Reading respond: "For Slower Image"

The article argues that painting is the unique image with direct human contact. Though the mass medias (internet, film, TV shows, magazine and etc.) pelt thousands of images to us everyday, painting is still "alive". It has more human interactivity that artists put more time and thoughts into. Each work is out of accurate, thoughtful brushstrokes. Painting allows for a more intimate connection to human perception both from artist and the viewer. Sometimes, the texture and shading and unexpected certain shapes created by artists simply couldn't be graphic, because they were so visually sophisticated. Slow painting, slow images represents a slow post-industrial life that keeps everything real. 

As a film and photography major who also love painting, this reading is quite interesting, especially comparing to Bazin's article "The Ontology of the Photographic Image". I agree that paintings are unique but I think it has nothing to do with how much time and effort artists put into them. Photographers and filmmakers put tons of time, thoughts, ideologies and human interactivity into their works too. It's different from snap shots on Facebook! 

I'd more agree with Bazin's perspective. He argues that the invention of photography and cinema has freed the plastic arts form their obsession with realism. The transition from the baroque art to photography is not only perfecting the physical process, but also satisfied our psychological obsession with realism. The mechanical reproduction of making an image that man plays no part fills our desire for illusion. In simple words, people don’t need paintings to remember or reproduce a person or events anymore. 

Contemporary artists tend to abandon the kind of painting that simply copy the reality like a photograph. The objective character of photography, which has no creative intervention of man, marks the distinction with painting. This objective nature forced us to accept the real existence of the object re-presented in front of us, also as in time and space. Thus, it frees paintings to go back pursuing the pure aesthetic autonomy.