I chose to show this image right now. It really isn’t anything special. It looks like it could be found in a retail store or a furniture store as a generic, mass manufactured, deco art print made for an average family. I don’t care though. I just like the space that it illustrates. The lines also intrigue me. I was hoping they’d intrigue you too. I don’t expect much reaction from this piece however.
What I do in my art is nothing new. I have been coming to this realization more and more as I grow out of my younger, idealist, self-deluded stages. I post this piece here now as a blank stare into the abyss of meaninglessness. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a random capture of a piece of a larger picture I was working on tonight. But I like random captures. I frequently take note of ignored daily instances and situations, like a weed growing in the crack of a sidewalk. Or the back side loading dock of an abandoned warehouse from the 20th century.
What we have here is a number two on a ruler, indicating two inches and more, along with splotches from my spontaneous acts of creation while producing the drawings for this piece. There are some red lines also from some college ruled paper I used to draw on. They were that standard light blue that college ruled paper is printed with, but I reversed their colors in Photoshop to display a red. The spaces in between the lines also reversed to a near black. I liked this because of the outer space sense it gives the piece.
I’ve been feeling discouraged by art lately for a number of reasons. One, no one gives a shit what I make. Some might feign interest because they feel sorry, but they’d never buy anything from me. I reason that art doesn’t add to peoples’ lives in the sense of providing food, money, shelter, clothing, cool allies, potential mates, and so forth. Like this piece, art is a meaningless pursuit for insane people, or for people who are unwaveringly convinced by their own apotheosis.
A second reason I feel discouraged by art lately is the human obsession with technological advancement. It’s sort of ironic, too, because the word “technology” has root words from Latin that literally mean “the study of art.” In Western culture, before photography, there was painting as the main medium by which artists produced works of art. Artists strove to master, say, portraiture, mythological scenes, biblical scenes, or still lifes for example. There was no one, or no technology, that could create these forms of art better than human masters of art.
Photography came along and pretty much neutralized masters of realist and classical art. Photography could create portraits in less time, with less amounts of money, so it replaced painting as the main means of creating portraits. Artists today still paint portraits, but it’s by no means a mainstream sought after market. The technology of photography challenged artists and the art world to create art that photography could not, such as impressionism, or abstract, or surrealism. These, I believe, were major, major advancements in art. The imaginative, innovative movements in art from the 20th century have been exhausted by many an art historian’s assessment. However, we now have digital technology that can make homemade movies that cost a fraction to produce compared to what traditional movies’ budgets are.
In order to avoid writing an art history treatise, let me address the issue of artificial intelligence. We now have artificial intelligence that can paint paintings of portraits. We have artificial intelligence that can build houses in record time by three dimensional printing programs. Pretty soon we will have human sounding artificial intelligence manning call centers to talk to about the woes of our handheld devices. Our technology is replacing so many traditionally meaningful sources of human labor at such rapid paces that people, I fear, will be rendered useless in future automated societies. I struggle to find the meaningful challenges that will enable people to engage in quality enhancing activities.
So please, my valued viewer, find the meaningfulness in this ostensibly meaningless fraction of a drawing I made several months ago. I titled it 2X4 (two by four) because of the number two and the four blue distinguished splotches in the lower portion of the image. Also, because of the artist’s “block” I’ve been experiencing to varying degrees in the last few years. It’s a very logical, stable, Western philosophical image, college-ruled and linear with a few imperfections that mock hypocritical stability demanding managers of human cattle.
Please note that I officially hand sign my prints with pencil as recommended by the trade. The type you see on this image is just for example purposes only of where each piece of information shall be written. My copyright watermark will not appear on your print as well. But the date will.
Specifications:
Title: 2X4 (version 1)
Source mediums: Water-based ink on college ruled paper digitally combined with standard print reproduction on paper
Source drawing completed: 6/19/2016
Print medium: Hewlett Packard printer ink from Hewlett Packard DesignJet Z2100 printer on Hewlett Packard print paper (Note: print can be made with archival paper and printer if requested)
Digital manipulation completed: 5/21/2017
Dimensions of print: 31 inches by 24 inches
Number of limited edition prints: 25
Investment of print not framed: $85.00
Investment of print framed: $425.00 (shipping included)
Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com
Art of eVan 