Short stories will gain new impetus.

Short stories, like poems,  have always been held in high esteem by the literati, but the general public much prefers novels.    I suspect that this is going to change, perhaps quite soon, as devices such as Amazon's Kindle become more popular.  Today we use a handheld, laptop, or desktop to read primarily because the information we want is published online.  But as reading a computer screen becomes easier and more comfortable, the short attention span of recent generations,the the busy life that makes watching YouTube such a pleasant, and quick diversion,  and the on/off nature of computers will conspire to make the short story considerably more appealing compared to the novel that it has been to date.

At the same time, I believe we will see that the capability of the computer to provide multi-media presentations will permit more lively and interactive stories, stories that appeal to more of our senses.  And at first these will be experimental and costly as new technologies generally are,  so the stories are likely to be start out short.  

All in all, if I were able to invest in short stories, I would do it with great confidence that I had for once, finally gotten in on the ground floor of a largely unanticipated boom.

 

Whither original art?

Until recently original paintings reigned supreme in the viewer's mind, and for very good reasons: in an original colors are truer and often more vivid;  one is most sensitive to the textures; the frame and settings generally add "depth" to the experience; perhaps most of all, the proximity to the actual object makes us feel greater physical, even temporal, proximity to the painter.  All told, the experience is more "authentic" than the experience of secondhand viewing, via prints, magazines, or the computer.  

Digital art erodes  the supremacy of the original art. A digital artwork  can be available in exactly the same way to all viewers. including the originator, the digital artist.  If the artist so desires, she could even bring the viewer into the process of creation, making that part of the viewing experience.  Examples already exist of this on the net.  

We are told that the future will bring us a gadget at home that can quite literally re-create a work of art on the spot, in our homes, perhaps to our specifications,  by, say,  changing the color scheme so that it better matches the sofa.

Consider how that would change the nature of original art!  Even if the art were not digital in the first place, such a gadget could reproduce it even as scanners already can.  What is the difference between an original photo and the copy?  

The mind boggles.

What is the role of beauty in art?

IMHO the artist only achieves a work of art if, whatever else it may be, it is beautiful.  And the greater the beauty, the better it is.  

In modern times,  beauty is perceived as a distraction from the artist's true pursuit, which is making a personal statement.  By personal statement I mean both in terms of the way the artist paints, draws, or collages, etc., by also in terms of what the artist wants to "say."

 Most modern artists are trying to create something unique.  "Derivative" is a bad word.While art history is still taught, mastering someone else's technique is rarely advised, lest it delay or worse, derail an artist's personal creativity.   While these artists may profess to be influenced by other artists, they do not consider themselves to be  real artists until they have developed a technique or approach or subject which no other artist has ever used.  

Modern artists  also want to express their opinions on political and cultural events and more's through their art. These artists decry what they believe to be evil, often using little subtlety to express their anger and angst.  This is hardly unknown historically, but the pervasiveness of the attitude is.

Similarly, many modern artists like to see themselves as rebellious, which attitude pours alchohol upon the flames of anger and despair. 

 

I haven't enough education in art history to place this attitude into historical perspective, but if I had to guess, I would argue that Picasso was an early example, and that his success gave  impetus to it.

What is the role of the art critic in all this?  I think it is central.  They are the arbiters of taste.  I wonder when art critique  became so central to the education of the artist, and art critics became the tastemakers.  

I don't know why art critics began to prefer novelty of technique and rebellious anger and angst over beauty as a standard.   Perhaps it was  iterative, the artist and the critic supporting  one another; but I wonder if art critics became famous with the advent of mass communication.  Perhaps the creation of mass media and communication made art accessible to the many, and the many were looking for direction about what to buy.  They were contemptuously told that they could not rely on their own uneducated understanding:  "I don't know about art, but I know what I like!" is a statement held up to ridicule. 

More later