artcodex reblog

This jpeg of a print by Ryan McGinness comes from Paddy Johnson’s blog. She’s talking about the marketing of this image and this artist and it’s worth a read to show you the mechanics of the hype and real estate and brand-building. I’m posting it on a slightly different topic, which is the “defaults” school of digital art. This strikes me as a very good example. It’s got the flat “Adobe Illustrator look” but this artist doesn’t make any bones about it. It’s a preset, and he is using it very well. There’s no getting around the content, either–any collector who buys the print will be looking through a prison camp fence, stylishly dressed up and tastefully layered as it might be. Several years ago I wrote about an installation by McGinness in a gutted building, soon to be renovated, on Lafayette–it also didn’t hide the digital “facture.” It was kind of the reverse of the above image–instead of a bleak adornment of a tony loft, the Lafayette show presented slick product logos on the inside of a “pre-owned” structure.

This post could probably read in tandem with one on Nasty Nets showing the similarity of some recent work by abstract/conceptual photographer James Welling and an Adobe Illustrator promotional graphic. Compare and contrast the relations of artists to well-known imaging software.

It could also be read together with my short interchange with a commenter about the use of presets in music (or more specifically the familiar interface Cubase.)

Originally by tom moody from Tom Moody on April 11, 2007, 11:49am