There was something about Will Evans' discourse on the state of digital art that caused a cloud of thought to begin to take shape. Almost exactly like those in the comic books. For those of you who may not know, Will has an impressionistic way of expressing himself which is at once cryptic and evocative. You may not understand what he is saying, but it makes you think nonetheless.
I have a friend from South Africa who has a distinctive British-esque accent and whenever I talk with him, I invariably fall into speaking like him... or, at least, speaking like I think South Africans talk. It is embarrassing, of course, but I cannot help myself. So it is with Will's writing. To comment is to mimic his style, lest you feel, I don't know..... dumb? And in your aping that approach, SOMETIMES you come upon something.
The Something that has been gnawing at me for the better part of the day has to do with style. With fashion. With Art. The comment I left on his piece had something to do with the phases of an art trend and I simplistically posited that your can tell at what point you are in an art trend by the degree to which the artist is less conscious of exploring and mastering the medium and more conscious of expression of thought. I don't actually KNOW that is the case, but it seems to make sense to me.
A friend recently brought me a formidable stack of books on Art Deco with the instruction: Read these. I don't read... but while thumbing through them and looking at the pictures, I came across the chapter titled: The End of the Movement. And even though I did not read the chapter, the IDEA of it caught my attention to the point that I know I SHOULD read it (and maybe I will).... but in the meantime, what strikes me as pertinent to both Art Deco and Art Digital is that at some point someone is going to write a chapter on both schools called The End of the Movement. Even Claude Monet and John Singer Freaking Sargent each got that chapter.
Naturally, the thing that got me going on all this was the thought, a grandiose moment to be sure, that I might actually be able to predict TRENDS... that I might at the very least be able to guess where we were in the lifespan of the trend. Things go out of fashion (artists hate it when you refer to their work as fashion), and new things come into fashion. But in the larger scheme of things, predictability of trends is kind of a losing proposition.
No. What the IMPORTANT idea here is not to how make a lot of money predicting the next Big Thing, but rather to address another idea which is What Makes You Think This Is Art? How much of art is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. Or if a tree falls in the woods... blah blah. Is Digital Art art? To describe this I am going to use the rather dubious tactic of making an analogy of the Subject Itself. Photography has been around since at least the 1850's and STILL there is a debate as to whether it constitutes art with a capital A. In that light, don't even bring up the subject of video. And although adherents will vehemently nod that it is---it IS!-- unless a culture as a whole acknowledges it thus, is it, in fact, Art? After all, is not art the expression of culture?
The simplistic explanation might be that the MACHINE (the lens, the camcorder, the computer) insulates the artist from the product and thus renders the product (the laser jet printer, the tv monitor) too far removed from the... uh... the Source to qualify it as art. A paintbrush, after all, is at least HUMAN.
But I think a slightly more complex notion might be that artists are supposed to STRUGGLE and how hard could it be, really, to push a shutter button?
Such is the iconography of culture, of art. If it does not have all the recognizable trappings of the collective definition of the culture, it is de facto NOT part of the culture, right? A conundrum. Which is not to say that art, in fact, has to be POPULAR to qualify, but it sure helps.
I might be WRONG about the current obsession with the Capabilities of the Machine rather than the excellence of the output (process vs. product), but this much I know: without a tradition, art is doomed to lack iconography. At least, it will lack iconography beyond its own self-referential world. A modernist will argue that iconography of tradition is shallow and fanciful (the word Disney keeps cropping up), a scripted world. Perhaps, but all one needs to do is look at the world of advertising to know the power of iconography, even if the icon is Modernism itself. The icons, the SYMBOLS, are our cultural glue. Will digital art develop the iconography to speak to our collective pop souls?
But I forgot my point. My POINT was through all this, the proliferation of the imagery, the viral nature of technique, the filling of the www ether with collective expressions of culture (think of Gather as just one big art project), at the moment when, in fact, all imagery that CAN be produced, HAS been produced (and it WILL happen)..... what then?
Here is what: at that moment, art will be defined by what it is not. Like defining the taste of jello by looking at the mold.
For Lisa.
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Comments: 36
But the world is thirsting for my video. I just know it. LOL
I have this weird sort of optimism about the arts in general. There's always something new and interesting around the corner. OTOH there's always something new and really stupid around the corner too.
Seems to me that tools and technique have always been a big thing like in the Renaissance when so many people did paintings that were essentially perspective studies. Even though they had that component there was usually something else there, at least in the work that we look at today.
I don't worry much about big questions, maybe because I'm better equipped to deal with little ones. I made an arbitrary decision years ago that it's impossible to define art. I'm very happy with my decision. I can go to a museum or look at a book and deal with individual pieces in the context of how they affect me. Sometimes I can articulate the reasons I think something is "good" or "bad," "interesting" or "uninteresting" and sometimes it's just an emotional reaction I can't put my finger on.
I'm a firm believer in the theories about the small number of plots in fiction. I think there are a small number of themes in art too. I don't think we'll ever run out of images to represent the themes because things change. Society changes, technology changes, the environment changes...
OK, that's enough thinking for the week.
Once just another source of annoyance, the infomercial has become my default program of choice. Not just any infomercial either. Even I have standards. No. My choice is (are) the orthopedic lifts, the easy-bake oven for grownups, and.... I can't remember the third one, but when I do, I'll tell you when it comes to me.
The plastic orthopedic lifts interest me because I already use them. Except I got mine at CVS and they are by Dr. Sholl (iPhone corrected the spelling of that to Dr. Shill!). I have VERY flat feet (my arches curve OUT). When I was a kid at the swimming pool, others would make fun of my wet footprints. So I started using those when the podiatrist prescribed very expensive ones ($300) for my son who is a bonafied ATHLETE. I am not, so the CVS Dr. Shill's suited me just fine. Until I saw the tv infomercial. The plastic arches are touted by some guy who looks VAGUELY familiar and is just a series of ordinary folk like you and me visibly having what appears to be ORGASMS just by trying on the arch support and having the vague celebrity try to push them over. He fails, of course, but that is not what sold me (so to speak). No. It was when they drove over the plastic support with a STEAMROLLER that made me know: I have GOT to get a pair of those. "You can spend up to $300 for supports like these" (I know, I KNOW!), but you get Two Pair (!) of these steamroller-proof ones for just $20!
I forgot to take down the number, so I had to wait until I saw the infomercial again... which was GOOD so I would have time to REALLY CONSIDER my purchase. Several weeks passed and I was still committed to buy, so that was a good sign. Then, one day I saw the infomercial again! Woo hoo! I got out my cellphone and dialed, still not believing I was actually doing this. I was almost giddy. When the recording came on the line the price was the quoted $20..... plus $15 for shipping and handling.
Click.
What WAS it?
At least you are writing again (but at that hour of the night?) and I get to re-read some really excellent pieces of yours. Thanks!
With the exception of the arch supports, which I really reallly realllllly want, I watch the infomercial with rapt attention trying to get to the bottom of it. And the ones I watch the most are the ones that come on the most; the ones that are sometimes on TWO STATIONS at once, the ones that have a few VERSIONS of the same ad, because they are the ones that are obviously working.
The best one is that little griddle-device you pour things in and whole meals come out.
I remember the Popil Pocket Fisherman, which I bought (at a store, actually) for my father in law. He was not impressed.
You want the supports? I'll buy 'em for ya, for Christmas.
I AM sorry to hear, however, the Pocket Fisherman was less than satisfying. I myself preferred the snappier Fishin' Magician. You never know when you might get the urge to go kill some fish. And Ron Popiel, CEO of the cleverly-named Ronco, is one of my heroes. He MAKES things. Americans don't do that anymore. Ronco, to my knowledge, is not seeking any economic bailout money either.
Anyone who sent away for a mail order object has seen where we must add a bit of money to the selling price for "p&h" -- which we thought meant "postage and handling," but it actually supports the road construction industry that halts summer travel on hot days.
Why are you sure that will happen? I don't think it's clear that "all imagery that can be produced" is a finite set. Our time, on the other hand, is finite...
I must commend you for your infomercial study though. It's a fascinating if scary topic. How does it work, if it does? What ancient ritual is being invoked?
My point was that digital imagery (and the internet which made it ubiquitous) transformed the likes of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, which at the time had the same ephemeral magesty as Beethoven, into the easily retrievable, thus transforming it's VALUE to us as art.
And I am NOT saying it is a lesser art. What I am saying, in the ethos of Wikipedia, that the collective display of all photographic imagery (think of the number of cat photos on Gather alone) is an entirely different information source: a different art.
Thanks for reading and pointing that out.
(and I am not quite finished with infomercials.)
Art for Art's sake vs.
Art for Life's sake.
Is the art of the Burger King ad any less of an art?
Was Monet just making a picture of lily pads?
In each case, the artist was reaching for phenomena. You are right to think that art will
transform. There was a time not so long ago that the main purpose of western art was to illuminate the birth, life and death of Christ. The purpose of painting itself transformed immediately with the advent of the camera, and the purpose if craft disappeared with industrialization and manufacture.
It will be interesting to see what art historians have to say about the digital age.
Then, once while walking through Bostons MFA I saw a painting from afar that I first did not recognize as Monet. It was a lily pond painting, but the angle of view was more horizontal than the famous ones, and it contained trees and sky. Suddenly I saw it: Monet was painting a phenomenon. He was looking at the surface of water defined by the floating lily pads, but he was also looking at what lay beneath the surface in the form of underwater plants and he was looking at the pond BOTTOM with its sunlight and shadows--the shadows cast by those same lily pads.
That was pretty amazing, but there was more. He was also looking at the surface of water which under certain conditions was not transparent, but reflective and in the reflections you could see the trees (the shadows of the trees on the lily pads) and reflections of the sky.
I have not looked at water the same since.
Sitting on that couch, mired in guilt and self-loathing, you are a PRIME CANDIDATE for an infomercial because in your heart, you know you are better that this. You know, given the right underwear, you can be shaplier. You know you would get out and exercise if only you had the right arch supports. You know your family would adore you more if you just had a device that made tasty meals and had that easy clean no stick surface. It is, like Faith says, like shooting fish in a barrel with the Popiel Pocket Fisherman. (Which, by the way, is STILL available at Ace Hardware for $19.99).
But that's not all.
It is not merely self-improvement which is the Holy Grail of tv gadgets. It is not enough to merely self improve while you sit on that couch. No. You must also appear clever from the purchase. Each item shown on tv has a cleverness factor. The greater the factor, the more envy the item is supposed to create when it is paraded in front of impressionable house guests. It is not enough to have clean floors; a home run is when you can have clean floors AND look resourceful in cleaning them.... And under the couch.
Even so, like my scholarly description of Infomercial, such a collection would interest me because, like the infomercial, one could discern the American psyche---what they THOUGHT my be impressive to Guests during the art trend known as Orientalism. Interesting parallel.
Lead-painted Mattel toys and melanin-tainted milk notwithstanding.
Here in Utah (my final day--woo hoo!) I read where there is a shortage of assault rifles in the gun stores because everybody is afraid that Obama will do the sensible thing and BAN them, then they will have NO WAY to assault.
And I would get into it now, but I have just gotten into bed and am too tired to pursue it so I won't. Not just yet.