Andrzej Bogacz Little Warsaw

[pieter]

ab.res.pl/index1.htm

[nancy]

Pieter,

thank you for this link! these are certainly not a tourist's view of Warsaw or other places in Poland. many compelling and artistic shots, I really like his work.

[pieter]

Nancy,

I do like Andrzej's work, because he makes good compositions (he is a good observer), catches the important
moments (good photographers are good in their timing), and he is authentic.

Pieter

[pieter]

Look at Bogacz photographs of 2004 and 2005! It shows you the Urban Jungle of Modern Warsaw! Fascinating!

[leslie]

Pieter
I am impressed by the skill and artistry of some of these photographs, but for quite a few others the thought came into my mind 'Why on Earth did he take that photo?'. Like a good painting, the image should tell a story to the observer and for some of these photos the only story that came into my mind was 'That's a good record shot' or even 'Did a child take that record shot'. I saw him as very inconsistent - sorry.
Leslie

[pieter]

Leslie,

I am sorry but if the Warsaw photographs are concerned, I absolutely disagree with you, I don't see any childisness in the images, they are an adult artistic (art photography) impression from Warsaw and very good in my opinion.
Not every photo has to be sharp or precise, in a sequence (serie of photographs) or photo-essay there can be sharp panoramic, snapshot or a combination of traffic, people and buildings or city tree and/or parks. This man symply took risks or searched and found unusual angle's, interesting views and just anoter image of Warsaw than the average Varsovian, Pole from outside Warsaw or foreigner sees. That's the artists view!
Artists are often not recognised or accepted in their time, because they show another side of a place or situation or the dynamics of an environment. Andrzej Bogacz does just that in my view!

But ofcourse that is my subjective vision. I like Bogacz!

Pieter

[pieter]

I have to admid that I am less enthousiastic about his other subjects: Daily news, New York, The Journey Old photos and Self-portraits with Shadow. I have collected to much photobooks and seen to manny photoexhebitions and have to much photographers who are friends of mine (three) to be easily impressed by photography.

Andrzej Bogacz night photographs of Warsaw just amalgamated with my own visial memory (I am a person of visual memory rather then auditive-memory) of Warsaw (1984-2007), Poznan, Krakow, Prague and Budapest. Cities I also wondered around in the evening, at night and the early mornings. Cities with that special Central-European atmospher which is hardly to desrcibe, because it is subtle, refined, and in the same time raw because of the layers of history, the scarfs of time, and the dynamics of new progression, new generations taking their chances. In the same time you see the heritage, the older generations the marks of Communism, 19 th century, the Interbellum, the second world war, Stalinism and etc.
That's the fascinating thing about Poland and the whole of Central Europe, that tension have the boringly clean wealthy Western-European Capitals not! They have another charm of their destinct nations, cultures and heritages, present and their progressions towards the future (in the present).

Pieter

[leslie]

Pieter

I am happy to accept your comments as the way you see this guy's approach. Just one correction - I didn't say the images were childish, I said that a child could have taken some of the photographs because they did not appear to me to be of the adult level of his other work.

But I think that you will agree that art - photographic, painting, crayon drawing etc. - brings out the subjectivity in all of us; simply put, we like what we like!!

I appreciated seeing his work and it has extended my education.

Leslie

[pieter]

Leslie,

You are right in your comment that the viewers taste and opinion is always subjective!
I accept your view, because I have to respect your vision.
Do you know by the way that in the 20th century some Modern artists were fascinated by the
purity of children drawings and paintings, the art of psychiatric paintings and the so called
primitive art of Polynesian and African artists? I just mention Picasso, Appel, Dada and
you know what I mean!

Pieter

[pieter]

Modern Art

Modern Art, painting, sculpture, and other forms of 20th-century art. Although scholars disagree as to precisely when the modern period began, they mostly use the term modern art to refer to art of the 20th century in Europe and the Americas, as well as in other regions under Western influence. The modern period has been a particularly innovative one. Among the 20th century’s most important contributions to the history of art are the invention of abstraction (art that does not imitate the appearance of things), the introduction of a wide range of new artistic techniques and materials, and even the redefinition of the boundaries of art itself. This article covers some of the theories used to interpret modern art, the origins of modern art in the 19th century, and its most important characteristics and modes of expression.

Modern art comprises a remarkable diversity of styles, movements, and techniques. The wide range of styles encompasses the sharply realistic painting of a Midwestern farm couple by Grant Wood, entitled American Gothic (1930, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois), and the abstract rhythms of poured paint in Black and White (1948, private collection), by Jackson Pollock. Yet even if we could easily divide modern art into representational works, like American Gothic, and abstract works, like Black and White, we would still find astonishing variety within these two categories. Just as the precisely painted American Gothic is representational, Willem de Kooning’s Marilyn Monroe (1954, private collection) might also be considered representational, although its broad brushstrokes merely suggest the rudiments of a human body and facial features. Abstraction, too, reveals a number of different approaches, from the dynamic rhythms of Pollock’s Black and White to the right-angled geometry of Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue (1937-1942, Tate Gallery, London) by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, whose lines and rectangles suggest the mechanical precision of the machine-made. Other artists preferred an aesthetic of disorder, as did German artist Kurt Schwitters, who mixed old newspapers, stamps, and other discarded objects to create Picture with Light Center (1919, Museum of Modern Art, New York City).

Thus 20th-century art displays more than stylistic diversity. It is in the modern period that artists have made paintings not only of traditional materials such as oil on canvas, but of any material available to them. This innovation led to developments that were even more radical, such as conceptual art and performance art—movements that expanded the definition of art to include not just physical objects but ideas and actions as well.

[pieter]

Characteristics of Modern Art

In view of this diversity, it is difficult to define modern art in a way that includes all of 20th-century Western art. For some critics, the most important characteristic of modern art is its attempt to make painting and sculpture ends in themselves, thus distinguishing modernism from earlier forms of art that had conveyed the ideas of powerful religious or political institutions. Because modern artists were no longer funded primarily by these institutions, they were freer to suggest more personal meanings. This attitude is often expressed as art for art's sake, a point of view that is often interpreted as meaning art without political or religious motives. But even if religious and government institutions no longer commissioned most art, many modern artists still sought to convey spiritual or political messages. Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, for instance, felt that color combined with abstraction could express a spiritual reality beneath ordinary appearances, while German painter Otto Dix created openly political works that criticized policies of the German government.

Another theory claims that modern art is by nature rebellious and that this rebellion is most evident in a quest for originality and a continual desire to shock. The term avant-garde, which is often applied to modern art, comes from a French military term meaning “advance guard,” and suggests that what is modern is what is new, original, or cutting-edge. To be sure, many artists in the 20th century tried to redefine what art means, or attempted to expand the definition of art to include concepts, materials, or techniques that were never before associated with art. In 1917, for example, French artist Marcel Duchamp exhibited everyday, mass-produced, utilitarian objects—including a bicycle wheel and a urinal—as works of art. In the 1950s and 1960s, American artist Allan Kaprow used his own body as an artistic medium in spontaneous performances that he declared to be artworks. In the 1970s American earthwork artist Robert Smithson used unaltered elements of the environment—earth, rocks, and water—as material for his sculptural pieces. Consequently, many people associate modern art with what is radical and disturbing. Although a theory of rebellion could be applied to explain the quest for originality motivating a great number of 20th-century artists, it would be difficult to apply it to an artist such as Grant Wood, whose American Gothic clearly rejected the example of the advanced art of his time.

Another key characteristic of modern art is its fascination with modern technology and its embrace of mechanical methods of reproduction, such as photography and the printing press. In the early 1910s Italian artist Umberto Boccioni sought to glorify the precision and speed of the industrial age in his paintings and sculptures. At about the same time, Spanish painter Pablo Picasso incorporated newspaper clippings and other printed material into his paintings in a new technique known as collage. By the same token, however, other modern artists have sought inspiration from the spontaneous impulses of children’s art or from exploring the aesthetic traditions of nonindustrialized, non-Western cultures. French artist Henri Matisse and Swiss artist Paul Klee were profoundly influenced by children's drawings, Picasso closely observed African masks, and Pollock’s technique of pouring paint onto canvas was in part inspired by Native American sand painting.

Yet another view holds that the basic motivation of modern art is to engage in a dialogue with popular culture. To this end, Picasso pasted bits of newspaper into his paintings, Roy Lichtenstein imitated both the style and subject of comic strips in his paintings, and Andy Warhol made images of Campbell’s soup cans. But although breaking down the boundary between high art and popular culture is typical of artists like Picasso, Lichtenstein, and Warhol, it is not of Mondrian, Pollock, or most other abstract artists.

Each of these theories of course, is compelling and could explain a great many strategies employed by modern artists. Yet even this brief examination reveals that 20th-century art is far too diverse to be fully contained within any one definition. Each theory can contribute a part to the puzzle, but no single theory can claim to be the solution to the puzzle itself.

Source: encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761568672/Modern_Art.html