Following up on last week's discussion of artists who are challenged to make the best use of the new technologies in our era of illustration:
Horrible New Yorker cover drawn on an iPad by famous artist David Hockney
In the following years, technology continued its inexorable incursions into art. Photography improved and became more accessible, then morphed into moving images, then moving images with sound. When photography went digital, it became possible for even the most untalented to manipulate images, simulate the act of drawing, and cut and paste moving images to create visual collages. In recent years generative AI has made that process interactive.
These technological changes put new creative freedom in the hands of the lumpenproletariat and introduced undeniable economy and efficiency into the production of images. What are we to make of all this? It does no good to avert our eyes. These are the forces that pushed illustration out of most magazines and then pushed most magazines out of business. Today they have breached the barricades of the most distinguished art museums.
For a while, we could take comfort from the fact that most digital art, even digital art by accomplished artists such as David Hockney (above) was so laughable that it didn't warrant serious consideration. But today talented artists are creating first class images digitally, and first class images are always self-legitimizing. If the image is excellent, I reject objections to its pedigree.
Exhibit A for discussion is the work of the brilliant Nathan Fowkes. Born and bred on traditional art media, he nurtured his talents honestly, spending years doing lovely, honest plein air paintings. In recent years he has also become a virtuoso with digital media:
I think these paintings are admirable. When I first saw them I couldn't distinguish them from traditional media, so it would be dishonest to think less of them just because they were produced digitally.
Instead, I salute the open mind with which Fowkes embraced the new tools and the honesty with which he explores their potential. I'm happy to say that both are hallmarks of Fowkes' work.
Fowkes is awesome. I learned about him here.
ReplyDeleteYes, IMO he does truly excellent work.
DeleteSin duda son muy buenas y se aprecia que tiene una gran formación y experiencia con el arte tradicional ( o medios tradicionales )
ReplyDeletePor lo que opino que esa experiencia le dió una base muy importante para crear con medios digitales...lo que hizo fue cambiar de herramientas, creo yo.
Estoy de acuerdo en que su experiencia con herramientas tradicionales marcó una gran diferencia. He escuchado lo mismo de otros pintores digitales destacados como Craig Mullins. Hasta que no dominaran las herramientas tradicionales, no les iría bien con las herramientas digitales.
DeleteFowkes is high on every artist's list of living artists.
ReplyDeleteBut still, fundamentally, essentially, inescapably.... these digital tools were developed by autistic non-artist nerds to replicate photo retouching and manipulation techniques... with a high resolution Lite-Brite as the ersatz photo-paper.
These tools in use carry within them, with every mark, the philosophy of those founding fathers' founding precepts, predicates and of their eye-destroying radiating screens. The affordances and limitations alike are invariant. The base ideas are ever felt in the productions; a constant vacuity or insipidity at the ineffable core; the lubricity is the stupidity. A minute blur where the subtlest feel of a hand dragging against paper or canvas should be.
Which is to say, the digital realm will always be mired in Anaesthetics™.
There are all kinds of reasons to have qualms about digital tools, but I propose in this series of posts to put aside all concerns except one: the aesthetic quality of the images we're seeing.
DeleteFor now, I don't want to talk about John Henry's race with the steam drill. I don't want to talk about the lack of justice in digital art or whether these tools were invented by "autistic non-artist nerds to replicate photo retouching and manipulation techniques," or whether their screens are indeed "eye-destroying." To purify the question, I want to put aside, for now, what we may sacrifice in exchange for their economy and efficiency, or how much we love the people and traditions they might replace, or how much we loathe the office workers and art editors they empower. We can discuss the teleology or epistemology or ontology or eschatology of digital art some other day.
For me the only question of the day is: when you look at these digital paintings by Nathan Fowkes, what do you think of their artistic value? Personally I think they are quite beautiful. I think they are strong, observant, well composed, sensitively done and (as with all of Fowkes' work) beautifully colored. If you think that viewing them on "a radiating screen" is any different from viewing a Leyendecker or a Maxfield Parrish or a Frazetta on a radiating screen, please explain why.
"is any different from viewing a Leyendecker or a Maxfield Parrish or a Frazetta on a radiating screen,..."
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point. We all use them (and are looking at them here) for looking at the work of great artists, but it's a really crummy medium (there is absolutely no doubt that they're damaging eye-sight en masse, it's been noted among kids with phones; and impairing mental sensibility to subtleties in the natural world).
I do wonder why this artist has chosen to use this medium. Might make sense if the end goal (a distributed product) is the determining factor, whether screens or prints on paper. In which case it's just an adaptation from the transformation of work into a mass-product in earlier illustration to fit the hellscape technology of today (which he somewhat brightens). But paper is a medium meet to the hand, the mind-eye, and a setting within the world. Screens are not.
Not sure it's really possible to entirely talk about the aesthetic quality of the images and ignore these contexts and those referred to by others. Especially as the work will either go down the route of mimicing pigment on paper like these (which are pretty successful), photography, or speak through the disordered and ugly manner of production, the anti-qualities, inherent to the digital medium and how it works.
Bill
As has been noted by me and others, reproduction and distribution have always been the life's blood of illustration. Modern illustration began when technology first enabled accurate reproduction and mass distribution of images. Before that, illustrators had to rely on primitive woodcuts and limited etchings. But the new technology meant you could hire the best talent, such as Leyendecker, by charging 6 million subscribers of the Saturday Evening Post 5 cents apiece, and selling advertising for the rest. That was the economic engine which drove the entire enterprise.
DeleteIf you look at The Post from 1910 or 1920 or 1930, the reproduction was poor. It may have seemed like a miracle to subscribers at the time, but to our eyes today it looks chalky and fuzzy. It wasn't until the late 1950s that the quality of mass reproduction could capture the sensitivity of the delicate pencil lines of Bernie Fuchs and Austin Briggs, or the intensity of the color of Bob Peak.
The moving finger writes, and today digital reproduction and distribution are the state of the art. Circulation is global, far less expensive, and much faster, so at least the economics are irrefutable. In high rez, properly calibrated, the reproductions are far more accurate than the Saturday Evening Post covers of Leyendecker and Rockwell. Whether the radiating glow is an asset or a liability is a subject for debate.
Are you sure the concerns you're expressing aren't due more to nostalgia rather than the inherent qualities of the image? I love the smell and feel of printed paper from the 1930s. I love the yellowed, crumbling newsprint hosting comic books and comic prints. The liquid crystal display on my monitor has none of those magical qualities, but isn't that distinct from the image?
When the first steam engine trains were invented, they were an ugly assault on the senses-- noisy, smelly, polluting beasts. But after a century they became humanized as a result of their interactions with our lives and today people are very nostalgic about them. People write songs and poems and books about them. Their train whistle has taken on human qualities and haunts us. Their folklore is romantic. Perhaps with time, your "radiating screens" will become humanized too.
"Are you sure the concerns you're expressing [...]
ReplyDeleteI don't think so, because, as you say, the display on the monitor "has none of those magical qualities"; and, yes, while it's "distinct from the image" I think the image needs ultimately to return to a 'hard copy' form (screens are... crap), and when it does so has to justifty itself in that form.
So, it's success or otherwise will be in its either successfully replicating a painted/drawn medium, or (while not to my liking) feigned photorealism.
The things that are unique to digital processes are, I think, ugly and not conducive to figurative representation of either imagined or seen things.
But you're right about the technology for colour reproduction being superior today compared to what was had in the past - except for the cases of 'block' colours through various lithographic processes.
These are far superior to digital reproduction of the same kind of images, beacuse the technology works in a way that is analogous to the placing of paint on a surface by hand. Even a kind of art in themselves, an automated version of japanese woodblock printing in some ways.
I think we can say that digital work has advantages over these when (i) it is dealing with fully chromatic and modelled forms (ii) and we're looking at a printed (eg, giclee) artefact at the end of the process. But then, why digital rather than a reproduction of, say, a coloured pastel or oil of one of the subjects Mr. Fowkes has turned to here using the scanning technology at disposal ? (He of course must have particular reasons for prefering the medium he uses, but that's probably involving considerations seperate to the question)
Trains were ugly measured against the beauty they erupted onto - the natural worldand the heights of crafted things that preceded them. They were mitigated by the beauty that was added to them in their crafting, and which today elevates them above the ugliness of the subsequent mechanised expediency of manufacture, and the loss of soul in much human endeavour, which followed.
Bill
Fix: 'I think we can say that digital [work]< reproduction has advantages over these...' /Bill
DeleteThe new art technologies are changing so fast, I doubt we'll have time to become nostalgic about any computer program before it is replaced by the next.
ReplyDelete'Perhaps with time, your "radiating screens" will become humanized too' - only by lowering the bar even further.
ReplyDeleteBill
(The 'anon' of 'radiating screens' you were first responding to, David, was someone else, btw)
DeleteNo deep analysis on my part but as I see it, if the image speaks to me I really don’t care how it was created as long as it is not AI.
ReplyDeleteThe point of the (my) lubricity remark is that there is an inherent slickness to digital work that is profoundly vacuous and can’t be dismissed. A deeper problem than even the smooth gradation of the virtual airbrush or bland-perfect vector edge or the utterly dead flat colorvalues, or the stamped-out sameness of photoshop brush use. Their wellspring actually; the deep aesthetic problem is there is no authentic artistic resistance to use of the medium.
ReplyDeleteThere’s no pushback from reality that creates any friction; there’s no beautiful dance of effort and achievement. No evidence of derring-do and deeds done, no virtuosity in the virtual. These are art pieces without performances. They might as well be transmitted from one mind to another without any intervening medium at all. That is the problem of their perfect lubricity in a nutshell.
It is in that sympathetically felt feedback friction – in looking at original man-made artwork – that gives even the atoms of real art a centering aesthetic gravity that connects it to the world. Or better to say, such evidence grounds the work in reality, personality, and physicality. Thus humanity.
Here we are unmoored. Not from Fowkes’ greatness. We have a great artist’s mind at work, but we don’t have his body. His hand is gone. There’s no paper or canvas. No board underneath. No floor and no feet. It is solipsistic at baseline, solipsism as method and aesthetic. Because he is working with the disembodied tools of non-artists, built by coders and technologists and circumscribed ultimately by their blinkered dreams and limited sensibilities.
A good photo of a real work of art interpolates the real physicality evidence via lens or photopaper grain and pixels. Discrete pixels, as bad as they are, can still – when coalesced in the eyes - suggest whatever physicality was captured photographically. They can’t however suggest what physicality was never there in the first place.
To Kev Ferrara-- Isn't the "performance" that led to the art the same thing as the "back story" behind the art? We have often discussed the view here that a work of art must stand on its own, without being propped up by an accompanying manifesto, or an explanation from the artist, or a knowledge of the artist's family life.
ReplyDeleteBy the same token, why should our assumptions about the historical tactile sensation of a brush dragged across canvas or the spatter of ink on paper be relevant if the digital result is indistinguishable?
If you are suggesting that these pictures visibly suffer from a lack of physicality in their creation, I'd urge you to point out specifically where. When I first saw these pictures online, I couldn't tell whether they were done digitally or by hand. My guess was "by hand," in part because of the traces of what looked like light red pencil line sketching out the basic shapes in pictures 3 and 5. Fowkes told me that they were all digital, painted in part with digital brushes that he had designed.
I think your point is exactly right when applied to that Hockney picture which is (kindly speaking) a piece of crap-- a miasmic combination of the novelty of the iPad medium, the celebrity of the artist and the hubris of the publication. It has no heft, and is guilty of all the sins you describe. But I feel the opposite way about the pictures by Fowkes.
When oil paint was invented, it added an "inherit slickness" as artists stopped chipping away with gouache or tempera and began slipping and sliding around with the newly oleaginous medium. The "resistance" of the paint was like spreading soft butter on warm bread, and called for a different wrist motion. It's difficult to think we should fault digital painting on that basis.
Great comment Kev.
ReplyDeleteThe ancient Egyptians, without hardened metals, had to shape their granite sculptures by abrasion, and this, by way of effortful physical participation with the stone contributed deeply to the aesthetic of their statue's massive, slow forms. The discovery of case hardening steel gave rise to the lithe articulation of limestone exemplified by Renaissance sculpture. Then the invention of the pneumatic hammer. And so with each technological step comes an extension of our bodily capacity at the expense of widening the gap between participatory relation to its means of expression.
With the advent of the resistance-less, fluid, infinitely scalable mailability of digital computation we are now at the stage where our body is irrelevant to the shaping of what this technology affords: the digital simulacra of physicality at the behest of the unembodied intellect.
One could say that meaning is to be found in the resistance to our imagining.
The "resistance" of the paint was like spreading soft butter on warm bread, and called for a different wrist motion. It's difficult to think we should fault digital painting on that basis.
ReplyDeleteYou are missing the point David. The embodied mind engaged with the behaviour of oil paint, or any other physical medium, is a sensory feedback loop out of which participatorily meaning finds its root. It is not a question of slippery or stogy, smooth or rough, slow or quick, but of how these qualities feel under the hand while it is making manifest the dream which guides it and yet reciprocally informed by it. The intention and the means are mutually dependent.
And if 'the means' is an electronic machine whose output is pixels on a screen, what does that say about the intention?
ReplyDeletechris bennett-- That's a pretty romantic notion of the role of the artist, chris. It reminds me of Antoine de Saint Exupéry's Little Prince, who said, "it's the time you give to something that makes it precious." Your theory appeals to me because I'm a romantic kind of guy, but around here we also take pride in being tough minded. The true test is always in the pictures themselves, not in the rhetoric surrounding them.
ReplyDeleteSo I urge you and Kev: show me. Let's focus on that first painting by Fowkes. How would it be improved if Fowkes chiseled it out of stone like the ancient Egyptians, or painted it with a traditional medium? Point me to where it is lacking because it is only "digital simulacra of physicality at the behest of the unembodied intellect."
For me, the painting is a fast, confident sketch in a medium that can keep up with the artist's quicksilver hand. I think the high contrast / high risk palette, which is shored up by nuances in the colors of the trees in order to convey the tangled, interlocking vines and trunks, was handled beautifully. That's a very difficult task for any artist at any speed in any medium. I think the strategic highlights were expertly placed, and I don't see how they could've been improved if they were painted in a traditional medium. I like how it was staged, with the dark, interesting shape in the foreground to give it depth and the deft handling of that light source at the top. If you asked me to identify 1,000 worse paintings of forests using conventional media, I could easily do it before lunch. So please: point out to me how the "resistance-less, fluid, infinitely scalable" digital tools made specific aspects of this painting inferior.
Eh, they’re alright. I find them a little too "shapey."
ReplyDeleteLots of artists these days are absorbing the stylized iconic qualities of Hollywood concept artists, children’s book illustrations, 70s sci-fi art, etc., and it has made everything feel over-designed.
At first, I really liked this style of painting. It jumps out at you, and I appreciated the strong cartooning skills it requires, but lately, it all feels a bit one-note to me. A bit gimmicky.
Not every tree branch has to look like a swamp vine from a Frazetta painting. Not every rock needs to be covered in blue and gold crags like a mountain face in an Edgar Payne landscape. Not every wave sliding onto the beach has to be covered in little white circles of surf like a Calvin and Hobbs cartoon.
In the final picture from the post (the best, I’d say), he loosens up a bit and tries to really paint instead of cartooning with noisy digital brushes, but here is where the limitations and inherent laziness of the digital medium become most apparent. I spent the last few hours before coming here looking at 19th-century German impressionist landscapes, and the difference is jarring. The digital Fowkes just looks so sickly by comparison. It feels like biting into a rubber steak after sitting down at a fancy restaurant.
I also have issues with some of the color effects he uses. The "chroma slider" effect he uses, for example. That's what I'm calling this technique (popular in digital painting because it's easy to do and has a loud effect I think) where you paint a gradient from one high-saturation hue to another without changing the value at all, creating a vibrating but flat gradient effect. That feels gimmicky to me as well. It’s fun to do—I was really into it for a while with digital painting because it makes it SO much easier to create the illusion of detail without putting in the time—but once you've seen it, you’ve seen it a hundred times. A related, overused effect Fowkes loves is the "chroma jitter," where you add chroma noise to an area without changing value, wildly shifting hues in an area without modulating value. This lets you create very clean shapes without the picture looking cartoonish, by simply jumping around hues in an area. For an artist with a deadline, it's great because it's never "wrong", you can paint with whatever hues you want and the eye will accept it, whereas with value you actually have to get it right or it will destroy the illusion. These techniques are straight out of the Disney/Pixar school of painting; all the cool kids in San Diego are doing it, and Fowkes is really into it. I'm tired of it, and I think it's used to hide limitations of the painter.
why should our assumptions about the historical tactile sensation of a brush dragged across canvas or the spatter of ink on paper be relevant if the digital result is indistinguishable?
ReplyDeleteCorrect, *if* it were indistinguishable, it wouldn't matter.
The problem with digital-paintings (of this type) is that in trying to mimic the effects of real paint, they will always fall short, because we perceive what looks ‘off’ or ‘lacking’ or ‘wrong’ when compared to real, physical paintings we’ve seen.
ReplyDeleteFor that reason, I prefer it when digital media ‘does it’s own unique thing’ such as 3D / CGI modelling or animation (e.g. The Incredibles) or a flattened, hard edged, graphic look for still images (e.g. David Plunkert ).
Let's focus on that first painting by Fowkes. How would it be improved if Fowkes chiseled it out of stone like the ancient Egyptians, or painted it with a traditional medium? Point me to where it is lacking because it is only "digital simulacra of physicality at the behest of the unembodied intellect."
ReplyDeleteThe lack is that the picture so manifestly embodies its un-embodiment. Using a virtual medium as a simulacrum of a real medium is like a zoom call with someone compared to being in their actual presence. In the latter of both instances our relationship is adversely affected.
So please: point out to me how the "resistance-less, fluid, infinitely scalable" digital tools made specific aspects of this painting inferior.
The “inferiority” is one of engagement, both by the artist and this onlooker. The image really feels like it is made of nothing, as indeed it is. The tones are just tones without any sense of them being substance of any kind, the dark area in the bottom right corner (which you admire!) is just emptiness, just a void, a hole. The movement of the forms feels like marbles rolling around on a tray, they are not growing within anything, there is no sense of air. The picture and all the others, accomplished as they are, feel sterile. They are stillborn.
Laurence John-- I'm not sure how you distinguish between "trying to mimic the effects of real paint" and trying to accomplish the same objectives as real paint. Both mimic the shapes and colors of nature to convey images of the world. They both use lines (or differences in color) to demarcate shapes. They both use textures to reflect the texture of the objects painted. They both use diaphanous colors to portray diaphanous objects. Shapes and colors are not proprietary to paint.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, there are still a great make many people walking the earth who resent "real paint" for trying to mimic nature. Some of them are standing behind you now with glittering knives. They recall the very first piece of art criticism in western history: it is an abomination to make any graven images or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath."
David, you said "When I first saw these pictures online, I couldn't tell whether they were done digitally or by hand.”
ReplyDeleteThat’s what I’m talking about. I don’t think the future of digital media is in trying to make images that look - at first glance - like paintings. That seems weirdly unambitious. I’d rather see what digital can do that other media can’t.
David: “Why should our assumptions about the historical tactile sensation of a brush dragged across canvas or the spatter of ink on paper be relevant if the digital result is indistinguishable?”
ReplyDeleteRichard: “Correct, *if* it were indistinguishable, it wouldn't matter.”
If you couldn’t tell – if it were that good a mimic - then the whole thing would be a technical fraud; a kind of forgery. A successful effort to give the illusion of artistry that never happened on an artwork that doesn’t actually exist.
Just as theft is theft even if you didn’t know it happened, lies are lies even if you didn’t catch them. And character, as the wise man said “is who you are when no one else is looking.”
But that didn’t happen in this case. The lubricious-cum-vacuous uncanny valley digitalia is everywhere and immediately evident in this kind of work, as good as it is. Even for those with zero experience using Photoshop. (Just as those who listen to auto-tuned vocals and synths in pop songs know the voices are being manipulated and the instruments aren’t real, even if they’d never heard of Auto-Tune™ or Moog.)
I should note, in reference to the tossed-in argument posted earlier, that Art is not ‘a lie.’ If it is any good at all, it is poetry. And poetry distinguishes itself from reality because tropes cause representations to feel strange with ulterior meanings; point being to express truth through the aesthetic fiction.
Only bad art that tries solely for slavishly mirroring nature down to the leaf is a lie. The “Ha, I fooled you for a minute” trick literalism of Trompe L’oiel, for instance.
David: “If you are suggesting that these pictures visibly suffer from a lack of physicality in their creation, I'd urge you to point out specifically where.
Everywhere.
And I obviously can’t point everywhere. So I’ll beg off schoolrooming this joint. But I will try to explain how you or other aesthetically stony readers can understand what I’m saying at bottom. And maybe even see what I’m talking about for themselves by some lucky eyeball noggen eureka.
Kev: "A successful effort to give the illusion of artistry that never happened on an artwork that doesn’t actually exist.’
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify; I’m not questioning the ‘artistry’ of someone like Fowkes, who is obviously a competent draughtsman. His artistry is evident in these images (different question if we were looking at ai-generated images). I’m only pointing out the fake / synthetic look of digital ‘paint’ which I see as a bad choice to represent the possibilities of visual digital media.
Laurence. I wasn't questioning Fowkes as an artist either. I think he's great, one of the best of our era. Let me clarify that I meant that a truly convincing digital illusion of pigment on canvas - with the perfect illusion of direct hand-applied artistry - would be artistic fraud. I think this is baldly obvious. Because - obviously - it all must be pre-programmed so that it can be stamp-applied digitally. There's no pigment, no canvas, and no hand directly forming one against the other in real life. Any illusion of reality is a trick, inherently, fundamentally.
ReplyDeleteSince there is no direct contact in the digital world between a human hand and some real work surface through some kind of substantive pigment, digital work can only ever be disembodied. Which is to say, inhuman, sickening lubricious, and artificial. Thus dispiriting.
Thus, I think the future of digital art is not in still images; one can't generate the handwriting that humanizes the marks in any honest way. I think the answer of digital art's future is in animation.
I am struck by the number of comments that suggest that digital painting is somehow cheating-- that it is mimicking, or forging, or an illusion of something more real, something that gains credibility or legitimacy from its solid existence. This seems to me to beg the hard questions raised by this phase of the evolution of art. Compared to a sunny day, an oil painting of a sunny day is just a 2D illusion of reality, one that creates more resistance as we pass through the world, displacing atoms, investing our time, expending ourselves, aging. Over 500 years we've made our peace with that way of mimicking or forging reality. Now we are looking at "disembodied" light images of that same sunny day. You can't touch it and run your fingers over it any more than you can touch or run your fingers over that Corot painting of a sunny day that is printed in your art book or reproduced on your computer monitor. In both cases the colors and shapes enter through your eyes and evoke reactions in your brain.
ReplyDeleteA lot of these objections seem to be clouded with information about the surrounding circumstances-- what it took to create the image, or what the image looked like before it showed up disembodied on your computer monitor or reproduced on your art book. Is it possible to isolate the image from its background?
I've already addressed all those points, David.
ReplyDeleteIt is the illusion of real brush strokes made actually by a digital input device that is the fraud. A poetic illusion of "reality" is a different thing, a different thing even than a simple mimetic illusion of a "reality". The latter is actually much like the illusory brush strokes, in that neither are much poetic, but are rather meant to fool. Fowkes was not doing that here. His work is obviously all digital, even though it seemed to trick you somehow into thinking it was real media. Which I find baffling.
Kev Ferrara-- I know you (and others) already tried to address those points, but what I'm trying to say is that your points are unresponsive to the question I'm trying to pose. I keep trying to isolate this as a pure aesthetic question, and you keep dragging the question back to your memories of when your grandpappy felt the loving resistance of the canvas against the brush, and when mimetic illusion was valid because it was perpetrated by heroic human beings without the assistance of computer code. Okay okay, I get all of that, but indulge me in a little thought experiment:
ReplyDeleteIf you'd been prisoner in a windowless dungeon for a hundred years, and you'd never heard of a computer, and your jailer (who'd had his tongue cut out) came in and showed you two 9x12 prints, one a landscape by Harvey Dunn and the other the last painting I've shown here by Nathan Fowkes, how do you think you'd respond?
Would you say that "The lubricious-cum-vacuous uncanny valley digitalia is everywhere and immediately evident in this kind of work"? Would you say that "the picture so manifestly embodies its un-embodiment"? Would you say, "The image really feels like it is made of nothing, as indeed it is." I'm betting the answer is no, you'd say "Gee, that's a really beautiful picture." Once you admit that, you can go on to make long lists of how unfair the world is, and how the artist's guild should boycott OpenAI and DALL·E 2, and how vinyl records are better than CDs because you love the hiss and the crackle. I promise I'll listen to all your grievances. But right now, I'm asserting that these are beautiful images, and I'm guessing that you and chris bennett and Laurence John would agree if you weren't so fixated on the ghosts you see hovering around them.
David: “If you'd been prisoner in a windowless dungeon for a hundred years, and you'd never heard of a computer, and your jailer (who'd had his tongue cut out) came in and showed you two 9x12 prints, one a landscape by Harvey Dunn and the other the last painting I've shown here by Nathan Fowkes, how do you think you'd respond?”
DeleteAlan Alda once hosted a Nova show about the brain. As a test, with brainscans being done every 24 hours, he wore a totally blocking blindfold, forced to use touch to find his way around in life day and night, even when sleeping. He couldn’t see a thing. In only 3 days, his internal brain wiring for apprehending visual phenomena began rerouting to his fingertip nerves.
Thus it is no surprise that when blind people – with rare curable forms of the disease – are cured, they have no idea what they are seeing when they suddenly can see. They experience a disturbing chaos of sensation. And they may never understand what they are seeing. Especially if the miracle surgery was performed in adulthood.
So much of beauty is about meaning. Which is to say understanding. So much ordering and apprehension goes on in the visual cortex, unbelievably complex interleaving intuitions at lightning speed build our coherent experience of the world. Art plays against the normal instantaneous ordering of visual meaning, uses the very terms of reality as we ingest it to build out a fictional aesthetic dream world. If the latter is not even present as a memory in the mind, forget the former. (This leaves aside the further question of direct reference via icon vs aesthetic suggestive depiction.)
All to say, your scenario would utterly retard one’s ability to appreciate any art at all.
David: “I promise I'll listen to all your grievances. But right now, I'm asserting that these are beautiful images, and I'm guessing that you and chris bennett and Laurence John would agree if you weren't so fixated on the ghosts you see hovering around them.”
David, YOU made your post about digital art and not being able to tell the difference between real media and the digital tools that Fowkes used in these images. We’re talking to you, not the pictures. The pictures speak for themselves.
I like a few of them, and I have saved several all-digital Fowkes works to my computer (though not these). But, it turns out, I never look at them. I never contemplate or consult them or study them. Because they are missing something. And I have been trying to explain to you what; handwriting that grounds them in the human experience. The artifacts of effort against the resistance of plastic reality are missing at the atomic level. Lubricity is the issue.
Indulging your thought experiment for myself David (Kev and Laurence may have slightly different takes on this) my answer is yes. My awareness of the difference is not predicated on the history of either of these mediums, the difference is apparent to me straight off the bat, and for the reason I've stated: the means by which something is made affects the aesthetic of the maker.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I am so sure in my answer is due to a high dose of "tough-mindedness" administered on my own part. I gave up a career in mechanical engineering to devote myself to fine art knowing it would be incredibly difficult to monetize, so I've spent much of my time strain testing my beliefs about every aspect of what it really means to be wiping coloured mud on a piece of cloth...
David, I have no problem with the lack of a real, physically-resistant media in the digital realm (the way Chris does). I mentioned ‘The Incredibles’ CGI animation earlier as one of the high points of digitally-made work so far. It exists purely as pixel-data on screens. That doesn’t bother me. I just think digital media should have its own unique properties that are distinct from traditional / physical media. I’ve already said why I think Photoshop digital paint looks unsatisfactory.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your thought experiment; it’s true that when printed on paper the slippery, ‘painted on the back of glass’ look is reduced when compared to viewing digital paintings on a screen, but not entirely. I think it’s impossible not to compare the digital version to its nearest equivalent in physical paint when confronted with the two.
I hope you’ll offer some better examples of the possible future of digital media (and AI needs to be discussed again, as it’s not going away).
I see I am a different generation here. As someone who started most of my art journey shortly before digital painting entered a scene (and as a result seeing it as something natural), the biased comments here towards digital feel a bit surral now. I haven't encountered this type of discussion for a very long time. I think last time it was on forums such as conceptart dot org.
ReplyDeleteI actually see both sides of the discussion as I painted traditionally as well and still do once in a while. The whole generative AI situation made me go back to beginnings and reflect what made me attracted to digital art in the first place. While it's true that surface of the screen feels sterile and lifeless in comparison to surface of canvas covered with paint, what I liked was how you could start with darkness and put some bright marks and those marks would be actual source of light. You could put one value for earth one for sky and when you dab bright dot in the center with light falloff it almost creates illustion of staring at the sun. When sitting in darker room while creating digitally it is very immersive and I liked that immersiveness.
I still got some mixed feelings on the topic of emulating natural media through digital tools. On one hand at the moment it is some way to show hand of the artist more when generative AI look very sterile in comparison. But on the other hand I'm not entirely sure if completely copying traditionally painted look is good direction for evolution of hand made digital art.
What Nathan Fowkes achieved for sure is impressive and I always liked his landscapes. I know he works in Photoshop and it takes a lot of effort to get natural media look in this program. Maybe it could be a bit counterproductive because for this traditional-digital mix (tradigital as some people call it) nowdays you got software like Rebelle which gives organic look more easily. I bought it recently and it is some technical achievement and fun to play with.
What Kev Ferrara mentioned in regards to digital's future being animation is good point. The unique thing about digital that you can't achieve with traditional mediums easily is that the imagery can be transformed in various ways in real time. You can change colors, move things, turn layers on and off. When linked with code the digital can be interactive and that's where it can also truly shine. You got mediums like like interactive art and also games. Digital art, animation and interactive applications basically exist in in the same realm.
If you couldn’t tell – if it were that good a mimic - then the whole thing would be a technical fraud; a kind of forgery. A successful effort to give the illusion of artistry that never happened on an artwork that doesn’t actually exist.
ReplyDeleteBut who cares if the artistry didn’t happen (aside from artists)? If the image is genuinely indistinguishable, it should produce the same effect on the viewer.
If it doesn’t produce the same effect, then it’s not truly indistinguishable. If it does, then the distinction is irrelevant.
Richard,
ReplyDeleteEven if the effects were indistinguishable in the digital realm, there would still be a difference from the actual physical object with its applied pigment; which has aesthetic effects of a whole other realm of sense. Which also demonstrate a whole other level of artistry, conception and performance.
You're getting tangled up thinking this is only a race to duplicate digitally the representation of the representation. But the point of the digital representation in the first place is to represent the original work of art.
So again just because you don't know a lie happened, doesn't mean it isn't wrong. Artistry evidently makes a claim. Through evidence encoded in its plasticity, actually, it makes many claims. And these claims matter, unless one doesn't have any qualms with lying. Which would entail a disinterest in the good. Which would then entail, I suppose, a disinterest in truth and beauty. So why look at Art - poetry predicated on the premise of truth and beauty? If you only have an interest in 'entertainment', another word for distraction, cat videos are as good as The Rockettes.
Claims also matter to the concept of Authorship. Authorship is a claim of or claim to authority. Shall we grant authority based on false pretenses? I don't think so. We want real heroes. This is a human thing as much as it is an art thing.
chris bennett wrote: "I gave up a career in mechanical engineering to devote myself to fine art knowing it would be incredibly difficult to monetize, so I've spent much of my time strain testing my beliefs about every aspect of what it really means to be wiping coloured mud on a piece of cloth."
ReplyDeleteDon't stop there, complete the thought experiment. Are you telling me that if there was no such thing as oil painting, or even a pencil and paper, and the only way to create images was to paint digitally, you would've stayed with mechanical engineering? Are you saying that your mind would not be adequately embodied if you weren't wiping colored mud on a piece of cloth?
For that matter, if ancient Egyptian artists were told, "I'm sorry no one knows how to shape granite sculptures by abrasion, the only way you can worship your gods through art is with digital images," do you think they would say, "Never mind, those images aren't sufficiently embodied for me, I'd rather give up art altogther and water the camels instead"?
For that last - I'm pretty sure the Egyptians would have refused, the beliefs in images in the ancient world (before they decayed) were that their creation was meet to house the god the statue depicted, and was bound up with ritual and not taken lightly.
DeleteBill
Are you telling me that if there was no such thing as oil painting, or even a pencil and paper, and the only way to create images was to paint digitally, you would've stayed with mechanical engineering?"
DeleteMan of the Alternate Present! What is this word "paint" that you use? I've never heard tell of such a word. What does it mean and why would anybody want a computer program that does it?
Movieac: "No deep analysis on my part but as I see it, if the image speaks to me I really don’t care how it was created as long as it is not AI.”
ReplyDeleteWhat if an image (or moving image) ’speaks to you’ and you find out afterwards it was made by AI ?
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DeleteAre you telling me that if there was no such thing as oil painting, or even a pencil and paper, and the only way to create images was to paint digitally, you would've stayed with mechanical engineering? Are you saying that your mind would not be adequately embodied if you weren't wiping colored mud on a piece of cloth?
ReplyDeleteOf course not. Although I welcome thought experiments of this type to tease out any incoherencies in an argument this is an absurd position for the reason Kev just implied above. Everything performed by computer is a simulacra of physical phenomena. Trying to conceive otherwise is like trying to imagine a new colour. Even something such as 3D animation is performing the same function as cell animation or even shadow puppets in that they are all model re-animations of the world.
So one might ask: is digital image-making performing the same function as real-medium image-making, but just differently? The answer is yes, but this difference makes all the difference to the qualitative nature of what we end up making with it.
For that matter, if ancient Egyptian artists were told, "I'm sorry no one knows how to shape granite sculptures by abrasion, the only way you can worship your gods through art is with digital images," do you think they would say, "Never mind, those images aren't sufficiently embodied for me, I'd rather give up art altogther and water the camels instead"?
The ancient mind, that is to say 'the embodied mind' cannot conceive of worship without the sense of embodiment in its ritual (and I'm using ritual in its widest possible sense). "We become what we worship" is a truism that applies as much to Ra and Christ as it does to Maoism and Luther, healthy food and exercise as it does to heroin and porn. But it also applies to how we worship: We love with what we love. Do I best love my wife by being in her presence or through re-presentation of her by pixels? Do I best express this by molding her features with clay or a by way of a software wire frame application and 3D printer? Does one really believe there is no meaningful difference between how real or simulated partaking affects us?
So David, I do welcome your push-back on all this, because I'm not interested in being right but in questions that test the truth of what I believe. If what I believe turns out to be untrue then I'm content in realising I'm wrong.
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