Emotion and personality

While I was in London recently I took time to go visit the Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery. Quite an event - large selection of work, well presented. I learnt a bunch about his work & influences. It's a tricky thing, doing something like this where the connections are really 2 dimensional (both in chronology and themes).

[A side note on the exhibition - while it is excellent in content, I think it is grossly over-priced, there were way too many visitors even early in the morning and the constant chatter of those damned audio guides is a real distraction.]

While viewing the work I was reminded of some things that crossed my mind years ago while visiting the Munch Museum in Oslo, and that is how the material reflects the artist. It also highlighted a key difference, in my mind, between painting and photography.

Apart from the content itself (Picasso jumping between the analytical approach of cubism to an overt obsession with sexual fantasy) is the enduring reference the the artist's emotional state. Munch's work (beyond merely The Scream) demonstrates the same emotional input - quite apparent in a couple of works made from photographs. The physical effort of painter applying paints provides a very real connection between the artist's mood and his work.

Photography cannot be like that. It is the capturing of just what is in front of the lens. The photographer has no direct contact with the subject. He does, however, impart something in the framing, subject selection and selection of the frame for presentation (the process of eliminating that unwanted). It's rather more subtractive than painting. In that way, over a series of images, a photographer reveals his wider personality rather than immediate emotional state.

Of course, these are fairly broad generalisations but it feels like a real and mportant distinction between the two media.