Touchstones

Every artist, I believe, in every art, has touchstones—works of greatness or œuvres of past artists with which he or she will engage fully, in an ongoing conversation of passion, learning, and open-heartedness. We can't engage fully with everything we'd like to; we can't even experience everything there is, much less engage with everything. So the touchstones are symbols, stand-ins—best cases; we adopt some work or works of art or science or scholarship or music or craft or literature as "ours" in order to become intimately familiar, artistically and aesthetically, with something. They are in a sense the "handles" by which we latch ourselves on to the great train human endeavor and achievement as we catch a ride. Old friend, adversary, instructor, "familiar," to which we intermittently always return.

Mike
(Thanks to Jim Schley)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Geoff Wittig: "That surely resonates as true for me. As Mike notes, the world of photography is far too vast to get a grip on it all. Some of it I just don't get, some I actively loathe. But there's a lot of it I like, and some of it rings like a bell to me, hitting a pitch-perfect note in sync with my personal sense of artistry. It'll be a slightly different body of work for everyone, but I'd bet most folks with an opinion about what photographs fall into the 'art' category have their own touchstones. The exact same thing applies to painting, at least for me. Many genres of painting really do nothing for me, but many appeal, and a narrower slice really resonate with the same kind of vision I'm trying to achieve. Of course, the next person might look at my notion of the ideal painting and gag. But that's why every museum has a different slant to its collection. It's a big universe of visual experience. If I dislike something, I just move on to the next painting or photograph."

Ed Kirkpatrick: "Interestingly, for me at least, it's not anything photographic but the work of the French Impressionists and especially, Monet and Renoir. I am lucky enough to live in Washington DC where The Phillips Collection features many of their great works but most especially, Renoir's 'Luncheon of the Boating Party.' The way they saw light fascinates me, and I will periodically go down to sit and stare at this piece. There is no end of visual pleasure and that refreshes me."

John Camp: "Pieter Bruegel. Cezanne. I Ido have a photograph that I keep coming back to, not for aesthetic reasons but for utilitarian ones—and that's Adams' 'Moonrise.' A very large number of people have seen this print, because there are a lot of them around—and the printing and exposure are exquisite, and the subject matter compelling. There is no such thing as 'the best photograph,' but Moonlight is a kind of 'standard candle' that you can compare everything else to, because almost anyone seriously interested in photography is aware of it, and many have seen either original prints or very, very good reproductions."

Comments

[Bil Mitchell]

Weston's "Daybooks." (Best if supplemented by other sources.)

[Kenneth Tanaka]

OK, I'll buy that. Who/what are your "touchstones"?

But, at least in the visual arts, there is a counter-force to the "touchstone", let's call it the "anti-touchstone". Works or artists that you find repulsive, distasteful, conceptually vacant, technically inept, or just plain pretentious. Identifying these anti-touchstones for oneself is at least equally as informative and self-defining at any moment in one's life.

Fun fact: At one point many years ago Saul Leiter's work was an anti-touchstone for me. Ditto Bill Eggleston. My brain chemistry must have radically changed in the ensuing years.

[Benjamin Marks]

In fact, I understand that some artistic traditions, in India for instance, have classical works that are _all_ touchstone. For a given era there will be one sculpture that is the _echt_ expression of the best aesthetic of that age. And then many, many copies of that one masterwork. But there is no known Indian Michelangelo -- that is, a personna whose work embodies the best of a classical era. So: a tradition that focuses exclusively on touchstones rather than "old masters" . . . just food for thought.

[Mahonri]

Why not illustrate this with the cover of the Tillman Crane book TOUCHSTONES ?

[Patrick Dodds]

Interesting idea about the anti-touchstone. Mine would have to be Jake and Dinos Chapman - the very mention of their name gets me all riled up. I need to think on some more about why this might be and, so doing, perhaps, as you say Kenneth, come to a better understanding of myself and where I'm at.

http://jakeanddinoschapman.com/

[WARNING: Link not workplace / school friendly. --Ed.]

[GRJ]

The Bach suites for unaccompanied cello. I have probably played the G Major prelude 1,000 times and have yet to get it right.

[Jean-Francois Pare]

Hi Mike,

Good to see you back. BTW, that would be oeuvres and not ouvres

Jean-Francois

[John Krumm]

I keep coming back to Iowa singer songwriter Greg Brown, who pens song with lines like..."you drive me craaazy, with every thing you do and do not do.... I love you sooo much, I'm gonna drive you crazy too."
I drive my wife and daughter crazy by playing his albums too frequently.

[Nathan Degargoyle]

Don't touchstones depend on the mood?
Sometimes it's Dali / Man Ray.
Or Ansel Adams
Or Constable.
Or Ansel Adams
Or HCB
Or Ansel Adams
Or Brasai
Or Ansel Adams
Or...
OK, You got me

[Jeff]

John Camp says…"Moonrise is a kind of 'standard candle'…"

And Adams consistently changed the 'standard' in his prints over a 30+ year period, as this evolution from 1941 to 1973 shows…

http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/anseladams/arrington/arrington_adams.html

[Omer]

The Americans by Robert Frank.

[Paul Ewins]

For me it is unquestionably the paintings of Jeffrey Smart, so much so that people are able to readily identify it in my photographs. Generally I find paintings more influential than photographs, even although I spend a lot more time looking at photographs.

[Mark Walker]

I was thinking the other day about the music I like and I keep going back to the things I was listening to 25 to 35 years ago -looming largest is Led Zeppelin. Occasionally I'll hear something of the 'now', thanks to my kids, and I might really like it, maybe buy the song or an album. But, so far there's nothing much recent that has really grabbed me with the same resonance as my earlier 'touchstones'. However, visually, there is often something appearing on my radar that really does grab me, that I follow up and slot into my reference library of inspiration and admiration. I guess that my aural spectrum of appreciation is just more limited. Also, music is so pervasive these days that I hear it but don't listen.
Photographically and artistically, my touchstones are more like a small jar of pebbles that I dip in to and depending on how I feel some are picked from the top and some are fished out from the bottom.

[Norm Nicholson]

Touchstones certainly ring true for me. When I was a kid I saw Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" at the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting represented, to me, the life my parents had led during the Depression. Hopper's expressions of mood, life possibilities never to be realized, and suppressed desire in his painting infuse the way I see the I see the World.

Also, when I was a kid my parents used to drive to El Paso, Texas in summer to see my uncle and grandfather. The memories of driving along route 66 and route 54 put me very much in sympathy with Stephen Shore's "Uncommon Places"when it was published.

Both of these influences consciously, and unconsciously, enter into my photography to this day.

http://normnicholson.com

[mike plews]

"Gano grain elevator, Western Kansas, 1940" by Wright Morris
or
Revolver on headphones
They both put the zap on my head