Anatomy and Art

Yesterday I went to the Art Institute here in Chicago.  I found myself marveling at the various techniques utilized over the centuries.  But as we looked over so many pieces, I started thinking about how certain techniques have really become a thing of the past.  They say even painting is becoming less and less valued.  Arts like etching, mezotinting, and carbon dusting, while still appreciated in older works, are simply no longer practical for emerging artists to learn at the level of their predecessors.  These days more and more things are done on a computer, and there is reason to do them that way, but it changes everything.

Tonight I went to a bar that had both DJs and live music playing.  The live music was still very electronic though.  And it was pretty good.  I even found myself quite happily dancing to some of the DJs sets.  But at a certain point my thoughts turned from how good we have gotten with making music electronically, to how long before analogue instruments become the neat old-timey way of making music.  We already have a generation of kids that know the game Rock Band better than they do any real instrument.  And the truth of the matter is that we have gotten very good at making electronic music.  So at what point, is the effect of real physical instruments not going to be worth the cost of making them, and time put into learning to play them?  It seems inevitable.

Here I am posting a photo of a guitar, and realizing that I took it with a digital camera, because just like everything else, it has become more economical and efficient to do photography digitally now.  And I know that we’re all aware of this.  It seems like every time I go out lately, someone is relieved to be catching up in person rather than through some social networking site.  it’s all the same issue.

So where do we draw the line?  Can we really draw a line?  Or should we be setting our sites on the new and exciting forms of expression and communication our digital technology enables?  Perhaps it is sentimental to worry about instruments, and tools, and skill sets left by the wayside when there are so many more waiting to be explored.  What would Rembrandt have done with Photoshop?  What if Leonardo da Vinci had been able to flip through digital images of scanned human figures when he studied them?  What if Van Gogh had learned to paint on a screen instead of a canvas?  Would their work have been anywhere near as inspiring?  Would they have seen that next level still waiting to be discovered?