Digital Painting and the question of value - continued

"Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Oscar Wilde

Mum's Mum

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/mums-mum-lianne-schneider.html

The question of value - the price that digital art commands in the art marketplace - is a complicated one. Few would argue the point that a traditional painting is a one of a kind possession while digital art is purposely made for duplication. Yet most traditional artists today have their work professionally photographed in order to produce at least limited edition prints of their "masterpiece." Museums sell prints, posters and art cards of famous works. Yet none of this activity reduces the value of the original work. I contend that the digital artist's original work was often as time consuming and difficult to produce as the painter's. [As I said in my short rant the other day, in some cases I suspect that it is MORE time consuming and difficult. How many "Oneness" paintings do you think Newman could have created in a day if they are similar to that one? Several I'm sure - yet it takes me two weeks full time to do most of my digital paintings.] And it is certainly possible that a digital artist could, if he/she wished to, limit the number of prints, or restrict the reproductions to giclee on canvas in order to increase the value of those reproductions. A Certificate of Authenticity might also reassure buyers that there is intrinsic value in a print or canvas of a digital work. But even employing those methods, could a digital artist expect to command the kind of price for even a large limited edition print than prints of an original oil or acrylic would get? 

I don't think so. In an article back in 2008, the TUTS website posted on its Design and Illustration division "54 Mind-Blowing Digital Paintings." Virtually ALL of them were Manga comics, fantasy figures, game figures, or illustrations - all brilliant yes - but none that looked like traditional paintings and all designed for digital viewing, gaming or animation. None commanded a $44 million price tag either. That has changed very little in the past six years - traditional digital painting seldom makes it into these lists and fractal art virtually never. Fantasy art and 3D continue to command the most attention and the highest prices for digital art because these forms are essential to video gaming, animation and interactive web designs. 

There IS some hope, however, whether you are a traditional digital painter or a digital abstract artist. The "hope" comes in the form of an article in Vulture by Jerry Saltz that is something of a "swan song" for the traditional gallery show. Decrying the fact that art shows go up but "without much consequence except for sales or no sales," Saltz says that internet sites now offer "high end sales" and online art auctions and that such sites are proliferating at an amazing pace. This means "art is about nothing but commerce" which is not what the gallery venue was; it was a place to engage with other artists, critics and students of art, a place for conversation and thought. He complains, "When so much art is sold online and at art fairs, it's great for the lucky artists who make money but it leaves out everyone who isn't already a brand." Art dealer, Kenny Schachter goes a step further, noting that "the higher and higher prices are for fewer and fewer artists." 

Dealing an additional blow to the gallery show, auction houses like Christie's are now providing a venue for emerging artists "unrepresented by galleries," and in this way making that art available only to collectors, not the general public. This again, is a great thing for the few lucky artists selected by such auction houses (physical auctions or online auction houses like ArtSpace) but such art remains the possession of the wealthy, and the very process, says Saltz, "makes being around art less special. Too many buyers keep their purchases in storage, in crates, awaiting resale. Mediocre Chinese photorealism has become a tradeable packaged good." 

So the narrow thread of "hope" offered by the death of the physical gallery show still offers little enough in the way of value and acceptance to the digital artist. I see "high end art" on a site I belong to and I've no idea how it was selected to be on that "high end" page. Most of the items offer a high priced original oil or acrylic, however, so I personally do not consider that traditional digital painting. These pieces were created as traditional art works initially and THEN digitized for much lower priced prints. Digital art, BY DEFINITION, is art created originally with digital tools and digital techniques. My own painting above is certainly no Georgia O'Keefe, nor does it pretend to be but it was hand-painted digitally stroke by stroke (in this case pointillist dot by pointillist dot) just as O'Keefe did her flowers. 

I am represented by a small gallery in upstate New York but sales in this gallery tend to be original photography or original oil/acrylic works, sculpture and jewelry and that is primarily who is represented by this gallery - photographers and traditional artists. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. I have friends whose photographic art (photographs altered by applying textures or recomposing several photographic images) is licensed by high volume publishers and while I consider their work to be art in the truest sense of the word, and I'm incredibly happy for each of them that their artwork is popular enough to make a living from it, that is not the case for most of us who are digital artists and digital painters. Saltz ponders the question of the future of medium sized and small galleries by asking, "I wonder if a much bigger shakeout is about to happen, one that makes art resemble any mainstream business." And if it's just business, is it art? 

The question of value then is multifaceted. Does a piece have value because it's in a traditional medium, because the critics like it, because a gallery is willing to show it, an auction house willing to auction it...or is its value based solely on market forces. Can a digital work even begin to compete and if so, how will the value of such easily reproducible art be maintained or even increased? If I were to license and sell 20,000 copies of the digital painting above would that make it more or less valuable as a work of art? If I master the business tools of social media, online art sites, self-promotion, looking at trends, checking out decor magazines for hot colors, do I do that at the cost of the actual artistic merits of my work? Or am I just smart enough to realize that digital art and digital painting are not meant to be measured by the same standards as an original oil and that its very accessibility and availability to the average person who loves what they see and can actually afford to own it makes it more valuable? I think the day is coming when a person will look at a digital painting and say, "I love that painting...Oh good, it's digital - and that means I can own it!"  Value is really not so much in the medium as in the eye of the beholder as well as in the heart of the artist who created it. 

Digital painting and the question of value...

"Wow, this painting is great! ...oh, it's only digital." 

Kelley McMorris

Outer Harbor - South Entrance
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/buffalo-south-entrance-light-lianne-schneider.html

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a wonderful illustration posted on Facebook that had been reposted from artist/illustrator Kelley McMorris' blog. At the top was a sketch of a digital artist thinking and planning his/her next digital art creation - paying attention to light, form, composition, color, message. This kind of thinking goes into the creation of a digital work BEFORE one ever puts pen to tablet just as it goes into creating a traditional artwork before putting brush to canvas. At the bottom of the illustration, however, was another sketch of the same artist sitting back in his/her chair and saying, "Computer draw me a horse." The two sketches demonstrate the difference between what actually happens in the process of creating a digital artwork and what the public perception of such art might be.

Until I took up digital painting, I probably suffered from the same misconceptions. Now, I know better and, like many other digital artists - illustrators, cartoonists, 3D fantasy creators, fractal artists as well as digital painters - I'm anxious for the day that digitally created art is perceived by both the public and gallery owners and art critics as valid and valuable art. That day has not yet arrived. Few critics can even agree on what constitutes "digital art" let alone consider it for the rarefied atmosphere of upscale galleries. Isn't most photography digital now? Photography as art seems to make the cut for what constitutes "fine art" though photo composites and significantly altered and textured works are not viewed the same way. Besides, I don't recall any photograph ever bringing $44 million at auction. (I'm speaking of the recent auction price for the Barnett Newman "Onement VI" painting that looks like a blue ping pong table top).

I hope you'll pardon my outrage about this but just because some ritzy art critic decided to tout Newman's series of paintings in New York art circles doesn't make it art, let alone art worth $44 million. Perhaps it's the "little green monster" at work in me, but I can assure you that a great deal more thought, time, effort, reflection about mood and message went into my digital painting pictured above than went into this work. Give me a roll of blue painters' tape and a gallon of oil based house paint and I could create the match for this in red or yellow or whatever color the critic might like. Then there is the $75 million for a 1950 Rothko, or the $148 million for Jackson Pollack's No. 5...but I'll stop there.

There is debate even within the digital painters' circle though about whether what we do is merely a duplication of traditional painting techniques or an expansion of them, and further whether a work created specifically for reproduction and print, even in limited editions, could ever have the value of a singular "original" traditional painting. So let's dissect the process and the question of reproducibility versus value.

Writer/artist Stephen Danzig contends, "Within the digital creative matrix is a human consciousness that must utilize the traditional processes of understanding line, color theory and subject matter - its linear function is the same by definition as traditional processes and must be judged and valued accordingly." There is some agreement about the similarities in the creative processes. According to the Wikipedia article on digital painting, "As a method of creating an art object, it adapts traditional painting medium such as acrylic paint, oils, ink, etc. and applies the pigment to traditional carriers, such as woven canvas cloth, paper, polyester etc. by means of computer software driving industrial robotic or office machinery (printers)....'Traditional digital painting' creates an image in a stroke-by-stroke, brush-in-hand fashion but the canvas and the painting tools are digital." 

I consider myself a traditional digital painter because even though I work from a sketch or a reference photograph, I apply each stroke and color in my painting individually just as if I were working with acrylics (my previous traditional medium) on wood or canvas. I work doubly hard to create the effect of tooth, texture, brushstrokes - aspects of a finished painting that would be automatic using traditional materials. I am not talking about programs - and there are many excellent ones on the market - like Corel Painter that will "clone" a photograph and convert it into any kind of painting with just a few keystrokes and the push of a few buttons. (Not that that is as easy as it looks either!) I am talking about starting with a blank "canvas" or a simple black and white sketch and actually painting each brushstroke, being responsible for color mixing, type and size of brush, desired output style, proper lighting and so forth. Even using a reference photo - as a painter would use a model or paint in plein air - does not negate the incredibly detailed work the true digital painter has to do.

This is where the disagreement often begins about the merits of digital painting. It is both harder and easier than traditional painting, I think. It is harder because as J. D. Jarvis, the Museum of Computer Art's contributing editor says, "Digital artists work hard to mimic the effects of gravity, absorption or resistance and interaction with grain and texture that happen naturally (or by chance) with physical materials. And, since these "accidents" shape the nature of such material-based work, digital tools force us into devising new virtual techniques." I have to use digitally rendered effects like "noise" or "grunge" or canvas texture to give my work the same kind of dimension and texture a physical painting would have. But it's easier and more freeing too for several reasons. Contrary to Stephen Danzig's assertion that digital art has the same linear function as traditional art, creating a digital painting or illustration is NOT a linear process. It is a layered process. Some of my digital paintings or digital composites have more than 30 layers. One folk art painting I did had 84 separate layers before I was even remotely satisfied with the final project. This is a major difference but one that should bring added value to the finished output. "Digital tools offer production techniques ...such as multiple undos and the ability to save and combine previous renditions of a single project and, thereby, allows us to risk pushing a composition in a direction that while it may have destroyed a physical work on traditional materials, only brings a digital composition greater depth and more polish. If nothing else, we are allowed to know that flash of inspiration wasn't really a good way to go after all and can return to the previous undamaged state. For this reason alone, digital compositions should be the strongest, most polished and thoroughly explored compositions in art and, at the same time, the most spontaneous." 

To be continued in Friday's post....