Painting and digital media

Today, in Haagweg 4 in Leiden, was the last day of an exhibition on the relationship between painting and digital media.

The exhibition was by three artists: Astrid Moors, Marja van Putten, and Arjo Rozendaal.

Digital images have obvious advantages, as in multiplying images fast, and then maybe making small individual modifications.

There were also lectures on the subject of the exhibition.

A thesis was that digital images have freed photography, similarly to the way that the rise of photography liberated painting some 150 years ago (from the “duty” of painting “realistic” (or not realistic, but idealistic) images in a time when there was no photography yet).

Digital images are not used only by artists.

For instance, Photoshop and similar programs were used in the infamous speech by then George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, Colin Powell, at the United Nations, seeking to “prove” by images the existence of non existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

There was a link to art, then, as the reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s anti war painting in the UN building was covered, as its message would have contradicted Powell’s message.