Young Altair

punkysdilemma:

On tumblr nudes :

When the famed jazz pianist Bill Evans was interviewed on Finnish television in 1970, one of the interviewers asked how he felt about the avant-guarde movement that was becoming popular in jazz at the time, especially it’s ‘expressiveness’, his answer was profound and one that would readily apply to almost any kind of art:

‘we need some sort of guiding aesthetic for ourselves, when an infant is crying in his crib, no one would deny that he’s expressing himself but I doubt we would call it art’

To some extent thats how I feel about the NSFW type blogs that manage to be enourmously popular on tumblr, it’s not the content that bothers me, Nudes are great and I understand the impact they can have, I understand the place they have in art history and I get that theres room for a subtle eroticism out there too but what bothers me is the lack of content.

I think the root of this ‘aesthetic’ is possibly in people like Sam Haskins (who created the leggy curly haired B/W photo of the woman above in his Posters book 1972) or even Helmut Newtons super-women (though the amazon style strength they exude is a long way from the junked out waifishness potrayed in many of the photos I’m talking about), with the sort of ‘Glamour Pin-Up’ style that went through Richard Kern & Terry Richardson and became this shitty, boring, self indulgent nothingness.

Nudes should have intent, say something about the artist, or the person or place they were taken or mabye just be a composition pure and simple that has good curves and lighting and framing and this sub-Richardson stuff that clogs tumblr seems devoid of any of the above.

I guess what really bothers me is that I hate these Guardian or NYT articles that seem to come out every 6 months decrying the hipster generation for it’s craven commercialism and shallow worship of image over authenticity but the insatiable fondness for glossy art porn is pretty much all those things they say we are.

I wish their was more of a willingness to be like Diane arbus with the jarring weirdness of her naked waitress or the raw social documentary art of Mikhailov’s homeless nude potraits or Jacob Holdt’s ‘American Pictures’ , or simply attempt the expression, humor, and mastery of composition of people like Ryan McGinley, Brassai and Olaf Martens. (all sampled in the nudes above)