From Naturalism to the edges of Abstraction

Ha! I bet you didn't expect a title like that from me!

I can't take credit for it though, it's lifted from the Scottish National Gallery website. They have a new exhibition on and to advertise it they have created the above pictured image, it's a serious of "triangles" (like giant Toblerone boxes standing on end) which when viewed from one side show "The Sower" by Vincent Van Gogh and when viewed from the other side you see "Lake Keitele" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (nope I've never heard of him either!). This is apparently called a Lenticular image or "turning picture" (as you walk past it the image turns from one to the other).

The exhibition is called "Van Gogh to Kandinsky | Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880-1910" and is on until mid October. I did debate going in to see it but I'm not a big fan of "art" in general, I did visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam a couple years ago and I have to say I wasn't impressed (I can certainly understand why he never sold anything when alive).

This does bring up an interesting question of "what is art", are photographs art? If so does that make Blipfoto a 21st century art gallery. If I take a photograph of a masterpiece, is it art? Or are photographs just a recording of real life? The answer is of course, "yes", "no", "sometimes", "it depends" and "isn't all art a matter of opinion"?