digital art and the return to a pre-modern notion of art

Self-Portrait by Arseny Gutov


This is an in-progress ramble I'm still rambling on.

From what I've seen the digital art communities like CGtalk.com and Conceptart.org, the digital art movement seems to return a return to 4 things that the 20th century art left to the past:

Story, Work, Science, and Realism

Story
A return to art as primarily storytelling. Through-out history artist were visual storytellers, they illustrated stories from sacred texts, mythology, history and literature. Then suddenly in the 20th century, artist who continued this tradition were named, in a diminutive tone, mere illustrators. (As if Michaelangelo and Rembrandt were not) This is related to the 20th century notion that of Art with a capital A, and the Artist who was someone above the tasteless masses, and who somehow didn't take commissions. In the digital art world (partly because of it's close ties to illustration, concept art for the entertainment industry, and film) we see a return to storytelling. The images that fill books like Expose and win awards at CGtalk are almost always telling a story and usually doing an excellent job of it. This is related to the return to realism, we live in the world of history, the story of stories.

Work
-Work/art/ craft

In the 20th century, art was elevated to Art, and so became something different then it really is, it was puffed up, self-serving, and introspective. It was too important to humble itself to tell a story, it refused to submit to the limits of visual reality. The artist was someone semi-divine, a Creator, not tolkien's sub-creator who must work with the already existing creation (story, nature, and annoying neighbors). And so the endless quest for originality. Artist of previous generations copied their masters and sought fidelity to the visual universe around them. Before the 20th century the artist was a workman, a craftsman, a paid laborer. True originality comes through limitation, true leadership is servanthood.

Digital art is a return to this. Jonathan Hardesty, now a classical non-digital painter, started his education in this atmosphere at conceptart.org. After studying under some tradition classical painters he can trace his artistic heritage back to Leonardo da Vince. This isn't arrogance, it's true humility.



Science
A return to acknowledging the scientific side of art, and using art to advance science,
-Topology Research
-Anatomy
-medical illustration

the empirical world, which leads to realism

Realism
...


www.cgtalk.com
www.conceptart.com
www.goodbrush.com
www.dusso.com

Girl in the Iron Shoes, illustration, and cg art

That is 'The Girl in the Iron Shoes' a digital painting by the great Chris Beatrice
It was based on the Fairy Tale the Enchanted Pig. Perfect Painting for a great story. Painted in Painter 8 (I use painter Classic, but there pretty much the same) He has a great gallery of Fairy-tale paintings here. Here is a very informative article by him on the making of this piece: (here)

I love illustration. 100 years of illustration has a great collection of classic book illustrations.

(warning, this is going to develop into a rant about modern perspectives on art)

It's always annoying to hear Modern Artists saying illustration isn't art. They always want to exclude Norman Rockwell, calling him a mere illustrator. But somehow want to include all the renaissance artists who painted (or 'illustrated') the Bible, or mythology. I think illustration and narrative Art recognizes that History is a story, indeed His Story (God's story), our lives are stories, and so people and places are inevitably going to be painted in the context of story. To try do disconnect them, is gnostic. It makes sense, though if you believe that history is not a story, but a collection of random events. Why paint people in story? There is no story.

Any way, one of the reasons I like, and am interested in CG art, Matte Painting and Concept Design, is that it very tied to story. One reason CG art has been tied to story because of it's use in the development and production Film and to a somewhat lesser extent video games. (Check out Dusso's matte painting) Also good art in these cirles is more tied to good craftsmanship and skill then merly to originality. Originality will flow from a mastery of the craft. This in a way recognizes God as the only original artist, and craftsmanship is simply learning to re-present his work. (Greg Wilber has interesting thoughts on this, that I don't entirly agree with) Also it has developed nearly independently from modern art theory taught in universities. Making it much more like classical art or natural art. Because CG Art developed with computers there is a much friendlier relationship between Art and Science (think Leonardo Da Vinci). Which is good, because there not that different. Only in modern times have they been in antithesis.

There has also been a revival of classical art in the traditional art world as well: www.artrenewal.com

This might be somewhat scatterbrained, but it's a start...