Digital Art

Digital Art 

In the 1950s, many artists and designers were working with mechanical devices and analogue computers in a way that can be seen as a precursor to the work of the early digital pioneers who followed. One of the earliest electronic works in the V&A's collection is 'Oscillon 40' dating from 1952. The artist, Ben Laposky, used an oscilloscope to manipulate electronic waves that appeared on the small fluorescent screen. An oscilloscope is a device for displaying the wave shape of an electric signal, commonly used for electrical testing purposes. The waves would have been constantly moving and undulating on the display, and there would have been no way of recording these movements on paper at this time. It was only through long exposure photography that the artist was able to record these fleeting moments, allowing us to see them decades later.

Ben Laposky photographed numerous different combinations of these waves and called his images 'Oscillons'. The earliest photographs were black and white, but in later years the artist used filters in order to produce striking colour images such as 'Oscillon 520'.
1960s.

1960s.

In the early 1960s computers were still in their infancy, and access to them was very limited. Computing technology was heavy and cumbersome, as well as extremely expensive. Only research laboratories, universities and large corporations could afford such equipment. As a result, some of the first people to use computers creatively were computer scientists or mathematicians.

Many of the earliest practitioners programmed the computer themselves. At this time, there was no 'user interface', such as icons or a mouse, and little pre-existing software. By writing their own programs, artists and computer scientists were able to experiment more freely with the creative potential of the computer.

John Lansdown using a Teletype ( an electro-mechanical typewriter)
about 1960-1970

Much of the early work focused on geometric forms and on structure, as opposed to content. This was, in part, due to the restrictive nature of the available output devices, for example, pen plotter drawings tended to be linear, with shading only possible through cross hatching. Some early practitioners deliberately avoided recognisable content in order to concentrate on pure visual form. They considered the computer an autonomous machine that would enable them to carry out visual experiments in an objective manner.

Early output devices were also limited. One of the main sources of output in the 1960s was the plotter, a mechanical device that holds a pen or brush and is linked to a computer that controls its movements. The computer would guide the pen or brush across the drawing surface, or, alternatively, could move the paper underneath the pen, according to instructions given by the computer program.

Another early output device was the impact printer, where ink was applied by force onto the paper, much like a typewriter.

Both plotter drawings and early print-outs were mostly black and white, although some artists, such as computer pioneer Frieder Nake, did produce plotter drawings in colour. Early computer artists experimented with the possibilities of arranging both form and, occasionally, colour in a logical fashion.

'Hommage à Paul Klee 13/9/65 Nr.2', a screenprint of a plotter drawing created by Frieder Nake in 1965, was one of the most complex algorithmic works of its day. An algorithmic work is one that is generated through a set of instructions written by the artist. Nake took his inspiration from an oil- painting by Paul Klee, entitled 'Highroads and Byroads' (1929), now in the collection of the Ludwig Museum, Cologne.

Frieder Nake, 'Hommage à Paul Klee

One of the most famous works to come out of Bell Labs was Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton's Studies in Perception, 1967, also known as Nude.
Harmon and Knowlton decided to cover the entire wall of a senior colleague's office with a large print, the image of which was made up of small electronic symbols that replaced the grey scale in a scanned photograph. Only by stepping back from the image (which was 12 feet wide), did the symbols merge to form the figure of a reclining nude. Although the image was hastily removed after their colleague returned, and even more hastily dismissed by the institution's PR department, it was leaked into the public realm, first by appearing at a press conference in the loft of Robert Rauschenberg, and later emblazoned across the New York Times. What had started life as a work-place prank became an overnight sensation.

In the early 1970s the Slade School of Art, University of London, established what was later called the 'Experimental and Computing Department'. The Slade was one of the few institutions that attempted to fully integrate the use of computers in art into its teaching curriculum during the 1970s. The department offered unparalleled resources with its in-house computer system.

Paul Brown studied at the Slade from 1977 to 1979. His computer-generated drawings, use individual elements that evolve or propagate in accordance with a set of simple rules. Brown developed a tile-based image generating system. Despite using relatively simple forms, it would have taken a long time to write a program to produce a work such as this.

Paul Brown, 'Untitled Computer Assisted Drawing', 1975.

Manuel Barbadillo, 'Untitled', about 1972.

The 1980s saw digital technologies reach into everyday life, with the widespread adoption of computers for both business and personal use. Computer graphics and special effects began to be used in films such as 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' and 'Tron', both 1982, as well as in television programmes. Combined with the popularity of video and computer games, computing technology began to be a much more familiar sight at home, as well as at work.
The late 1970s had seen the births of both Apple and Microsoft and the appearance of some of the first personal computers. PCs were now available that were affordable and compact, and ideal for household use. Alongside this, inkjet printers developed to become the cheapest method of printing in colour. The development of off-the-shelf paint software packages meant it was much simpler to create images using the computer. As this new medium entered popular culture, the type of art being produced changed. Much of the new work of this period demonstrated a clear 'computer aesthetic', seemingly more computer-generated in its appearance.

This image by Kenneth Snelson was created using a 3D computer animation program. The image forms the left side of a stereoscopic image. Accompanied by a near identical image placed to its right and viewed simultaneously, the two images would have created the illusion of a 3D environment.

Kenneth Snelson, 'Forest Devils' MoonNight' (detail), 1989

The term 'Computer Art' is used less frequently to describe artists and designers working with the computer today. Many artists who now work with computers incorporate this technology into their practice as just one tool amongst many that they may use interchangeably. This is part of a more general shift towards artists and designers working in an increasingly interdisciplinary manner. Many no longer define themselves as practitioners of a specific media.
James Faure Walker can be described as both a digital artist and a painter. Since the late 1980s Faure Walker has been integrating the computer into his practice as a painter, incorporating computer-generated images into his paintings, as well as painterly devices into his digital prints. He moves between the tools of drawing, painting, photography and computer software, blending and exploiting the different characteristics of each. His work frequently plays on the contrast between physical paint and digital paint, and sometimes it is difficult to differentiate between the two.

Faure Walker aims to complete at least one drawing each day, either in pencil, pen or watercolour. These drawings are always abstract, and have their roots in gestural mark making, rather than being figurative drawings of objects. In the same way, the artist uses software packages such as Illustrator and Photoshop to explore digital motifs, or linear marks and patterns. A motif that has been created digitally might then be projected onto a canvas using a digital projector, where the artist can begin experimenting with the pattern or motif in the physical medium of paint. Faure Walker creates digital photographs of his paintings in progress, so that he can try out changes and additions on the computer before adding them to the canvas. He applies this same method to his production of large digital prints such as 'Dark Filament', incorporating found imagery such as a botanical illustration.

James Faure Walker, 'Dark Filament' (detail), 2007

Conceptual Art

Conceptual Art 

&

Young British artists

Conceptual Art

Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the artwork, and the way it is made are more important than the finished work itself. The term usually refers to artworks from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. Because conceptual artists stressed the ideas and methods of production as the value of the work (rather than the finished object), it follows that conceptual art can be – and look like – almost anything. Conceptual art, sometimes simply called Conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many works of conceptual art, sometimes called installations, may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions.

Keith Arnatt

Arnatt's work is referred to by the art historian Charles Townsend Harrison as " ... developing during the mid '60s from a concern with Minimal paintings and sculptures posing gestalt problems, through involvement with elements of behaviour and performance to works often sited out of doors involving suspension or interruption of the spectator's expectations." Arnatt's works, associated with conceptual art came to prominence in the late 1960s. A number of works from this period, including Self-Burial (Television Interference Project) (1969) and Trouser-Word Piece (1972-89 version) are in the Tate collection.

Joseph Kosuth

Joseph Kosuth
Clock (One and Five), English/Latin Version (Exhibition Version) 1965, 1997
Clock, photographs and printed texts

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965)

Land Art

Land art was part of the wider conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The most famous land art work is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty of 1970, an earthwork built out into the Great Salt Lake in the USA. Though some artists such as Smithson used mechanical earth-moving equipment to make their artworks, other artists made minimal and temporary interventions in the landscape such as Richard Long who simply walked up and down until he had made a mark in the earth. Land art, which is also known as earth art, was usually documented in artworks using photographs and maps which the artist could exhibit in a gallery.

Robert Smithson

American artist Robert Smithson used the land itself as his medium and the landscape as his gallery:

I think that’s more or less run its course – the typical idea of exhibitions in a museum. I think it would be quite possible to make art in a quarry, a mine, a lake, or canal – you know, any number of places. To build directly out of the ground of the site is one of my intentions.
Robert Smithson, in conversation with Kenneth Baker, 1971 

Robert Smithson
spiral Jetty April 1970, Great Salt Lake, Utah
Black rock, salt crystals, earth, red water (algae)

Robert Smithson
Order in Chaos

Richard Long is most famously known for documenting his journeys from epic solitary walks through photography, maps and text.

South Bank Circle by Richard Long

Small White Pebble Circles

Andrew Goldsworthy
  He is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. Goldsworthy regards his creations as transient or ephemeral. He photographs each piece once right after he makes it. His goals is to understand nature by directly participating in nature as intimately as hecan. Hr generally works with whatever comes to hand: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice , reeds and thorns. 

Rain shadow St. Abbs, Scotland June 1984

Oak Leaves and Holes

Rivers and Tides

Performance Art

Performance art is sometimes carefully planned and scripted but can also be spontaneous and random. Although it often takes place in front of an audience and may involve audience participation – or the orchestration of other participants by the artist – it can also be an action performed privately by the artist.Performance art has origins in futurism and dada, but became a major phenomenon in the 1960s and 1970s and can be seen as a branch of conceptual art.

Stelarc

He is a Cyprus-born performance artist raised in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine,whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centered on his concept that the human body is obsolete.

Stelarc, the award-winning Australian performance artist who has grown a third ear on his arm for art’s sake, believes it is. And as he pursues further surgeries to install a Wi-Fi connected microphone that will allow people anywhere in the world to listen to what he hears, he hopes he can convince others of his vision.

Young British Artists (YBA)

Who is  Michael Craig Martin?

He is an Irish  contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is noted for fostering the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, An Oak Tree. He is Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths. Goldsmiths College of Art played an important role in the development of the movement. It had for some years been fostering new forms of creativity through its courses which abolished the traditional separation of media into painting, sculpture, printmaking etc. Michael Craig-Martin was among its most influential teachers.

An Oak Tree
Michael Craig Martin
1973

Details of the An Oak Tree

Study for Storeroom
 2000

Eye of the Storm

Untitled (painting), 2010, Acrylic on Aluminium

The label Young British Artists (YBAs) is applied to a loose group of British artists who began to exhibit together in 1988 and who became known for their openness to materials and processes, shock tactics and entrepreneurial attitude
In the late 1980s British art entered what was quickly recognised as a new and excitingly distinctive phase, the era of what became known as the YBAs – the Young British Artists. Young British Art can be seen to have a convenient starting point in the exhibition Freeze organised in 1988 by Damien Hirst (the most celebrated, or notorious, of the YBAs) while he was still a student at Goldsmiths College of Art. Freeze included the work of fellow Goldsmiths students, many of whom also became leading artists associated with the YBAs, such as Sarah Lucas, Angus Fairhurst and Michael Landy.

The YBA brand

The first use of the term ‘young British artists’ to describe the work of Hirst and these other young artists was by Michael Corris in Artforum, May 1992. The acronym ‘YBA’ was coined later in 1996 in Art Monthly magazine. The label turned out to be a powerful brand recognised worldwide and a useful marketing tool for the artists associated with it (as well as for British art generally in the 1990s). One of the features that defines the YBAs is their ‘can do’ entrepreneurial approach to showing and marketing their work. This can be seen in ambitious exhibitions such as Freeze organised by Hirst and his contemporaries, as well as in ventures such as the Pharmacy restaurant opened in Notting Hill in 1998 and backed by Hirst, and The Shop set up in an empty shop in East London by artists Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas in order to market their work.

Damien Hirst
Mother and Child (Divided) exhibition copy 2007 (original 1993)
Presented by the artist 2007

Sarah Lucas
Pauline Bunny 1997
Mixed media

Michael Landy
Cor! What a Bargain! 1992

Cornelia Parker
Thirty Pieces of Silver 1988-9
Silver and metal

Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas
The Last Night of the Shop 3.7.93 1993
Fabric and paper badges

Postmodernism

Postmodernism

The term postmodernism is used to describe the changes that took place in Western society and culture from the 1960s onwards that arose from challenges made to established structures and belief system. In art, postmodernism was specifically a reaction against modernism which had dominated art theory and practise since the beginning of the 20th century. 

The term postmodernism was first used in around 1970. As an art movement postmodern style or theory on which it is hinged. It embraces many different approaches to art making; and a host of art groups and movements from the 1960s onwards can be described as postmodernist. It is therefore perhaps easiest to define postmodernism by looking at its main characteristics. Anti-authoritarian by nature; it refuses to recognise the authority of any singe style of definition of what art should be. It collapses the distinction between high culture and mass or popular culture and it tends to get rid of the boundary between art and everyday life. Resultantly, postmodern art can be characterised by its self- conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, and an eclectic mixing of different artistic and popular styles and media. 

Main Characteristic 1

Anti- authoritarian

Anti authoritarian- opposed to authoritarianism, democratic- characterized by or advocating or based upon the principles of democracy or social equality. 

Main Characteristic 2

Collapses boundaries between high culture and the Mass Culture

Jeff Koons

Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York,Pennsylvania.

His works have sold for substantial sums of money, including at least one world record auction price for a work by a living artist.

Critics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch, crass, and based on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings in his works,nor any critiques.

Jeff Koons rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated era.He gained recognition in the 1980s and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a SoHo loft on the corner of Houston Street and Broadway in New York. It was staffed with over 30 assistants, each assigned to a different aspect of producing his work—in a similar mode as Andy Warhol's Factory.

 "I think art takes you outside yourself, takes you past yourself. I believe that my journey has really been to remove my own anxiety. That's the key. The more anxiety you can remove, the more free you are to make that gesture, whatever the gesture is. The dialogue is first with the artist, but then it goes outward, and is shared with other people. And if the anxiety is removed everything is so close, everything is available, and it's just this little bit of confidence, or trust, that people have to delve into." Jeff Koons

Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry is an English artist, known mainly for his ceramic vases and cross-dressing. Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, often appear. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003.

In his childhood Perry took an interest in drawing and building model aeroplanes, both of which were to become themes in his work.

The Walthamstow Tapestry

The Adoration of the Cage Fighters

Gretel and a Russian Orthodox church, in the form of his house for Essex. The rentable holiday home is also an eccentric dedication to an individual by the name of Julie Cope.