Art, Photography, and Literature

One of my favorite and most respected authors, a man with over 40 books to his name and several screenplays, said something in a forward to a book on fiction with which I cannot agree. He made the statement that the advent of photography created a dearth of western writers who cannot compete with the grandeur and beauty of western photography. He said that it would take a wordsmith of great skill to improve on the picture of horses running.

As I think on this author's western fiction, I realize the element that is not present in his writing. He does not expend much time or energy describing the land or the region. Instead, he tends to use marvelous stories and people's reactions to events and circumstances to provide the reader with an image of the country. After reading his comments on photography, I am beginning to understand his approach to writing and why I have always wanted to read more descriptive language on the land. Ironically, I also know this writer is a visual type of person who has a great love of the outdoors and a warm sense of beauty and awe of the country.

Before proceeding, I want to reiterate my respect for this writer and my own hesitation to be a critic. I am not convinced it is my place to disagree with such an austere and successful writer, one whose achievements are remarkable, and one who is held in high esteem by the literary world. Yet perhaps it is my own admiration and knowledge of his works, that gives me an opposing view at least on one issue.

While photography is certainly an art form and a "picture can be worth a thousand words," I nevertheless find greater imagery presented in words than in a photograph. Now I realize that is a bold statement and must be qualified in order to give it greater credibility. For instance, to state that "the tree is an oak tree with green leaves" gives very little information, thus making a photograph of the same tree much preferred. Yet in literature and in art, I am not interested in remaking the same tree or in some kind of accurate physical description of the tree. Instead I am interested in perspective, perception, and perspicacity. I am fascinated with the emotions of the tree or its history or its future or its place in the universe. I want to know what the writer is feeling as he describes the tree and I want to see beyond the obvious characteristics of the tree. And that is why I prefer a written image of the tree.

To take it another step, in art I prefer a more abstract rendering of the same tree. While I can certainly respect and am in awe over the sheer artistic ability of a person who can create an exact copy of the real object, in truth it does not interest me nearly as much as another artist's abstraction of the same object. It is well and good to be able to paint realistically and naturally, but the depth of expression occurs from an artist's concept of what the tree means to him. To attempt visually to portray the emotions, light, power, and perception of the tree and how it appears to an individual regardless of its collective impression, is to reach deeply for meaning. As you read, take a moment to scroll down the side of this blog-site and study the Salvador Dali artwork. You may love it, or hate it, or maybe be indifferent to it, yet perhaps it does strike some kind of emotional chord, and maybe it causes you to pause in contemplation and in thought. And that is why I prefer abstracts over naturalism in art.

In literature, a description of our tree that produces in my imagination an exact duplicate of a typical tree is certainly to be valued, for to write a sentence or a paragraph that produces a pictorial representation with all its intricacies and without the nebulousness of most writing is to be precise, albeit unimaginative. Yet, to write a sentence that evokes emotion, feelings, confusion, complacency, or the past, the present, the potential, is to write at a more meaningful level. This is not to say that a writer who chooses to present the world in terms of circumstances and events is a poor writer. Perhaps, in fact, it is a sign of a great writer who can depict nature through the eyes of the events of the people. Yet, for me, I prefer a moment or two, a sentence or two, that describes the world in terms of the feelings gained. One of the best books I have recently read that does this very thing is The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Tucker: "When I encountered the oak tree, boldly bursting forth with green leaves, full and sturdy, demonstrating heartiness through its large, but rough exterior, at a height proving many years of dedicated growth as it towered above the other trees, I felt a surge of optimism, not at the formidable size, but rather at the tiny acorns that adorned its branches. The acorns sent a message to the minions, of which I am, that in spite of our years, we can still be productive."