Art vs. Computer Art
There were the greats, Euclids, etc., but today
everyone must work at trying to interpret the riddle of
technology - Paul Verillo
How will the art world of
the late 20th century respond to the way that computers
have entrenched themselves in our society? There are many
today who would bury their heads in the sand, trying to
avoid dealing with the issue of digital technology. They
would have us believe that digital art is not a viable art
form, and that the true modes of artistic expression still
lie in painting, photography, sculpture, and the like.
This is probably high culture's way of expressing the techno-phobia
that the rest of society has been grappling with throughout
the computer boom of the 80s and 90s. To embrace or reject
technology is a question which has ceased to be relevant
in the business world, with the workplace racing after automation
and all of the competitive advantages it brings. In like
manner, it is time for the fine arts community to move away
from its evasive, distancing stance, and embrace technology
and its capacity to help artists express themselves.
Art has always responded, either directly or indirectly,
to the social, political, or technical changes our society
has undergone. Painting's reaction to social change from
the mid-19th century into the 20th century bears this out
very clearly. Consider the reaction of painting to the invention
of photography in the mid-19th century.
Empowered with the ability to authentically capture images
in a split second, the photographer became the official
recorder of our life and times, a role that painting had
held for hundreds of years. In 1839, faced with the invention
of photography, Paul DeLaroche is supposed to have declared,
"From today, painting is dead." Painting was not dead, it
simply needed to assume a new role regarding the kind of
art it would create. In response, painting became much more
expressive, moving from its mid-19th century realism through
Cezenne and Manet, into the realm of French impressionism.
In focusing on capturing a sense of air, light, and space,
impressionism set about addressing the shortcomings of photography
as an expressive medium.
Photography could accurately render an image or likeness
with a degree of detail and fidelity never seen before.
It could not, however, address the issue of color the way
impressionism did. It also had a problem showing motion
and action.
Just when it seemed that painting had reacted well to technology
and had staked out its own new territory, technology again
made an assault on painting's domain, this time in the form
of the motion picture. Here was a medium that unfolded over
time, it moved, it conveyed space and action in far more
precise terms than painting did. No matter how successful
Monet or Van Gogh were in how they suggested movement and
space within the picture frame, there is absolutely no denying
that their work is static and flat. Painting's response
to the motion picture was somewhat different than its response
to photography, in that it chose to emulate rather than
differentiate.
Painting differentiated itself from photography by focusing
on color and space. With the motion picture, painting sought
to copy technology, destroying the idea of the flat, static,
window of a picture plane. These changes played an influencing
role in the development of cubism. Cubism wanted to describe
the world in the same terms that the motion picture did.
It took an object such as a teapot and described it from
all angles and points of view. If the movies could show
that the pot had a front, back, bottom, and that there was
tea inside, well then cubism could show this as well. It
compressed all angles into the surface, doing an early 20th
century version of multi-tasking. In cubism, painting even
went so far as to shift from the bright palette of the impressionists
to the somber, more monochromatic palette of the black and
white movie.
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