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That strikes me as absurd. Isn't the common worry that we're overproducing artists beyond all economic need? The Internet is full of portfolios, webcomics, and so on. You still have thousands upon thousands if you discount manga-style artists (and I don't think you should if you're worried about technical skills being lost; what they lack is originality, but the archetypal manga style still demands a solid handle on perspective, proportions, etc.). The professional art world is a mess, but that's a small fringe of elitists chasing esoteric radicalism off a cliff like they've been doing for sixty years, and has had no impact on the number of people capable of drawing and painting conventionally beautiful artwork. We have more of those than ever.
I just went to the 97th Grand National Exhibition of the American Artists Professional League, which is an association for artists working in traditional, realistic styles. I would say about 75-80% of the paintings exhibited, particularly landscapes, were in the league that I could expect an internet artist to potentially reach. They're fine, but they're not special. The top stratum of paintings (mostly still lifes and portraits, some more dynamic scenes) were on a truly qualitatively different level. I have seen a lot of internet artists, filtered through imageboards and feeds that select for quality, and nobody is even close. These top-tier paintings were generally in the $2-5k range, so much lower than works painted in traditional styles I've seen for sale in e.g. London, that I can't imagine that all of these artists are in fact rare, innate, generational talents hidden by the zeitgeist (in fact, some of the most technically accomplished ones had pieces of clumsiness in the composition or subject choice that would be harshly criticized in an Old Master); I think they're just high-percentile artistic talent people who studied really hard and figured out some beautiful but realistic ways to paint stuff. And it's this level, the type of true old skill, that's falling away.
Partly, I think that's a function of the internet and economics. People are more willing to pay $5 a month for a stream of anime girls than they are to pay $5k for a physical painting, and these skills have fallen far less in, say, South Africa, where art is cheap but the cost of living for a middle-aged artist is even cheaper. And these skills are inherently meatspace-locked, not just in creating the art but in appreciating it. As I've said before, a physical painting is a totally different experience from an image on a screen. For instance, this was probably my favourite painting in the exhibition, and I would have purchased it instantly if it was for sale. But it looks like shit, honestly, on the website, because the screen loses the illusion of depth that makes the painting so compelling. I looked at that painting for quite some time and my brain couldn't but see it as a 3D object, even if I moved around it (this is the same with impressionism and abstract expressionism, you simply cannot begin to get them without having experienced their depth illusions in person). This is downstream from many things over the last two-three decades but such is life, we live in a society joker.jpg.
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I do not include manga in the classical tradition of drawing or painting. Digital is a different discipline. I’m not at all concerned with the production of artists, but I’m quite concerned with the loss of the discipline itself. People making digital art by and large can not paint in the western tradition. The same holds for the western tradition of music.
The discussion gets more difficult because many manga professionals - notably the aged ones - still work on pencil and paper and only digitize for cleanups.
I agree that digital is a different discipline, but disciplines of pretty much everything at levels is being lost as people find them increasingly unneeded. Draftmanship used to be a core, necessary skill for engineers, which has since been replaced by familiarity with CAD software.
See also: the argument for how reliance on the internet has essentially outsourced knowledge to the smartphone.
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If the results are indistinguishable, would it truly matter? But I don't think even this claim holds water. Plenty of Internet art-kids use ink, paper, paint and canvas. Those who go to art school certainly do. "Traditional art" (Internet-speak for "non-digital", not a statement of style or ethos) is a well-populated tag on any platform where artists congregate. Searching for the most recent post on X to use the tags #TraditionalArt and #Painting, I immediately landed on this.
If.
I have nothing against digital art, but it is decidedly distinct from traditional art.
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I’m sorry but I’ve never understood art beyond the complete ignorance and disinterest of an otherwise ordinary spectator. Abstract expressionism, realism, etc. at least American art; the likes of a Jackson Pollock or Barnett Newman.
I’ve always had an affinity for Socialist Realism and Roman or Ionian Greek (classical) art. But even then I just think it’s beautiful. I don’t have the insight or attachment a professional artist or architect would have, I suppose.
In what sense is “art” a mess today? I barely knew what the hell it was for the last two centuries and it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
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