images that grow in influence with the passage of time. But Friedlander's street photography, or documentation of bad motel rooms, while perhaps striking because that style of work had never been done before, are relegated by the passage of time to rusty visual anecdotes of a time in the past when you could point a camera at anything and people were so amazed that the images were in focus or adequately exposed that the very provenance would provide an audience. And banality fit nicely into the wheelhouse of anti-establishment types who considered Jack Kerouac's book, On the Road, to be a bible of the times. "Taste-makers" ruled the roost and provided their services as gatekeepers and cultural guides for a number of generations. If J.S. at the MOMA liked "it" then I guess "it" had to be good. Right? Epatez les Bourgeoisie by overwhelming them with images of nothing at all.
We may come to hate Szarkowski, in an art historical sense, for pushing a number of mundane "talents" into the front of the stage while crowding out many substantial visionaries who, for lack of social entree, missed the unearned gift of annointment. The active push toward the limelights of lesser talents also included the turbo boosting of an unproven Stephen Shore, and now his protege in spirit, Alec Soth. Among the many other mundane photographers who had the ear (and the purse) of the emperor.
My point here is not that there weren't reasons to regards some work as fresh, in the moment, but if it doesn't wear well are we really obligated to pretend that it still moves us in some intellectual or even visceral way? Can't some work just politely evaporate over time without destroying our ability to enjoy photographic art in general?
I asked two people who professed to "enjoy" Friedlander's work immensely to explain their reasons and neither could give me any thoughtful underpinnings to understand his oeuvre. Nor could they come up with more than "it's largely a matter of taste" or some other dodge. My least favorite explanation is that he put the "spotlight" on the mundanity of everyday American existence. Tough for him that Robert Frank beat him to the punch by ten years and actually did it so well.
Though I knew Garry Winogrand well enough, personally, and followed his work over the years; even buying his books, there is something in the early documentary work by the art elite of black and white, 35mm photographers in his circle, all contemporaries of each other, that just continues to lose value with the passage of time. Sure, they have their greatest hits but even those hits are "smaller art" that leaves only a vague residue in the mind after viewing. No epiphanies and certainly no revelations.
We already knew that 1960's motel rooms in small towns were depressing. We already knew that there are weeds at the edges of parking lots. But flatly printed, small, black and white remembrances of time misspent in random self isolation hardly seems to be the backbone of a worthy art practice.
Back to my question, because a style of art becomes popular for a time, amongst a small but influential group, do we have some sort of obligation to keep the works on life support as they progressively diminish themselves in our collective culture? And was most of the work any good to begin with?
Or was it a classic case of "the Emperor has no clothes" with the emperor being Szarkowski and the clothes being any long term or intrinsic value to several well served photographer's work? Even the direct blessing of a famous curator doesn't automatically imbue art with lasting and collectively recognized value.
I have nothing against Lee Friedlander or his well executed plan to avoid a 9-5 job and instead roam around a country having fun shooting random images with his Leica cameras. Hell, I do the same thing and I would never expect that someone will bless the work with the wand of authority. I think he's pretty much a business genius. But a top tier, world changing photographer? Hmm.
I could be totally wrong about all this. L.F. could have been making genius works of art all along. In one sense I hope that's exactly what's been happening instead of my portrayal. But if I do happen to be wrong; demonstrably wrong! I sure hope someone can, without an ad hominem attack, correct me by way of a good, solid explanation of what has so far eluded me for well over 40 years of trying. Why is the work good? What makes it special?
Then maybe we can move on to a cogent and profound explanation of Alec Soth's work. That might be even harder... Let the slings and arrows fly.
