The Paragone between Painting and Photography

Paragone (Italian for “comparison”) was used historically to establish the superiority of one of the arts over the others.

Until the arrival of photography, painting was seen as the unrivaled form of art. Photography struggled to be accepted as true art and really brought the question of "what is art" to the forefront. Perhaps it was the democratic nature of the camera, where every Tom, Dick or Nancy could produce a photograph. Maybe it was the lack of skill required to push the shutter release button. Whatever the reason, the art world resisted including photography in its pantheon. 

This was despite painter Paul Delaroche's pronouncement that "As of today, painting is dead." when he learned of the camera's invention by Louis Daguerre. Why learn how to use tools like pencils or brushes to depict the world when you could simply pick up a camera and capture reality? Of course, Delaroche had little to fear since he was a "history painter" specializing in recreating historical events, often with broad artistic license.

Photography claimed to ultimately represent nature in the most accurate way possible. Some painters figured why fight this new invention and strived to produce work that rivaled the camera in its realism. To these artists, the greatest compliment was to be told that their painting looked like a photograph. Cameras reproduced what the eye could see and nothing else, the "visual truth." Actually, photographs show reality but not how we really see things. They reduce nature to an almost mechanical state, as exemplified by Eadward Muybridge's photographs of horses in motion. Photographs could show answer the question as to whether a horse's four hooves touch the ground simultaneously, but this is beyond the human eye's ability to perceive. Hence, the horses' movements in photos look unnatural to us. It seems that "optical truth" and visual truth are not the same thing.

Eadweard Muybridge

Animal Locomotion, Plate 626, 1887

Previously, paintings were thought of as a window through which the viewer looked at a stage. With the advent of photography, artists were free to experiment and began to focus solely on the surface of this "windowpane." Artists stopped trying to compete with cameras. Painters were able to use their imaginations and depict things in more than just how they appeared. Painting could create its own truth.

Artists realized that anything could be seen as a work of art. Photography, while gaining acceptance as art, had given form to the age-old question of "what is art?" The entire concept of art had changed by the time Warhol and Duchamp had made their mark.