Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I'm not so sure it is. Just because steps of the process are "industrialized" doesn't necessarily mean something isn't fine art anymore.

Fine art photography nowadays often involves an industrial inkjet printer.

Assistants painting dots after dots still makes a Damien Hirst for some reason.

There probably is a line somewhere, but it's far from clear where, and highly depends on your definition of "fine art". That the service discussed here is not "fine art" IMHO is easier to argue, but depends a lot on how much leeway the artists actually are given, less so on how many there are or how much they paint.



It's not fine art because the artist isn't choosing the subject and presentation. If you commission me to do a portrait of you, that's fine art. If you hire me to make a copy of an existing image in paint, that's strictly a commercial task.

The basic aspect of art is that I as the artist make the decisions about what the painting is going to look like. Damien Hirst is a fine artist, his assistants are not (while they're working on his paintings obviously).


I think most artists would agree that the line is drawn when a customer gives you a picture of their pet and says "paint that, exactly like the picture."

Certainly many, many artists throughout the centuries have painted commissioned work to survive, but when the customer demands an exact copy of the photo in another medium and the artist is allowed no subjective interpretation of the subject matter it ceases to be fine art.


I would agree (except of course if the artist is doing exactly this on purpose...), but I wanted to make the point that a lot of the process can be factory-like, as long as that "artistic freedom" of someone, not necessarily the one actually doing the work, is expressed. Just because there is a factory doesn't mean it isn't fine art, so there could be a "fine art factory". In general, not talking about this specific service.


Yes, the process is irrelevant to the "fine art" quality (whatever that is).




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: