Last Sunday I went to see Duchamp Man Ray Picabia, at the Tate Modern, along with my friend Kiran. I was quite amazed at the quality of prints that Man Ray made while experimenting with photographic techniques. They were delectable. I reminisced about my undergrad college course in photography in which I exposed objects on photographic paper directly (without the camera), while in the darkroom, which is what Man Ray did almost a century before me. Man Ray created a wonderful new world of art by layering the images of objects on paper. Picabia, on the other hand created a new style of painting by playing with this layering of objects, but on canvas. Thus using traditional materials of painting, Picabia was influenced by what was happening in avant-garde photography at the time. An older form of art was renewing itself with the influence of a new art form.
I found this cross-pollination of artistic mediums very interesting, as it doesn't follow a linear or predictable trajectory that our limited minds impose on the future development of art. You would expect the artist to explore new paradigms of painting rather than compete with the photographic world.
While watching Beowulf, while half-asleep on the plane to London, I was delighted by the thought of how a film made with live actors was adopting a video game syntax. While video games programmers try to emulate movies by making the games more “realistic,” the last thing I expected was a movie-maker to emulate video games by making the movie more “ game-like.” There’s a curious link between the Picabia-Man Ray and movie-video game cases.
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