After the image has been painted, we can think of the relation it may bear to ideas or words. This is not improper, since images, ideas, and words are different interpretations of the same thing: thought. However, in order to state what is truly necessary about an image, one must refer exclusively to that image.
Rene’ Magritte
Rene’ Magritte is properly pointing out that the image must speak for itself, although it is also quite proper to think about its effect on the individual as colored by the qualities of that individual. This is a bit more complicated when I consider my own work, since I am both creator and audience.
My image “Homage to Sudek” is of course paying tribute to the famous Czech photographer Josef Sudek’s 1950 image “Still Life Glass Eggs.” It is more, however, because it also is rather post-impressionist image since the glass appears to hover in the darkness, over what the viewer will eventually understand is a table. Also, the perspective also doesn’t seem quite right, although it is a straight photograph. Post-impressionist painters would consciously do this as a way of manipulating space to increase the ability of a two dimensional canvas to portray a three dimensional world. Both Sudek and Cezanne were banging around my head at the time because I had just read “Art & Physics” by Leonard Shlain, where the above quote comes from, while trying to accomplish a photo assignment for “The Art of Photography.” So I suppose “Homage to Sudek” is surrealist as well. I hope you like it.
Blog 93, Thoughts on an Image
After the image has been painted, we can think of the relation it may bear to ideas or words. This is not improper, since images, ideas, and words are different interpretations of the same thing: thought. However, in order to state what is truly necessary about an image, one must refer exclusively to that image.
Rene’ Magritte
Rene’ Magritte is properly pointing out that the image must speak for itself, although it is also quite proper to think about its effect on the individual as colored by the qualities of that individual. This is a bit more complicated when I consider my own work, since I am both creator and audience.
My image “Homage to Sudek” is of course paying tribute to the famous Czech photographer Josef Sudek’s 1950 image “Still Life Glass Eggs.” It is more, however, because it also is rather post-impressionist image since the glass appears to hover in the darkness, over what the viewer will eventually understand is a table. Also, the perspective also doesn’t seem quite right, although it is a straight photograph. Post-impressionist painters would consciously do this as a way of manipulating space to increase the ability of a two dimensional canvas to portray a three dimensional world. Both Sudek and Cezanne were banging around my head at the time because I had just read “Art & Physics” by Leonard Shlain, where the above quote comes from, while trying to accomplish a photo assignment for “The Art of Photography.” So I suppose “Homage to Sudek” is surrealist as well. I hope you like it.