The Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones sure knows how to make a loud fuss about nothing. In a recent column, he laments the “world’s largest gif” made by Insa, a British street artist. Jones complains that it’s 1) not the largest GIF and 2) not good art. Therefore, GIF art continues to be “more interesting for how it is made than for what people are making.” For the moment, its history consists of “silly animated gifs and other online ‘art’.”
Let’s start with some facts: Ballantine’s commissioned street artist Insa to create a yellow-and-pink mural of hearts that can be seen from space. Insa then performed a process that he calls “GIF-iti” whereby he films murals, then animates them into frame-by-frame GIFs. The Ballantine’s promotional video refers to it as the “World’s Largest Animated Painting.” Nobody in the video calls it the “world’s largest GIF.” Who has? Media outlets like Mashable that have picked up on the story. Art critics are not rallying together in praise of pink and yellow hearts as an example of art and technology at its finest.
Like Jones, we can all agree that this “has the feeling of a contrived publicity stunt invented by marketing folk.” Heart GIF-iti sure looks like yet another dumb PR stunt, made to go viral on websites that rely on 10,000-plus likes per post. But nobody, except Jonathan Jones, thinks that GIF-iti is representative of GIF art. It’s barely even a GIF. If you watch the video, you’ll see Insa’s very specific process: A satellite filmed Insa’s mural from space every day for six days. Each day, the “stripes” were moved, creating a different-seeming mural. From that, those frames were turned into a GIF. Again, barely a GIF.
Then, if you still care about what Jones has to say in the rest of his “article,” he tacks on a love note to David Hockney. Look no further than Hockney to find our age’s best digital artist:
No artist has been quicker or more successful than Hockney in using digital media. His iPad drawings are joyous responses to a new medium. Are they masterpieces? That’s not the point. Hockney is a real artist whose craft skills are beyond doubt. It is therefore fascinating that he finds the iPad such a useful instrument.
Speaking of publicity stunts, Hockney’s first touring show of his floral digital drawings began in 2010 and were sold on the fact that the exhibition would be displayed on iPads. There were 20 time-lapse animations documenting the creation of the flower paintings, two films of the artist working, eight large-scale animated projections of the iPad drawings, and a triptych slide show with an additional 169 images. Basically, a whole bunch of who cares. Jones could have spent the minute it would take on Google to cite a worthier artist.
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that giant gif-iti is a sponsored commercial right? but then comes ‘just close your eyes and think of david hockney’ – erm, apple and oranges?… perhaps it’s not that animated gifs are inherently art or even craft, but techno-technique, with the right artist they can be an art practice exploring collage and montage (man bartlett comes to mind) lots of gif artists on giphy for jonathan jones to champion including one of my digital favorites, dvdp http://giphy.com/search/dvdp/
Like the best ad campaigns, this is not really a commentary on anything, just sort of an expression of brandvertorial joie de vivre. It’s nice that we can look a satellite photo and not be reminded of drone murders or the Iraq War (what’s that moving box in the top-left corner? seems suspicious). I would expect a street artist to force this type of allusion, really rub your face in it, so cheers to “Insa” for playing this one by the (brand) book. Three cheers for David Hockney too, what a great artist.
Technically this gif was sponsored by Chivas Brothers, which owns the Ballantine’s brand; likewise, Chivas is a subsidiary of Pernod Ricard, the French liquor conglomerate. The non-issue of whether it’s a “gif” or not can be solved by looking at the first 6 bytes of the file.
It may be a GIF but its not an animated GIF. Its an important distinction.
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