The artist’s studio – it’s one of the great mysterious places. We visit the preserved studios of artists with awe and fascination, from Jackson Pollock’s little barn with its paint-spattered floor to Brancusi’s lair in Paris and Barbara Hepworth’s studio, where the artist died in an accident.
Now the mystery is over. Today, everything can be shared. Why should art be a secretive, private labour? Now it must be live online, in the eyes of the world, for everyone to see.
“The journey is long, but it doesn’t have to be lonely”, is the slogan of Sywork, a new website that allows you to watch illustrators while they work. You can see today’s artists doing their stuff via live video stream or by browsing recorded sessions that includes everything from 3D modelling to traditional drawing.
I think Sywork perpetuates a myth about creativity.
True creation is not something you can watch. Or rather, if you really did watch it, you would need a colossal amount of patience and imagination to even understand what was going on.
We love the idea that artistic creation happens in a fury of energy and insight, that it is spectacular. Michelangelo lies on his back painting the Sistine ceiling, Pollock dashes paint. Those things really did happen – though in reality, Michelangelo stood up on his scaffolding, which must have been even scarier – but the occasional spurt of drama in artistic life is accompanied by long periods of thought, rumination and time-wasting.
“The genius may be doing the most when he appears to be doing least”, said Leonardo da Vinci – and he should know. A witness recorded how he worked on The Last Supper. Some days he would do nothing at all. Another morning, he might delicately touch the painting with his brush before going away. Or perhaps he’d work intensely for hours without stopping. It was completely unpredictable.
Real art does not arrive on cue, so observing it is like watching for an elusive snow leopard. Sywork avoids this problem, because the artists performing on it are not real artists as I would define them.
It is a showcase – at least so far – for digital designers and illustrators whose work is cliched and repetitive. What I actually found was unbelievably boring footage of dull “creative” processes. I tried to stick with a live feed of a 3D design emerging on screen, but it was literally like watching someone else’s computer screen as they worked. I can watch my own.
This is true of “traditional” artists as well as digital ones. Viking-style comic book warriors anyone? Bug-eyed aliens? Bland pink bear cartoons? It’s not exactly a chance to see marvels of the imagination burst into life. You can even watch the “process” of making a digital painting of a frog with a gun, including the key moment when the creator selects a colour from a digital palette! My God, it’s like The Agony of the Ecstasy!
Some art wants to reveal its process, but some does not. We should respect the privacy of the creative mind. And Sywork is not live art, just a window on the ordinary.
