New Yorker Work, Compare and Cite

   For my New Yorker Cover Art, I was selected to do David Hockney's IPad art creation called "Shoes." Looking at "Shoes" for the first time threw me into utter confusion; I expected the see a cover of a grand skyscraper, political symbol, or even a snapshot of Central Park! Not the simplistic painting of a pair of shoes lying before me on my desk, but after researching Hockney's other works I began to see a method to his style.
   After doing further research into Hockney's backround, I discovered that he had become a major advocate for drawing old classic paintings using new modern tecniques. More specifically, Hockney's most well know modern works have been created with his IPad app "Brushes" and he has been in contract with Apple to promote his art using their system. "Shoes" was painted on his IPad, but so were other striking successes including "Landscapes" and "Still Life Flowers" both shown on the left hand colum. In my mind, these classic painting being created using such sophisticated technology is like a wake up call to the rest of the art community.

   Classic painting is often times seen like a tradition set in stone. For example, for hundreds of years the stereotypical painter slaving over a canvas for sometimes weeks at a time to capture an image was for the most part true. This classical view of painting would be challenged by the prototype of today's modern artist; a group of "renegades" who first took shape in the 60s and 70s, and began a style of expression painting without much of a subject took hold. To the tradionalists at the time this was seen almost as a taboo, but this new style slowly grew in popularity and now no one in the art community would question this form of artisitic expression. Hockney and others like him, who are now also trying a new system for expression, are now also coming under the same scrutiny as thosebefore them. Using technology to create works of art that would otherwise be trapped within the mind of the creator; I see no wrong in this, but traditionalists may see it as another heresy growing with the times.

   Perhaps instead of looking at these new interpretations not like a step toward some emcompassing darkness without the guidance of the ways of old we should look at it like the next step in artistic evolution. Would cavemen have seen the transition from painting on cave walls to painting on paper canvas in the same way? Our world is rapidly becoming more based around the technological aspect of society; from our economy to our military even to our personal lifestyle, should our art be put on the same playing field and not confined to just past interpretations? Perhaps what Hockney is trying to explain in "Shoes" is that it's not just about a pair of shoes next to a wall, but that it's a metaphor for keeping the ways of old right next to the new and see where they can take us when we use both of them together.