This article makes an interesting point that I’d never thought about; pieces like Duchamp’s Fountain or “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) by Félix González-Torres took very little physical ability to create- a urinal or analog clocks are something you can just buy, but these artists made art out of them by using them as a tool to get a message across. Similarly, just because a digital artist used a pen to automatically draw lace on their sketch of Queen Victoria doesn’t negate the talent it takes to create the composition, or just because AI was used to create the image doesn’t mean the artist had no hand in curating the scene or series. I’ve been drawing digitally since middle school, and the shortcuts given to you in programs like Krita or Procreate cancel out with the control or spontaneity of sketching or painting physically- there are drawbacks and simplicities to every medium of art, just because you can erase graphite in a pencil drawing doesn’t mean oil painting is a more authentic form of art. And just because you can push and pull oil paint for extended periods of time doesn’t mean acrylic painting is harder or easier. The fact that there is this misconception that digital art is easier is mind-boggling. The amount of time that goes into learning new drawing programs and the tools involved in them rivals that of more traditional media, and the translation to digital landscapes doesn’t suddenly mean that an artist has forgotten or ignored all that they’ve learned about traditional art.
"Is digital art real art?" Reading Response
Updated: Dec 14, 2022
