President John Kennedy was a passionate believer in the importance of the arts; he was a voracious reader and intellectually curious. He invited over 150 artists, poets and writers to his inauguration.
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| Composer Leonard Bernstein's invitation to the Kennedy inauguration |
The invited artists included Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Alexander Calder, Paul Manship, Charles Burchfield, Mark Rothko, Max Weber, William Zorach, Walter Gropius and Eugene Speicher. He also invited authors such as W.H. Auden, Saul Bellow, Pearl Buck, John Dos Pasos, William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Carl Sandburg, John Steinbeck, Robert Penn Warren, Thornton Wilder and Tennessee Williams.
Kennedy knew that the government shouldn't attempt to control the arts, but he believed it was important for the president to demonstrate a high regard for cultural excellence, which he felt was one of the greatest fruits of a free society. He said:
Aeschylus and Plato are remembered today long after the triumphs of imperial Athens are gone. Dante outlived the ambitions of 13th century Florence. Goethe stands serenely above the politics of Germany, and I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
After Kennedy was assassinated, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was named in tribute to him. Kennedy had been instrumental in the private fundraising for the cultural center during his lifetime. The center was managed by a bipartisan Board of cultural figures. The activities of the center have been paid for by private donations and ticket sales, but as part of a public/private partnership the government provides the maintenance and upkeep for the building. This gives the government a say in its management.
Last week President Trump fired the whole Board and got himself appointed as the new Chairman. This is not a political blog so I offer no opinions on Trump's fitness as president; for all I know, he may go on to become a great president. However-- limiting my comments solely to the arts-- Trump is a vulgar brute with the artistic taste of a simple minded child, pathetically attracted to all things glittery and gold. He is proudly unlettered and can barely muster the curiosity to read more than a few bullet points out of his Presidential briefing books.
Despite his ignorance-- or more likely because of it-- Trump feels that the arts will benefit from his political supervision.
It's not surprising, then, that artists might instinctively bristle at such a natural enemy of the arts. But what kind of responses are available? Is the artistic community defenseless in this exchange?
Well, for one thing, art enjoys the clarifying power of naming. Which brings me to this dandy cover by Justin Metz for The Atlantic in 2024.
This magazine cover was not constructed the way that Norman Rockwell used to construct magazine covers 100 years ago, combining pigments with linseed oil on a palette. Metz curated stock images (the capitol building, the sky and the swamp) and combined them using 3d modeling and Photoshop. He built the rest of the images, creating a hybrid of an old fashioned circus car and a victorian horse-drawn hearse. He forced the perspective, using the legerdemain of steam from the swamp and strategic lighting, in order to squeeze in everything he felt was essential. He crafted and refined the image, including brushing to give it a painterly feel. He carefully designed that whip, the coachman's bulk, the clenched fist. The result, I think, is a powerful image that rivals the best propaganda posters by the greatest illustrators of World War I.
Despite the fact that he used new tools, Metz had to make many of the same aesthetic choices required of traditional realistic painters in the past. The grim colors, the ominous light, the foreboding landscape, the placement of symbols such as the iconic vulture in the dead tree, the pose of the coachman-- these are all the types of elements that Brueghel might have weighed for his landscape, The Triumph of Death. The choice of how many symbols to include without overloading the picture, and how explicit to make those symbols-- again, these are all traditional aesthetic judgments.
In developing a "sinister circus" theme, Metz drew upon childhood Disney movies such as Pinocchio and Dumbo, with their dark sequences that terrified generations of children: the coachman with the bullwhip who drove bad little boys off to Pleasure Island where they were turned into donkeys....
These Disney memes still retain great subliminal power today.
For me, much of the artistry in Metz's cover lies in his depiction of the captive Republican elephant staring out of the shadows. His look of resignation, wondering how his past compromises could've led to this, adds an important layer of tragedy to what otherwise might have been a purely angry image.
There has been a mountain of editorials and books and articles with charts and graphs debating the political issues behind the recent election but I think this cover is a good reminder of how much more devastating a picture can be than words.
36 comments:
"... is not a political blog so I offer no opinions on Trump's fitness as president"
Except when you decide otherwise. Stop pretending. Embrace it.
"- Trump feels that the arts will benefit from his political supervision."
Yes, he's an dick and totally unsuitable for the role, but the arts are fully polticised already - supoort for ideological positions is baked into funding and determines appointments.
They even exported it abroad - like the 70,000 spent on an arts org in Ireland on running a "diversity" concert on the ambassador's residence there.
DEI in tech firms is nothing compared to the ideological stranglehold knitted into the arts, museums, etc.
Be even in your critiques, or else not only is this a political blog but a partisan one.
(The Disney Pinocchio stuff is good, of course, but that digital collage piece is junk.)
(PS - is it similarly knitted as a clause into contracts in the legal profession ? 'Covert messaging publicly or else no invite to the Eyes-Wide-Shut parties'...)
Anon: "...but that digital collage piece is junk"
Explain why you think it's junk.
Because it's a digital collage and the lion's share of what -design merit it has, and about 99% of its figurative rendering, was pre-made.
Just like a platic Jesus or resin 3d-modelled Michaelangelo's David is junk.
Every shortcut in manufacture, since mechanisation of production in the 19th c., creates results that are dessicated to the extent that the processes involved intervened in (and so became a barrier to) a conscious act of making.
They aren't 'tools' in the proper sense. They don't conduit creative action, they skip it.
The extent that digital processes succeed is to the extent that they recreate in simulated form the traditional processes, and only reach parity with these in terms of the artist's control when the shortcuts are done away with, and every stroke or what-not becomes a conscious act. At which point the artist realises that they are inferior to work with than his sticks and paint anyway in terns of conrptrol, nuance and tactility so why bother with them. Saves scanning ? More fitted to an online screen product ?
And it's a crappy image - the sky like the bad filters in a film where they have to de-naturalise it in order to prevent it jarring with iffy cgi. The inorganic feel to the relation between snipped-out pieces betraying their origin as awkward juxtapositions.
It's fine. It's an elaborated meme, a couple of steps up higher than the kind that proliferates on the internet. But it's junk. Not the worst thing in the world, and sufficient as a political ideogram.
And entirely fit for the Atlantic. Those writers are in a weird word-bubble simulation anyway, so they don't notice.
Awesome to see somebody making tough art like this.
"....who drove bad little boys off to Pleasure Island..."
I thought they flew ?
Glasshouses....stones, etc.
He could have made it easier on himself using 'prompt.'
'Hee-hawww.'
🤔
Anonymous-- If you don't think I've criticized art censors on both sides of the political spectrum, you haven't been paying attention. (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2019/07/burned-twice-in-one-lifetime.html ). But I have to confess, I've never encountered anyone more eager or less qualified to bully the arts than Trump.
One could debate whether a hostile takeover of a cultural institution is primarily a political or a cultural act, but it seems to me that there are a lot of clearly artistic issues here. You seem to think that traditional art tools such as oil paint should have a permanent monopoly, but those tools have plenty of disadvantages. Van Gogh's famous paintings of sunflowers completely changed colors over time because the chrome yellow oil paint had darkened from exposure to atmosphere and the green paint changed color due to the copper acetoarsenite in the pigment. Renaissance painters began experiencing "painter's colic" with the invention of oil paint (later determined to be lead poisoning). Rembrandt's painting Danae was slashed with a knife and burned with sulfuric acid in 1985. His "Nightwatch" was trimmed by local bureaucrats to fit on the wall of a municipal building. None of those problems are faced by digital art. So rather than assume that whatever once was should always be, I take the view that quality images can be self-legitimizing, regardless of the tools and technique. Identifying quality with an open mind is the key. Sometimes that involves looking in unexpected places, as Picasso did with tribal art.
Whether one agrees with the politics or not, I find the Metz picture a very striking, powerful image, a skillful image created with rare artistic backbone.
Can I once again invite anonymous commenters to leave some kind of identifying name or number? I can't tell if we have one "anonymous" or six, but people will never be able to connect responses to comments without some kind of identifier.
The Republicans who tolerated fascism as a response to DEI are now the elephant chained up in the back of that circus wagon. This is a smart picture.
JSL
Anon: “...to the extent that the processes involved intervened in (and so became a barrier to) a conscious act of making (…) At which point the artist realises that they are inferior to work with than his sticks and paint anyway in terns of control, nuance and tactility so why bother with them. “
I agree with your general point that modern technical shortcuts usually produce lazy artists, and compromised art, but not that paint and brushes are the ultimate medium.
I’ll put my critique of this illustration in as short and sweet a way as possible and expand later if anyone’s interested:
Structure first, surface details later.
'You seem to think that traditional art tools such as oil paint should ave a permanent monopoly,'
- no, I don't. Find new ones by all means.
Just don't circumvent the process. This stuff is step one on getting a result using the card-arranging technique that, multiplied, is ai.
'...but those tools have plenty of disadvantages. Van Gogh's famous paintings of sunflowers completely changed colors over time because the chrome yellow oil paint had darkened from exposure to atmosphere and the green paint changed color due to the copper acetoarsenite in the pigment. Renaissance painters began experiencing "painter's colic" with the invention of oil paint (later determined to be lead poisoning). Rembrandt's painting Danae was slashed with a knife and burned with sulfuric acid in 1985. His "Nightwatch" was trimmed by local bureaucrats to fit on the wall of a municipal building.' None of those problems are faced by digital art.'
- Totally different and unrelated issues.
Willfull misunderstanding.
'If you don't think I've criticized art censors on both sides of the political spectrum, you haven't been paying attention.'
-Good. And if there are any attempts by Trump to censor anything should be met with resistance.
Censorhsip is one side of the malign coin. Shaping content and policy is the other. Through appointment, duress, purse strings and so on.
Though I don't think these things are as big a problem with you in the US as they are in Europe.
Where this is allowed https://web.mit.edu/21f.402/www/images/Spiegel_Titel.JPG
But this is not
https://cjhopkins.substack.com/p/the-criminalization-of-dissent-continued
No doubt you will have at least heard about the policing of memes and comments in germany on a US tv show recently. And I've been reading a lot in defense of their actions from US democrats, who believe and have been using the argument that it's to stop hitler happening, and would have had it been in place back then. I think most reasonable people, though, were shocked by it.
What many mightn't be aware of is that it includes not just rascism, but saying transwomen are really men, and extends beyond Germany (Ireland - https://gript.ie/cj-hopkins-and-irish-hate-crime/ , Austria - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6316567/Woman-correctly-convicted-Austria-calling-Prophet-Mohammed-paedophile-ECHR-rules.html , where a ban against 'blasphemy' even has the backing of the European Court of Human Rights) and mocking politicians ( hey fatso - https://www.foxnews.com/media/germany-started-criminal-investigation-social-media-user-calling-female-politician-fat
what an idiot - https://www.ft.com/content/27626fa8-3379-4b69-891d-379401675942 )
Even when the case is lost by the State(s), they will carry on to try to break the person in something like Kafka's Trial (read the links on Hopkin's case above).
Like the hundreds of women in England cautioned, threatened, etc, by the police for wrongthink - sticking up suffragette ribbons or posting online that transwomen are men - even without jail or fines, the process is itself used as a tool of coercion.
What has any of this - online comments and memes and so on - got to do with matter in hand ? They're not art. But the latter aren't that far removed from the Merz piece.
The prospect of Trumpian persecution for similar wrongthink/wrongart is an - as yet - unproven.
Not so in Europe. And judging by their reaction to aspects of Vance's Munich speech (which most of us here listened to approvingly), and the glee from certain campuses, professors and journalists at what they saw in the 60 Minutes piece, quite a few Americans of the contra-Trump persuasion are admiring what's happening in Germany and its neighbours.
I'd be watching them at least as close if I were you.
DEI is totalitarian evil masquerading as compassion. Extra-constitutional thuggery by the most arrogant and self-regarding people alive who seek to permanently empower themselves by any means necessary. That's the attempted cultural revolution that we are now reversing, that queering of everything that suddenly happened, that invasion through the southern border, the constant hoaxes through the legacy media, statues coming down, words changing meaning. This is the work of sick Fabian Socialists who had spent their lives "marching through the institutions" in order to take over our country from within. And, it turns out, loot it.
You don't even know what fascism is. It sure isn't uncovering and rooting out long term waste, fraud and abuse by an unaccountable deep state, NGO network, and cabal of political insiders laundering money left, right, and center. Fascists don't shrink government. Read a book.
The Truman Show of media that hysterical midwit Democrats consume is the greatest danger to our country. Rage bait and fear-mongering all day long. You have no idea how much propaganda you have believed and you are continuing to believe daily.
"that paint and brushes are the ultimate medium"
Not ultimate by any means (though I can't think of anything better than a mark-making, or pigment-placing tool, which only seem to be bettered by the hand itself)
Just what is employed and each action of which the work is comprised is enavted through an act of directed intent.
If the work - not just 'art' - has a portion of its composition that does not require this, then constant hand-tool acts can be effectivel replaced by mechanisation. eg, a loom can be used after the tweed or tartan design has been chosen.
But imagine a picture created in black and white by stippling - a photographic machine can match tones immediately, but if those stipples are made each one in a manner that is conscious of the thing they represent, they will be modulated in a way - and carry the feeling and human quality of response - that cannot be replicated by a machine.
Some people have said that digital techniques can effectively shortcut what would be a wasted effort on detail - blades of grass, grains of sand. This isn't the case - unless the artist is one who employs details or rendering in a mechanical manner. Artists who really are engaged with the details of things will convey them with the same feeling as the gesture of a person's limb.
And this goes beyond detail, of course, and is even more pertinent to the larger elements in works (with or without their having high degrees of detail).
If the shape and depth of a space of land and the weight of the carriage is understood and felt, as also if the elephant in the cage gives a sense of its mass - and the physical and emotional effect of the confinement - the better will be the picture.
None of which is necessary for a political cartoon, which can get across its message without them.
(The cleverest part of which here is, I suppose, the Elephant in the cage. But not so much as the Donkeys of Little St James.)
Since it was your sister-in-law that recommended Barack Obama to the DNC, you must have known exactly what kind of cultural revolution was in the works.
You did know.
So you are a fibber, Mr. Apatoff, regarding your partisanship. It has become increasingly clear. You are a Fabian Socialist, a hard leftist, a radical in sheep's clothing. A snooty superior commie pretending not to be, quietly and cleverly trying to undermine our constitution. You are worse than a total partisan hack. You are a Manchurian activist; a deceiver and a traitor.
As an SDS member said long ago "The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution." Whatever you revolutionaries say you want in the moment, whoever they rail against and for whatever reason, they really want to overturn the whole system. And install themselves as god-emperors. And torture those they loathe with perfect righteous impunity. As befitting their egos.
Marxist praxis all day long. Undermine, lie, problematize, polarize. And never ever tell the truth.
Signed,
Apatoff The Deceiver
Anon: "Some people have said that digital techniques can effectively shortcut what would be a wasted effort on detail - blades of grass, grains of sand. This isn't the case - unless the artist is one who employs details or rendering in a mechanical manner.”
If you were making a CGI animated film you would use whatever looked right (to you) when viewed at a certain distance within each scene. Perhaps a specifically modelled blade of grass for a close up, or a whole ‘grass effect’ field for a distant out of focus shot. Any negatives of a ‘mechanical manner’ are dependant on the context.
Anon: "But imagine a picture created in black and white by stippling - a photographic machine can match tones immediately, but if those stipples are made each one in a manner that is conscious of the thing they represent, they will be modulated in a way - and carry the feeling and human quality of response - that cannot be replicated by a machine.”
No machine can do anything without a human inventing it first then deciding what to do with it.
Any human picking up an ink pen or paint brush and attempting to reproduce what is in front of them (or from their imagination) is limited by: the medium itself, the level of abstraction used, their degree of hand-drawn ‘realistic’ accuracy, and a hundred other factors too numerous to mention, all of which results in what we call ’style’.
I don’t see much difference between that and a mechanical device such as a camera, or digital software such as CGI. Each involves a multitude of interacting decisions, none of which is reducible to the purely mechanical - as in your example of a photo stippling machine (unless that’s all you’re talking about).
It’s the human interaction with the physics / limitations of the medium (physical or digital) where the ‘artistic’ quality emerges.
...
"Each involves a multitude of interacting decisions, none of which is reducible to the purely mechanical"
Unless there is a fusion between the imagination of the artist with the subject, seen or envisioned, that informs each patt of the act of making, *and* a choice at each step, it is so reducible.
Human beings can fall into it - mechanical rendering, imaginative 'muscle-memory' and so on.
Machines can't *not* escape their inbuilt mechanical perameter. The human 'director' of digital works can only employ the technology in a parody of traditional mark-making, and only lifts the work out of the 'purely mechanical' to the extent of acting contrariwise to the shortcutting they're designed for.
Digital animation can achieve things that would be impossible through normal human effort, but they remain just bad pictures that happen move.
'
"If you were making a CGI animated film you would use whatever looked right (to you) when viewed at a certain distance within each scene. Perhaps a specifically modelled blade of grass for a close up, or a whole ‘grass effect’ field for a distant out of focus shot. "
- Yes, I only mentioned detail because it's the typical 'plus' some people get excited about when talking about digital art's possibilities. And because what's true of the micro-detail is true of the larger forms - when details aren't individualised. Whether that's a rock, a torso or a swathe of grass .
Everything that succeeds in a digital artwork only does so because it works against its inherent mechanism.
And by approaching or mimicing not just figuration in painting/drawing/sculpture, but the actual manual processes of these
By 'imaginative 'muscle-memory' I mean the formulaic. Or the imitative - of others; or of self - habit (repetition)
Either I've been cloned, or someone's been reading me quite closely. A Paraphrasing Phantasm it seems.
No machine can do anything without a human inventing it first then deciding what to do with it.
You missed the point the Paraphrasing Phantasm was making about belief; "conscious of the thing they represent." Digital code is like AI, it has no idea of what it is doing, no feeling, no spirit, no consciousness, no haptic sense, no imagination. To stamp on some print by a mechanical action, is no different. Whereas the hand is in direct connection to the imagination and is sensitive to thought in a direct way.
As Harvey Dunn said, "Pictures are mediums of expression
and if we are interested they become interesting. You can’t touch your brush to a piece of canvas without having every stroke show just what you thought when you put that stroke on."
Just as when you speak a word, the inflection you give it makes it come alive according to your deeper thoughts in relation to that word and the meaning and tone of the sentence and paragraph in which it occurs. Type out the word - and you have a similar situation to stamp printing, a complete lack of inflection at the scale. Because the keyboard is just a lifeless mechanical instrument and the letters are codified per typeface.
"It’s the human interaction with the physics / limitations of the medium (physical or digital) where the ‘artistic’ quality emerges."
Lubricity in compositing, rendering, effects, etc is the very point of photoshop's existence, why, as a cheap shortcut it has been so widely adopted. Digital lubricity is the opposite of struggle. Digital art, with its suite of codified affordances, is a funnel which obviously has drawn millions of artists into banal similitude with one another. Part and parcel of the coding of the tools is the complete eradication of handwriting.
"Any human picking up an ink pen or paint brush and attempting to reproduce what is in front of them (or from their imagination) is limited by: the medium itself, the level of abstraction used, their degree of hand-drawn ‘realistic’ accuracy, and a hundred other factors too numerous to mention, all of which results in what we call ’style’. "
So style is only a result of various limitations, and not talent, personality, consideration, taste, expertise, thought, and so on? Hardly.
As I wrote last time, shallow style is the conversion of an art problem into a design problem. Deep style comes from profound aesthetic understanding and a very personal-taste approach to expressing the unity of feeling and meaning as poetic effect.
'A Paraphrasing Phantasm'
Ha ha. Don't flatter yrself 😉
Bill
I recently noted the existence of an "American Songbook" series highlighting girl punk bands at Lincoln Center.
If any more clear example of the aesthetic rot among supposed cultural elites exists, I haven't seen it. Our cultural institutions have been captured by dim politicized goons, virtue-signalling poseurs who wouldn't know a sonnet from a grommet and couldn't care less. A good first step is unemploying the lot of these tasteless aesthetic frauds. We need people in place who don't see art as some mere stepping stone to political power or political change. Maoists - talentless, humorless, spiritless control freaks - ruin everything they touch.
Kev: "You missed the point the Paraphrasing Phantasm was making about belief”
No, you’ve missed my point re the user of the machine or tech.
Kev: "So style is only a result of various limitations, and not talent, personality, consideration, taste, expertise, thought, and so on? Hardly.”
More mis-reading (and projection). Funny, I was trying to talk about taste in the previous thread (regarding Kinkade) and you evaded it and said "I don't think taste is even considered”
"No, you’ve missed my point re the user of the machine or tech."
That was a nonsensical point. Digital tools only fake handwriting. They obviously don't allow for it, which is exactly why a million different artists all seem indistinguishable from each other. That never happened before. Because in the coding of digital tools is not only not their thought, but no thought. Transhumanism in any form is anaesthetic bullshit. The humanity is in actual touch and so is the meaning. Your girlfriend grabs your arm different than your mother; and neither are a merely mechanical sensation If you think a robot can do either, go marry a robot.
More mis-reading (and projection)
I'm pretty good at reading comprehension. You wrote: "Any human picking up an ink pen or paint brush and attempting to reproduce what is in front of them (or from their imagination) is limited by: the medium itself, the level of abstraction used, their degree of hand-drawn ‘realistic’ accuracy, and a hundred other factors too numerous to mention, all of which results in what we call ’style’."
Please note that you used a colon after "limited by". Which means everything listed after the colon is a limitation. Including "a hundred other factors." If that's not what you meant, that's on you.
Regarding my evasion of your bait last time, yes. James Gurney is not only a friend and artiste extraordinaire, but an important art teacher with something to say. And I didn't want to cloud up that thread, and the point of the post overall, re-beating a literally dead horse.
Kev: "That was a nonsensical point. Digital tools only fake handwriting"
You seem stuck on the very limited point that a digital brush can only do the same ’stamped out’ brush look every time, which in your mind equates to fake ‘handwriting’.
There’s a lot more to using mechanical / digital tech than a crap photoshop brush tool, and I’m not much of a fan of ‘digital paint’ either (see Nov 02, 2024).
Kev: "you used a colon after "limited by". Which means everything listed after the colon is a limitation.”
All mediums are inherently limited. Scraping pigmented gloop onto a grainy surface with some bristles on the end of a stick seems a pretty crude act to do just to create an illusion of something. Of course you can say that the ‘handwriting’ of the artist is the most important thing to justify paint as THE most important medium. I refer you again to the medium of moving film, which uses no strokes of paint, and which I’m sure you’ve been moved by.
Anonymous wrote: "Every shortcut in manufacture, since mechanisation of production in the 19th c., creates results that are dessicated to the extent that the processes involved intervened in (and so became a barrier to) a conscious act of making."
In the 19th century, illustrations were reproduced for magazines using wood engraving until the invention of photolithography, which was one of those "shortcuts in manufacture" which saved time and money. If you read 19th century trade journals, there were people weeping (as some commenters seem to be weeping here) about the demise of the close personal bond between the wood engravers and their artists. There was considerable gnashing of teeth about the end of personal craftsmanship from the engravers, who were rapidly becoming unemployed after a lifetime of dedication, only to be replaced by a cold and bloodless mechanical form of reproduction.
Yet, from that mechanical form of reproduction arose the golden age of illustration and the popularity of modern magazines. So let's salt our predictions with a little humility.
Kev Ferrara wrote: "I recently noted the existence of an "American Songbook" series highlighting girl punk bands at Lincoln Center. If any more clear example of the aesthetic rot among supposed cultural elites exists, I haven't seen it."
Naw, it was those mop top hairdos them dang Beatles wore. That's when everything started to go to hell.
"...wood engraving until the invention of photolithography, .."
Wood engraving was a translation, a copy translated.
Photolithography has the same relation to a drawing as a cast does to a clay or wax original.
Etching is like taking a cast from a footprint, or making a lifemask.
Some of this is just to do with reproducing an original work. Some, like engraving, whether raised or intaglio, don't have an 'original' as such, the finished work is at a remove. But the fundamentals of the manner of their making are the same.
And not similar to what was referred to in digital processes.
Bill
(I'm mistaken there - you said photolithography, I was thing about photogravure.
Overall points are the same, though. )
"Naw, it was those mop top hairdos them dang Beatles wore. That's when everything started to go to hell."
You must have kicked ass making fun of tweedy old squares in the hallway between classes in 1964.
Sing to yourself your favorite "American Songbook" melody by The Slits or Poly Styrene. Go ahead. Sing quietly to yourself. I'll wait.
Geeze, you didn't even think of one song! Not one single melody came into your dorky mind! And here I thought you wuz gonna show me sumptin' by celebratin' them bran' new lady punk entries into that there American Songbook. Guess you ain't the culture boy you thought you wuz.
The American Songbook. You know... Gershwin. Cole Porter. Ellington. The Slits.
Non-judgmentalism is a mental disorder.
"You seem stuck on the very limited point that a digital brush can only do the same ’stamped out’ brush look every time, which in your mind equates to fake ‘handwriting’."
I'm stuck on the uncanny fact of a million different artists using digital tools seeming indistinguishable from one another. And aesthetically dead or deadened. The reasons for this are due to the Faustian deal of having infinite undo, no risk, no mess, and all the technical assistance and collaging you want... in exchange for no physical evidence for or consequence to the act of art making. Which is to say, no you.
"There’s a lot more to using mechanical / digital tech than a crap photoshop brush tool"
The tools have utility and are sensitive only to the uses and degrees of freedom that they have been programed with. Which was done, necessarily, by people who aren't artists. Since everybody's artistic hand-writing is sui generis, it cannot be pre-programmed.
"All mediums are inherently limited."
Sure, but that's a different question. Each also have a unique suite of inherent affordances. The analog plasticity and non-linearity of real materials for instance.
"Scraping pigmented gloop onto a grainy surface with some bristles on the end of a stick seems a pretty crude act to do just to create an illusion of something."
Oh. You've never painted well.
You're talking about an infinitely subtle and infinitely sensitive medium as "crude." It won't help you to speak from ignorance.
"Of course you can say that the ‘handwriting’ of the artist is the most important thing to justify paint as THE most important medium."
The handwriting records the performance through the resistance of the plastic material. There is no performance otherwise.
Imagine typing at your computer only to find that there's no you there. Imagine being disembodied from your actions.
"I refer you again to the medium of moving film, which uses no strokes of paint, and which I’m sure you’ve been moved by."
Yes But filmmaking uses an entirely different suite of affordances with an entirely different suite of limitations. Since the aesthetics of filmmaking are extremely complicated, voluminous, and interesting; with edit cuts, animating in actual time, using music, special effects, sound effects, the human voice, dialogue, and visual images superposed, I wouldn't think it would benefit your case to compare them to a single computer image.
Because a single image is a very limited canvas to work on, it must go deep if it is to have any richness of feeling. Every layer of information matters.
"...for all I know, he may go on to become a great president..." A nice twist, thumbs up, Mr Apatoff. Having established how a truly great president - JFK, who else? - should value the arts, you have given in adfvance the answer to your musings about greatness. Trump will never achieve greatness. He will pull the USA into the same pit in which he dwells
David: “ Naw, it was those mop top hairdos them dang Beatles wore. That's when everything started to go to hell.”
You jest David, but when people say things along the line of “music was better in my day” whether their day was the 1920s, the 1960s or the 1980s, I believe them. I think we’re each allowed to romanticise our youth, and bemoan the state of modern culture.
Kev: "You're talking about an infinitely subtle and infinitely sensitive medium as "crude." It won't help you to speak from ignorance.”
The best artists I’ve encountered over the years in the fields of illustration, gallery art, animation, storyboarding and concept art can switch mediums (physical or digital) with relative ease, because they’re bringing an understanding of the principles of image making (static or moving) that can apply and adapt to any medium.
The worst artists I’ve encountered over the years play up the idea (deluding themselves and the gullible customer) that oil on canvas has some kind of near-mystical quality that only oil on canvas can achieve; essentially an appeal to tradition and sentimentality that will somehow rub off on them.… "Rembrandt used these same paints therefore my crap somehow shares some sort of quality with his, because quality materials, tradition etc”
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