It is Art or not?

[Simon_P_Cooper@adobeforums.com]

What are your views on computer art aesthetics against traditional painting?

I am carrying out a BA research on this subject. Let say for example you retouched a photo with a soft brush it is still a photo or a painting? Let say you used one of the filters (watercolour, pastel etc) on a photo, would you think it is still a photo or a painting? What do you think computer art really is?

[Buko@adobeforums.com]

To me its art. I create what I would like to see.

I originally took up photography because I was such a miserable failure at painting.

Now with photoshop and my photos I can create what I would paint.

[Ed_Hannigan@adobeforums.com]

"Let say for example you retouched a photo with a soft brush it is still a photo or a painting?"

Must it be one or the other? It's a retouched photo. Digital art.

"Let say you used one of the filters (watercolour, pastel etc) on a photo, would you think it is still a photo or a painting? What do you think computer art really is?"

Computer art.

Paint, photography, computer; all just tools.

[Scott_Weichert@adobeforums.com]

It's all a retouched Photo.

it may enter the realm of digital art if you do more than jsut run a filter on a photo. But just usign a photo and commands within Photoshop, I condiser that, a retouched photo since Photoshop is doing all the work.

[Ronald_Lanham@adobeforums.com]

Simon

It's subjective.

There are people that will rail against a form of art that they themselves either do not produce or, for what ever reason, don't like.

I had a studio in SoHo, NYC, for a couple of years and there was a common joke among painters...

"Sculpture is just something you back into when looking at a painting." <g>

I'm also a sculpture as well as a painter... so it was a little irritating.

If a work combines various media it's simply... you guessed it... mixed-media. As Ed alluded to... it doesn't have to necessarily fit into some else's 'neat' classification.

"Don't be an 'ist," said Harold Rosenberg (Picasso's dealer), "bad artists can be classified, but great artists can't be."

To this day many painters don't consider watercolor a fine art. Yet J.M.W. Turner created some of the most memorable watercolors imaginable; ones that would rival any painting.

Again... it's very subjective.

IMO if it's done extremely well, no matter what media, it's art. If it's done badly, no matter what media, it's cr_p.

FWIW...
"Your exhibition is a great success and, like all successes, we have sold absolutely nothing!.." Harold Rosenberg to Picasso after his first NYC show. <g>

[Phosphor@adobeforums.com]

Art is manifest where I declare it to be so.

Apply liberally, from your own frame of reference.

[Ed_Hannigan@adobeforums.com]

"But just using a photo and commands within Photoshop, I consider that a retouched photo since Photoshop is doing all the work."

I dunno. My brother-in-law sent me a run of the mill snapshot the other day and I ran a couple filters, duplicated layers, changed Blending Modes, etc. on it in Photoshop just for fun (actually did this a few times to get different results) and it doesn't look like a photo any more at all. It looks kinda like art. Maybe not great art but much more interesting and expressive than the original snap. Yet I didn't draw anything or do any compositing (and what of compositing by the way). I'd be hard pressed to call it a retouchesd photo.

Does the fact that an artist(me) used a tool (Photoshop) to produce something neat-o not make it art\?

Ah, the rarefied atmophere of these discussions...

[Stevie_J_V@adobeforums.com]

Michelangelo was a sculptor who painted for a living.

[Allen_Wicks@adobeforums.com]

Simon-

The various dictionary definitions of art all pretty much answer the art portion of your question. Art certainly is not defined by any medium.

Once you apply multiple tools the pieces in question might be described as mixed media of some kind, but that is all just semantics. A retouched piece might be "called" any number of names, but its visual impression and the visceral responses it elicits are all that matters. The descriptive verbiage is IMO pretty meaningless.

[Ronald_Lanham@adobeforums.com]

Michelangelo was a sculptor who painted for a living.

Stevie

I might add... that he was required at one time to paint or not get any commissions to do his sculpture. He preferred to create sculpture.

Something like... "...get up there and paint... or else..." <g>

[Lawrence_Hudetz@adobeforums.com]

"Sculpture is just something you back into when looking at a painting."

Damn! Knocked over another statue. What? It was a Rodin? <shrug>

[Neil_Keller@adobeforums.com]

...would you think it is still a photo or a painting?




Why does it have to be neatly pigeonholed? Why should it even matter? For art, it's the end result that matters, not the means to it.

Neil

[Todie@adobeforums.com]

It would be easier to simplify and call everything Art, but than you may be asked to separate the good from the bad : )

[Stevie_J_V@adobeforums.com]

I'm the other way Neil, I believe art is the process, the creative process, when it's finished (for me anyway) it's history.

Yes Ronald, but from what I've read and seen (a great 2 hour doco on the History channel) that he'd rather sculpt any day of the week.

Indeedy Todie, that's half the fun though, "sorting the sh!t from the clay"

[yassy@adobeforums.com]

Hard to say,but hopefully i`d like to discussing this topis at 3D forum rather than photoshop.

[Neil_Keller@adobeforums.com]

Stevie,

Yes, the process itself can be an "art", as is, say, the molding of Tiffany glass or creating transparency in skin tones in an oil painting, or in setting up the lighting of a photograph. But your remark about it being just "history" at the end of the process doesn't work. OK, that would probably be true for a lot of commercial art. But then, it's history after it's been billed and paid for. <lol>

That said, most would consider the end result of an art-creation process art as well. Whether it is good or bad art is something else! <vbg>

Meanwhile, back at Photoshop...

Neil

[Todie@adobeforums.com]

I've seen Art made by excited monkeys, walking chickens and even bored elephants (that is the effect of paint being smeared on blank canvases by them).
I didn't think it was too good.
(As a matter of fact, I can think of someone much more talented than the monkeys:
Cy Twombly--boy he's good!)

There are Photoshop plug-ins and actions which can make a photo look like a painting.
Is that art? Of course it is. A photo is art from the start, so why would it stop when a new look is bestowed on it, on purpose?
(most of the definition of art has to do with purpose).

So, Photoshop can do Art from... art.
(... or art from Art)

Simple!

[JasonSmith@adobeforums.com]

I honestly think that if Picasso or Dali were alive today - they would not shy away from using Photoshop at some point.

[Neil_Keller@adobeforums.com]

Neither would Ansel Adams.

Neil

[Ken_Nielsen@adobeforums.com]

Art is when you are not paid for it.