Painting by the numbers
Welcome to the 74th edition of this newsletter!
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At the end of 2022, I had a paint-by-number set made from one of the photographs in my book Vaterland. I had come across the idea through an ad on Instagram. I first got a set as a Christmas present (a picture of a cat). But there was something irresistible about the idea. I spent days and days thinking about it, to finally put in an order.
In the end, a number of somewhat separate thoughts contributed to my decision. I cannot claim that everything was as clear as I'm hoping it might be in the following. And I certainly don't want to claim that it's the greatest artistic idea ever (it clearly isn't).
To begin with, I've always been oddly fascinated by paint-by-number sets. What I love about them is that they're clearly art and not art at the same time -- depending on where you might find yourself on the spectrum of art. In an old-fashioned way, they mic high-brow and low-brow in possibly the worst possible way. You're obviously not a painter if you fill in a bunch of areas on what essentially is a map with colours based on some simple prescription. There is, in other words, no creativity involved.
Maybe the idea of creativity is overrated anyway. Furthermore, if someone's engagement with art consists of that (painting such a set), then I'm wondering why this would not be just as amazing as someone creating their own paintings. If we decree that real art can only happen at a very high level, then we exclude huge numbers of people from experiencing art.
Talking about paint-by-number sets in this fashion is old-fashioned, though. There are a number of additional aspects, and it is these aspects that had me very much interested.
To begin with, there was the technical aspect. I figured that at the price (I paid $23.36 incl. shipping), the set would be made in China. I have no way of knowing if this is true. The shipping dates and the included "operating instructions" clearly point into that direction.
I have also no way of knowing how much work goes into each set. At the price, it can't be much. There must be some software that gets applied to whatever photograph people send in, which then generates the pattern that is printed onto the canvas.
My photographs are all very grey, and I was curious what the software would make out of that, in particular what the 36 colours I ordered would be and what the pattern would look like. By the way, my set only contained 35 colours.
Purely on a technical level, this idea set me up for what turned out as a major kerfuffle. The printing on the canvas was faint, with some of the numbers being illegible, some of the spots containing no numbers, and some of the spots being very, very small.
Consequently, on top of the abstraction (if that is the word) produced by the algorithm I had the added abstraction (ditto) of a few spots that ended up with guessed paint. However, the faintness of the lines mostly worked in my favour. The very cheap paint was able to easily cover the lines in most spots. However, in the brighter areas the paint ended up being basically see-through. This had me apply layers and layers of paint there (I'm still not done with that).
Given that there currently are so many AI-based apps that render photographs in any kind of style, I viewed my paint-by-number kit as an analogue version of one of those. But it was my job to do the bulk of the work.
Which brings me to another important aspect of my idea. Years ago, the late photographer Michael Wolf commissioned Chinese painters to produce reproductions of famous paintings. Apparently, there is a whole industry of such painters. Wolf then photographed the artists with their results. Predictably, the copies of the original images aren't really very good. The whole exercise always left me feeling that Wolf was making fun of the painters and their industry. That's a cheap shot if you will -- kind of like people used to make fun of people who would buy a paint-by-number set to try to be creative.
With me having to do the painting myself, I thought I'd get around this problem. It's true, the set is made in China. But everything is more or less automated, with, possibly, some person picking the colours from a bunch of tubs based on what the computer tells them. (I don't really know how it works.)
Regardless, while the computer algorithm is responsible for the overall look of the painting (it must have been programmed to produce as accurate an image as possible -- otherwise, the business would make no sense), it's up to me to do the actual work. So I don't think I'm actually making fun of anything or anyone here. Or rather, if someone thinks I'm making fun of someone or something that someone is me, and that thing is my picture. I'm fine with that.
This brings me to yet another aspect of the project. A few years ago, I saw an exhibition by Christian Jankowski in Berlin. Jankowski had sourced photographs that showed people re-staging classical paintings. He then had them re-painted in a studio he set up in China (at the scale of the original paintings). He called this Neue Malerei (New Painting). I loved everything about the exhibition and went to see it a number of times. If you're supporting me on Patreon, you can find an article about the catalogue there.
Jankowski's idea -- the transformation of a piece of art in a number of steps -- was on my mind before I ordered my set. The paint-by-number idea is obviously different. The only step I'm not controlling is the creation of the set. In Jankowski's case, there are source paintings, there are the people who re-stage them, and there is the final step that's similar to what Wolf did.
I don't mean to compare my painting with Jankowski's. After all I started out with my own photograph. But I liked the idea of creating something in the general area: the way an image gets changed once it is seen and then used and re-created.
I'm not a real painter so it took me a while to finish my painting. A friend commented that it sounded like a good January project. I liked that description, because I'm not the biggest fan of this particular month. Given that I'm currently not enjoying being seated for extended periods of time (see my previous email), working on my painting was an opportunity for me to do something while standing. (I obviously didn't know I'd hurt my lower back when I ordered the set.)
And there it is. I still have to touch up some of the spots in the "sky" (you can still see some of the lines). This is an iPhone photograph but I think you get the idea of what the painting might look like.
With all that said, you might imagine that I'd be excited about what I got. Alas... While did enjoy the job of painting it -- it was tedious, but the routine was also oddly meditative, I ended up being more disappointed than pleased with the outcome. I somehow had thought this would be better, even though I actually don't know what exactly this would mean. Better how or in which way? I don't know.
And with that I'm going to conclude for today. As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg