Giclee's = Crap

Giclee's bother me. First of all, people throw the name around like its a badge of honor, but in reality it is a derivative of French slang for ejaculating. Even worse is the whole subculture that the giclee revolution is helping to spawn. The revolution I'm referring to is the current trend of mass producing crap with the help of computers and printers and selling it as fine art. (For those of you who are going to nitpick about the missing accent in giclée, I chose to spell it this way, so choke on it).

Just yesterday I talked to a man who said that he recently retired from a lifetime of construction work and he is now going to pursue his artistic calling. I listened to him for about an hour as he talked about printers, software, and CNC machines and what they're capable of producing ... but he didn't talk about his art. So I pryed, and discovered that he's trying to learn to paint with watercolors and acrylics, and he would also like to try sculpture (with the help of his CNC machine of course). He isn't even an accomplished artist yet, and he's orgasming over the shortcuts offered by our current technology. What a moron. He claimed that he was going to spend $50,000.00 on a CNC machine, so he could do 3-D scan of objects and reproduce them at the touch of a button, which he would then sell as art. Anyone stupid enough to consider that art should be beaten repeatedly and given a lifetime giftcard to the Wall Mart art department. He also claimed to be a photographer. What a Renaissance man, at least in his head. Knowing that the battle between digital photography and traditional photography is one that can get heated, I asked him what he thought about the differences between the two. He didn't see one. Big surprise. The fact that one is based on traditional processes that are time consuming and require practice and knowledge, versus the new point-and-shoot-press-print (Photoshop if necessary) mentality, in which he doesn't see a difference tells me that he probably just bought an expensive digital camera and became a professional photographer overnight.

Now, I'm not a pretentious snob, and I'm a big fan of technology, but I do know where to draw the line between art and mass produced crap. Reproducing something at the touch of a button without any physical manipulation might make a fine reproduction, but it is NOT art. It is no better than a photocopy or cheap poster. If that's what fits your budget, then pardon me and go for it. But if you want to collect art, you'd be an idiot to buy anything that is mass produced by machines.