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When do we stop calling something "Art"
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Message
Posted
I think there is a common thread evolving here. Whether you are a traditional painter or a digital 'artist' (quotation marks just to be provocative) art is something that is created from a blank canvas or screen. It is also implied that the ideas generated in the brain are transmitted via the hands to produce the end result. The key word is 'created'. There seems to be general dislike, which I share, of images that are simply transformations of an image which already exists. I am not saying that such images are not or cannot be visually pleasing, but I certainly would not regard them as paintings. The same would go of images created by AI, as they too are transformations of existing images - at least at the moment! Art is a much broader term than paintings and probably beyond my ken to define limits. If an installation, or an unmade bed, is artistic, and hence is 'art' it is presumably because it is visually and, to some, intellectually pleasing. On those terms is would be difficult to discriminate against transformed images, though there is still the element of creation from nothing. Thankfully I can, and do, choose not to look at them, unlike digital paintings. Coming back to this site, if a photograph of Tracy Emin's unmade bed be deemed not suitable for a site called Painters Online, then the same would have to apply to digitally transformed images.
Edited
by Tony Auffret
Posted
I think others have covered most if not all bases, so I've little to add except - I've never done this, so don't understand the processes involved. I'm not in a position therefore to judge whether digital artists here are using a blank canvas approach, or manipulating images grabbed off the internet. The former is fine by me - I don't have to like it, though I sometimes do - the latter is just playing with pixcels/pixels, whatever the hell they're called - and I don't see the point, but if it gives you pleasure, do as you like: there are lots of leisure activities in which I see neither point nor pleasure, but each to their own.
However - I appreciate there may not be many sites on which manipulation of someone else's images might be shown, which is why this one has been settled on; but it's not painting - it's using a computer programme to change an existing image. I imagine there is a skill in it - but artworks start from scratch: from your own drawing and observation - or, if you're a student, by trying to make a copy of someone else's work; nothing wrong with that, it's an established learning tool. But having copied the Mona Lisa, you don't try to pass off your copy as all your own work - in execution it may be, in composition and conception, it isn't. I don't think that all digital manipulators - a term I prefer to "artists", frankly - get this, or understand why many of us are at the least of it uneasy with those practices. We all need, whether critics of digital art or digital artists, to make the effort to understand these different points of view.
One thing, though: I'll defend digital artists like Skylar to the hilt, because his work is all his own - I'll do the same for David Hockney, who creates entirely original images on his Ipad. What I won't and can't do is defend taking someone else's image without their permission and running it through a complex computer programme without even attempting to acknowledge their source - that is not what real artists do; oh yes, we might try to imitate a style, in order to understand it, we might even try to replicate a famous work: the late Murray Ince did that with the Hay Wain, for example - well, hard not to recognize where that one came from, and of course he made no attempt to disguise it! But if we take, or borrow, a) we do so having sought permission, where appropriate, and b) we acknowledge it.
Posted
Interesting topic and one I agree with most here.. My main comment would be called "Definition". For example: there are three shops, one selling fruit and veg, called a greengrocers and one selling bread and cakes etc called a bakery. The third shop sells all sorts of things and is called a Supermarket. Point being, you know exactly where to go depending on your needs. "Painters Online" for instance, is what led me to this site in the first place.
The Internet does actually define digital art , but the rest is more "supermarket" encompassing sculpture, wood carving, pottery etc. Beyond using "Paint" to put a line around my work, I wouldn't know the first thing about Digital art. Pencils, brushes, ink and paint, and all associated items using in mark making are the extent of my "Art", and I don't regard sites like this as competitions, but shared pleasures. It's also got a clear definition title in being "Painters Online". I believe in Live and let live, but
we're all different in most things. We just need direction signs...
Posted
It is an interesting, though a somewhat frustrating topic. "Painting," the act of applying paint implies the use of tools. Does the digital use of those tools make the product any less worthy than a conventionally made image? As an analogy, "writing" implies the use of a pen or pencil but they have largely been superseded by the keyboard yet we accept the product as writing. The fact that an image/mark has been created using what we accept as conventional means doesn't necessarily make it art. I suppose that some questions can never be wholly and satisfactorily answered.
Posted
Fiona makes an interesting point which leads me to the question of when would writing not be considered writing. Let's take a modern, and broad definition of writing as the creation of an image of a sequential series of words by whatever means. If I were to take an old novel, and, so as not to upset Robert, one which is clearly out of copyright, and then to print it in blue ink, one thing is for sure and that is if, I were then to publish it under my own name, no-one would take me seriously as an author. Though I suppose, if I were to print alternate words in blue and green ink, there are those I might flog it to as avant-garde art, but no-one would accept it as a painting.
Posted
I suggested some time ago that the gallery be spit in two, traditional art and digital art. I was told it wasn't possible but wouldn't it solve the problem?
Obviously some works straddle both camps but surely that's not insurmountable. The artist should know which side of the fence his/her work falls.
Personally I'm going to keep on smearing paint onto canvas.
Edited
by Peter Smith
Posted
I like seeing digital art on the gallery - as I know do others. The issue here isn’t traditional v. digital - it’s genuine digital work skilfully created from a blank screen as opposed to digitally manipulated photographs or digital images created by AI, both of which can mislead the viewer into thinking there is real artistic input when there’s very little or more often none at all.
Edited
by Jenny Harris
Posted
This is a fascinating discussion, one I'm sure is being held in many artistic circles (the spell-checker just changed that to 'autistic' - I'm glad I spotted it). I think myself that if there's room for creativity there's the potential for art. I would certainly qualify digital work done using a virtual paintbrush as art, because there is almost as much human input and therefore almost as much potential for genuine creativity. That suggests it's inferior in its current form to 'analogue' art made using physical implements and it probably is inferior, ie has less potential. But I would also argue that the extremes of hyperrealism and abstract have less potential for creative communication than everything in between. Pop art too has less potential. But all are genuine art forms, methinks.
Images produced by manipulating software are something of a mystery to me, but although there seems to be much less potential for genuine creativity in the manipulation of photographic images there is certainly some, as far as I can see. I would class it along with photography itself, then and I would say there is art in them both, based on my criterion of creative potential.
Images produced by AI are another step removed from directly making marks on a surface or reshaping an object. AI will be based on algorithms created by programmers and even self-teaching programs are simply employing higher-level algorithms, doing more calculations in a more sophisticated manner. The creative input from humans is now minimal and I would argue that 'AI art' is and will always be an oxymoron, because nothing is being created, other than by rote. I argue this because genuine creativity - as opposed to painting by numbers, which is essentially all AI is doing - comes from consciousness, and by consciousness I mean not just our own minds, but something larger, which can inspire us as artists. That in fact is why I believe artists and musicians, etc, are so valued: because they can be channels for divine inspiration. Stravinsky said of his The Rite of Spring, "I was the vessel through which it poured'" In other words, he believed it was composed somewhere else and simply downloaded into his mind. AI may be able to do certain things better than people, for instance, win at chess or blend digital images better than the best human artist. But the artist can get up and make tea, phone someone, a zillion things a program couldn't do, and be consciously aware and interacting with his environment and have learned unique skills over time and developed an original painting style and be capable of being inspired to greater heights of artistic expression.
Posted
"Stravinsky said of his The Rite of Spring, "I was the vessel through which it poured'"
That made me smile Bill, because it reminded me of a similar quote by Rudolf Valentino, who said, "I am simply a canvas on which women paint their dreams and fantasies" (or words to that effect) (-:
Ref the original question, I reckon a pile of bricks and that unmade bed defined the time for me. Not sure what either was, but art it wasn't. I don't like Brussels Sprouts or carrots (strange fellow I know, my wife says so)) so I simple don't buy or eat them, same with sham art.
