Sir, - I disagree fundamentally with Brian Fallon's opening paragraph in Artists in their own Light (March 1st). He asserts that the camera has replaced the artist's traditional role of representation with (probably) no artistic loss.
On the contrary, I, think it has been a great artistic loss. The major loss has been that of accomplishment. The accomplishment in art are similar to those which underpin the European musical tradition. In art, as in music, skills have to be painstakingly learned and this requires an extensive institutional and educational structure. The skills can be graded - there is an objective standard of excellence, a mathematical and analytical analysis, there are harmonies, and in art, particularly, there are proportion systems and beauty.
The musical arts have retained accomplishment. The visual arts have, abandoned it. Since the mid-sixties we have completely demolished the educational structure and loss of accomplishment in the European figurative tradition has been particularly marked. The art critic Robert Hughes has said that within two generations it will be completely lost. David Hockney has said that artists can no longer draw. It would certainly take two generations, starting from now, to repair the damage and bring us back to a base from which we could have living continuity in European art.
The major area of cultural loss is in the experience of seeing. The camera short cuts this process and substituting the camera deprives the artist of the visual enhancement that comes through classical accomplishment. In a living system this would diffuse from the artists to the community at large.
This is no minor loss as the classical way of seeing is a large section of our cultural heritage. Unfortunately, art critics like Brian Fallon create a climate of disparagement that contributes to its ongoing destruction. - Yours, etc.,
(sculptor),
Richmond Avenue,
Monkstown, Co Dublin.
Brian Fallon writes: Whoever said that the camera had replaced traditional methods of representation? Not I. I merely referred to certain areas - little better than hackwork, after all - in which it has taken over as a medium of record. As for what Mr Buick says about loss of drawing skills, etc, I agree broadly with much of it but I am more hopeful than he appears to be.