Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Stephen Shore on the diptych


Stephen Shore in his small but perfectly formed artist's book WITNESS NUMBER ONE comments. "...the form of the book adds one element...to the subject, which is the relationship of the pictures to each other...A simple example is the diptych and why there are very few uninteresting diptychs...You can take two ordinary pictures and put them side by side as a diptych and...improve them both." So here is another, made in China.

3 comments:

doonster said...

I'm not sure if that is the enduring effect of dityochs or not.

On the one hand, as viewer, there there is an assumption that a deeper/broader meaning is implied. this leads to longer contemplation.

If no such meaning is implicit (i.e. the artist just bolts together 2 images) time is wasted or the viewer drops the whole idea as meaningless.

I like to think along the former lines: there is implies meaning, earranting my further attention. If, over aseries, I start to "get" the idea, I linger. If not, I lean towards the latter lidea (no meaning implied) and move on quickly.

Does any of that make sense??

doonster said...

Crikey, that was rubbish - excuse the poor typing.

Beattie's Book Blog said...

Thnks Harvey, great images, we must have a coffee and a catch-up so I can hear more about this journey of yours.