Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, William John Smith 
<william@g...> wrote:
  

Bravo!
Check out the opinions, some day, of the Late Medieval monks who through the "Dark 
Ages" kept the light of learning alive, when confronted with the threat of Gutenbergs 
press wailed and lamented the imminent loss of the illuminators art.
Then the trraditional illustrators of books who couldn't abide the new art of engraving 
which Hogarth etc. brought into the mainstream. Now there work is Fine Art.
Much like the wail - ever diminishing, of the traditional Lithographers and Engravers, 
who proclaim that digital or offset printmaking is not REAL printmaking.

"Plus ca change..."

Brian

> Baudelaire rightly and prophetically defined the subjective domain of 
> dreams as the valid domain for the visual artist; he
> also displayed a certain right-hemisphere paranoia, a fear that the 
> powers of imagination and intuitive vision would themselves
> be usurped by this automatic method of drawing with light.
> 
> But whether or not photography and art are the same thing is beside the 
> point, since art resides not in techniques but in a knowing
> application of insight.  Falling for the anti-technological line, 
> Baudelaire dismissed photography as the refuge for every would-be 
> painter
>   too lazy or untalented to succeed as a real artist - an assessment 
> that was no doubt as true then as it is today, when it is even easier
> to become infatuated with the gadgetry of media.  But whether they are 
> called tools or media, these technical
>   extensions of man's being can only mirror the intent of the user.
> 
> William
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]