[Atherium]

Hey all,

I just got back from a hell of a monday with 12 hours of instruction 6 of which was contemporary art history and the thought occured to me...

Are my kids going to be seeing the likes of someone like craig mullins etc one day in an art history text.

I guess now is the time, the time for all of use to realize that infact we are pushing a new era next to time periods that have brought us to the level we are at now.
I don't know, maybe I am going crazy here but I think those who qualify as "masters" need to realize the torch that they are carrying and what they must do with it.

When they ask about 21st century art and what it was mostly comprised of I think it would be utterly tragic to have digital painting etc left in shadow of another movement no matter how significant it becomes.

I would love to hear what you guys think.


Thanks

[Lomi]

Interesting topic, never really thought about this before... well I do believe that digital art is the next logical stage, however we have a long way to go before its accepted into the major art galleries. The major argument I have heard is that its really difficult to say a painting is unique, as its quite possible someone has it on disk or has scanned it then may print out a copy complete with signature...

[Frog]

For now at least I think that digital painting will remain in the commercial field, rather than the fine art field.

Galleries and art historians aren't really interested in representational art these days, and talented as Craig is he will be the first to say that his art is pretty commercial. No one is going to see attack helicopters or samurais in galleries anytime soon

The world of fine art is a million miles removed from what is being done on this forum, painting in that sense is very much out of fashion there and in fact pretty much everything that is well regarded here (such as subject matter, execution, technical ability etc) is conversely poorly regarded in the current fine art scene.

What history will decide is another matter. It is well known that at the end of the 19th century the work that was well regarded in art and gallery circles is now pretty much forgotten in favour of impressionism and it's successors. This is mostly due to some very influential artists and art historians in the early 20th century deciding that impressionism was more significant. Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime, now his work is considered priceless.

Nonetheless, I don't think that digital art in the context of this forum is going to go down in history, simply due to it's nature. The stuff that is popular here is mainly game art, fantasy art and comic book art, with a bit of film work thrown in. There is nothing wrong with it, but these are all commercial genres not fine art ones.

[Socar J. MYLES]

Well, some of it is already sneaking into universities--funnily enough, without the artists' permission. I've had a couple of American students e-mail me because they got assigned to do a project on me for some contemporary art class they were in, and (bizarrely) I also got mail from students in an entomology class who had to study an old picture of mine for a project on bugs in art.

Funnily enough, I never got e-mail from the professors teaching these classes--I take their lack of permission-getting as an assumption on their part that I am so famous my art is already taught in every major university.

(Well, okay, maybe not...they were probably just lazy.)

[eyewoo]

What Frog said...

...However are many digital artists who consider themselves to be in the fine arts. Here's a link to one listing that has some pretty cool work...

http://www.internationaldigitalart.com/guests/guestart.html

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: eyewoo ]

[ceenda]

I guess the books will focus on the "avant-garde" of the early 21st century, which will probably mean contemporary Turner prize winners and not ourselves.

[Pat]

Until some clever soul figures out how to smear digital poo across a Photoshop canvas, the cognoscente won't consider it canon. Adobe's got it's best people working on a filter. so it shouldn't be too long.

-Pat

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: Pat ]

[Frog]

Using poo filters is lame, real artists don't use filters. I smear poo on my actual monitor, only then can it be real art.

[Socar J. MYLES]

You guys are SOOOO twentieth-century. Didn't you know that, like, VOMIT is the new poo?

Why do you think my pictures have gotten so colourful of late?