In this essay I plan to analyse and
explore the ways in which digital technology tools, such as computers, drawing
tablets and digital editing software have changed the way we create and view
art within contemporary illustrative practice. I want to explore whether this
new technology increases the creativity of the artist or stifles it. To gain research
for this essay I am using online articles, books and my personal analysis and
where possible backed up by theory. I will be comparing the creation of images
using digital technology today with historical examples of using new technology
to create art, during the renaissance period and subsequently.
The Austin Museum of Digital Art (AMODA) defines digital art as ‘art that
uses digital technology in any of three ways: as the product, as the process,
or as the subject.’
These three ways of using digital
technology are explained in more detail in an article ‘Digital Art’ by Lauren Tresp on the ‘Chicago School of Media
Theory’ website. She states that artwork using digital technology as the product in its final stage ‘must be
viewed on a digital platform.’ She then explains that artwork using digital
technology as the process can be
defined as ‘work that is created through a digital medium, such as computer
software. Sub-categories include algorithmic art, computer painting,
computer-generated animation, and even art generated within online
communities’. She goes on to say that although these works are created
digitally, they ‘could be printed out and represented materially’. Finally,
Tresp defines art that uses digital technology as the subject as ‘any medium
of art production, traditional, performance, or otherwise, that refers to
digital technology in its subject matter.
Johanna Drucker in her essay “Art”
in Critical Terms for Media Studies :
“In the modern
to contemporary period, the prevailing belief is that the distinctive identity
of art derives from the unique ability of individual artists to give formal
expression to imaginative thought.”
Christiane Paul,
in Digital Art, defines:
‘The terminology
for technological art forms has always been extremely fluid and what is now
known as digital art has undergone several name changes since it first emerged;
once referred to as ‘computer art’ (in the 1970s) and then ‘multimedia art’.
Digital art now takes its place under the umbrella term ‘new media art’.
In Computers & Art, Brian Reffin-Smith claims that the term
‘computer art’ is a bad way to define artwork that uses computers as an aid
that can have a negative effect on the way such work is perceived:
‘To talk about
‘computer-art’ (or computer-anything) is wrong, because it is confusing two
categories that are fundamentally on different levels. Yet from the use of
computers in art can come the most revolutionary of activities.’
The validity of Digital Technology
within the art world is a controversial issue, Some have suggested that using
modern digital tools such as Photoshop and digital painting devalue or detract
from artistic merit and remove any original quality of the image. Stuart Mealing details some of the
negative perceptions people have about digital ‘computer generated’ art in his
section of Computers & Art:
‘Perceived
manifestations of computer generated imagery include – a lack of evidence of
hand skills, absolute precision, a clear mathematical basis for the
composition, palette limitations of tone or hue, pixellation and a clinical
‘cleanness’ of image’.
Digital art may be either art
presented through digital media or art presented in other media, the creation
of which is assisted by digital technology. In this essay I will be concentrating on the latter. The
possibility that there could be a creative conflict between digital art and
traditional art is particularly relevant to my own practice as I work almost
entirely within the field of ‘mixed media’. My work incorporates hand rendering
and digital rendering techniques in roughly equal parts. Having grown up studying traditional
art techniques and being part of a generation comfortable with using computers
and software such as Photoshop. My use of digital technology does not replace
traditional, manual techniques,
but accompanies them to make the process quicker and more convenient. This not
only allows me more time to explore creative possibilities . , but the digital
tools open up new methods and means of presentation than would otherwise be
possible.
Does this make me, and other
artists and creative users of such technology more or less creative?
The rapid increase in the
availability of digital technology has provided wide public access to
techniques for creating images that were previously the domain of experienced
artists. This may have been expected to cause a conflict within the art world;
arguments that new methods of working require less skill and personal input,
and that much of the huge increase
in output of “artistic” work now created
holds little or no artistic merit because of the amount of technological
support provided. Many articles I have found set out to justify digital art as
distinctive from traditional art, is if it were an art form under critical
attack, and suggest that there is a conflict between traditional and digital
art. Jerry Weist, in the book Paint or
Pixel, 2007, states after critical reflection of the industry and his own
experience as an artist:
‘Here we are,
still questioning whether or not in the hands of a committed creative artist
any new tool (even Adobe Photoshop) can’t be the NEW paint brush! But then
society always plays catch up with truly creative minds anyway.’
Having searched for critical
expression of this concern however, all the expert opinion I have found seems
to view the transition to using digital technology positively. I have found no
art criticism that challenges digital movements in art to be a backward step.
So where is this tension coming from?
Through internet research, I was
able to find some negative opinion to support the possibility of a
traditional/digital conflict, but these responses come not from critics,
artists or journalists, but from members of the general public – posting their
opinions in the forms of comments on articles, blog updates and responses to
exhibitions. The common opinion within these comments is that although the work
created can be fascinating and sometimes not initially distinguishable as
digital art, the images are ‘ lifeless’ or ‘wrong’.
I want to explore whether my
perception that the technology stimulates my creativity is supported by other
evidence and opinion, and how we might help public opinion to understand better
the justification for using digital technology in the creative process. I also want to explore historical
precedent s for sudden and rapid changes in artists’ creativity through technological
change, and what the impact of this has been.
In an article in The Telegraph 20th
October, 2010, Martin Gayford, in writing about David Hockney’s earlier use of
the Ipad, states that ‘This is not the first time that Hockney has turned new
technology to the age-old purposes of art. “Anyone who likes drawing and
mark-making,” he thinks, “will like to explore new media.”.
There are many examples in history
of artists making uses of advances in technology to improve their ability to
create and keep images, from the instruments they used to make the marks, to
the pigments they used, the surfaces they made the marks on and the means of
making them permanent.
One good example of this is the camera obscura (Latin for dark room), a device which came into
use in the Renaissance period.
This technology has been under scrutiny recently after a thesis was
published by David Hockney and physicist Charles Falco (Optical Insights into Renaissance Art). They claimed that
influential artists of the 14th – 16th century, such as
Jan Van Eyck and Vermeer used a combination of mirrors, light and lenses to
project an image of the scene they were painting onto the canvas. The device
made the process of creating grand paintings quicker and more accurate.
A key example put forward to
illustrate the Hockney/Falco thesis is the ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ painted by Van
Eyck in 1434. The painting is incredibly realistic and Hockney bases his claim
that the image was created first using a camera
obscura on the notion that the chandelier and mirror in the background are
too perfect to have been painted without the use of optical aids.
The Arnolfini Portrait ,1434, Jan van
Eyck.
He elaborates on this accusation in
a BBC documentary entitled ‘David Hockney – A Secret Knowledge’ (2002).
In his interview with Martin
Gayford, in The Telegraph, (op cit) Hockney argues “In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is
made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a
tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.” His view, with which
I agree, is that the art is in the mind of the creator, not in the tools they
use to create with.
In the art world today artists are
more open about their use of technology in the creation of their artwork.We do
not know whether those commissioning Renaissance artworks were aware of the
device being used, and of any contemporary criticism.
However open or concealed, the use
of the device has not damaged the reputation of the great masters who are
alleged to have used it. The accuracy of the setting of the image within the
frame may have been assisted using optical aids, but the artist was still
responsible for the composition, the lighting, the rendering and the adjustment
of what was seen to present what was intended, or required by the patron.
Another example of advances in
artistic tools influencing creative activity is described on The Metropolitan Museum
of Art (New York) website, which explains that in the mid 18th
Century, artists in Britain regularly sketched and painted outdoors. This
activity was made easier by the introduction of portable watercolour sets.
These sets, also known as ‘paint boxes’ consisted of a pocket-sized case with
compartments for 32 colours, brushes, a porte-crayon and compasses. Initially
these cases were created by the artists themselves, who would have some initial
knowledge of colour and painting theory. Turner for example, created his own
portable watercolour set, which consisted of watercolour cakes stuck into a
leather carry case. However, as the technology became better known and
commercially exploited, the paint
boxes became available to buy ready made from artists’ colourmen. This meant
that the process of watercolour painting became accessible to a much wider
population. People with little knowledge of the process of watercolours could
acquire, more easily, the tools to create works of art.
There may have criticism been at that
time that this devalued artistic creativity, but in the long run the
credibility of watercolour art has been sustained.
Andy Warhol, the Pop
artist who experienced the height of his fame in the 1960s, experimented with a
number of different uses of technology to create his work. As well as being a
successful sculptor and painter, Warhol was renowned for his prints created
using a silkscreen, Silkscreen printing is a method of printing coloured images
using stencils and fine meshed silk screens. The method made reproducing work
much faster and easier. These are two attributes that could viewed negatively
in public opinion, and which in fact he was criticised for at the time. In an
article in The Tampa Bay Times, 2009,
when explaining initial public reaction to Warhol’s screen prints, Lennie
Bennet, Times Art Critic, explains:
‘People
took notice. He was ridiculed at first, even reviled by critics, but he had the
last laugh. He became the king of pop art as well as a very rich man.’
Digital technology in art is not a
new concept. In Digital Art by
Christiane Paul, (2003 , Thames and Hudson) she states “The 1990s witnessed a
technological development of unprecedented speed for the digital medium – the
so called ‘digital revolution.” She goes on to explain that decades before ‘the
digital revolution’ had been proclaimed officially, artists were ‘experimenting
with the digital medium’.
David Hockney, a contemporary English painter widely
respected for his mainly traditional approach to figurative painting, is a good
example of an artist adapting their techniques to take advantage of the ‘digital age’ of art. In his
current exhibition at the Royal Academy, Hockney released a series of large
scale, hand rendered paintings; a series of paintings created digitally using
an Ipad; and video works using digitally recorded material The digitally
painted works were created using an I-Pad tablet, and then digitally printed at
a very large scale to mimic the
effect of his manually painted work.
In praising the capability of the I-Pad,
Hockney claims that “Picasso would have gone mad with this, So would Van Gogh.
I don’t know an artist who wouldn’t, actually.”
However, there are some who claim
that using an I-Pad to create images is easier than using traditional methods
and therefore does not deserve the praise it is receiving.
Although Hockney stands by his use
of new technology, his I-Pad work was not as well received as he might have
expected. In a review of his latest exhibition in The London Evening Standard,
critic Brian Sewell responds to his I-Pad paintings by saying that “They have increased mightily in number, but
in quality they have, no matter what the subject, as mightily deteriorated.”
(19th January, 2012)
Sewell continues “in this new work, every
blade of grass, every stalk of stubble, every hedgerow flower is reduced to a
cypher and, when diminished by erratic perspective, to a blur.”
David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire
in 2011
The above image, The Arrival
of Spring in Woldgate, is one of the images Hockney created using his I- Pad for the 2012
exhibition. The image is created digitally and printed in high quality on a
large scale to fit in with the scale of his paintings created using traditional
methods. The issue that some, including myself, had with this image is that the
initial impact of his traditionally painted large scale works is that they
represent a great deal of commitment on the creators behalf. The I-Pad image is
created much faster on a small scale and simply blown up. This could be
interpreted as cheating the viewer and taking the easy option. Another issue
with images being blown up to a large scale is that they become more noticeably
computer-generated. The images do not pixellate, but the viewer is able to see
each individual ‘brush stroke’ and, where the same brush has been used more
than once, to see that the strokes are identical. Having noticed this, it highlighted
for me a key issue with the justification of exhibiting the I-Pad paintings
alongside the traditionally painted ones.
However, Stuart
Mealing (op cit) discusses this issue of criticism towards digital painting and claims that:
“It would be
strange to criticise a painting because you could see that it had been made
with a brush and paint, yet computer generated images are often criticised for
being too computery or because you can tell they’ve been done by a computer.
This implies either that there is merit in concealing the origin of the image
–that the computer is not a worthy tool for the creation of images – or that
the computer generates a particular (implicitly unsatisfactory) type of image.”
So does the idea
that images created digitally do not deserve the same amount of praise not in
itself stifle creativity?
Although Hockney has discovered a way of working that facilitates the
creation of images rapidly, . the results are still similar to those that he
has created with paint and brushes. The technology has helped him produce more
work, but in my opinion it hasn’t encouraged him to create better or different
work. It may be of course that this will come in the future.
The use of conteporary digital technolgy in aiding artists in their
creative practice is open to greater scrutiny than any prevous technology in
art. This is partly due to the increase in the ability of the general public,
who may not be well informed of the previous history of technology in art, to
criticise and dismiss or undervalue this current phase in the evolution of artistic
expression.
The introduction of new technology
and techniques within the history of art do not appear to have had a negative
effect on creativity. In fact they
have tended to encourage the continuing predominance of representative art.
Major shifts in artistic style have
come from stimuli other than technology – social, cultural, political and so
on.
Jerry Weist, in Paint or Pixel, explains that within all
creative industries, change is vital to the progression of creativity. He
begins by highlighting the fact that many people reject the idea of new
technology being incorporated into and accepted within art.
‘With each step
we take toward acceptance of unfamiliar technologies, and the changes they make
in our daily lives, there are those who reject change and question whether
change is constant and unavoidable, and always for the good. Aren’t at least
some changes, perhaps, for the worse?’
Through an
analysis of examples of new technology in art history, as well as comparisons
to new technology in film and music, Weist concludes:
‘’Can the
machine, or the modern computer render traditional forms of artistic expression
obsolete? If history is any predictor of the future, the answer is “yes.”
Weist goes on to
explain that although traditional forms of artistic expression may be rendered
obsolete, the form that renders them obsolete can often be a revolutionary
advancement, offering new directions and possibilities that before would not
have been possible.
The reason expert criticism is
positive and why we as a community can be confident that digital technology
will have a positive influence on art is because of three things. First, there are
examples through the history of art of technological advances being adopted by artists
to help them in their creative processes. There is no evidence that these have reversed the trend
towards ever greater and more diverse forms of artistic expression. Secondly, that if greater access to art
through technology encourages many more people to take up artistic expression,
then that has to be a good thing. It doesn’t particularly matter if the
technology allows a lot of people to produce derivative or otherwise unoriginal
works of art because eventually those with original ideas will come to the
fore. And finally, the evidence of history is that however much technology
assists the creative process, ultimately artists tend to return to manual means
of creating art because it is ultimately more satisfying and gives them greater
and more direct control of the conversion of their ideas into permanent images.
Digital technology and its use in
creating works of art is to many a fairly new concept, and seen by some as a
negative influence The concept of exploring
how to use new tools and techniques to advance the creative process is however
a characteristic of artistic endeavour throughout art history. These tools have
played a vital role in developing
the works of art that we now view as using ‘traditional’ techniques. The
exploitation of digital technology may still be in its early stages, and we
should be confident that its long term impact will like previous technological
advances at worst neutral, and at best very positive.
Bibliography
Book resources:
Mealing, S. Computers
& Art, 1997, Intellect Books, Exeter.
Paul, C. Digital Art, 2003,
Thames & Hudson Ltd, London.
Weist, J. Paint or
Pixel (Frank, J), 2007, Nonstop
Press, New York.
Internet resources:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bwtr/hd_bwtr.htm
Image resources:
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait
