Spectrum Hawaii; Koreans in Hawaii and Van Deren Coke on Photography; Interview with Pritwish Neogy

The following program is a production of Keiichi in Honolulu Hawaii Public Television. The following program has been funded in part by the Hawaii State foundation on culture and the arts and a grant from the people of Chevron in Hawaii. Yeah. Today on a noted guide to the evolution of photography as a medium now we venture into a culture that has given how a beautiful architect and dad. Landed this morning. Korea. Called it a gem of a country inhabited by noble people.

Think of the GM and the ferment in the. Rugged mountains around it by China Russia and Japan. Korea has been a. Conduit for what you thought talked about might. Even Be A. Korean course in the course of history has received a great deal of influence from China in many sectors and. Of course less willing to accept that they suit its two Korean traditions and their native culture. And reject the voice that they are not suited to them. And also another video important war that Korea had played historic audio us to transmit the highest realization that I think existed in China to Japan putting sort of a breach in the transmissions.

Corrigan I have chosen well on the ground. Then you think yeah then language you are remarkably you know me. As with other ethnic groups the Koreans first contact with Hawaii within the fields of the sugar plantation. The sugar plantation Association here in Hawaii had been charged with the labor force being one applies by the Japanese the Chinese had been prohibited from coming to Hawaii and you know at this stage because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. So she was looking for alternative naval sources. And they found a career as a convenient supplier of the naval force to Hawaii. And starting from one thousand or three after the first group of creativity of 103 even and women arrived on

January 13th. One thousand or three. And the neighbors continue to come through and teach me the part of a 19 or 5. Then Korean government was forced to accumulate any additional behavior as to why. Largely because of the pressure exerted by the Japanese government. When emigration from Korea ended in 105 eight thousand Koreans made Howie and a few of the Koreans found the opportunity they left the field for the cities and small businesses. I remember one they do who told me that they out there they opened the shop. One thing they did was pretty Monday morning. Read that they had that business on out that he opened she opened up the shop. She struck down the cash register

and picked up one and went to a bank and deposited it and the reek. Whether she made money or not. The committee they did in this way they used to buy pot and powers to run. The boarding house. Although unity is going on. Around you knowing its cultural contribution. On the east west campus sits the Korean study. Building them and the Korean Akala by using the royal throne of the dynasty. The structure is patterned after a 14th century palace and so. In 1974 Korean craft came to Hawaii to build the building which by lattice were a deep green glazed tiled roof and

beautifully painted on a mentation. Expressions of him may not be as visible. But when discovered they ought to be like no other music for instance. Song named a national treasure for her contribution to play and composed for the. 970 moved to Hawaii with her daughter and now lives in New. Delhi. Her generation.

Follows. They didn't think about anything else just have a teacher teach them and they play all their life. Different teachers. Beginning at the age of seven. Next to her. The person. Asked her father if she could get there. No. Music is based on the trip when you know the rhythm of 30 to 1 or 30 temple or rhythm. Whereas the

Japanese or Chinese musics are based on a rhythm rhythm of FOL that is really a big difference. More true the more sort of extend the. Sound part of Korean music emphasize more on the on part of their natural sound of the instrument and the voice. Your. Record for the manufacturing that you know you can't instrument you don't have to spend energy through the instrument to cry to produce the crying sound. Because they're wrong. Sound really. Report poor quality of the Korean music. Oh.

It said that dad actually originated in Korea and then migrated to China and Japan. Whether or not the folk dances begin with the religious ceremony 3000 years ago. And still found villages. Had a. Form of hard. Music. Especially music because careering traditional really of the past were just ethics of Korea. That expression is not there for

restraining expression this word will express in the. Korean dance can be found at. There. Is. The society and the culture. My mother. In a country where I have learned to grow

because she taught me in the strict discipline society. Gone through when she was young. Just read. How much he enjoyed it.

They have never done that. And. Sharing one's culture with others gives the artist enjoyment as well as pleasure to the audience. Sharing one's vision can give a different perspective to an everyday occurrence. The photographer shares his world of images through his camera vendor and Koch the director of photography of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art takes us through the evolution of photographic images in an exhibition at the Academy of. Photography can be as commonplace as snapshots of a Fourth of July. Or a studied treatment of a moon rise over New Mexico once a plaything of the wealthy hobbyist photography is now instant and accessible to

many. During its maturation. Created by history. Technical development and an ongoing relationship with the other. From the beginning. Of photography. Destroyed the minute your. People went and created the artistic. Skill introduced to photography but it was always sort of a handmade. There are. Four photographs that looks like a drawing room. Photographer drew on the work and.

Their greatest. Influence was Whistler. Model in turn with Japanese prints in many places so the photographers would often go to that original source tickly the 19th century Yukio in France. And we see that quite clearly in this famous picture of the Flat Iron Building in New York City which has both in its overall shape and the way the tree interacts with the building. Recollections of Japanese printmaking techniques operate in New York City that most of our. Art Gallery in America. At this gallery in 1915 that photographer Paul Strand met and Francis because this meeting affected the development of photography and the subsequent Strand.

They began in nineteen sixteen to make pictures of elements that were geometric in nature without reference to what they actually represented. Like the bowls there and the pair have to do with. Geometric forms not with tires and bowls. Then the relationship between these elements or seen as elements rather than representing in a documentary sense what was in front of the camera. I was a very great step toward abstraction and toward the utilization of a whole new kind of. Subject matter for photography. Technological advances now have made for a smaller camera one that could be handy. Now the photographer and. The snapshot is created. We work is fairly consistent in the way he gets. To the. Human element without settlin

demarcation as. Are the other things that drain years of their lasting power. Great contribution. Think of inches of people. You know like so. Whatever motion might be that is beyond the commonplace Cartier-Bresson probably early realize that the portability of this camera and the fact that it had 35 exposures he could expand without reloading. I gave him a great flexibility of viewpoint and he would use this film at a good run through his camera to indicate to get up to a point that what he called the decisive moment when everything came together the idea in the form and it's this marvelous example of. A person suspended in the photograph. That we all empathize

with almost no bodily séance because he has not come in down to the splash and we know it's going to have a place and then in the background the marvelous example way over in the background of a big poster that exemplified the skilled dancer also making a jump. And sort of a repetition life like an echo. That was a great breakthrough as far as attitude toward the target one candid photography in the sense of catching something that was unsavory it was just extending human vision because the human eye can see all this the same time and the camera can arrest it so we can see it later. These kind of instantaneous recordings were snapshots. And as a consequence he was more interested in.

Making any art from the beginning have been changing them to capture a feeling of binding them to the image of the. Tree. Or using a manipulative process. To. Actually impress people with their knowledge of the. Kinds of. Monkeying with them. It comes out of a different motivation that comes out of trying to break out of the straitjacket of the pure photograph. If you make a mark on a photograph in the modest mark of a photograph you do have this extraordinary change. In. The way space is understood. And since they are the artist

photographers became very sophisticated and began to use the language of the painter space. They began to use this then there was this tremendous sun or. Other other textures actual physical things on top of the print. Picture Of Bill Larson incorporates many of the things that divers are interested they're interested in color. In this case he's gotten part of this color by using the old blue print process. The image is a snapshot. He's holding on to the idea of photography's relationship to the snapshot. And that's been sold to another piece of just sheer textured material that has a zipper and it being one kind of texture the cloth another tearing down another part of the edge of it. Then underneath is what looks to be like a Polaroid picture. This great instant color process we have available to us today.

And then linking that his own passages of the whole rainbow car which gives you both texture and the car. And so he's got the whole need of photographers for that for that texture and color all in one ball of wax. Color is the darling of all photographers today because there is a lot of. Limitation. Because it is new. There's. A new dimension has been added by just sheer color of many many new problems. One of the problems is the philosophic one are we trying to emulate nature trying to mirror the nature are we trying to use color for its own emotional quality. I think that the person that bridges this gap as well as anybody is film are which

is a real problem. Simon but he ends up with. Pictures and he has an eye for things that are dramatic out of things that are rather commonplace. And he's a good example of how he works with process color or color that is processed in labs in the labs. But there's been a great need on the part of a lot of diverse to get some kind of car other than process color because the same problems uninterrupted surface of the image that everything is done with the eye on the land. Hand in hand with the development of photography but the appearance of the pictorial magazine a market place for energy is a tremendous increase first in Germany in France and in the 30s in the United States. In picture magazines there are generally weekly they consumed an

awful lot of photographs they wanted something that was sometimes informative sometimes spot news sometimes something that was rather exotic. They said these magazines are agencies work for the magazine when all the world. To do what they call photo journalism in other words pieces where in this case Jane Smith the great American photographer who was linked with Life magazine most of his life. He's gone to Spain and gotten well acquainted with the people in the. In the little Spanish village that he was. Profiling I guess you'd call it. And he stayed around and he took pictures of all the people in this case woman spinning thread as it had been done for a thousand years to show how these people lived in the 1950s. It was a sort of a foray into romantic and

arranged fascination with what was not happening in your own back yard and these all were knitted together with. Text. And literally picture stories 8 10 15 pictures would constitute a picture story. But this is a kind of documentary photography. But they truly aren't really documents because there's a great deal of coaching. And directing going on when these pictures are made but they are meant to seem to be caught. Or fanned. It has a tremendous. Toll because of its. Immediate identification of things that in turn evoke other things. Because we really believe that we still really believe the photograph with all the manipulation that takes place. We really believe what we see in there did exist in front of that camera and then we can use that as a bring board for our legislation.

Like that's the appeal. And what happened to. The fine art photography all of that has been going on. Audience very sophisticated audience. We have now thousands of students who have taken one two three four courses in photography. People who understand what I've been saying about metaphor and. Understand the history of photography understand the aspirations of photographers. And as a consequence they go out from accountants or they become doctors lawyers or whatever they might do professionally that sticks with them and then there's no fear on their part of what photographic exhibition. Just like this one I like. I don't like that one. I think this is you. This photographic run assaults if you want to call it that. But certainly this great surge of interest in photography as an art form.

Who just turned out much more sophisticated image makers years when. They've had taken our history and they've taken photo history and they might have had some anthropology and they might have had some of these other things. But give them a quote out of which they can. And they expect other people to have this kind of background when they make their picture. It's very difficult to make a care more than something. That the human eye does readily and the human brain can by the human eye without even. Care because it's meant to do one simple mechanical thing. We sort of think that it works like a human eye and you can't make it you can't make it in your head because it's a very simple instrument however complicated it might seem to be. That of course is a challenge very difficult to make art with a camera. That's the that's the

crux of the matter. Very difficult indeed to really make art with a camera. The decisive moment of preparation and training his camera on hand to offer another perspective to the new and to the individual. Spectrum. Spectrum was funded in part by a grant from the people of Chevron. You know what.

And by the Hawaii State foundation on culture and the arts. The following program is a production of Katie Chichi in one a little over

public television. The following program is made possible by grants from the state foundation on culture and the arts and Chevron USA. In Hawaii. A native of India in the West both ancient and modern

society uses it. Hello there and welcome back to spectrum. You know frequently on our program we enjoy featuring members of our community whose interests are primarily in the arts. And today we're very privileged to have with us a specialist in Asian art history. One also has a lively interest in contemporary art. He was educated in Calcutta India and at Harvard University and he has developed a unique approach to appreciating the fine arts. And he's here with us today to share to share some of those. Please welcome to our program Mr. Perth wish Professor nailed it very nice to have you with us. At 3 it has such an unusual name for things which were that the original Sanskrit. It's perhaps not and unusual in Sanskrit to when translated might sound a little preposterous.

It means the larger bars. In other words it's simply another way of saying God. My goodness that I'm in the presence of God today. With the heart since you've been teaching art here in Hawaii what 23 years. Yes 23 years a great deal has been said about the purpose of art and what good is it. And in society a lot of people feel that art is just a luxury. How do you feel about that what value is art. It reminds me of the statement once made by TS Eliot when he was asked a similar question about poetry. And he said that this is not necessarily the best answer but this is better than any other answer I can think of. He said that at that point was to PDA amusement and the emphasis was in the fresh word superior. You can say that it is somewhat flip our

sarcastic statement but that's how he put it. So I would say that in a way it is something that is that is closed to entertainment. But if it is a PDA then it must be understood as serious entertainment and entertainment in the sense of real creation in there already than sense of guitar and we are the created by means of art. So from the point of view of bookkeeping one can say that art is not significant because it is not anything material. On the other hand one can say that it is very important in order to believe that we are still human beings. Is it important to the survival of a civilization. Well on the basis of. The fact that we do not know of any time in human culture even before civilization

were developed there was always art. And probably it's difficult to know exactly how to answer that question but it is talk that all the things that had evidence from those remote times the war practiced because of a certain advantage in actuality even though we may not be able to say exactly how survival is enhanced by our very precisely. But it is possible to hazard a few guesses that it creates a harmonious relationship between the human being and the context of the human being. This is by participating in the creative endeavor. Human beings then more or more benign towards the things that you do you feel that

America has a say in the 20th century not been as interested in. Art. And the artists say and where Europe has been very interested in art throughout history and back in several several centuries art was very popular at the time. Musicians are architects fine artists were always very popular they became fashionable. Where are we going in America with this. Is it going to be detrimental to us. Will this is a different history from the history of Europe. So the kind of culture that was on the surface. In Europe with regard to any educated Farson and you know that did not work exactly in the same way in the United States. But I would not say that art has not been valued in this county. It depends on which particular class or which group of people who are out there fighting. True. And

art today is is a very important aspect of this country the scholarship as a matter of fact. The cound that was held for a long time. My hat is now belongs to New York. As far as art is concerned so. That evidence art is to the good of this country. Yeah but it's up to in the news for example you certainly don't see a report on art every day but you certainly do see a report on the financial. And you see a report on sports. Yes you know you see a five minute report of what's happening in the art world. No no that's not possible because those journalists reporting about the physical financial and political aspects of this civilization of this college and of this country and now everything is specialized so that one has to look into the many specialized provocations that do due to poor hocked. And they do not report on the other aspects of this

culture at all. They don't say anything about politics or economics although sometimes they do. In so far as it affects the domain of art. Let's talk about you know as an artist you're a sculptor and a painter. That's how I was trained. I have relinquished those possibilities in favor of becoming an art historian. Why is that. Well I decided because I had probably a precautious development of critical faculties and I decided that my art was the art that I was producing was not good enough. So I thought that I should rather devote my energies to the study of our childhood and the creation of life. But that doesn't mean that I still don't dabble in they do. How about as a sculptor or a painter now when you when you approach your work you have an idea about what you want to do. Is that communicating to the observer basically what it is which you had in

mind. Or does the observer look at it from a totally different point of view. Well the first question would be of course the ideal situation and if I could communicate what I have in mind to the observer. But first of all as an artist I do not have all of the details of what I want to communicate. That itself is uncertain because it's part of the creative process in which the artist can be quite surprised at the results and then it would be presumptuous to believe that an artist could communicate with such effectivity if there are such precision that that all that is the content of the work will be actually communicated. This is only roughly vaguely possible and then it has to be left at that and then in Thai the walk may be better understood or better misunderstood as the case may be. But these positions and never

fixed they go on changing so that the creative work of art is essentially an exploration in the ability of the I've known how much of this is private. Your own thoughts and your own motivations and ideas as opposed to public. What you want the public to see and observe and is there a private art where you can only do it for yourself. Not probably literally. If there were if I knew certainly with complete certainty that nobody else is ever going to look at this walk that would not perhaps encourage me to create any work of art at all although that it's often said by artists that they create art for themselves. But then they are cheating themselves at that moment as viewers and spectators as observers that you see when they have finished the work of art then no longer the artist but rather the consumer at heart and in that sense one

could possibly say that one can be the spectator of one's own creation and we have been talking about art.. We throw around that term quite a bit today and I think that perhaps as an art history instructor an historian and a professor of art at the university I would like to have your definition. Of are and I know that's a very difficult thing to do but I'd be curious to hear what you had to say about what I already know. Well the surface answer to that question would be that the definition of today is that there could be no definition of rock. This is a historical situation that has developed in in our times in which. Art is no longer clearly seen but rather it's a kind of an activity of indeterminate Katic dead which can function as art under certain suitable circumstances. Now that's a very vague thing to say very safe and so on the other hand that seems to be the situation right

now. Anything could be art if it is accepted in the cut and glee. It established our context. If the ah context accepts it shows it. And it is written up as art then we have no choice but to say that at this time this must be functioning as art therefore it is art. But in other words the thing of art that there was a certain category of things called Art is no longer possible to be established. It's an action that could be art there are no criteria. Well then it only temporary criteria which is which comes very close to criteria that we see in fashion. That is this season's criteria. That all C sounds very cynical but it is at the same time the truth for Surely though if you take modern art for example and you take the traditional Classics there must be something that's fundamental about

both of them that we can consider art. Yes traditionally there were fundamentalists and the fundamentalists were very important and that is one of the identities. What are the ways to recognize something that is traditional that there were values riding which lasted for a very long time centuries sometimes thousands of years. And these were basic values which were never allowed to be changed jeopardized or completely transformed or replaced by something quite other than itself. But in more recent times that has all changed. And we do not have any such clear cut ideas or ideas or values. The eternal verities identify the classics and the traditional But the eternal very very very hard to establish today. That does not mean that there is no continuity. Art still goes on in Intrade

is diverse but it is not the same thing that if you say the thing Miss art has become now. At one time it could be a sculpture it was a carving of a marble and a painting was essentially an oil paint on a canvas. Today it is hard to even use the word sculpture and painting. Those categories are not really significant. But the word art is a catchall that still identifies the peculiar activities that human beings in gauging and which is not necessarily very materialistic. There surely must be a problem there for an art teacher today. You're talking a contemporary modern art against the classics. How do you as a professor of art approach teaching art. Where do you start with it. Well I have the difficult task of finding out that the certainties of the past cannot be readily

applied to the to what is going on today in the same field that is still being called art. The same word is being used. It has different implications and then try to establish a. That approach will always remain valid to you flexible and open and I did then trying to the police a clearcut crystalize definition would and I did try to cut and crystallize definition of recent vintage. Instead of that one has to abandon that quest and try to come up with something that would be flexible and open to existential. Yes it is in a very the sense he exists if I were to. Let me just reverse the question. How can one become more sensitive and appreciative of art is this something that's genetic inherited as a something that's learned. How can how can any of us go out and say go to a museum or

just walk outside a building and see a structure to see the way a garden is designed. See a painting or anything. Fashionable art if you want to take a look at an automobile How can you appreciate the qualities of it. Well perhaps the immediate answer would be the Indian view. Traditionally Indian view that an individual is like a two wheeled chariot one of the wheels is what has been inherited by this parson for which the parson cannot really take any credit. The way that parson was born and the other one is the effort that the parson has made and the combination of these two wheels then let the chattier go on. So it's something like that. There has to be something that is perhaps genetic something that is perhaps in barn to the extent such things are possible. On the other hand the rest of it is the atmosphere. The soundings in which one had grown up what was permitted was what was included in all that sort of thing. And then one might get interested

in some of these. One may develop an interest against some of these prevalent material in one's soundings and then one puts in effort to develop that. And so the two wheels of the chariot then come together and the chattier grounds. Of course I would rather have both wheels I want. It occurs to me that with your appreciation of our intercourse being an art historian eventually that you must of had. Somewhere along the line a great deal of influence and learning who was an individual's teachers and yes I have had a number of important teachers three of them I would call great teachers and the first one happened to have been my grandmother who was responsible for bringing me up and I was very small because of circumstances. And she talked me how to lard. She made me see that better than teaching

one should rely on learning. And this is something that one has to do oneself and the teacher simply is helping is not cheating. The would be student but is not actually imparting knowledge. Knowledge has to be acquired by oneself. And this is something that is a very valuable idea that I received from her. How did she do that for you. Well as she did that by by simply trying to field my endless questions by trying to answer them and then say that well that's probably not all that there is to it but this is what I can tell you at this time. And when you grew up and learned to read and delve into these matters probably you will find a more profound answer deeper and said all. You might also discover that some questions can never be answered so that there is something that is that will remain unknowable to you but you will be wiser

for this knowledge at least. She gave you something for your 10th birthday Well yes that was quite extraordinary I was very touched and I still remember that in my 10th birthday she gave me the keys to her library. Who do you something as a self parson she had accumulated books on various subjects and more than in more than one language. And this was in a glass glass covered type of thing old fashioned thing and she just said that this is my gift to you. Now this is this library's yours and how we cause I see that you are interested in finding out things and books are necessary for that project. Take it. So there you are and have started your career as a teacher really. You had some other teachers all that were very influential in your life. One said and I quote here nothing can be taught but it can be learned. Yes this was my mathematics teacher because initially I was

interested in physics and mathematics and in order to go ahead with higher mathematics theoretical aspects of mathematics I had this tutor who said to me that he didn't believe in teaching but still he thought that he was a good teacher which is a paradox. And by that he meant that he taught that if you if he is a good teacher then soon I will not need him. So he's kind of dissolving his job. Yes that was his view of the best kind of teaching. So I would consider him as a teacher and he would probably have admired the fact that actually do not remember his name anymore. He would not have wanted me to eliminate his name but rather what he did for me. So he taught you well yes. Let's move a little now to what's happening in the modern world. We are now in the 20th century particular America where in the world of computers

there was an article written by Richard Sennett and Newsweek where he talks about the new administrators and now they're all very tidy and they have their well managed art institutions and there is no risk taking no waste and no mistakes. How do you feel about. The whole idea of money and art coming together now are becoming a big business and the artists tin already at least is tending to make him come sandwiched in between all that. What's happening to the art is the individual and the whole art world. And I see that you insisted in asking very difficult questions. I don't know if I could answer that satisfactorily but I would say that part of it is quite true that art is now big business and the perception that in under certain circumstances the collection of art for investment could be better than stocks and bonds and that has

resulted in a kind of a distortion of the previous view of art in society and its relationship between art and society. And some artists have benefited enormously from this situation. But on the other hand the question of the idea of economy and art of course is very intimately related. On the other hand the question of technology is a little more complicated because it is quite true that the information gathering storing and dispensing equipment electronic equipment could be treated as a medium of art that if you say by scuttling the intention of those instruments by distorting that and making them behave in a distinctly different way maybe creatively it is possible to create something that we

may insist on calling as art. And there have been artists who have tried to do that. On the other hand that is probably not all that is likely to happen as it is out of the prevalence of these instruments are these devices and already we are perceiving this something that is called High tech is being countered in terms of a counterpoint by a new relatively new expression which is high touch. Which means that it could be that it would develop in contrast with rejection of. Temporary rejection of high tech and art could go back to the individual craft of one single parson. But why would that happen. Well that is probably because of the peculiarity of the human animal that there has to be some sort of

dialectical opposition you know order with to create a dynamism of a situation. Otherwise everything will be resolved and everything will be similar and therefore die. Yes but couldn't the computer art form the technology in the 20th century art form if you will working with computers and strictly be a new tool. The old days in the classic forms you use brushes and chisels and so forth. Now we're using buttons and wheels and dials. Yes indeed. But I would like to propose that perhaps it's not a matter of one replacing the other form of art but perhaps the necessity of these two different kinds of art at least and that one of this could very well perform in the public domain and the other in the privacy of the individual's own

needs and so on. So that I see the coexistence of these two dimensions or do these two directions out in one sub blending together. So in the private world all these artists are producing these magnificent pieces of art but will never see the right view of that. That may be just right because it would have a private audience. It could be a private audience of one and of people. Yes in just a minute or two that I would like to. I'm sure that you have a lot of other interests other than just are and I would like to kind of know what preoccupies and some of your thoughts. Well part of it is to discover it again and again. What kind of conceptual structure one can invent or construct by means of which a better understanding of the complexities of the domain of art could be achieved.

This is of course sort of philosophical in in an ultimate Katic. The other is to try to escape from these problems into experiencing. Perhaps arts which are not part of my profession ready to say I would then like to as soon as I leave my office I would not look at any other work of art visual work of art but I would immerse myself in reading poetry or listening to classical music. Any particular time period of music that you like. Well I have started to take some interest in Western music and I decided that because of this structure that 80 the music would be easier for me to understand. So I started out from music in a sense and broke and then gradually come to the later developments including modern contemporary Stravinsky. We have a lot of that.

I want to thank you very much Professor for being with us today on spectrum it was delightful chatting with you and I'm sure that you have imparted a great deal of knowledge and information to many of your students and thank you for sharing that with us. I mean that very much. Thank you. And thank you for being with us on the spectrum today our special guest has been Professor Perth wish they would be he's a professor of art history at the University of Hawaii. I hope that you enjoyed the program and were able to learn a little bit about art and art appreciation today. Thank you for joining us until next time around.