“Art Without Compromise*” by Wendy Richmond. Publisher: Allworth Press (2009).
Crawling out from under the worst financial environment since 1929, it would be entirely understandable if photographers, illustrators and other creative-types spent their precious reading time, should they be lucky enough to actually have any, diving into books dedicated to business survival strategies, or perhaps technical tomes that could help them rise above their competitors by acquiring heightened skills within their craft. Nonetheless, I would heartily recommend Art Without Compromise* (and don’t ask my why there is an asterisk at the end of the title; since it was written by an artist, just chalk it up to creative license) as an antidote to all the grim front-page news and subsequent forced-operation in survival mode that many creatives have found themselves in over the past couple of years.
uthor Wendy Richmond, a Communication Arts columnist since 1984, as well as a teacher, artist and media observer, has put together a thought-proving, insightful compendium of extremely brief essays which, in total, are a collective call to arms for the creative process as well as concise commentary on 21st century technology and attitudes toward both art and artists. And, because no single essay exceeds 5 or 6 pages (most are only two or three pages), you can easily snatch her book off the shelf and devour an essay or two in one of the many “in-between spaces” she describes in the essay titled “Killing Time”:
“In our twenty-first century society, most of us have lives that consist of densely packed activities. We do so many things in different locations with different people (even when we are just sitting at our computers) that we have created a by-product: innumerable ‘in-between’ spaces of time. They are the gaps that exist between finishing one thing and starting the next. These gaps are typically short and unpredictable in length: empty moments that, for the most part, simply require us to wait. But we never simply ‘wait’, do we? Because we are a hyperactive, hyperconsumptive society, we have to be busy, productive and entertained, even during the in-betweens.”
Richmond is an unabashed proponent of the value of the creative process itself. Thus, one of the book’s values is its encouragement for artistic professionals to welcome the “unknown” (which stimulates curiosity), rid themselves of both internal and external editors, make room for serendipity, and strive for some degree of recapturing a time, perhaps experienced only early-on in the professional lives of numerous artists, when work and play was seamless. There may be more than a few working pros who could use one of Richmond’s “excitement meters: an internal gauge, an indicator of what I find interesting and positive and worth pursuing.”
Although Richmond’s book is not about photography per se, there is nonetheless much within its pages that touches on the creation, effects and applications of both moving and still pictures, since the author has extensive history working with both, though often in a somewhat non-traditional photography context. For example, she discusses the growing pervasiveness of surveillance cameras, and in “Framing Video” states that “on a surveillance camera, everyone looks guilty,” and later in that same essay says: “More and more, video is becoming the basis by which people learn and then determine what is the ‘truth.’ Over the years, video has been like a chameleon, literally changing its colors in an effort to be viewed as ‘real.’ Because we no longer trust anything too slick, we have been given a whole genre of television ads, news, and reality television shows that use low production value and appear (or at least pretend) to be unscripted and unedited. Low quality equals high authenticity.”
ven non-creative professionals will find many of the essays in Art Without Compromise* engaging, but especially enjoyable and stimulating are the chapters “Questioning the Tools” and “The Twenty-First Century Landscape,” both of which offer up enlightened opinions on such topics as computers, iPods, cell phones and the post-9/11 trend towards Big Brotherism. Addressing the plague of our times, the self-absorbed cell phone user (“Private Talk in Public Places”), Richmond observes: “Perhaps when you see only one half of the conversation, that person seems to be committing a greater breach of public space. The tone of a cell phone voice is distinctive. It is a little bit louder, and it is self-privileging. It implies a lack of civility…The lack of awareness of one’s immediate surroundings is benign when it’s confined to a private place. But take it out in public and it enrages those who witness it.”
Chances are that most readers will never meet Wendy Richmond in person; my guess, however, is that after finishing Art Without Compromise* they’ll want to, and the ensuing conversation will be anything but boring.
review by phh
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