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I have the habit of
printing some of the digital artworks I like and having them framed to
hang on my walls. About a month ago a famous local traditional artist
and former professor of mine visited me to see some of the architectural
designs that I had done. While in my home he looked around at the
digital images hanging on my walls and said, “Nice posters.”
"No, they are not
posters they are artworks, digital artworks," I said.
He smiled and
simply pointed to a traditional artwork on my wall that was painted by
another local artist:
“That’s an artwork,
those are posters.” He continued, “just tell me how many copies exactly
like these digital artworks you could do and tell me how would you than
know which one is the original one. On the other hand, no one has
another copy like this oil painting. It’s unique.”
I responded, “The
number of copies does not affect the value of the art.”
He sat down on the
chair surrounded by all that smoke emitting from his cigar “At the
corner of the street there is a shop that has a painting of the Mona
Lisa, would you pay the same price for this fake copy as the original
one?”
I tried to explain
that these digital artworks hanging on my walls were done in the same
context as any traditional artwork. Just the difference is that the
tools used are the computer software, besides that most of them were not
painted for a specific purpose other than these artists did them for
their own pleasure.
“Ok, I am not
discussing if they have artistic expressions or not, because they have,
and you can use any tool you want to produce your own art. I will ask
you a question; could those images be sold for a price higher than the
price of their paper and their frame? And what is the name of the most
famous digital artists in the world?”
He kept talking,
“Would any of the international art institutions such as museums,
Christie's, and Sotheby's care about digital art? The answer still no.
Simply because they can't adopt digital art as a viable article of
trade. The buyers aren't interested in digital art; they consider it as
an ‘artificial’ art”
“The digital art is
a relatively new art and in the future the images are going to change.
However, like any type of art it has to be formed first and the market
will come later,” I replied.
“Art sellers around
the world feel they do not need a virtual digital image or concept to
sell, it’s about the money not just the art,” he smiled as he thought
that he was scored a knockdown.
He took the
architectural designs “I like those photorealistic architectural
renderings but it would take us a while to make them real, is not that
right!” he laughed.
“Yea, but they are
now the most vital thing you’ll count on to make the building real, not
photorealistic.”
He left and left behind him a big cloud of smoke that reminded me of
those days when we were students at the university and we could
recognize the smell of his cigar from 100m away.
He was not talking
about art itself; he was talking about the fantasy of possessing art.
Maybe there are some psychological issues that interfere with the idea
of possessing a masterpiece that no one else has it.
Another
conversation with a friend of mine who works in a digital equipment
store answered my questions in different way:
“Yea, the digital art market is great, just take a look at the market
for scanners, printers, large format printers, ink, high-quality art
paper, LCDs…the sales of all of these products are flourishing year
after year.”He was not talking about the art itself; he was talking
about the flourishing of production tools used to make digital
advertisements or digital photos.
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