Yesterday I received an email from Marklin that I think better sums up what I was trying to get at yesterday. So I am using it as today’s project writing because I think this is a discussion that is beginning to influence the way we see ourselves as artists and how we approach our work:
“I enjoyed your post today. Funny, it is a subject I have been thinking lot about lately. When I was in Europe earlier this year, I had the opportunity to stand before the master painters I always loved. It dawned on me that before the invention of the internet we had to work at seeing the art we cherished. You had to find books or travel to see a Caravaggio, or Michelangelo. Now we just put in a few key strokes and there it is for your viewing pleasure.
I think it is a double edged sword. By all means there is the ability to expose yourself to work you may never have had the opportunity to see, yet at the same time it feels like it’s cheapened and artificial.
Does the ability to see an image with out the effort take away from it’s core value? I have been wondering about that ever since.
On a photography level, I remember when the whole Bosnia Herzegovina tragedy was unfolding, both Time and Newsweek, had the same cover photo. It was of a emaciated man behind barbed wire. I remember clearly thinking my god that’s a concentration camp. It dawned I me I had only seen this in my history books.
Our technology has advance so much in the ensuing 60 years of then, that we can literally watch men die on the other side of the planet the instant that it happens, what has not advanced is our humanity.
Our art is what makes us human I think. It goes for words as well, in the not so distant future will anyone remember the pleasure of the feeling of turning a page or the smell of a book ?
Maybe because of our ability to see the image so readily we have become desensitized to the rarity and beauty of what it took to create it in the first place.
I wish you an incredible journey. Bring some Kleenex with you if you are anything like me, you will bawl like a baby when you stand before a Caravaggio paintings. The other masters of Italy had god given talent. Caravaggio had the balls to steal the hand of god to paint.
Marklin”
It feels that the world of art and presentation is about to shift. The world of online galleries seems to be shifting. They just seem so saturated with over hyped, non-artistic, computer generated stuff. Its like films anymore, all special effects with no substance. We spend so much time on line socializing and researching, that for many of us we want the interactive pleasure of walking through a gallery or museum and seeing works hanging on the walls. It still does have an impact on seeing these things the way they were created and as they were originally intended instead of broken into a bazillion little pixels. Now that we live in a world where everyone can take a picture, the next step is to make a leap and connect the soul of ourselves with what we are doing and make something extraordinary that reflects who we truly are.
