Recently I have been going through some books I own and which I had decided to sell because they no longer move me, and their physical weight and space take space that I want to devote to what I truly believe in.
on the other hand there are many people who could genuinely benefit from these books, they will want them care for them and will be glad of the experience.
I see this as a win-win situation.
One of those books I own is Richard Avedon's fashion. When I first started out as an artist I was obsessed with photography and with Richard Avedon. I loved both fashion and beauty so his work was a natural fit to what my eyes craved.
One day I went to the San Francisco museum of modern Art to see an exhibition of large portraits by Avedon. Avedon's work was on the top floor. On the third floor there was another exhibition of photography by Robert Frank. Richard Avedon's portraits were enormous or at least they seemed to me so, larger than the height of a human being. Robert Frank's photographs on the other hand were tiny, or what it seemed to me the palm of a human hand. So what happened is that I descended from the top floor of the enormous portraits down to the tiny photographs of Robert Frank and I was profoundly moved by there genuinity. Where Richard Avedon's photographs were produced, Robert Frank's photographs were snapped casually and with keen eye on the streets, they were made with love and immediacy and they carried a personal truth.
I think what Robert Frank exemplified in his work was the profound sympathy for the human condition. While Avedon tried to cover it up, mask it and serve it on a plate.
“Ugly humans do not belong on the beautiful page, in fact most humans aren’t beautiful enough to grace here these pages so I come in to fix what’s wrong with the prowess of my photo improving skills, with the might of my lights and the fake filters on my lens” I could hear Avedon say.
I immediately fell out of love with Richard Avedon. See truth really matters in art, this is one of the reasons that Van Gogh is more prized than Bouguereau.
I have many painter friends who do not like Van Gogh and that is okay because he's not really painters painter, he's the truth of the human condition. His work speaks to everyone, just like his letters.
I frequently have arguments with people over values, and specifically the role of money in interactions. So I always tell this story.
Imagine a friend gives you a present, it is a beautiful present and you're so grateful to get it. You thank your friend profusely and you feel great. You turn around to stash your prize away but then your friends taps you in the shoulder and says, sorry it's going to be 200 bucks, how would you feel?
When art is produced this is exactly what it feels like. And this is the type of art that Richard Avedon makes and which turned me off to whatever he made. I could see the price tag of his work before I see the work, and the human being/s behind it.
Just like in the story with the gift and my friend, where within 5 minutes of interaction you decide whether this is a work from the heart or the work of a merchant, in art it really takes some time before you could decide whether to connect with the work or to put it in the merchandise box. It is fine to be bought and sold, bread is also bought and sold. But while bread has to be consumed fresh, art must live and outlive the human condition it was produced with, it must transcend the individual and its production value and speak to our higher brain, and not the consumer reptile brain. Art must speak truth.