Consumption of art images has evolved with new technologies. New technologies impact successive generations differently as older generations adopt changing technologies for existing solutions while younger generations experience new technologies as a formative baseline.
The visual art world has experienced technology-driven changes in many ways over many generations. An argument can be made that the rise of Modernism was intertwined with new technologies including photography, organic synthetic pigments and modern printing methods. Current consumption of visual information is evolving from primarily physical images (original work and printed reproductions) to digital images consumed on electronic screens.
The change in media will potentially impact the next generation of art collectors’ understanding and consumption of fine art.
Digital images can be vibrant produced by transmitted light from a light source rather than reflected light off an image. The digital image is produced by an optically mixed synthesis of Red, Green and Blue (“RGB”). These colors match the receptors in our eyes, impacting our perception through a direct mapping of input to receptors. Combining all the colors results in a perception of white as all the eye receptors are activated by the incoming wavelengths. This is also referred to as additive mixing. Additive mixing adds the light intensity of each color’s light source together, resulting in an image that can be brighter than the individual components
Printed images are often produced in Cyan, Magenta and Yellow (“CMY”). Depending upon the method used to combine individual pigments, mixed colors are formed by subtracting different wavelengths of light based upon the input pigments colors. Subtractive mixing produces the spectrum of colors in a way we are used to seeing in both paintings and in printed materials such as magazines. Combining all Cyan, Magenta and Yellow results in a Mixed Black as all wavelengths of light are ultimately subtracted from the image leaving no input for the receptors in your eyes. This is also referred to as subtractive mixing. Removing colors by subtracting light wavelengths from the final combination can also reduce the light intensity of the image.
The two methods are different and have different impacts on viewers. The issue facing the visual art world is that the consumption of visual imagery has begun to materially skew to digital images. This is especially noticeable for younger consumers who have grown up with access to image-based digital services such as Instagram. Much consumption of paintings is now through a backlit, RGB digital reproduction, which results in a different visual experience than seeing a printed reproduction (or the real painting itself). Many of the art collectors of tomorrow who were born during the rise of the personal computer and the Iphone will have had a very different relationship with printed and painted images than collectors of prior generations. The familiarity with backlit, additively mixed images over printed or painted subtractively mixed images will continue to increase.
The visual artists’ reactions to the consumption trend are evolving. I believe that further analyzing technical image construction for both digital and print media will help form strategies to address the consumption trend. Part of my current body of work is an attempt to analyze the impact of print media color separation and differences in reflected versus transmitted light on these images. Further development of this work will hopefully allow me to better understand potential methods of bridging the historical and future states of visual art consumption.