Looking for design inspiration?   Browse our curated collections!

Return to Main Discussion Page
Discussion Quote Icon

Discussion

Main Menu | Search Discussions

Search Discussions
 
 

Ronald Walker

8 Years Ago

Modern Art, The Big Bang.

Perhaps the birth of "modern Art" came in the form of a click. Photography freed artist up to pursue other directions than just the dogma of recording the world in figurative terms. The camera also made it so many more people were able to create realistic images since the camera processed the image. More people now are able to give their inner most visions a place in the real world today than ever before thanks to digital. Everyone has creativity but inventions have allowed more individuals than ever to be able to express themselves. The result is anyone who wants to be called an artist is one. Decent images are everywhere, many made by people who would have been lost on the way side without the incredible inventions of today. My question is will there be a big crush? Will there be a time where the value of the images produced through the eye of machines become less valued? If everyone can produce great images, through the use of machines, in the future why buy art from anyone else?

Reply Order

Post Reply
 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

Note: Early photography tried to mimic paintings.

"Pictorialism is the name given to an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. "

Later we had a burst of photorealism where painters tried to create images as the camera sees.
...

Well at the top of the heap there the gatekeepers - galleries, museums, curators who have always had a role of sifting through mankinds endless stream of artwork and bestowing the crowns of greatness.

As far as "machine" produced images - aren't we already there? If as an artist you offer nothing more than a button click then you aren't offering much to differentiate yourself.

"Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It's the hardest medium in which to have some sort of personal vision and to have a signature style."
Chuck Close

..

Still kind of confused by the premise - lumping every single image produced into "modern art". Is this including every web page, every film frame, every security camera, every cell phone etc etc.

 

Ronald Walker

8 Years Ago

Point being it is like a shotgun blast ever expanding. More and more people producing art. Machines will be giving aesthetic advice and soon everyone will be producing whatever art they wish. No one will buy it or give artist any credit at all since everyone is an artist. Will this direction collapse or continue?

 

Lisa Kaiser

8 Years Ago

Well, that's where I'm at now, Ronald. I do not need others to own great art.

 

Vincent Von Frese

8 Years Ago

Modern painting often tries to mimic early photography at least I have.

 

Ronald Walker

8 Years Ago

Lisa, guess the second part of this would be, is it a bad thing? It would be the end of the financial side to art replaced by everyone exploring their own creative directions. Or perhaps the machines will start to make art that only they like as their ability to make aesthetic decisions develops?

 

David King

8 Years Ago

I believe there will always be demand for the hand made, it's just a question of whether that demand will increase or decrease. For the near future I believe it will increase, I think more and more people are feeling a bit oppressed by technology that demands their constant attention and are now starting to look for things that are disconnected from technology to give their lives more balance, to feel more human. A local collector bought one of my paintings, he showed me a photo he thinks he might like to commission a painting of some day. It was a really good photo and I confessed that I don't think I can make a painting that would be an improvement on it. He said he didn't care, he wants something that shows the hand of the artist, in other words he prefers the "hand made" over the over the "machine made". This is a self-employed professional that spends most of his day on the phone and in his car and on the computer.

 

David Bridburg

8 Years Ago

Ron,

Can we make statements......

Ancient Human Instinct

 

Roy Erickson

8 Years Ago

Regardless of how many camera's phones with camera's - I doubt that the end of the 'financial side to art' will ever be replaced - oh yes - all the entry level will be taking a crack at it - using the camera and software to create their own vision - but where the money is - those folks are more into making money and living a lifestyle and being directed by art agents, galleries and museums for their 'taste', decoration and "investment". There are a lot of good, very good, artist painters - but they will hardly be discovered by those that pay 5 or six figures for art. And what "china' and 'walmart" have done to the decorative art market - hasn't made a pinch on the real art buyers.

 

Lisa Kaiser

8 Years Ago

I think it's really challenging to successfully create great art. Even deciding what great art is can be challenging. While some people are like us and create art, most people I know just want to buy it and put it on their wall They want a work that surpasses what they could do themselves.

Go into most people's homes and you will find art from stores, real work and prints. Photographs are usually not the best art and when I see photos on people's walls, it's like the ugliest group of people I've ever seen all in a framed photo (this is bad art). I think it's gone completely out of fashion to have your family in photos on the wall or your beloved children's art or someone's experimental art.

That means people are buying art. Places of business, banks, wineries, restaurants, theaters, doctor's offices, hotels, coffee shops, sets, stages all have real art and prints. The key is to have your art as the chosen work and you will be profitable. Good luck to all of you out there!

So no it's not a bad thing that everyone is exploring their creative direction because it does not produce that much great art. It takes time to do that in my humble opinion.

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

Art production is in direct proportion of leisure time. Get ready for the Baby Boom of artists. I don't think these is much of actual increase in the amount of art produced rather an increase in the amount of people who think they can sell it.

Art materials are inexpensive and widely available. People only need time to pursue it. But today's artist and crafters can easily offer their work for sale from auction sites to Craiglist to POD to yard sales.

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

FYI - I was wandering around K-Mart this morning a saw a couple of poorly done knock-offs of some of FAA's top sellers (walking in the rain). Sometimes I wonder if we are just providing the content for these overseas factories.

 

James McCormack

8 Years Ago

Beaudrillard
"Art does not die because there is no more art, It dies because there is too much" (1996)

Its an interesting idea - however as it becomes more common it becomes more incorporated in our lives (like phone cases - now with customised art, not just one plain colour).
So have artists become glorified decorators ?

I work often in the street and what fascinates people is seeing something being handmade - my lines are not AutoCad - they are very purposefully shaky and hand drawn, with overlapping/off-register shading.

Modern Art - that was last century, what about Post-Modern from the 70s and 80s - aready dead ?

There is still space - we are still selling.

 

Dominic Kinkaid

8 Years Ago

dont even get me started.:-(

 

Chuck Staley

8 Years Ago

There are many kinds of art, and one of the mediums I fell in love with years ago was hand wrought iron and hand carved furniture, so I opened a store.

I would design the iron pieces: gates, fences, furniture, dividers, candle holders, and drive to Mexico where I had located some wonderful old iron mongers.

Each piece was hand hammered and twisted and bent, and I wish I had taken pictures.

Same with the furniture: hand carved oak and other softer woods.

To me, hand made makes items valuable and machine made will never replace them in my world.

I'm happy to say that I live in an 80 year-old-house, filled with hand-made items. It makes me happy.

Chuck Staley Concept Art

Read "Murder on the Six O'Clock News"

Read "Southern Planter"

 

Ronald Walker

8 Years Ago

Post modern is modern from the sense that modern always needs the next big thing. Post modern, the act of going back through time and cherry picking what you like best was really not that new.

 

Joel Bruce Wallach

8 Years Ago

"If everyone can produce great images, through the use of machines, in the future why buy art from anyone else?"

Ron, everyone can't produce great images, now or in the future. The hundreds of informed choices artists make in creating their work can't be replicated by machines or software. The illusion that machines and software can do all the work results from the way these technologies are advertised, but you know that their claims aren't so. For example, art oriented software doesn't make you an instant artist, any more than music recording software somehow turns you into an excellent songwriter.

- Does Photoshop give you the instant ability to make good compositional decisions?
- Does it automatically make intelligent decisions for you about color, texture, lighting, or the many artistic decisions you, the conscious artist, must make?
- Does it automatically know to remove irrelevant items from your picture, such as an unsightly trash can from a street photo, for example?

Of course notÉ you must choose all these things, and the unique choices that you make cause a uniquely meaningful piece of art to be created.

The reason that some pictures look as if they are amateurish works is that these hundreds of artistically informed decisions weren't made, and a snapshot was simply run through a simple filter to give it a so-called artistic effect. And it's true that more and more people will suppose that they are artists because their snapshots now look artistically blurry.

But if you're an artist, whether you utilize paint, ink, photography, Photoshop, or anything else, you'll still have the hundreds of artistic decisions to make, and if people want that level of quality, they'll just have to buy your art. There's no replacement for that.

Never mind that there are countless so-called decent images. You're here to produce something sublime.

 

Ronald Walker

8 Years Ago

Joel, true today but will it be true in the future? Less human, more machine as the years go by?

 

Ronald Walker

8 Years Ago

Think about this images can be produced quicker and easier than in the past, give it another 100 years where will it be?

 

Joel Bruce Wallach

8 Years Ago

Ron, there's a lot of software that lets you produce digital music, but more people than ever before are writing music, albeit often with the help of software. Songs that touch people aren't going away anytime soon.

There are many computer programs that let you produce automatic fractal designs, but if used superficially, they tend to look repetitive. Only the most creative use of these programs produces something that touches the viewer, and when it does, it's because artistic human choices were made.

That's why our purpose is to put ourselves into our work, whatever medium we utilize. The more conscious choices we make, the more the work reflects our unique personality and soul, and that's what really makes people resonate with our work -- it makes them feel alive.

Machines can give you a clever effect, or a glossy surface, but the unique artistic decisions you make activate a spark in the viewer, and in a technologically advanced future, those heart activations will have greater and greater value to people. So put your heart into your work, because that makes it alive and meaningful for you, and causes your art to instill something meaningful and healing in the viewer, now and in a hundred years.

 

Bill Tomsa

8 Years Ago

This argument for machine produced' "art" reminds me of the late '70s and early '80s when companies started acquiring desk top computers.

That's when "management" thought that the graphic designers (like myself) would soon become obsolete because that kind of work could be turned over to anyone, like say....the receptionist, who could be taught to use the new fangled PC.

Because, of course, everyone was convinced that good graphic design was just a matter now of a few keystrokes and "the machine" will make all of the right decisions to spit out good design. I still get a good laugh when I think about how quickly "management" realized the folly of their thinking.

Needless to say trained graphic designers are still designing and receptionists are still....well, receptioning.

Bill Tomsa

http://billtomsa.blogspot.com/

 

Kevin Callahan

8 Years Ago

Hear, hear, Bill.

 

Ronald Walker

8 Years Ago

The human brain and peoples capacity for creativity will not and can not be replaced by any machine in a hundred or a thousand years. That is how I feel but I just wanted to start a dialog concerning the topic especially for those who do feel we are almost obsolete.

 

Gareth Lewis

8 Years Ago

Perhaps there should be a Turing test for visual art. The test would be whether a human being can detect whether an image was produced by a person without the help of a computer, or by a computer without the help of a person.

 

Robert Kernodle

8 Years Ago

"Randam Ulumer" ... again. When will these people learn that we are sooo far beyond this now. The art of spamming, like the art of conning, is the new mindless, soulless art. Hey, Random, you're in the wrong place.

But back on topic now:

Ronald W. asked:

If everyone can produce great images, through the use of machines, in the future why buy art from anyone else?

My answer is "Why, indeed?" There really is NOT a need to buy art from anyone else, if the means exists to produce it yourself.

As long as we continue to define visual art as objects produced by ANY tools, then we will continue to remove the importance of human anatomy, physiology, and muscle power from its production. We will continue to marginalize the importance of distinctions between the various physical performances necessary to produce art. Dancers, painters, photographers, and digital artists all find themselves on an equal playing field, in other words. The mechanical tool is on an equal footing with the human tool of the body. Human performance, then, ceases to be a distinguishing factor, as more and more people acquire mechanical tools that enable a far greater number of efforts to produce art.

Maybe there will be a new age of the body, and people who use the fewest refined tools will be hailed as the greatest artists. I doubt it, because we are far too immersed in the technology paradigm, and I see it only advancing to the point of eliminating ALL barriers to creating and acquiring art on one's own.

 

This discussion is closed.