Art and Internet: Blessing the Curse? - Essay
Art and Internet: Blessing the Curse?∗
Patrick Legros ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles and CEPR February 1, 2005
“Beauty, however, in its general aspect, is the inseparable characteristic of the idea when it has become known. In other words, everything is beautiful in which an idea is revealed; for to be beautiful means no more than clearly to express an idea.” — Schopenhauer (2004-eBook edition) “In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius: he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of Artist History.” — Marcel Duchamp (1966)
1. Introduction
At the time photography was invented, the technology was expensive, difficult to use and required specialized skills and craftsmanship. Because many painters at the time were doing portraits, they saw the danger of the new technology for their activity. The folk history credits the painter Paul Delaroche to have said after seeing the Daguerreotype “from today, painting is dead”.1 Other artists embraced the opportunity to use the new medium and indeed, a movement developed quickly that defined photography as art.
∗
Many thanks to Victor Ginsburgh for his patient editorial work and for convincing me that econo-
mists should be interested in arts. I benefited from comments by William Baumol and Andrew Newman.
1
Some historians of photography like Robert Leggat (1999) claim that in fact Delaroche was a
supporter of photography. He had been commissioned by the French government to present a report
When George Eastman invented the “clic-clac Kodak” in 1868, photography became widely accessible; while there were some issues of craftsmanship, the act of taking a picture became trivial enough that it took effort by photographic artists to preserve their identity. Some have argued that the pictorial movement emerged in response to this democratization of
Patrick Legros ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles and CEPR February 1, 2005
“Beauty, however, in its general aspect, is the inseparable characteristic of the idea when it has become known. In other words, everything is beautiful in which an idea is revealed; for to be beautiful means no more than clearly to express an idea.” — Schopenhauer (2004-eBook edition) “In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius: he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of Artist History.” — Marcel Duchamp (1966)
1. Introduction
At the time photography was invented, the technology was expensive, difficult to use and required specialized skills and craftsmanship. Because many painters at the time were doing portraits, they saw the danger of the new technology for their activity. The folk history credits the painter Paul Delaroche to have said after seeing the Daguerreotype “from today, painting is dead”.1 Other artists embraced the opportunity to use the new medium and indeed, a movement developed quickly that defined photography as art.
∗
Many thanks to Victor Ginsburgh for his patient editorial work and for convincing me that econo-
mists should be interested in arts. I benefited from comments by William Baumol and Andrew Newman.
1
Some historians of photography like Robert Leggat (1999) claim that in fact Delaroche was a
supporter of photography. He had been commissioned by the French government to present a report
When George Eastman invented the “clic-clac Kodak” in 1868, photography became widely accessible; while there were some issues of craftsmanship, the act of taking a picture became trivial enough that it took effort by photographic artists to preserve their identity. Some have argued that the pictorial movement emerged in response to this democratization of