One of the most frustrating things for many artists is when someone is so sucked in by technical virtuosity that they pay no attention to anything else. They don’t care if it’s a lame, derivative and unimaginative image of a B list celebrity, all they see is that ‘it looks so real, isn’t that amazing!’. It becomes the end all and be all of artistic value.
But for me, it is first off, a technical feat that isn’t as hard as people think it is. It looks impressive but having done photo-realism myself back in graduate school days, I know it can be done with repeated practice and not much else. It doesn’t, in and of itself, take a lot of imagination or creativity, it just takes technical practice. Don’t get me wrong, it can include those things, it’s just that often times it does not.
Secondly, admiring that over all else shows a simplistic understanding of art and what it can be and do in society. If the only art that is great or worthy is art that is a direct copy of a photograph or of a real scene, then it cuts off the value of the creative impulse in art that goes beyond realism, like expressionism, abstraction, impressionism, conceptual art, etc.
Thirdly, we already have the photo. What is the value of making something look like a photo when you already have the photo? It becomes just a way to prove virtuosity, which means it becomes a gimmick. Gimmicks in art fall flat after a while.
Fourth, it creates a group of artists who feel like the only valid work is realistic work, that they have to stay in that realm or they are discarded as being not very good. This is especially damaging to beginning artists in their teenage years where they are often pushed to make things look ‘realistic’. But art doesn’t need to be realistic to be valuable and good. But these teens, frustrated with their inability to make something look real, which might be being taught by their teacher and expected from their parents, give up on art never knowing they were perfectly ok just working in whatever vein they were working in.
My teaching philosophy is to teach creativity development and imagination building alongside technical expertise. If one does that then the artist will be able to create technical masterpieces but will have something unique and original within them that make them more than just dead copies of something else.
Drawing, photo and commentary © 2018 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com