Tag Archives: painting

ArtSunday: the nonlinearity of influence

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“I’m interested in what motivates you, and how you understand the world.” He glanced sideways at her. “Rausch tells me you’ve written about music.”

“Sixties garage bands. I started writing about them when I was still in the Curfew.””Were they an inspiration?”

She was watching a fourteen-inch display on the Maybach’s dash, the red cursor that was the car proceeding along the green line that was Sunset. She looked up at him. “Not in any linear way, musically. They were my favorite bands. Are,” she corrected herself.

He nodded.

– William Gibson, Spook Country

I’ve always been intrigued by the curious dynamic of influence. Read more

ArtSunday: Photorealism and Jerry Van

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When it comes to art, part of me has never fully grokked the photorealists. I mean, in an age before photography, sure, but these days if you want photorealism wouldn’t you prefer, you know, photos?

Then there’s the other part of me, the part that’s always cognizant of Keats:

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

The truth is that what some of these artists are capable of is nothing short of remarkable. Their technique is necessarily flawless and the best of them can infuse a subject, by design, with a greater degree of character, gravity, even intent than a photographer, who is more or less constrained by what’s in front of the camera. Read more

ArtSunday: do electric sheep dream of digital art?

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A few weeks ago we showed you a painting by Miro and posed the question: is this art? The consensus opinion seemed to be that sure, I guess it’s art, although I wouldn’t pay a penny for it.

Today we look at digitally generated images and ask the same question. Specifically, have a look at Electric Sheep, my cool new screen saver program. According to the Web site:

Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver created by Scott Draves. It’s run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers “sleep”, the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”. The result is a collective “android dream”, an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Read more