Exerpt from Paul Strand Essay

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" The existence of a medium, after all, is its absolute justification, if as so many seem to think, it needs one at all, comparison of potentialities is useless and irrelevant. Whether a watercolor is inferior to an oil, or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent.To have to despise something in

Comments

[zeronine]

The important thing to take from the above essay is that disparate media cannot be compared in a simple linear ordering, vis a vis "oil is superior to watercolor, always." This point is often lost on purists, and not just in the artistic community. However, one should not lose sight of the fact that though they cannot be stacked and ordered as such, different media are neither equal nor equivalent. I would argue then that one should take the above essay excepting the fact that each particular medium carries with it a vocabulary of expressiveness capable of different things, and the artist must be fluent in that particular language in order to realize said "intense self-realization" in it. Succinctly: different tools for different jobs with different results.