The art connection
Yesterday, when surfing the web site of Animation World Network, I stumbled upon a series of articles written by Jean Detheux, entitled “Notes from the Underground”. What’s interesting about this: The author is a painter from Belgium, who started working with digital media because he became allergic to paint. Besides, the title of the series is a reference to the book of the same title by Dostoevsky, which in turn was one of the influences on screenwriter/director, Paul Schrader, when writing his script for Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976).
This is also interesting because I have been preoccupied with this very topic (lack of substance in animation & computer graphics) myself for some time, and the reason for this is basically that, although technically-wise, computer graphics have advanced amazingly in the course of the last say, ten years, what I personally am desparately missing is the artistic depth in digital art.
Maybe this is sort of a viscious circle: Artists working with traditional media perceive digital art as superficial and therefore hesitate using it; on the other hand, (often younger) digital artists don’t have the background of the former; thus, their work often lacks the depth we admire so much in traditional art forms such as painting.
Be it as it may, here’s the link to the very first article of the series, entitled “Notes from the Underground Part One — Animation: Prozac or Kyosaku?”.
Related: “Animation as an art form”
