First of all here are my credentials: Four years of undergraduate art culminating in a BFA, two years of graduate for an MFA in painting, additional studies at the Art Students' League and the National Academy, 20 years of painting since then, occasional shows (I have one coming up in February), occasional sales. You can check out my work at www.emasary.com/art.htm.

I don't make my living as a painter, much as I'd like to. Instead I do computer graphics and architectural renderings for a living. So I think I know both sides of the issue.

Now, as to why computer art isn't art, I'd like to start out by explaining why photography isn't an art either. Photography is a craft. What's the difference between an art and a craft? Very simple. Craft is useful, art isn't. Art, by definition, is useless. Photography is a craft because its primary function is documentation. A photograph can be very beautiful, but it's still just a beautiful piece of craft. Same thing goes for ceramics. A dish or cup may be extraordinarily beautiful, but they are still functional and therefore, at heart, a craft. Line the cup with fur (like Rauschenberg did) so it can't be put to its intended use and you suddenly have art. Bad art maybe, but art nonetheless.

Cinema on the other hand is an art.

So how does this apply to computer art? Well, the origins of computer art lie in its utility. Photoshop was invented to make things easier for graphic designers to create ads, not to create art. The user's intentions may be artistic but ultimately we're talking about a craft here, not an artform.

Not only that, but a great deal of Photoshop work is intended to duplicate "artistic" effects. A photo that's been put through a charcoal filter is not the same as a charcoal drawing. Speaking as an oil painter I can tell you that an oil painting has 3-dimensional aspects that simply can't be conveyed by applying a filter. There is a presence to an oil painting that can't be captured even by a high resolution photograph.

Which brings us to the next issue. Art objects, by definition, are unique. Computer graphics, by definition, are infinitely reproducible. There's a big market for giclee prints now, high resolution copies of paintings which are framed and sold as if they were paintings. I think that's a load of crap. It makes the fatal mistake of suggesting that the image is what's important in a painting. In fact, it is the authenticity of the painting as a unique object that gives it its value.

So can there be such a thing as computer art? Eventually there will be. It will be an absolutely novel art form executable only by computer, producing a one-of-a-kind product which, aside from its beauty, will be totally lacking in utility. Give the medium some time folks. It's only been around for 30 years or so. Lithography was an exclusively commercial medium for about 60 years before someone latched onto to its unique qualities and started to create real art with it.