Opening sentences: “Photography pushes painting aside.
Painting resists and is determined not to capitulate.”
Photographers’ motto: precision, speed, cheapness.
Photography is no coloured (written in 1920s). Painting can
give a picture colours but approximate so the defence of painters is that ‘precision
is not the ultimate aim’ (perhaps this misunderstanding of what art aims to do
underlies Brik’s thesis). It is the painter’s ‘duty to change reality otherwise
he is not a painter but a bad copyist.
‘Life cannot be represented in painting....[but] must be recreated on canvas in a separate, painterly
way.” Hence rise of Impressionism, Cubism and related schools.
Brik sees that contemporary Russia needs a visual record of
the new (socialist) life and in the absence of sufficient photographic
resource, what Brik terms ‘painterly realism’ is resurrected; a hopeless task
in his view, akin to using a horse and cart instead of an automobile.
Brik scolds photographers for not realizing their social importance:
“they think they are only artisans, humble workers far removed from artists and
painters”. Hence photographers strive for painterly effects in order to attain
the social recognition of painters. Brik views this goal as mistaken, indeed
the photographers should accentuate the differences between the arts. “By
battling against the aesthetic distortion of nature the photographer acquires
his right to social recognition, and not be painfully and uselessly striving to
imitate models alien to photography.” We need a new art of photography
independent of the laws of painting. Example is Rodchenko.
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