How does one judge political art?

Make and model of camera?

Areal cheap one argus dc1812. So far I have managed to install the program that went with it, take some pictures, and make thme into thumb nails.

Now I guess I need to re=size them so I can satisfy my artist frineds and poste them. That is where I am sort of confused.

Is it the same as loading the avatar or is there a simple way to do it?

I gotta think the camera's image editing software gives you the option of saving both thumbnails and full size pictures. You wanna work with the full size ones, not size-up the thumbnails. Those are just to help you keep trackmof what you've got ... I think. Not familiar with that camera. Look for a PM from me ... soon, prolly, but not right away.

Hey Timber look what I did I posted a picuture of one of my paintings. Weird looking isn't it. I did it through the Raven's Realm.

This image is not like the painting because I don't even know how to use the camera yet and the light was bad and it is upside down - no it is sidways.

And while it is just an experiment with color it does look diferent here.

truth
And did you see Heliopo's Self Portrait? Very successful.

Sorry I deleted before you saw it or did you?

And then I sucessfully deleted it.

Fm I think I have an answer for the egg tempera problem I think you should try egg tempura instead.

There probably isn't a better example of the controversy of judging art by artistic merit and content than Leni Riefenstahl. she was undoubtedly a great propaganda film maker. "Triumph of the Will" is a masterpiece. The opening scene of the heavens and the clouds, a plane flying in among the clouds, slowly descending, like a heavenly chariot descending and bringing a God to earth. Only the God she adored and believed in was none other than Adolph Hitler. She admired him all her life. She died a few years ago at a ripe old age and continued to assert her bielief in Hitler to the end.

What are we to say of beautifully made films whose content is about dreck?

Art is often topical even when it is not meant to be so it would seem to me. Artists - painters, writers, muscians, etc., are all affected by what is going on around them.

Well Billy, I suppose we can disagree vehemently
with Leni's message yet still admire her artistry
and technical virtuosity.

Certainly all art is revealing of political economic
circumstances...Even the modernists, whose art
was avowedly apolitical, still had the wherewithal to
purchase expensive art supplies and spend enormous amounts of time on the activity of art.....
They also had the support system to get publicized and handsomely rewarded for their efforts.....

I am very interested (in these historical paintings) in what they chose to honor and why, and how they chose to depict it. The history of the commision and the debate surrounding the comission (who liked it, who didn't, and why) is very interesting. If you ever get the chance check out the Montana state capitol. It is very unique and I think very beautiful. It was designed by people who decorated hotels .

The early American government didn't think that public money should be spent on art (that would be frivolously spending the money of the public, like the French at the time) but they wanted to set the tone of the U.S. capitol, beyond what the architecture did for setting the republican democratic mood. So, in a session of congress, with (I believe) the push of Thomas Jefferson the first round of Capitol murals were put through. I think those murals (the first round not the second) still set a tone when you see them in the capitol. Their size and place (and somewhat subject) still make you feel the sense of nationhood ideals and history when you walk in. I am glad that they decided to spend the money.

How do you feel about "Washington Crossing the Deleware?" What about government comissioned art in other countries?

I think that comissioning art is different than the government giving grants for art. I actually disagree with the government doing that - I don't think they should take the money of the American people and spend it as if it were theirs to spend however they wished. They also tend to give grants to crappy artists. Of course, the artist side of me certainly wouldn't mind getting a grant.

truth
Billy Falcon, I guess great art can contain lies as content. If not, bad art could not contain truths as content. To me, the most important criterion for the evaluation of art is its aesthetic form. I remember once answering someone's assertion that evil men can not make great art, that this logically implies that good men can not make bad art.

Shepaints, have I ever told you how much I appreciate your avatar? Is it a detail of a larger work, or was someone so creatively brash as to make that simple statement so boldly?

Shepaints and JLNobody,

I don't think the case of political art in regard to evil men can be so easily summed up. Both fascists and communists have their fairhaired "boys" who are approved and others who are disapproved. If anyone was in doubt as to which was which, the Nazis put on an exhibition called "Degenerate art" It contained all Jewish artists, abstract art, etc. Approved artists such as Riefenstahl continued to serve the state. She remained in Germany during the war.

The following review gives more material to think about:

THE WONDERFUL, HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL
A Illusion review by Joan Ellis.

"The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl" is a superb documentary that was initially and more aptly called "The Power of Images." It could also have been called "Leni Riefenstahl meets Ray Mueller." In his determination to let the legendary German film-maker speak for herself, the director leads her on a tour of the landmarks of her life and work, confronting her with the contradictions in her life, but resisting the temptation to interrogate. The result stands alone as a visual exploration of the mind and soul of a human being.

Riefenstahl's name is rarely spoken in Germany today, so thoroughly was she connected in the public mind with the Third Reich. Her "Triumph of Will" was a driving force in the glorification of the Nazi Party as it came to power. The rally she filmed in 1933 was still a somewhat ragtag, disorganized group, but she brought to it an extraordinary eye and original camera techniques that bestowed grandeur on a force for evil. She has been punished for that for over fifty years.

Riefenstahl's fascination with the majesty of the human form has been the focus first for "Triumph of the Will," then for "Olympia," later for her photographs of the Nuba tribesmen in Africa. Now in her 92nd year, she is filming the ocean floor herself, returning with predictably monumental images. Prevented by public opprobrium from making major films, she still manages to have her hand on an editing machine or a camera whenever she can.

Mueller's film bores slowly, over a three hour period, to the core of this passion. Riefenstahl has been obsessed by film making since the day she skipped her train to see a movie. Far ahead of any one else in the field, she pioneered the world of images -- directing, leading and teaching the men who she gathered around her. As a study of obsession, this film is riveting.

The world still asks "What did she know and when did she know it?" Riefenstahl denies guilt, insisting that her art was entirely separate from politics. Once asked to film the party rally, she says, she decided to do the absolutely best she could, as any artist would. She adds that in 1933 it was by no means clear that Hitler was evil. The problem lies, of course, in the fact that by 1944 she still believed in him, still professed innocence of the death camps. While her colleagues fled the country, she chose to stay where she was allowed to work.

It is quite true that she made no further films for Hitler, true also that she managed to be elsewhere when needed. But the overwhelming sense of this woman is that she saw what was there and chose to deny it to herself in deference to her own obsession with film. The pity is that one of the world's most brilliant innovators crossed paths with history's most barbarous being and failed to step back. But then that is the nature of obsession. Critic: JOAN ELLIS

An interesting sidelight to her film "Triumph of the Will"
iw that it played in Yonkers, New York for several months to packed houses and long lines.

Thanks for the enlightenment Billy. I saw 'Triumph
of the Will' many years ago in a Film class. Your
posting reminded me that I thought it was all about 'evil'. I then segued to Hieronymous Bosch, a painter of evil....

However, it seems to me that Bosch painted for a "moral" purpose....to frighten people towards religion. Leni, on the other hand, was "immoral".... enticing people to evil through its glorification.... What do you think?

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bosch/

JL....I cant take credit for my avatar, but thanks for the compliment.
Though it has a rather "Lichenstein" feel, it is right out of a clip art file.

What if a person's political goal is to legalize child pornogrophy? They write very eloquently or they paint very well or make superb films. Are we to call attention to the artistry of the "the artist on behalf of child pornography". Is this any worse than an artist using his artistic abilities to issue a call for genocide?
(I'm thinking of "Mein Kampf" published C. 1922. In it, Hitler raised the issue of needing to get rid of the basili, the vermin of Europe.

Or, a more repugnant example would be a beautifully made film showing great artistry. The film being a snuff film. (Filming the actual killing of a person.) Do we separate the artist from the content?

Is there a point at which we say that content does matter?

truth
Billy, of course there is a point at which content matters. A great work of art may have an atrocious purpose or message and perhaps should be condemned, maybe even censured for that reason. But as we destroy the work we should also admit that we are destroying a great work of art that is, nevertheless, an evil document.

portal star, sorry I missed your post of two weeks ago. I just revisited this thread.(I guess it kept dropping to the bottom of "your posts")
My feeling of Leutzes' Washington Crossing the Delaware " is mixed. I think as an illustration it is important as any that Rockwell has done.

Leutze painted this while he was still in Germany. It was a sensationand , consequently, was sent on tour in the US and, as Leutze relocated to the US, he was later commissioned by Congress to paint an epic work on the "Westward Course of Empire" which was apparently lost I like the Washington Crossing on several levels.Its got action and a focus I recall Trumbulls "Signing of the Declaration of Independence" which is more like a painting of wax figures with a kind of banality that describes later public art.Althhough pretty bad, Trumbulls "Declaration..." was an example of some of the first "public art" in post rEvolutionary time (1819).
Prior to the Civil War there was an active association with artists and commissions by the Congress were many. Most of this work was rather banal, like Trumbulls work of a bunch of stiffs , some actual masterpices do remain. LAter, in theThe Civil War, most of its art was either free lance or reporter art which was engraved for papers or was commissioned many years later by the states or US Congress for "Space filling"

The US govt , after the Civil War, mostly got out of the painterly art but then there was a great revival of a lot of sculpture commissioned like a "race to have the biggest , baddest, and often, ugliest , depiction of Civil War heros in memorial statuary. Most of this stuff was produced in the North, for obvious reasons. In the South, lots of statues of REvolutionary Heroes that were clearly southerners reached a high point. Iveseen alot about the Beaux artes statuary and Saint Gaudensor ADams stuff. Whenever I go to a city on business , i try to seek out some post Civil war Statuary and find more about that cities connection with the work. Like in Pottsville Pa is a statue ofCalhoun thatunashamedly stands in the middle of town. Turns out it was a mistake and was actually destined for Pottsville Miss. It was delivered by train from a steel mill in Richmond and nobody had money to send it back so they put it together and set it up where it remains till tody.. In Philadelphia thereis a statue of Gen Chamberlain of Maine. (I suppose it was to honor his efforts at Gettysburg,) but why not put it up in MAine?Every little town has some statuary devoted to Civil War heroes , and most of these were commissioned by local vet groups or , in many circumstances the towns and boroughs


Painting was pretty much dismissed as a Govt commissioned effort till the art workers projects of the WPA in 1934. During this period Many regionolists and photographers became quite famous, Benton, Curry, Wood, etc. Much of this work is of no great merit , except that most of it chronicles some part of a states history or expresses some pre conceived "ideal" long ago redefined. Some of the WPA art, heavily influenced by the hugely popular Mexican muralists , actually was classified as "social realism, or social impressionism" and actually served as a good training ground for the next generation the abstract expressionists. So even the epic surrealistic stuff of the WPA served as a jumping off point for "the next big thing"

Govt commissioned art is, still, quietly present, from work chronicalling the space program to work celebrating nature and national parks. Much of this is paid for"In advance of sales" where an artist wins a commission in an open competition and sales royalties (with a minimum prize) are where the artists is mostly paid. I dont mind that because it draws out some of the best genre artists, and (except for duck stamps in which some govt jury determines the subject a year in advance), it allows an open interpretation by theartists.

I too would love to see how some of the early commissioned art was drafted by Congress in the post Revolutionary period. Benjamin West was thhe teacher of John Trumbull whose life as an artist was full of what Id call "Bi-Polar episodes". Trumbull, originally a minor officer serving under Washington, quit the Army under a disagreement on promotion,so he decided to become a professional artist. His following art career and Harvard education was directed by none other than Jefferson and Adams (the first). Trumbull was such a head case that, after a couple of his ideas fell flat he gave up painting for almost 20 years. Then, as the Capitol needed some rotunda art,after Latrobe finished the repairs and designed the new dome, Congress coughed up about 35000$ for Trumbull to paint THE canvases that were to be hung in the new rotunda. His selection of subjects was full of controversy , as his "Signing of the Declaration..." didnt include many of the signers and actuallyincluded people who werent even there. Also his subjects were just flat no life aspects of the Revolution, like "Cornwallis SUrrenders at Yorktown" This had a bunch of people standing there obviously posed. His subjects were so "Unheroic" that Congress stopped him at only 4 panels. Id like to know what influenced Congress to initially come up with the 35K stipend and why Trumbull at all, he seemed so , unstable..

You know your stuff, Farmerman. I have always liked Charles Wilson Peale (even if I don't like his artwork) for his tremendous dedication. You're right about Trumbull being very hit or miss. Am I right in guessing that you specialize in civil war photography?

About the civil war statues - they are always trying to take down the ones on the (University of Texas) campus, and recently a "task force on race" delegated them to a lesser area of campus, to be replaced by minority based figures.

The artwork seems to continue to fight a war that we have finished. I guess that's the ideology part, which comes after the bludgeoning.

I personally think they should leave the statues where they are - I like confronting history instead of hiding it.