MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
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Dedicated to The Smartphone & the Art Book

The Smartphone & the Art Book (Interviews with Bruegel – 5)

(29.7.2023) Here we are in the gallery of Vienna with Mr. Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

– Mr. Bruegel, do you know what a smartphone is?
– A camera that also can talk?
– In a way (it can give directions). But it is much more. Art book, museum… picture storage facility. What does the artist in you think of that?
– We had art books in our time. But they looked more like a psalter. Handmade, with the whole bible being illustrated…
– But few people had a psalter, and even less had a zooming function…
– But at least the psalter did not receive a phone call while I was looking at it. And this is interesting: you get phone calls – for example from one of your friends, but not only from your friends – phone calls, while you might be looking at a reproduction of one of my pictures. But neither do I get that phone call, nor does my picture get that phone call.
– A new philosophy of the phone call is needed?
– Yes, exactly. Many correspondences there are in the universe, and people do not want to see them. This is scandalous. For example, if you are looking, in the gallery of Berlin, at my two monkeys, and then you decide to take a picture of them, and then you get a phone call. It might be me, because I am not getting a fee from you, for seeing my picture, or for taking a picture of my picture.
– I see, also a new philosophy of copyright is needed. But there are discussions… And I certainly would like to speak to you, otherwise we would not do this interview… so I would take that phone call.
– The main point is that the phone call is for the picture. The picture has a right to get that phone call, coming in from somewhere – to your smartphone.
– But the picture is getting that phone call, if the loudspeaker is turned on, and if the museum guard…
– I have seen whole flocks of people around my pictures, and everybody had a smartphone, but they did not use the smartphone with a loudspeaker, or as an art book (or as a camera), as it seemed to me, two or three were just doing something else on their smartphones, while their teacher was lecturing. And this is also interesting, these two or three pupils are the interesting ones. They do something their teacher is not wishing them to do, while my picture is being discussed, and this is exactly what would be interesting: to discuss, what these people are doing, with my picture. Something new, of which the picture has never heard of. And my picture has a right to know about that.
– You seem to think of your pictures as living beings, they seem to listen, to discuss, to speak, to have rights. Do pictures have rights…?
– Why should a smartphone be a living being (a camera that also talks), but not my picture. That would not be fair. My pictures are older than…
– The art book?
– Older than the coffeetable art book. And I am getting no fees for that either.

– Mr. Bruegel, which of your paintings would you recommend to be looked at on a smartphone rather than in an art book?
– All of my landscapes, and not only the painted ones.
– And why?
– Because you can’t see them.
– And so?
– You can’t see them, that’s why.
– You mean that the smartphone makes perception more difficult?
– Exactly.
– And this is what you want?
– Exactly, this is why the smartphone was invented anyway. It allows people not to see landscape. And it allows people to look at my painted landscapes, and they realize that they cannot see them. That’s a beginning. You begin to think about what you see and what you do not see. And about what you want to see and about what you do not wanna see.
– Some people do that perhaps.
– Exactly.
– Perhaps art historians?
– No, they cannot see, by professional default.
– But they use smartphones.
– Yes, exactly.
– But without thinking?
– Yes, perhaps.
– Okay, Mr. Bruegel, one last question: art historians have claimed that someone is firing a shot in your landscape with the hunters returning. Have they seen correctly?
– I don’t remember.
– You don’t remember? But perhaps you should look at your painting with a smartphone. It might arouse your perception.
– Yes, okay. A shot was not fired.
– A compromise? A gun was pointed at a rabbit, but the shot not fired?
– Exactly. Or perhaps: not such a bad idea.

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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