Foto y pintura / Photo and Painting José Manuel Ballester / Pere Formiguera / Nanna Hänninen / Idris Khan Peter Oetzmann / Pablo Picasso / Mariah Robertson / Hannah Sawtell Shirana Shahbazi / Wolfgang Tillmans / Darío Villalba ntrevistas / Interviews nterviews: Ignasi Aballí / José Ramón Amondarain Entrevistas Texto exto / Essay ssay: Laura González Flores
Robert Rauschenberg. Despliegue soviético-americano, 1988-1990. Courtesy of Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia.
Robert Rauschenberg. Untitled, 1968. Courtesy of Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia.
On Disjunctions, Conjunctions and Equivocalness: Eight Aphoristic Thoughts on Photography and Painting LAUR A GONZÁL E Z F L ORE S
I photograph what I don’t want to paint and I paint what I don’t want to photograph. Man Ray
In 1915 Emmanuel Radnitsky, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp entered into their long friendship in New York. They share the need to explore forms of art as alternatives to painting, a “retinal” genre whose valuation tended to be associated with technical and qualitative aspects. Duchamp is working on the production of Le grand verre (The Large Glass), 1915-1923, a work whose production he has begun in Paris and which he still calls “painting”.1 Man Ray begins to experiment with photography, portraying what he doesn’t want to paint.2 Not only does Man Ray’s adoption of the photographic medium arise from his experimental nature, but above all from his disdain for the art of his time. And if he has ever stated that photography is not art, his experience with photography will radically change this opinion: I had plainly stated that photography was not art and I had even published a pamphlet with this title, to the dismay and disapproval of photographers. When I was recently asked whether I still held this opinion, I declared that I had slightly modified my stance: for me art is not photography.3
Man Ray counters photography and painting, symptom and mainstay of the “art” of the times. The relation is one of antagonism: that which for centuries marked the distinction between sensitivity and rationality, art and science, hand and machine. E X I T Nº 47-2012 26
A clear dilemma, that of Man Ray: painting or photography. II Around 1923 Manuel Álvarez Bravo buys a book by Picasso at Pedro Robredo’s bookshop in Mexico City. More than Rousseau or Diderot, whom he read by night, Picasso is the one who opens up new paths for him. An accountant in a tax office since adolescence, Álvarez Bravo dreamt of being an artist, but as opposed to Man Ray, he is not a skilful painter. Therefore he tries his luck with photography. And although his first visual influences are Hugo Brehme and other pictorial photographers, Picasso and his cubism confront him with another type of reality: that of photographic “rarism”.4 The “rare photographs” to which Álvarez Bravo refers are those that tend toward formal abstraction, such as those Edward Weston and Tina Modotti are doing at the time. It takes Álvarez Bravo some time to rid himself of Brehme’s picturesqueness and discover “pure” form. Around 1927 he produces his Juegos de papel, a series of pictures constructed from rolls of paper that abounded in his bureaucratic work. Álvarez Bravo folds them and shapes them into waves or figures; and subsequently photographs them from diverse perspectives. Of a formal elegance that is as exquisite as it is minimal, his photographs are more radical in their abstraction than those of Weston or Modotti. Like Man Ray and Duchamp, Álvarez Bravo seeks to move away from painting in order to gain access to an essential and specific notion of photography. And, paradoxically, it is a painter, Picasso, who suggests to him
Jeff Wall. Picture for Women, 1979. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
José Manuel Ballester. Lugar para un descanso, Espacios ocultos series, 2007. Courtesy of the artist.
Gjon Mili. Pablo Picasso Creates a Light Drawing, 1949. Courtesy of Time & Life Picture/Getty Images.
Gjon Mili. Pablo Picasso Creates a Light Drawing, 1949. Courtesy of Time & Life Picture/Getty Images.
Repetición y diferencia Entrevista con José Ramón Amondarain SER GIO R UBIR A
Siempre te has definido –o te han definido– como pintor, ¿cuál es tu relación con la fotografía? Ser pintor es pensar en pintura. La pintura es parte de mí y continuamente tengo una especie de programa abierto en torno a la misma. Ser pintor está en su modulación. O sea que la fotografía, la escultura, el vídeo, etc. pueden entenderse como variaciones de tono en la pintura. Entiendo que todos tenemos relación con lo que se entiende como fotografía. Todos los artistas la utilizamos de alguna manera. Desde muy joven la fotografía fue para mí algo maravilloso. Así que cuando en la facultad nos enseñaron a revelar, apareció para mí una nueva forma de ver y confeccionar imágenes. Piensa que las imágenes surgen tanto en los procesos de revelado y positivado, como a través del ordenador. Cuando hablas de la fotografía y su proceso, ya sea analógico o digital, casi pareces describir una “revelación” en todos los sentidos de la palabra, una imagen que se crea a sí misma y se descubre, un momento que podríamos calificar –como tú mismo haces– de mágico o maravilloso. ¿No sucede lo mismo con la pintura? ¿Hay alguna diferencia con la forma en que se construye la imagen pictórica? Maravilloso porque en 1980, desde la posibilidad de lo doméstico, sólo se podían capturar imágenes con una máquina fotográfica analógica. Recoger los positivados de mis carretes era emocionante. En la pintura los espacios de espera son intrínsecos. Picasso apenas utilizaba pintura. Le sobraba todo lo que le impidiera ser ágil. Sin embargo una pintura siempre arrastra su tiempo. Gerhard Richter dice que nunca se debe mostrar el sudor en un cuadro. Según él la pintura debe mostrarse como una especie de aparición. También, dice, como una imagen. La pregunta es compleja porque hay muchas formas de construir una imagen pictórica. Muchos siglos, mucha historia, muchas formas de pintar, de entender la pintura y de construirla. Yo diría que más bien son dos formas muy distintas de construir y de relacionarse físicamente con lo que se tiene entre manos. E X I T Nº 47-2012 74
José Ramón Amondarain. Untitled, 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Galería Max Estrella, Madrid.
Peter Oetzmann. Picture This series, 2005-2006. Courtesy of the artist.
Peter Oetzmann. Picture This series, 2005-2006. Courtesy of the artist.
Shirana Shahbazi. Komposition 48, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich.
Shirana Shahbazi. Komposition 52, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich.
Darío Villalba. Salpicado saco, Primary Color Splashes series, 2001. Courtesy of the artist.
Darío Villalba. Naranja, Primary Color Splashes series, 2001. Courtesy of the artist.
E X IT Im ag en y Cul t u r a / I m a ge & Cul tu re R ev i s t a t r i m es t r a l / Q ua r t e r ly M a gazi ne • A ñ o 12 - #47 A go s t o / S e pt i e m bre / O c t u bre 2 01 2 • P VP Es p añ a: 25 Eu ro s