Four Questions About Art - ACE086.3

Ruskin: "Artistic genius is necessarily a rarity …" Caption: "secondly, how best to employ your artist" Lecturer continues, "We’re too much in the habit, these days, of acting as if art were a commodity which people could generally be taught to produce…", saying that the value of an artist’s work comes from that which cannot be taught and is unique to the artist. Photographs of park benches. Commentary: "In 1839, a selection of Daguerreotypes was shown to the French Academy of Sciences…"; the members commented on the precision of the reproduction of the objects and expressed concern that this "might deprive the artist of his traditional livelihood". Man setting up camera and taking photographs; he explains what he’d doing. Marking proof sheets. Commentary explains how, in an 1862 law suit brought against rivals by Léopold Ernest Mayer and Pierre-Louis Pierson who claimed protection for their work under the copyright laws, the court judged that the law applied only to art, rather than the "industrial" skills required by photography. Photographer explains to printer how he wants his pictures processed. Photographs of props holding up ends of buildings, hay bales and stacks, bundles of cloth, seashore, trees, etc. Commentary says that Mayer and Pierson appealed the verdict, their lawyer arguing that "truth and beauty … were the same for the photographer as they were for the painter and sculptor…", and the Attorney General agreed that photography was an art and would, in future, be protected as such. Photographer describes the "painterly feel" of one of his images, but says that he doesn’t consciously think of such things when he selects his subjects. He hopes that particular photographs "speak for themselves". Film of some of the photographer’s subjects. Commentary: "In 1888, George Eastman patented the Kodak No.1 portable camera…", and quotes Eastman’s brief instructions for its operation.