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Invisible Man
Chinese artist Liu Bolin does not use photoshop, just paint. It helps to know that the government shut down his art studio in 2005. More here
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on November 15, 2009 at 07:40 AM in The Arts | Permalink
Comments
Quite fantastic. This reminds me of the 3-D pavement graffiti, only this time the artist is the subject.
Posted by: Riz Din at Nov 15, 2009 9:38:49 AM
Those pictures are amazing!
Posted by: Enrique at Nov 15, 2009 10:00:46 AM
Those pictures are amazing!
Yes, but only because they were done with paint rather than Photoshop. Which is pretty odd when you think about it--the value of the art, then, is not the images that result (the end product that we actually see), but in the back-story, in that they were produced using a difficult, painstaking (but wholly unnecessary) process.
Posted by: Slocum at Nov 15, 2009 2:35:33 PM
Great point, Slocum. We're impressed by people who handicap themselves and still produce something cool.
Posted by: Gary at Nov 15, 2009 3:05:46 PM
It's a signal of purity of intention. It makes for very effective protest, much like a hunger strike.
Posted by: mk at Nov 15, 2009 3:19:52 PM
Microsoft Paint? Impressive, I have a hard time making supply and demand curves look nice.
Posted by: Simon Howey at Nov 15, 2009 3:34:24 PM
Paint to Photoshop is as Art to Hackery
Posted by: anon at Nov 15, 2009 3:45:36 PM
I'm pretty sure that when Tyler and the blog said 'paint', they meant actual wet pigmenty stuff, not MS Paint.
Posted by: MD at Nov 15, 2009 10:25:29 PM
@Slocum, @gary
He paints his body. Then he poses for photographs. That is what makes it so cool. You could be walking by and he would look almost invisible. It's something you couldn't recreate with Photoshop. So, it's the end product we value here, not the medium of creation. We're just viewing it in a form that could easily be counterfeited.
Posted by: Chris at Nov 15, 2009 11:29:03 PM
Wait, this is an Alex post?
Posted by: FJM at Nov 16, 2009 1:17:12 AM
He paints his body. Then he poses for photographs. [...] We're just viewing it in a form that could easily be counterfeited.
That's a nice trick, but it still only works on camera. The part of the uniform he painted on himself for example only works from this exact angle.
But what's the problem that the production method counts? We could easily manipulate images to make the 100m sprint seem faster on screen, or to have your favourite team win every game. Or film mars landings in a studio.
Posted by: Zamfir at Nov 16, 2009 3:57:13 AM
