This made a lot of sense to me in terms of photography. We should always shoot what we 'see' rather than trying to conform to a well tested format or align with conformity.
ART BEYOND GIMMICKS
Chogyam Trungpa, "Endless Richness", In DHARMA ART, page 117.
Any entertainment that aspires to art should not work with the audience like an advertisement. Trying to please the audience lowers the level of sophistication constantly. That's what's wrong with the American marketing system. When you try always to please the audience, you have to produce more and more automatic gimmicks, more and more plastic. Finally, people don't even have to walk out of their rooms to make things work; they just press a button and get entertained. As artists, we have the responsibility of raising the mentality of the audience. People might have to reach out with a certain amount of strain, but it's worth it. The whole civilization then begins to raise its level of sophistication.
Damian
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2 comments:
I can see what is being said here, but it seems to me that there is a difference between an audience for marketing and an audience for art. One needs to be easily drawn in, and the other challenged. I think that's always been so, and it's a little simplistic to liken art/photography to the different needs of an effective marketing system. Bad or lazy photography (poster of tennis girl scratching her arse, for example) could be likened to marketing a product to a less "sophisticated" audience, but I don't think that good artists (or photographers) neccessarily think that way. The conclusion that people must be challenged to reach out with strain is correct, but the attempt to compare to what goes on in consumer marketing seems a little off the point.
Interesting post though, D.
Ivan
Artists and advertisers do think very differently. I think all that is being said here is that as artists (and I know Ivan does not consider a photographer as an artist) we should not conform to images that are easily accepted by an audience and be afraid of showing images that bend all the rules. Marketing does that because companies want to pull people in easily; they don't want people to have to stop and think. As artists we should encourage people to do just that and not be persuaded by our peers and friends to conform.
Damian
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