Invisible Art

Cooper-Hewitt just awarded type designer Matthew Carter a National Design Award for lifetime achievement in the typographic arts. You know his work very well. You've seen it countless times. You're looking at it right now. He is the designer of the ubiquitous Microsoft system fonts Georgia, Tahoma and Verdana. I usually prefer Trebuchet for TLP, but in honor of Mr. Carter, today we're sporting Georgia.

Georgia and Verdana (Tahoma is very similar to the latter) are notable as being designed specifically for high-legibility on computer screens. Both are very extensively hand-hinted, meaning that the characters are carefully encoded with rasterization data for screen display. They are easy on the eyes and legible at very small point sizes. That's why countless Web pages have Georgia or Verdana set as their default fonts. You and I unknowingly drink in Carter's invisible art every day.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Carter's landmark fonts is that they have achieved a ubiquity and acceptance that very few fonts do, but are seen by designers as appropriate for screen-only use. Ikea caused a big dustup in 2009 when they adopted Verdana as their print catalog typeface, wanting to unify their Web and print look. Critics dubbed it Verdanagate, both miffed and bemused that so savvy a design company would willfully disregard good design, in some attempt to appeal to pedestrian comfort. It's like a worldclass print design firm decorating their offices in American Colonial because that's what most Americans have in their living rooms.

Ikea blew it off. Said a spokesflunky, "I think it’s mainly experts who have expressed their views, people who are interested in fonts. I don’t think the broad public is that interested. . . . [Verdana is] a simple, cost-effective font." Lame, Ikea. You did a Gap. Just own it. You know very well that good design isn't some when-convenient option. It's a way of life. You live the aesthetic life or you don't.

Artworld vs. Realworld

Lately I've done a little reading on art theory and art criticism as it relates to modern photography. Perhaps the best book I've read so far is Charlotte Cotton's The Photograph as Contemporary Art. I've been fascinated to find that most contemporary art photography is, as one recent blogger summarized it, "theoretically-driven conceptual photography." I'm speaking here of that contemporary photography favored by galleries, museums and academics. In other words, the artworld. In fact, to distinguish it from other forms of non-commercial or artistic photography, I'm going to label it simply artworld photography.


As artworld photography goes, this is straightforward. No, really.

Artworld photography is a genre of photography most people never see, even in photography magazines, and when they do get dragged into a gallery to look at it, they have no idea why it's on display. Great swaths of it are driven by postmodern theory, which challenges traditional ideas of authorship and meaning a variety of ways. The net product is photography that, counterintuitively, "relies most heavily on words, whether to explain or obfuscate its meaning." It's photo-illustration, or visual performance, illustrating various artistically fashionable political or theoretical ideas. It is a theoretical exercise rather than the aesthetic or documentary exercise most people assume photographs to be.


Part of a gallery series by Thomas Struth. This is more challenging artworld fare, but typical. It is not visually interesting in any obvious way and its meaning is esoteric. Artworld art.

For these reasons, it seems few artworld photographers succeed as artworld photographers on the visual strength of their photographs alone. They invariably offer up explanatory narratives for their work that are heavy in theory and couched in the lingo of artworld in order to impart artistic meaning to their work. Or more precisely, using Arthur Danto's terms, to legitimate their work as a candidate for artistic appreciation. In fact, I expect it would be very difficult to break into the artworld with your photographs if you could not explain their value in artworld terms. Or at the very least, you must attract critics and curators (like Szarkowski) who do that for you.

Realworld photography is basically everything else. It's primarily committed to what artworlders would call a "straight" aesthetic, but it's realworld because it is democratic. You don't have to belong to a guild just to have an opinion on a photograph, as in artworld. There, first you need a certain status or credentials; then you must demonstrate an informed understanding of the photograph; then you have the right to an opinion. In realworld, you just like the damn picture or not. Democratic.


"Funeral - St. Helena, South Carolina " (1955), from Robert Frank's book, The Americans. Realworld art.

Sure, it goes deeper than that. In realworld we have our guilds or, better, clubs. You can become a connoisseur or a collector or blogger or a film fetishist and, very often, you are a photographer yourself. There is a history of the art you learn and become a part of yourself. There are of course cultural, political and historical frameworks for critical judgments. It can be as challenging as anything in artworld. But in realworld a great photograph can just be a great photograph, without having to be overtly transgressive, political, or encoded with a theoretical narrative.

Most photographers are, in fact, realworld photographers. They revere the masters of the "straight" aesthetic that became dominant about a century ago and they still work in strong dialogue with that aesthetic. They take seriously the unique qualities and genius of the medium. They regard photography as an artistic end, not as an artistic means. I'm definitely a realword partisan.

Now, I do confess, I enjoy at least some artworld photography. My biggest objection to much of it is that it is esoteric and pretentiously didactic. I find myself working hard to extract meanings that do not interest me. But I find more compelling that generous portion of photography that straddles the lines. I enjoy the democratic work of someone like Platon, whose portraits are definitely realworld, even fashion, but still is tapped for gallery shows. I guess he gets it all.

"Cost Is Not Value"

Following up my post yesterday, an article in the NYTimes looks at a recent exhibit on forgeries at the National Gallery in London, and what forgeries and related high art hijinks tell us about how silly the world of high art is and how simple it ought to be. It affects to rise somewhat above "the populist suspicion that much art is really just a scam," but doesn't by much, and pokes a finger in the eye of "dubious connoisseurship." But most people will be nodding their heads.

I have a conflicted relationship with art criticism of all kinds (literary, music, performance, visual, whatever). I am a critic myself, both as a blogger and professionally (academic literary criticism), and see my criticism as part formal exercise and part rationalization of subjective perceptions that are heavily conditioned by culture. I enjoy the critical exercise, but it's a cheap thrill. Opinionated bloviation in serious dress. I don't believe a word I say.

But still I seek out and am influenced by the criticism of others, and there is no question that expert criticism shapes popular aesthetics. When what I like and what others say I should like happen to coincide, I am very satisfied. When they do not, I can find myself a bit vexed, perhaps afraid that, despite my best efforts, I will never graduate from the ranks of the ignorati.

The canard goes, " I don't know art, but I know what I like." Why can't that be sufficient? Over time, I'm relieved to find that increasingly it is becoming enough. I'm becoming cheerfully ignorant and vulgar. I recently came across some simple photographic advice that summarized my emerging non-philosophy of aesthetics: "Look at collections of other people's work, go for the pictures that instantly appeal. If you have to think about an image to like it, then that's not what you are looking for here. This is not meant as an intellectual exercise."

Art is not an intellectual exercise. 'Nuff said.

Workers Paradise

Something I whipped up for my door at work to express my feelings about our new offices. Workers unite!

The Perfect Painting

Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid are two Russian émigré artists who, booted out of their own country for subversion, undertook to test American tolerance as well. They devised a survey of artistic taste upon which they then based their rendition of the perfect painting, as based on public preferences. The result? Meh. As Louis Menand put it, "They set out to find the visual lowest common denominator, and the work they produced . . . is preposterous even as kitsch. It tells us as much about art as a single dish combining all the flavors people said they liked would tell us about cuisine." But surely it does not fail as satire. More results for other countries here.

Fourteen Photography Masters

I used to be a real reader. I mean, I still read constantly, but I don't read for the aesthetic experience of it like I used to. Now I read for information, not for the experience of Truth. Music and the visual arts speak to me much more powerfully. With a few exceptions, I think all of these photos, which are just samples of the work of masters, are exceptionally good. I just makes me regret yet again that I didn't go to that Sebastião Salgado exhibit that came through here last year (doh!). Anyway, an Obama shot here, just 'cause I'm still so thrilled about the election.