ArtonArt- Site Background

    As the image (top right) of my hand drawing the nearly 2000 year old bronze of Emperor Caracalla (top left) suggests, ArtonArt presents images made by "copying" the art of others. It is one of a number of websites (see Related Taylor websites, below) built to explore the peculiar utility of drawn images, as valuable information paralleling or complementing related textually presented information. Its particular focus, drawing the works of other artists, is also partly a serendipitous outgrowth of earlier website work, as browsing several earlier Taylor sites like Webbery will confirm. With its focus, ArtonArt offered a unique context for exploring the influence of art on image making. Today, technological copying of images is so easy that it obscures some of the issues involved. This site suggests by example what some of the issues are, while indirectly raising questions about what a "copy" really is and is not.

    The drawings digitally mirrored throughout the site were created in a rather ad hoc fashion, some for one reason, some for another (see A dozen DC Drawings for one typical causal explanation), but those selected to appear cover a range of styles and a span of creative history. Like all the other websites of drawings I have created, one of the site's central features is indexing so that the user can navigate easily and display, of the images included, those he or she is most interested in. In appropriately indexing this site to thus serve the user, a crucial innovation made possible by the digital representation of images is demonstrated: concurrent exhibition. Because the image is represented in digital storage by a collection of numeric values that can be instantaneously transformed to visible image and displayed on the screen, and just as instantly made to disappear from the screen, replaced by something else, a given image can be displayed in as many contexts (with other works, other backgrounds, etc etc) as the site creator cares to prepare. For the visitor, the result is that the image seems to be displayed concurrently (virtually simultaneously) in each of two or more totally different exhibits. (Again, several sites in Related Taylor websites below, discuss this further and offer additional examples.) Reactions and suggestions on both the images and the digital arrangement are welcome, and can be communicated through Comments below.