HISTORY

DIGITAL DIVIDE
Claire Bishop on Contemporary Art and New Media

One paragraph I liked in this article is where 'old media' is discussed as so rare because it cannot be copied, like 'new media' i.e. DVDs and other digital films can. I think it is really interesting how they touched on the fact that society today is becoming really enveloped with retro things like 16-mm film and black and white film and retro artwork. These kinds of vintage things have always interested me more than new age technology and products because they are so original. Now you can make millions and billions of copies of one thing, whether it be a piece of digital art, a film, a T-shirt, but when you have something retro it is old and rare and one of a kind. Recently, the art world has become very wrapped up in this idea. Things from 'old media' can never be perfectly recreated like everything else is now during this modern age. Now, analog film is seen as fashionable, when during the past it was seen as advanced technology. It just goes to show how quickly technology advances, and it also makes me wonder how our current 'new media' will be looked at in the future. Will it be seen as 'fashionable' in the future like old media is to us now?

INTERNET ART
Rachel Greene

One thing that really interested me towards the end of this article is the part that talks about EAT, the group formed by Billy Kluver in 1966. It is really cool that he was able to bring this diverse group of people, with names such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and so many more, together under one group. One artist that I really respect out of those mentioned in this article is Andy Warhol because he went against the grain of what everyone else was doing at the time. Some people do not appreciate his work because they believe it is not really art because it can be mass-produced and people do not think his art has a message, but I really respect him for doing something that nobody else thought of. He questions the old fundamental rules that are associated with art, like that it has to have a meaning or that the artist had to spend hours and hours painting, sculpting, drawing whatever it is. He undermined the whole value of art which was something really revolutionary for his time.

I especially appreciate his work in portraiture and that is where I feel my work connects with his the most. I am very into portraiture, especially with the use of colors that are not typically seen in an average portrait, like crazy reds, blues, pinks, neons. This is something that Andy Warhol does in his work and this is something that I like to do too, although I paint so we do it in very different ways. I do not like the idea of art being mass produced, but I like the idea that Andy Warhol was the first one to think of this and to question the entire concept of what is art? I chose one of my paintings to relate to one of his works of art because they both display portraiture but in very skewed ways and use colors that one would never find in someones real face.