Media Curmudgeon

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November 28, 2007

The Impressionists, YouTube, Quarterlife, and the Striking Writers

What connects the French Impressionists, YouTube, Quarterlife, and the WGA writers who are on strike?

The first Impressionist exhibition was mounted in 1874 by a group of independent painters who defied the classical formalism of the official Salon and the autocratic rule and conservative teaching of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The group included Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Cézanne, and Berthe Morisot, who were, to a large degree, excluded from the well-attended Salon and, thus, had a difficult time selling their work to a burgeoning middle-class market. The Impressionists formed an association that controlled the organization, distribution, and sale of their work and mounted an exhibition that would let people, not the establishment, judge their art and, more importantly, buy it.

In addition to 1) the dissatisfaction with the tradition of depicting religious and mythological scenes that imparted moral messages and 2) the desire to depict scenes of real life in a vibrant, new Paris, the invention of photography was an impetus for artists to invent new ways of painting. Photography was a disruptive visual technology that made accurate reproduction of images by painters outmoded. Photography forced many forward-thinking painters to approach their art in a new way and to find new ways to express themselves. At the same time, they wanted to sell their innovative work to a broader audience.

Instead of meticulously detailed renderings, innovative Impressionist painters produced impressions of a scene, painted how the light changed on a subject from morning to evening, emphasized the geometric shapes found in nature, and accepted the flatness of a canvas. These innovations led to cubism and eventually to abstract expressionism, which, of course, the Impressionists couldn’t possibly have imagined or predicted. They knew things had to change and they just wanted to make a living.

YouTube was founded in February 2005 by Steve Chan, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, former employees of PayPal. By 2005 broadband Internet access had grown to the point that approximately 57 percent of Internet users in the US had a broadband connection, which meant they could watch videos online. Today, broadband is available to 81 percent of all users of the Internet. Like photography was in 1874, online video is a disruptive visual technology that takes control of video entertainment and information programming out of the hands of the conservative, establishment television networks and stations and puts it in the hands of viewers. Aspiring video artists can now cheaply produce videos, express themselves, and exhibit and distribute their work to the world on YouTube.

Furthermore, via online video, viewers now have access to entertainment series such as “Quarterlife,” the “new online series from Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creative team behind ‘My So-Called Life,’ ‘thirtysomething,’ ‘Legends of the Fall,’ and ‘Blood Diamond.’ It is the first time a network-quality series has been produced directly for the Internet. And it’s the first time an independent project of this distinction has been owned and controlled by its creators,” according to the “Quarterlife” website. One feature of www.quartelife.com is that people can post comments (text and video) about the “Quarterlife” episodes—it’s interactive.

The Impressionists couldn’t predict where their innovations would take art, the creators of YouTube, couldn’t predict where their innovation would take online video, and I doubt Herskovitz and Zwick know where “Quarterlife” will take entertainment, but all of these creators have bucked tradition and conventional wisdom, have taken control of their creations, and have allowed people interact with their art. The writers who are on strike more than likely don’t know how online video will change the exhibition and distribution system for their work but they understand that the Internet will have a huge impact on the current system that is controlled by the networks and producers of entertainment programming, and they want a fair share of this new online revenue stream.

It is possible that a new, interactive, video art form will develop in ways that we can’t imagine. It’s possible that the writers will take control of the exhibition, distribution, and sale of their work like the Impressionists did. Who knows? But one thing I do know is that I can’t wait to see who will be the new Monet.

Posted by Charles Warner at November 28, 2007 06:50 PM

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