Drawing is the New Painting

'Drawing is closest to the original kernel of an idea. Drawing is private. Drawing is the trace of a unique human subjectivity. Drawing returns us to narrative but without objectivity. Drawing always connects to writing. It links directly to literature, it is always a fiction. Drawing is irrational and rational, done on both sides of the brain. Drawing uses the newest digital technologies. It creates a virtual reality. Drawing is the foundation of all art departments, so important that it does not even need a concentration of its own. Drawing is very valuable, and must be shown only rarely, protected by glass. The more minimal, delicate, and ephemeral, the more poetic and evocative it is. The more obsessive, the more expressive it is. The more monumental, the more paradoxical and contemporary it is.

Drawing is the newest oldest medium. Drawing is impossible to define.'

from Kurczynski, K. Drawing is the New Painting. Published in Art Journal, April 2011

Read the entire essay here.

Essay: The Paradoxes of Digital Photography

An extract from an interesting essay about the digitisation of photographic
processes by Lev Manovich:
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...Digital photographs function in an entirely different way from traditional
photographs. Or do they?  Shall we accept that digital imaging represents a
radical rupture with photography? Is an image, mediated by computer and
electronic technology, radically different from an image obtained through a
photographic lens and embodied in film? If we describe film-based images
using such categories as depth of field, zoom, a shot or montage, what
categories should be used to describe digital images? Shall the phenomenon
of digital imaging force us to rethink such fundamental concept as realism
or representation?

In this essay I will refrain from taking an extreme position of either fully
accepting or fully denying the idea of a digital imaging revolution. Rather,
I will present the logic of the digital image as paradoxical;  radically breaking
with older modes of visual representation while at the same time reinforcing
these modes. I will demonstrate this paradoxical logic by examining two
questions: alleged physical differences between digital and film-based
representation of photographs and the notion of realism in computer
generated synthetic photography.

The logic of the digital photograph is one of historical continuity and
discontinuity. The digital image tears apart the net of semiotic codes, modes
of display, and patterns of spectatorship in modern visual culture -- and, at
the same time, weaves this net even stronger. The digital image annihilates
photography while solidifying, glorifying and immortalizing the photographic.
In short, this logic is that of photography after photography.

Excerpt from:
Lev Manovich, The Paradoxes of Digital Photography
First published in: 'Photography After Photography',
exhibition catalogue, Germany, 1995.
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Read the full text:
manovich.net/TEXT/digital_photo.html