You have to admit not all of what you see is art, or at least what you consider art.
That might seem a bit hypocritical coming from someone who believes that jewelry and photography is art instead of a craft. Certainly it took more creativity and craftsmanship to take photos of people still stand in awe of such as the work of Ansel Adams or Edward Weston than to decide a urinal could be art. The Cartier mystery clocks weren’t just timepieces; they were works of art.
Yet do a beautiful presentation make it art? That’s a question that the exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art really asks. We see it is science and perhaps at a scientific symposium, one would appreciate the elegant presentation of their exhibit “Data + Art: Science and Art in the Age of Information,” yet is it really art? Or is it just good science, great technology and nice photos of bugs?
There is indeed, something clever about the presentation of the $100 bill. Yet is simply being clever really art? Photos from space, “Eye in the Sky: JPL’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,” are cool in the way that perhaps getting clear images from higher than most people will ever fly is cool, but is it art? Will someone use it for their next sci-fi flick as just more information?
Conversely, in “Micronautics: The Photographs of David Scharf” are photos taken from closer than you’d ever want to be to anything in a sort of I-shrunk-the-kids sort of view point. They have that sort of science fiction disorienting effect. Neat and it might fuel future nightmares, but is it art? Do I care that Time magazine called him the “Ansel Adams of inner space”? Not really. They probably thought that was a name that everyone could identify, but I doubt that in the same number of years after Scharf dies that people will remember him in the same way, except for the scientists.
Will these things be worth gazing at outside of their intellectual meaning? Wasn’t Rosalind Franklin’s photo 51 cool in its time? Now, would we care for it on our wall or in the dining room before polite company?
Is it art or just an intellectual show and tell? To be fair though, during ArtNight I saw a postcard on the wall at the Armory. It was welling for a couple hundred. Now if you asked me to make a comparison, certainly there was more craft involved and aesthetics at work in Scharf’s photos than that one found-object postcard.
Saturday is the last day for you to catch this exhibit.
Museum Location
490 East Union Street
at Oakland Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91101
Museum Hours
Weds – Sun, 12pm – 5 pm
Free the first Friday of the month
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays
For more information, call 626-568-3665 or email info@pmcaonline.org or go to their Web site.
