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The discovery of photography, born together with Impressionism, radically modified the social role of the artist in the communication system.
Photography deprives him of the portraying role, as views and landscapes are taken by these new scientific tools, which gradually become more and more sophisticated, even capable of seeing beyond the human ranges.
Somehow, the artist, mainly the painter, delegates the protraying roles and works on the insight, digging into emotions, looking in his and other's soul in order to find sensations and new places, namely those of the inconscious, that new tools couldn't reach. He frees himself from the social structure, giving up his role in the exchange culture environment, isolating in a peripherical function.
Somehow, the artist works alone in his atelier with no traditional client, someone who gives him directions, subjects or models. The collectionist or the merchant come after, underlining with their choices this or that subject, the formats, and so on.
This situation, which may look limited, in fact allows the artist to experiment and to reach the avant-garde in any aesthetic discipline, real point of reference for many different genres, from fashion to advertising, from cinema to theatre. The artist finds himself in a privileged situation, as he owns the manifacture media. He's the only protagonist, both active and passive, in his job and doesn't need any burdening executor who may make the work an enterprise.
With his brushes, his colours and his canvas, the painter experiments his hypotheses without needing any immediate economic gain, free from any client. The artist, as the silkworm, produces silk as this is his nature.
The political changes occurred during the centuries have modified the social role of the artist.
The great decorations were a status symbol and any great governor wanted the artist to come to his court and draw and paint the great works we all can admire.
But, is this golden isolation still possible in this communication and show society of ours ?
As the artist goes on isolating, he may become a dot in the system of images.
Industry can become the new client and make the artist feel socially important, as he needs to.
The great public works may somehow be considered as clients, but we have all seen their results. Industry can build new ways of financing the artist and give him the themes that lead him back in the society, still peripherical, which will grow as time flows.
Yet models are not the same any longer. Another bottle replaces the Morandi's. Various designers have built his fascinating history. We all think of "Absolut Vodka": the bottle becomes the heraldic symbol of the year 2000, testimonial of his time and of people's taste. It prevails in the landscapes through the strong advertising medium.
Then, behind a simulacrum, you find the work of many people who have built in different ways the history of this object, giving new communicative energy to it.
Using his sensitiveness, the artist must find the aspects that an untrained eye can't see. We don't have to invent a new object, but to look through the artist eyes at what many other creative minds have made of this object.
We don't study the bottle, but its multimedia image. The artist is then limited, he's compelled to get back to his roots, but at the same time, he's given a new important role in the social structure: the interface of communication.
The artist begins where the others stop. An image which is read as it enters the circuit and seen through untrained eyes in the final communication moment.
Back to social life, creating more misunderstandings than problems.
The limits coming from the subject may be passed taking new points of reference, allowing the artist to work for a huge audience and, mainly, to realize the Bauhaus utopian society in which everything, from the knife to the house, is built and designed by the artists. (Fernando De Filippi)
Translated by me.
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