ART IN THE 21ST CENTURY

JACK PERLMUTTER

Taking a telepathic leap forward to look back

Just for a moment, imagine you have beamed yourself through time to the year 2045.Washington, DC, as we have always known it, has all but vanished. Terrorists are still at work and there has been widespread destruction to many metropolitan areas of the nation. Looking about you in shock, you see severe damage to Gehry’s wings at the Corcoran Gallery. Large portions of the Corcoran’s contents have been lost.

But what about the Gallery’s digital archives? They have survived, fortunately, and reveal much about the evolution of art over the past century. Scanning through these archives allows you to see the progress of art in a high-tech world. You see strange shiftings in the design and use of tools and media being used, of the artist’s interpretive pathways.

In the early part of the 20th century, what we now call “Modern Art” took off. At the forefront were Wassily Kandinsky and his designs, and then came Pablo Picasso, who surprised everyone by painting a portrait showing all aspects of the subject...front, profile, and three-quarter...all superimposed. Paintings of the 20th century were revolutionary approaches to a previous era. In the United States, Jackson Pollock began to drip and throw paint, never letting his brush touch the canvas. An entirely new technique was invented. Abstract expressionism became the mainstream of American art.

American artists stopped looking at the outside world and began turning inward, developing an internal world without images. But the images were still there, even though ignored by the leading-edge artists, and although much of American art became a pastiche of redundant traditionalism and “modernaise.” The tapestry of modern art began to fade without a conclusion. That golden era is not coming back. Art and its history up to the 21st century are now no more than the meat of academics and have become repetitive and uncreative. Same old, same old....

In 2045, it’s easier to understand why the American art scene was left in a vacuum as the 20th century drew to a close. No new nationally recognized artists emerged for a number of reasons: a hostile public; repetition of the same abstraction; the same still life, the same scenes.

Eventually, incredible technological and biological opportunities began to open up new areas of visual artistic expression never contemplated before. Electronic digital imaging, digital sound, multiple images and dimensions, reflections of after-images, and the like expanded the horizons of the art world. Toward the end of the 20th century, artists for the most part could barely imagine an ink or paint cartridge that has 30 print openings, each one about the width of a human hair, producing an impression at 270,000 times per second.

The art scene of 2045 invokes a world of fantasy. Just how far can the evolving computer take artistic vision? Even optical image processing can be changed by changing the colors of the on-screen palette.We see the image or “painting” being transformed by a cartridge or cartridges, all of permanent pigment that can be added to, altered, or otherwise “mixed” at the artist’s whim. Imagine a painting on an easel, just in blues...some different blues of all shades and values. A 21st century artist can go well beyond Picasso’s wildest imagination and create a truly mind-boggling “blue period.”

Any color or composition can be called up...with voice recognition! The artist can paint simply by talking to the properly programmed computer. Even texture can be introduced into the painting; there is no need for a palette knife, paint, and sand. Just name it, and even heavy impasto can be added to your “painting.”

The very vocabulary of art has been revised drastically. Nevertheless, in 2045 the artist still invents and is the creative force. Industry only invents the tools the artist needs and uses...or takes advantage of unexpectedly. Paints, brushes, canvases, and techniques have given way to completely new tools in the digital world.

Enhanced telecommunications and the ability to transmit “virtual reality” have globalized the artistic process. For the first time, the creative integration of disparate artistic geniuses living in different geographic locations is now possible. An exchange of artistic input to an image is as simple as sending an e-mail. These are virtual workshops,much like the print workshops of yesteryear, where artists, apprentices, and printers all worked together on the same piece at the same time. It is not surprising to find more than one signature on a finished work in 2045.

Inherent in the use of electronic digital imagery is the availability of “depth effects” that allow new creative parameters altogether. Focus can be controlled. There can be a change in composition by introducing another dimension, which involves slipping an image in and out of focus. In fact, that is what the human eye does naturally. Look at the fore-image and it is sharp, while the background is out of focus.When the gaze is shifted to the background, that area becomes sharp and the foreground slips out of focus. That is reality...and as 21st century artists and viewers of artwork, you will be in technological control of reality depicted by the “painting.”

Completely three-dimensional art will be possible in the 21st century. Art will be created with multiple options of vanishing points. They, in turn, can be moved around. The horizon will be introduced to a new point that will in fact go beyond the horizon and create a macro-cosmic perspective to the image that will have its own definition.

In the year 2045, paintings might be off the wall, quite literally. They might be holographic images or conceptual displays designed to function individually, openly and free-floating, or within the confines of a room. Galleries and art museums may become super- fluous in the new world of art. Every home or office has a vapor screen that can be sized to fit the painting or other image. Art lovers can order up a painting, drawing, or other image from their favorite artists for viewing. Images might then be “rented” for a month or longer.

By 2045, almost all drawings, paintings, and images are stored electronically.A catalogue of the artwork can be pulled up when desired. No more sliding works of art in and out of racks, and no more scratched surfaces, torn canvas, or chipped frames. Just call up the perfect image for viewing. Imagine, also, paintings numbered in editions like prints of the earlier artists.

GETTING THERE FROM HERE

As we zoom ourselves back to the reality of today, there’s every reason to hope that art takes off in all these fascinating directions. The danger may be that the 21st century artist will use the new techniques, but remain bound by practices and techniques incorporated from the past. Artists need to take genuine and uninhibited advantage of the new-found freedom that comes with electronic digital art. In the past, for instance, printmakers stuck to producing artwork that looked like it came from wood blocks, even as technology evolved toward the use of metal plates etched with acid. There was a latent, if not strong, reticence to be truly different.

But for the 21st century artist, just imagine being able to move the vanishing point, using colors, values, and tones never before available. And yet the high-tech art of 2045 may be more “humanized” than the art of the 20th century. Working in a world that has over a half-century of science and technology perfection to share with the artists and the world of art lovers, artists will have the ability to create, please, satisfy, and fulfill as never before.

POSTSCRIPT

Standing amidst the wreckage of the Corcoran Gallery, kicking at the cement and concrete dust and ashes with my toe, the museum’s catalogue software is exposed. I’m relieved to see my own personal works, safely preserved in digital form. Although I never left the year 2002, by 2045...I’ll be back!

Jack Perlmutter (CC ’62) is a professor of art and former Fulbright senior research scholar. His artwork is featured in the permanent collections of over 120 galleries and museums around the world.

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