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| Peter Thiel. Photo by David Orban. |
What I like about this piece is that it's lengthy and has a broad scope. The standard newspaper length article starts feeling a little stale and thin after a period of regular reading. And examining issues on the micro scale (should the tax rate on the wealthy be raised by x percent?) looks like a worthless exercise when you start to ask yourself about what generates progress broadly.
Let me know what you think about Thiel's argument. In many ways, I agree with him. Has art stagnated of late? Are people going to look back and consider some of today's American authors equal to Hemingway and Fitzgerald? I thought you might have some thoughts on that.
A lot of Thiel's piece is about economics, but he doesn't ever get too technical (except for that bit about leverage). I think it's interesting to consider this view, because it really forms the essence of what appears to be a growing libertarian constituency. I don't agree with his ultimate opinion that there's little hope of economic progress without drastic change, but it's that dark thought that makes this piece so captivating.
Enter the desert:
Note: I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors. I didn't feel like I should worry about them, because I don't think you'd particularly care about them.
Progress, be it scientific or technological, has always been a controversial factor in the world of art. As mankind progresses the means by which we make art will develop and shift along side us. The idea that technological growth is exponential means that contemporary artists, starting as early as when the first photographic images were created, have had to deal with this problem much more than say Rembrandt, or Michelangelo.
ReplyDeleteIts not secret that the field of illustration has largely been considered "dead" since the advent of conventional photography. There was a time known as the Golden Age of Illustration that stretched from the early 1900's to the late 50's. During that time illustrators were akin to rock stars. They were rich, people flocked to them in hordes and they were essentially a household name. Once the camera came along, the wealth of jobs illustrators could pursue in the advertising business shorted out and their "time" had all but come to an end.
Now, when I say dead, I obviously don't mean that there are no illustrators left, just that our job market wouldn't yield the same success as it did in the past. Naturally, there will always be a place for illustrations like the shitty ones you see in the Economist. Unfortunately, our generation has seen the birth of something that is akin to the camera both in its representation of a progressive milestone and in the threat it posses to illustrators of our time. The rise of the digital artists is cornering the illustration market from a two-fronted attack.
On one end, we see the drastic rise in graphic design. This movement started in the Bauhaus late 10's. Since then it has flourished in our culture. Graphic design is considered a communicative art like illustration and focuses around visually appealing ways of displaying information without reliance on pictorial imagery. The digital age makes it even easier for graphic designers as one can set fonts and generate layouts with ultimate precision at the mere click of a button. In a matter of moments anyone can gain the basic technical skills of a graphic designer. The market is swelling with these new hordes and pushing illustrators out.
ReplyDeleteOn the other end of the digital age we have the digital artists. Illustration has never been highly regarded as an "art form" and illustrators have known that from the get go. Our job is to create the most visually appealing piece of work that we can and to do it by whatever deadline our client gives us. Cutting corners in the illustration world isn't frowned upon among illustrators, its just part of the trade. A painter may scoff at an illustrator's informal techniques and our lack of adherence to artistic "rules" but we do what we can to pay the bills. Now, what better way to cut corners then on a computer? Digital illustrator can do the work of a traditional one in a fraction of the time and if the digital artist is any good, then no one can recognize the difference. There's no set up time, there's no disconnect between the piece and distribution (it is expected that any traditional illustration these days can be transferred into digital form for a client) and most of all there is no cost for supplies.
The only thing preventing traditional illustrators from being totally wiped out is time. Digital illustration is new and people are still getting a grasp of it. More importantly, there hasn't been a paradigm shift in our cultural expectations yet. The sign of a talented digital illustrator is one that can perfectly imitate traditional medium. Until culture gets more accustomed to a "digital" look, digital illustrators will always be chasing the authenticity of a traditional piece of illustration. It is the presence of fate and randomness that traditional medium offers, the presence of real brush strokes, natural, uneven distribution of paint that digital artists try desperately to capture. As long as us traditional artists still have that on our side, there will be a place for us.
Inevitably, our slim hold will one day slip. Soon people will become more accustomed to the digital aesthetic. That will leave little room for us traditionals. We will be as antique and odd as someone who owns a vinyl record player. Less charming though, more of an unrelatable quirk that really isn't worth the effort.
When we look to the future of our business, it often helps to consider the past. In the fifties, Norman Rockwell, possibly the greatest illustrator to ever live, admitted to using a camera in his studio to aid in illustrating. The illustration community was shocked and felt betrayed that Rockwell would employ such a device as it stood to replace his very job. Rockwell seemed to believe that the camera was going to be nothing more than a tool to ease the illustration process and would be unable to supplant the human element of an illustration as a whole. Contemporary traditional illustrators who use "a little bit of digital" just to ease up some of the work load, myself included, need to take note of just how wrong Rockwell was.