In the Wharton's The House of Mirth, there was a scene in which Lily Bart took part in a popular cultural game of the time, tableau vivant. She posed as a famous art persona in a recreation of a famous art work. The viewers marveled at her beauty and accorded to her artistic temperament. Well she was beautiful but the artistic value inside Ms. Bart was unknown. She neither had the will, strength and ultimately the inclination to follow her artistic impulses. They only found expression in a rich person's game of pretending to be art for the joys of the idle rich. Then they could all exist under the delusion that since they could appreciate tableau vivants it made them art connoisseurs and artistic in nature. When really those works of art were turned into currency and mere trinkets to show off wealth.
This ties into my recent forays into the burgeoning art world of Second Life. The platform does hold promise for fantastic work. However I don't see it as of yet. I only see glimmers. What I do see are lots of Tableau Vivant. In essence, the art projects with a few exceptions are mostly derivative. They celebrate art that has come before in painting and photography. In SL we have a lot of "You are there" experiences. You can be a nymph in a Ray Caesar work. You can walk those empty fields in a Wyeth painting like Christina. Or play at being an Arbus twin.
I like it. And so do many others in the SL world. But I have a hard time in calling it virtual art, a new form in the art world. It isn't. And at times, I feel duped into according to myself artistic impulses just like Wharton's decadent Mirth inhabitants.
Because I'm not appreciating the work itself but the technology that allowed the tableau vivant. Just about anyone in the SL world can stage a tableau with varying results according to their familiarity with the SL build tools. But I haven't seen anything that transcends the rehash of the old. It just isn't there yet and at this point, I'm not sure that it will ever be. And considering the shaky protection of IP rights on the platform itself, I would think that this would give most professional artists pause.
In my time in SL, the direction of the art in this format rests in avatar creation and environment design. Quite simply the most artistic builds were and are for SL companies. It ties directly into and is an extension of avatar creation. The successful commercial builds provide avatar lifestyle. In such that they are unobtrusive but provide the backdrop of avatar life. The aim of these humble builds (there to sell goods) are to showcase the resident avatars. We become the art. And in the process model their creations. The commercial drives the artistic and the vice versa.
I suppose to some camps this is a travesty. Because they feel art should not be for monetary gain and artists should not seek monetary exchange for their work. I don't agree. In SL there are very few patrons willing to bankroll the avatar artist. Rather than wait around for the next sponsorship, many entrepreneurs build their stores which birth their worlds. And they have more artistry than reliving a famous art work and playing an RP of art world.
Reynolds, Mrs. Lloyd, Lily Bart's Tableau subject
Labels: art, computers, culture, digital art, mmorpgs, second life, technology