Magical-Secrets: A Printmaking Community
Daguerreotype to Digital (Chuck Close)
Practical suggestions about thinking creatively. A new Egg from time to time.
The 3-Minute Egg
Practical suggestions about thinking creatively. A new Egg from time to time.
The 3-Minute Egg
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In “The Work of Art in the
In “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” Douglas Davis suggests that when meaning is de-constructed, it is re-created, within a subjective context that is inevitably unique, no matter how ordered, or predestined.
For those of us who have worked on computer, we understand that the image that is encoded in the 1 and 0s is a unique concept—but that its external existence is dependent upon the device by which it is made visible, a hugely significant variable.
“THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL REPRODUCTION: An Evolving Thesis/1991-1995” by DOUGLAS DAVIS LEONARDO Volume 28, Number 5 (1995), available online at http://cristine.org/borders/Davis_Essay.html
This is the first time I do
This is the first time I do not know what to think about your comment.
Recently I visited a David Hockney exhibition and he had a couple of digital prints hanging together with many paintings and drawings. I immediately felt uncomfortable as I saw that the digital work was of inferior quality compared to the paintings/drawings AND the artistic input in those was totally abscure. Where these reproductions or original works..? Where is the border line and how shall we look at totally digital work ?
There are enough artists and dealers who strongly argue that the value of a picture is totally independent from the medium no matter whether you draw with a pencil or with an inkjet printer.
What we see nowadays isn’t it just the death of the good old original?
P.S.: I am owner of two digital iphone paintings by D.Hockney that were available for download for 48 hours. What is the value of that work ?
By “value”..i take it
By “value”..i take it you mean “monetary value”. it’s ‘value’ is what any person is prepared to give for it. Would you have downloaded the images if you had to pay $1000 for each…..what about $10 each.. personally, i would not pay ANY money for them..just as i would not pay to download a Monet image. i might imagine a situation in say 50 years when we are still having this debate and a collector may pay for “your” images as an example of an early 21st century debate. Right now, the image has been aquired by ..no doubt…thousands of people…for whom they DO have value..in the fact that the original was made by Hockney and they feel happy to have them on their walls..
Art-market value is not
Art-market value is not usually independent of medium. People are generally not willing to pay for an original print within the price range of paintings by the same artist, even if the print is a great one—or even if, as occasionally happens, it is a unique print. Knowing the amount of hand work that goes into an etching, I don’t think anyone should pay the same price for an ink jet print as for an etching, but deep down I realize that the amount of hand work in any piece of art has little to do with its value. So, what you call “artistic input” is as good a way as any to describe what is critical, and that input has to include the choice of medium best suited to the work the artist wants to do. You have put your finger on the key question: is it a reproduction or an original work? We printmakers work constantly to develop an audience that realizes fine art prints are original. But the manufactured look and feel of ink jet prints, combined with the fact that many are reproductive, make it essential to ask that question about them. Reproductions can have value, but it is different from market value—this point was being made by Hockney in giving you his iphone paintings free, don’t you think? Aren’t those works in the same boat with free posters, maybe accompanying a work by Felix Gonzales-Torres? I don’t think that having to ask whether something is an original print or a reproduction means the death of the original, as you suggest. It’s a question the printmaking field has been dealing with for a long time. KB
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