(05-13-2016, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Most of my art was purchased at science fiction conventions. Much of it originated as cover art for paperback novels. The painters who do that sort of stuff generally call themselves illustrators rather than artists, but technically they seem to me to be at least the equal of the old masters in creating realistic work often set in less than realistic science fiction and fantasy environments.I would point out that until the development of photography, visual art was the only means of recording images. Once photography was established it reduced the market for work intended to record visual images, such as portraits. AOf course, artists could continue to find work as illustrators, set painters, etc. One way to remain relevant was for artists to produce work that achieved results unattainable with photographs. One was color of course, and the other was special effects like the "shimmering" effect obtained in impressionistic work. Surrealism, cubism and other approaches tried various warpings of space to obtain cool effects. One thing an artist could do was paint a photo-realistic image of something that did not exist, or which was unknown (like pictures of the surfaces of the planets). You can't take a photo of something that is not there.
All the things above were new stuff not done before and which could not be achieved with the competing technology. Now artists that paint photo-realistic canvases aren't doing anything that the old masters didn't do, and probably better. So they stopped doing this until the more recent times when a market developed for this sort of thing as a political statement.
Now those that enjoy visual art (it's not really my cup of tea) say they note all sorts of emotional, spiritual etc. aspects of old realistic art that made some competently-executed works better than other competent works. If there is a non-material aspect of a work that is beyond the photo-realistic image what do you have if you subtract the material image? Some remaining essence or "soul" if you will? I suspect this essence was what abstract artists were trying to capture in their imageless work.
I really don't know. But if I am in the right direction, then I would suppose abstract art became passe when photography developed into an art form that could capture that essence. In today's world of computer-generated imagery, is there any role for two-dimensional physical art? Visual artists will remain, somebody has to work the software, and I suspect in high demand for video productions and computer game applications. I don't play many video games but my understanding is some of the imagery found in them are very much Art.
