Does it Matter? The Role of Photographic Materiality in the Digital Age

Steven Ramage

Since the birth of digital photography, much has been said in the debate about the merits and shortcomings of it as a medium in comparison to the traditional photographic print. It is only in recent years however that our understanding of digital images has developed into more than a replication of the past, and in fact into a new branch of photography altogether. This is not to say traditional photographic debate, or the comparison of the old and new mediums is not essentially important, but rather we must now think of things in newer terms, as our understanding of the implications of these technologies deepens. Influential writers such as Daniel Rubinstein and Katrina Sluis have written extensively on the materiality of digital images, how we interact with them, and even how they interact with each other with the development of the semantic web. What this essay sets out to investigate however, is the importance of such differentiation which we have traditionally seen in academic discourse. Now that we have a more thorough understanding of the nature of digital materiality, a number of key questions arise: Can we discuss the materiality of a digital image in similar terms to a photographic print? Is it important to distinguish between the two within wider conceptual discussion? Or are we simply fetishizing the traditional due to a sense of sentimentality?

To address these questions, we must start with the importance of traditional materiality, and look at the nature of the photographic print. Sassoon (2007) argues that the true meaning of a photograph is derived from a combination of its content, context and materiality. This statement alone highlights the importance of such a debate, as ignoring materiality would be detrimental to the true understanding of the printed image. Writing with specific reference to the digital archiving of traditional prints, Sassoon questions what information is lost in translation during the processes used. Despite her specialized interest in this area, the importance of the aforementioned trifecta is key to a much wider debate, and forms a great starting point for the understanding of the traditional photograph. Bee (2008) whilst also referring to the process of archiving, makes similar conclusions when talking about literature. He denies that the information contained within written volumes is of primary importance, a stance taken by Budd & Harloe (1997). Instead he offers examples of the format of written works being of crucial importance to how we interact with them, whether it be scrolls, codexes or indeed, a digital screen. Orbán (2014) although not dealing with photography, also argues the importance of haptic communication as part of a multisensory reading process. It would be overly simplistic to suggest that we only read with our eyes, when in fact we connect with visual media using a variety of senses, working in accord to form a more complete understanding of what we perceive.

So too, in terms of understanding the true indexical meaning of a document, the physical properties of a photographic image are of utmost importance. For example, a digital reproduction of an old press photograph tells only part of a story. The original photograph, as printed on newsprint, in the context of other stories and images, paints a much clearer picture of the context in which it was originally displayed. In the realms of photographic debate, this is a well-established and practiced methodology, to the extent that currently huge amounts of money are spent in the pursuit of authentic archiving. The prime example of this is of course the Corbis Iron Mountain facility; an underground, temperature controlled, multi-million Dollar vault inhabiting a Pennsylvanian mountainside, which exists for the sole purpose of protecting the Corbis archives.

It in undoubtedly the case that the archival value of traditional photography has in part been driven not by academic best practice, but rather a booming photographic art market in the second half of the 20^th Century. It has become increasingly important in recent years for libraries and museums etc. to consider materiality when creating archives, and when considering the exponential increase in market value of photographs, it becomes clear it is driven by one main factor. When images were predominantly being created using silver and paper, the photographic negative, the original, took precedence over the paper reproduction in terms of archival worth. It wasn’t until the boom in the photographic art market, and the death of certain influential practitioners, before the print itself was considered an original which was worth archiving in it’s own right. With the original practitioner unable to make any more prints, those prints in existence were capable of acquiring much greater value than ever before. The purpose of the negative and the print hence take on different meanings in terms of their archival worth; Whilst the negative would preserve content and at times context, the photographic print provided much more information deemed culturally valuable through it’s materiality, having attained a history of its own. Whether this added value was the result of having been hand printed by the artist themselves, or through the paper object being considered the most important document of time, space and place, the materiality of photography had by this point become intrinsic to the medium as a whole.

This is something that evolved as the photographic medium matured, yet is not a new phenomenon in itself. For example, in painting it has long been considered part of the status quo to address the material properties of the piece. One such example of materiality playing a vital role in our current understanding of an artwork is Diego Velázquez’s painting, Rokeby Venus. Velásquez’s painting was completed between 1647-51. In 1914 however, in protest of the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst another suffragette, Mary Richardson, walked into the National Gallery in London and attacked the painting with a meat cleaver. The damage was subsequently repaired, however it now means there are two stories to be read from viewing the original painting. Whilst the content and context of Velázquez’s work gives us many insights into 17^th Century ideals, just as the day it was unveiled, the materiality of the painting as a physical, fragile object also now documents a point in history in the 20^th Century, and the fight for women’s suffrage. This is a great example of the importance of the supplementary information which can be obtained from the materiality of works of art, to the point of it providing a whole new story in itself.

So, how then do we apply this way of thinking to the newer medium of digital imagery? To revisit Joanna Sassoon, she wrote that a digital image would seem to have no material presence at all, as a result of a lack of physical and tactile presence. In academic discourse this has been seen in both positive and negative light. In 1991, Kevin Robbins wrote of the merits of the new medium, claiming that only now will photography lose it’s intrinsic link to the real, allowing for a new era of unhindered creativity. Whilst undoubtedly the traditional photograph has always had a strong link to the idea of the real, it is important not to overstate this. As early as 1840, Hippolyte Bayard created his “Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man”, a clever but very blatant disregard for this notion of truth in photography at a time when our understanding of the implications of photography, never mind the processes, were not yet developed. What might be more accurate than Robbins’ statement, is that digital photography has the potential for new creative possibilities, but first we must detach ourselves from the current fetishisation of the traditional. As digital photography matures, alongside the growth of Web 2.0/3.0 and the Semantic Web, the materiality of digital images is only starting to be understood. As with any new media, we must start with looking at how this compares to our knowledge of existing mediums, and our pre-existing assumptions and expectations. As mentioned previously, the materiality of a traditional photographic print affords the opportunity for a whole host of supplementary information to be read from the object itself. The assumption however, that this is non-existent in digital imagery is simply not accurate. Though in the traditional form this can includes things such as artist notes, the paper type, signs of ageing etc, in digital images we have metadata. Often overlooked as a utilitarian by-product of the digital image making process, or serving the purpose of protecting copyright, in actual fact this is a huge understatement of the potential for metadata use. In fact, the volume of information that can be saved in digital form through metadata is huge when compared to traditional materiality. So although we lose the haptic process of reading the materiality of an original, we actually gain much more potential in terms of the amount of supplementary information available. I include the word “original” in the previous statement, as it is important to clarify at this point between the “original” digital state of a digital image, and a physically printed reproduction, which must in part be considered in the same terms as an analogue photographic print.

To revisit Budd & Harloe (1997) and applying their ideas to this debate, it is clear that if one is simply interested in information rather than experience, then in quantifiable terms there is nothing that need be lost in the transition from analogue to digital photography. As discussed earlier however, a large part of the human reading experience is enhanced by our haptic participation, and this cannot simply be ignored. The difference between analogue and digital imagery is not in its link to the real, nor the amount or type of information we can read from it, but rather it lies in our viewing experience. With tablet computers, smartphones and even wearable devices becoming increasingly popular in all spheres of life, we are currently seeing a re-introduction of haptic interaction to our online and digital experiences. Both in etymological and practical terms, it has been said that the digital can be considered an extension of the human fingers (Van Den Boomen, 2014). The personal computer, as with almost any machine, has always required the input of human touch to operate. Whether through a keyboard, mouse, or other input device, the common element is the physical interaction of a user to create a digital response. In relation to photography however, this traditional digital interface was incredibly detached from the traditional, haptic way of interacting with images. In recent years however, with the invention of digital photo frames, portable touch screens and tablet computers, we are seeing a re-introduction of the importance of human touch and gesture into the way we interact with digital content. In addition, these gestural interfaces seek to not only replicate, but expand on traditional modes of interaction. As well as viewing digital images in a haptic way, we can also zoom, crop, retouch and otherwise manipulate them at the touch of a finger. Whilst still crucially different from a traditional experience, the possibilities in terms of information and possibilities afforded to the viewer are almost endless.

In considering these issues, we must also remember that photography as a medium is not just indexical in nature, and avoid constraining ourselves to thinking of it in purely empirical terms. In revisiting the main points of this essay, the question of creativity in the digital age remains central. In my opinion, we must move away from our inexplicable obsession with the process and mechanics of photography if a newer and less restricted creative culture is to thrive. We cannot disregard the specific material properties of a photograph as we study it, just as we would not ignore the choice of oil paints over watercolours in a painting, but this must no longer be the defining characteristics if the medium as a whole is to mature. Just as Katalin Orbán suggest for graphic novels, photography also has born a new sense of materiality which although based on nostalgic foundations, is also distinct from it at the same time. The divide however, is certainly not black and white, and the new digital aesthetic cannot be said either to be a rebellious reaction for the most part. What we are witnessing is both a divergence and also a strengthening of traditional thought on materiality in different aspects. Whilst the technology of making images has undoubtedly shifted towards newer methods, the way in which we read images is actually strengthening the traditional debate around our interactions with these images in the real world. Otherwise we would no longer have any desire to print photographs, compile family albums and so forth. In an age of information overload, we are simply more tactile in our archival methods. It is human nature that we want to be able to read things in a haptic manner, and whilst we may not understand now to do this with digital born images yet, there was once a time when this could be said of a traditional photograph too. What we know for certain though, is that we are reluctant to relinquish the processes of the past before fully comprehending the new.

There is also a debate to be had about the importance of such studies moving forward. Whilst it is imperative that we understand the nature of the medium both past and present, it can also be argued that to do so too readily may inhibit creativity in the new generation of image-makers. The mechanical nature of photography as a medium means we can never truly separate the result from the process, as the former is forever influenced by the latter. So although we cannot discount the importance of knowing the nature of the medium being viewed; and yet by the same account we cannot give it too much importance when critiquing an artwork, where does this leave us? The answer, as with many of the points in this essay, may just be found by looking to the past. ‘Paintings’, the generic term that encompasses a whole plethora of physically different materials has come to define a type of mark making which transcends any particular type of paint or technique. Similarly then, the term ‘Photography’ may come to transcend it’s own literal meaning in time, with the digital revolution simply being the first of many catalysts in a greater evolution of the medium.

References

Bee, R. (2008) ‘The Importance of Preserving Paper-Based Artifacts in a Digital Age,’ The Library Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 2, pp.179-194.

Budd, J. & Harloe, B. (1997) ‘Collection Development and Scholarly Communication in the 21^st Century: From Collection Management to Content Management,’ in Collection Management for the 21^st Century: A Handbook for Librarians, G. E. Gorman & Ruth Miller (eds.), pp.3-38, Westport CT, Greenwood Press.

Orbán, K. (2014) ‘A Language of Scratches and Stitches: The Graphic Novel between Hyperreading and Print,’ Critical Inquiry, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp.169-181.

Ou, A. (2014) Underground: The Corbis Image Vault, http://www.nowseethis.org/invisiblephoto/posts/2

Rubinstein, D., & Sluis, K. (2013) ‘Notes on the Margins of Metadata; Concerning the Undecidability of the Digital Image,’ Photographies, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.151-158.

Sassoon, J. (2007) ‘Photographic Meaning in the Age of Digital Reproduction,’ Archives & Social Studies: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, Vol. 1, No. 10.

Van Den Boomen, M. (2014) Transcoding the Digital: How Metaphors Matter in New Media, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.

Can the Rich be Trusted to Make Art?

Sam Robinson

The question, even if the answer turns out to be yes, is unavoidably accusative. It contains both qualitative and ethical judgments. It contains a potentially proprietorial tone: art belongs, it might imply, to the proletariat and not to those whose view of the world is filtered, softened or distorted through a prism of privilege; all of this within a supposedly democratised art world where subjectivity’s stock is at an all-time low. The question might seem dated and divisive to some, mawkish even. It does seem important to avoid the temptation to respond with an instinctive, vitriolic ‘no’, however it also seems important not to obediently resist polemic.

To begin with it should be accepted that some of the rich might make good art. In fact, that they apparently have a long track record of doing just that, given that most art is the art of the wealthy. Aside from the connections money creates it also buys the kind of time necessary to make art. It buys the education necessary to complete an impressive CV; professional amounts of studio space; better materials which signify ‘quality’. Do these factors, which create confidence, amount to legitimisation and amplification for the mediocre? Or do the rich actually have, via their lack of anything much else to worry about, access to planes of thought closed to the rest of us?

Significantly, and in direct contravention of this idea, there is a long and telling history of the rich themselves implying some cosmic disconnect between money and the making of art—or of being an artist. They have often felt the need to hide their wealth, and still do. They have come to art as a means of escaping the ‘shackles’ of privilege. Choices of personal style and opinion speak of the disavowal and avoidance of traditional class definitions; working class artists have tried to follow suit—but have they really been allowed? All this denial, the apparent alienation of the rich from that which in reality defines them begs the question: why do they want both money and the heightened version of cultural capital that comes with producing art? Couldn’t they be satisfied with simply buying art, like their deck shoes and their pinkie rings? Why do they need to be artists too?

Today, little reference is made to successful artist’s backgrounds—in interviews, in press releases. Why might this be? Are we to believe that disparity, post the 60’s, has been ironed out? It is genuinely hard for the self-aware working class artist to see fine art (that is to say an autonomous gallery based art) without conditions and barriers. Hard too to see a way in which he/she might fit into this version of what art is. Is our faith in the canon—and a trance-like attraction to slick gallery spaces—just masochism? Is it damaging to self-esteem? Could an obsession with the evils of the high art world be stultifying or self-righteous—and equally damaging to self-esteem? Are we looking for success on the wrong terms? For all its problems, or neuroses, the question remains valid, because if, in the title of this essay, we substitute ‘rich’ for ‘working classes’, the answer often seems to be a flat no.

Breton famously encouraged us to ‘leave everything’, he mentioned wives, mistresses and children (in the woods) explicitly, but not money. This would have sounded too callow—and for his purposes too pragmatic. However money has often been histrionically betrayed by artists from wealthy backgrounds (fortunately it is quite happily cuckolded and waits in the wings). If bohemianism has traditionally been defined by lifestyles which run counter to conventional bourgeois priorities, it is often itself just another such bourgeois priority. It was they who needed the myth Wilson (2003: 3) describes by closely linking the idea of the bohemian to that of the individual. They are closely linked, in the sense that both are delusional and exist in apparent ignorance of the glaring paradox that they are utterly dependant on wider dialectics to form and define them. Bohemia is so utterly reliant on the haute-bourgeoisie, from where it draws its population, its patrons and indeed its antonymic means of definition; its sense of self—that it can never claim autonomy from it. The end goal of bohemia’s apparent rejection of class is in reality the denial of the importance of money (easy to say when you have plenty). It implies the vulgarity of money, but is in itself vulgar. It may have set out to alienate a wealthier bourgeoisie, but by extension it paints the working classes as somehow desperate and grasping. Bohemia is conscious of, and reliant on, the fact that it is being watched from all directions: engendering shock, admiration and envy.

A central paradox of Bohemianism is its fetishized idolisation of poverty allied with the brief that no experience should remain unexplored. The true artist’s life, it suggests, should consist entirely of yesses. As Rose (2002: 442) points out, working people cannot run to this kind of permissiveness; for the rich it is money very well spent. To poet Clare Cameron, from a working class family in the East End of London, the kind of Bohemian parties she began to be invited to were mystifying and occasionally painful (Rose, 2002: 440). Firstly, there was the inevitable lack of shared reference points. There was also the feeling of betrayal, guilt at the shame she felt when comparing the continental, ‘progressive’ homes of her artistic contemporaries to that of her unworldly parents. Similarly, her clothes (the wrong kind of shabby) provoked in her an almost adolescent sense of self-loathing. An intelligent and mature artist is reduced to an insecure teen, not so much by her own frailty, but by the reflected shallowness of others.

August Sander (1922) Bohemians

Rose (2002: 441) notes that working class writers, marginal to these scenes, have been able to capture their hollowness very accurately. But this journalistic opportunity is small reward for those who have hoped to have genuine involvement in the arts; insufficient recompense too for the feelings of inferiority and vulgarity that bohemian power-games have induced. The wealthy on the other hand, or those from backgrounds of cultural capital, have consistently been granted access to the private rooms of art. This has occurred in a very literal familial sense, quite informally and with the assurance of social equivalency. Early in his career Ben Nicholson, son of painters, visited Mondrian’s studio and soon set about making his own Mondrians (Rose, n.d). It was casually dropped into a recent biography of Robert Wyatt that as a child his mother arranged for him visit Braque in his studio (O’Dair, 2015: 25). The value of this exposure cannot be over-stated. Its worth exists not so much in intellectual terms but in the confidence, legitimacy and self-esteem it instils. If we are fashioning a more honest ‘theory of creativity’ then Rogers’ (1954) locus of evaluation is secondary in importance to a locus of emulation. The door to this might be circumvented, but by chance or initiative. Vlaminck famously claimed to have met Derain on a train; correspondence course scholar Philip Guston had to spy on Stuart Davis. It took them some years to produce work that existed on its own terms, though they unquestionably did. Nicholson himself remains plagued with accusations of pastiche and good-taste (Graham-Dixon, 1993).

Dan Steffan (2014) Bohemians

Conveniently, bohemians had, and still have, little real interest in politics; whilst they have at times flirted with socialism they have been equally absorbed in drug use, sex, mysticism, spiritualism, theosophy, religion, existentialism and organic food. They have immersed themselves in cultures notable for being a world away from their own. Their gaze is always suitably glazed and distant. Stover (2005), on the other hand, gives the newcomer advice on which kind of bathroom, lampshade or outfit might be most bohemian. To some this might seem like an awful hollowing out and misappropriation of what has been a fluid and edgy repost to wider societal priorities. I would argue that bohemians have always been interested in lampshades and outfits (be they shabby or even non-existent) just as much as art or literature. Stover is mistaken about bohemia only in the sense that its rules should never be spoken or written down, let alone published. It has been easy to commodify bohemia because it was a shallow creation to begin with.

To a painter like Cedric Morris, who had studied with Leger in Paris, and was heir to a baronetcy, the landscape post WWII was as welcoming as that of the Suffolk he painted (Morphet, 1984). Painting was not perhaps of greater priority to him than his other interests. His paintings are fittingly casual in subject and mannered in treatment—much like Alex Katz’s. Paintings like The Eggs (1944) are stylishly Spartan, but Morris’s eggs were bountiful, not rationed. His life was a model of what we might now think of as middle-class priorities, and probably not so different from Nigel Slater’s (whose paintings are yet to appear). Rambling Suffolk houses like Morris’s Benton End are now home to Sadie Coles, Sarah Lucas and Ryan Gander. Before these (now old) young Turks appeared Morris was important as an arbiter of British painting; his East Anglian School of Art gave us amongst others Lucien Freud and Maggi Hambling. We shouldn’t necessarily hold this against him. It is notable that these painters adhered to a certain bohemian and conservative model of painting and the painter long after it should perhaps have disappeared. But, without wanting to sound too objective, it is also true that painting survives (or should) as a broad church, within which there is disagreement, disillusion, alienation, identification and occasionally, loathing. This division of meaning, of what the medium is, is more apparent in painting than in younger media where an unspoken consensus, a kind of intellectual demilitarization, exists.

The reification of a British working class intellectual life in terms of literature at least, was brought about by its own documentation; its own field of study. Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy (1957), for example, not only acknowledged the democratization of literature, but legitimised working class involvement in it. This process never occurred for visual art, whose model remained one of hidden trade between artist and individual buyer. There were other means of control too; Szczelkun (1990: 22) notes that the inventions of community art, art therapy and other specializations were necessary in order for there to be jobs (that were not utterly alienating) for the increased number of art graduates from new universities 60’s, but that simultaneously this streaming has also allowed Fine Art, or High Art to remain cloistered, defined as utterly distinct and rarefied. As Fisher points out (in Wallinger and Warnock, 2000: 112) the ‘proletarianisation of art’ where it has occurred has more often meant the conspicuous appearance of the ‘everyday’ than the genuine representation of diverse artists on their own terms. Richard Billingham’s photographs from the series Ray’s a Laugh, which always felt problematic, now appear shocking not just because they signify art’s version of, and aversion to ‘the other’, or because they might be exploitative, but because as an artist, he has disappeared from the high art context within which they were first seen.

A tired and at times embarrassing debate was played out recently in the pages of the Guardian (Mason, 2015) after Chris Bryant, newly appointed as Labour’s Shadow Culture Secretary made a call for greater diversity in the arts. The thrust of his argument was that we need to see more Albert Finneys and Glenda Jacksons, less Eddie Redmaynes and James Blunts. The Guardian’s article pointed out for the uninitiated or totally disinterested, that the latter two were educated at Eton and Harrow respectively. Blunt put down his guitar, flipped open his mac book and hammered out an angry response, calling Bryant a ‘wazzock’ and a ‘classist gimp’ (thus entering the canon alongside fellow old boys Shelley, Huxley, Orwell and Anthony Powell). Redmayne, the more Bohemian thesp, wouldn’t be drawn, but it is comparatively easy to find examples of actors speaking out against class and financial inequality in their field. One has to look much harder to find their counterparts in fine art circles. Elizabeth Price’s speech on being awarded the Turner Prize (Waters, 2012) made admirable reference to the iniquities of art education, but didn’t go widely reported. As an aside, in 1991 the prize was £20,000; today it is £25,000. This represents the esteem art is held in when its role as pure commodity is removed. It is a gross understatement to say that sales figures dwarf this amount. The prize comes under attack, but surely represents one of the least controversial faces of the art world.

It often feels as though art attracts the most directionless strain of the rich. They drift there for want of anywhere else; to them it is endlessly forgiving. Under its auspices they can indulge in the kind of care-free sociability that has defined their caste ad nauseum. The social engagement of art-making itself is not enough for them. Output and productivity are of secondary importance; like the wife of the successful businessman (forgive the chauvinism here—it’s theirs, not mine) who is given a boutique to run as a hobby—it looks like a functioning shop, but it only opens on Saturday mornings, once a month, or not at all. As art practices become dematerialised and often devoid of any physical labour, they seem more tempting still. I do not begin to suggest that indolence is the reason behind art’s movement in this direction, but that art may well seem more appealing to the feckless because of it. The door is open. Painting’s relevance is constantly questioned because in the minds of the new bohemian mandrinates, blind to the paradox of their uniform individuality, it is conservative—or indeed bourgeois. As discussed above, painting remains live as a subjective medium—publicly so—and this is why they consistently attempt to shut it down.

Biography itself has disappeared. We are not inclined, or encouraged, to know the economic background of artists. The Simon Starling Story remains unwritten; likewise, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Memoirs. On the occasion of her show at David Zwirner’s Mayfair space, a press release for the chic, familiar sculpture of Carol Bove tells us only: ‘Bove was born in Switzerland to American parents’. We can fairly safely, if bitterly, assume that they weren’t cleaners in a Geneva hotel. We are obsessed with the lives of artists now long gone. Kahlo for example, sixty years dead, has a new lover (Bidisha, 2015). These cases exist as surrogates because the background of our current artists is often a deliberate mystery. To some eyes this might seem the only reasonable position, but we have no way of knowing if things regulate themselves and work out in any way fairly. We have more reason to suspect that they do not. As a means of control the Arts Council is no use. As Williams knew (1989: 41) it somehow pulls off the trick of being simultaneously bureaucratic and profligate; proscriptive and vague.

It would be ludicrous to suggest that the rich be banned from making art (how would we police it anyway?). And, lest we be accused of class-envy, what of artists who only become rich? At what point should they be stopped? Critical studies programs in art schools, replacing art history modules since the 1960’s, have tended to be firmly of the left; they have often been progressive, revolutionary even. Kenneth Clark is nowhere to be seen. But this is yet to have real discernible impact on the (art) world outside. There often seems to be a gulf between message and audience: to rooms full of art students from wealthy families this kind of theory is the perfect window-dressing for their boutique, but they have no instinct, no reason whatsoever, to want to put it into practice. It might even provoke guilt, who knows? But if it does, it is brief and silent. The rich can very much be relied upon to make art, in fact they can’t stop; whether they can be trusted to is another matter.

References

Bidisha. (2015) The Exhibition of Frida Kahlo’s Love Letters is a Grubby Violation, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/sale-frida-kahlo-letters-grubby-violation.

Fisher, J. (2000) ‘The Proletarianisation of Art’, in Wallinger, M. and Warnock, W. (eds.) Art For All? Their Policies and our Culture, London: PEER.

Gale, M. (1997) Dada and Surrealism, London: Phaidon.

Graham-Dixon, A. (1993) Done Up Like a Kipper…, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/done-up-like-a-kipper-ben-nicholson-was-a-victim-of-his-own-caution-even-his-most-impressive-works-seem-tainted-by-pastiche-andrew-graham-dixon-argues-1511780.html

Hoggart, R. (1957) The Uses of Literacy, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Mason, R. (2015) Arts World Must Address Lack of Diversity, says Labour’s Chris Bryant, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/16/arts-diversity-chris-bryant-eddie-redmayne

Morphet, R. (1984) Cedric Morris, Uxbridge: Hillingdon Press.

O’Dair, M. (2014) Different Every Time: The Authorized Biography of Robert Wyatt, London, Serpent’s Tail.

Rogers, C. (1954) ‘Towards a Theory of Creativity’, in ETC: A Review of General Semantics 11: 249-260.

Rose, J. (2010) The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 2^nd edition, New Haven and London: Yale University Press .

Rose, S. (n.d) Mondrian/Nicholson: In Parallel, https://www.courtauld.ac.uk/publicprogrammes/documents/MondrianNicholsonteachersweb.pdf

Steffan, D. (2014) ‘The Frowning Prophet and the Smiling Revolutionary’ in Berger, D and Buhle, P. (eds.) Bohemians, London: Verso.

Stover, L. (2005) Bohemian Manisfesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge, New York: Bulfinch Press.

Szczelkun, S. (1990) Class Myths and Culture, London: Working Press.

Waters, F. (2012) Elizabeth Price Criticizes Government’s ‘Utilitarian Ide of Art Education’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/turner-prize/9721731/Turner-Prize-2012-Elizabeth-Price-criticises-governments-utilitarian-idea-of-education.html

Williams, R. (1989) Resources of Hope, London: Verso.

Wilson, E. (2003) Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts, London: Tauris Parke.

Introduction

This is ‘New Minds Eye’ which brings you some of the best new writing on art and culture. Below you’ll find short essays on a range of subjects. This is the first issue and as we progress we hope to expand the project into covering things from a more international perspective, with a greater range of media and subjects combining the ability to experiment with free expression of ideas and opinions. The idea emerged from students from The Sociological Imagination post graduate course at Glasgow School of Art as an independent project.

Sam Robinson—Can the Rich be Trusted to Make Art?

Alex Stursberg—The Gift and the Ghost: Value and Exchange in Contemporary Art

Kelly McLeod—Feminized Flora to Floral Feminism: Gender Representation and Botany

Frida Alvinzi—Can Disavowals be read as a performance art piece?

Julie Laing—Documentary film has connotations of veracity, but does this mean that films that use a documentary style tell us the truth about the society they present?

Steven Ramage—Does it Matter? The Role of Photographic Materiality in the Digital Age

Nikki Kane—Can places be considered ‘inalienable objects’, and how do they operate in connection with imagination?