The Fine Art Perspective

by Kevin Salatino, Lead ITP Juror

Video game graphics as fine art present a number of challenges to the museum curator of prints and drawings. To begin with, video games are just that — games — and the temptation to dismiss them as nothing more than entertainment for the masses is powerful... These, at any rate, are the perceptions/ prejudices that I brought to the table when I was asked to help judge a selection of video game artwork for Into the Pixel. To my surprise, those prejudices were, in academic parlance, quickly “problematized,” if not exploded.

There is simply too much talent in the video game world to dismiss so cavalierly the seriousness of the work its many gifted artists produce... In fact, the constant cross-pollination between the entertainment world and the art world cannot be ignored. Understanding and explaining where one stops and the other begins is where the real difficulty lies, though why, ultimately, does it matter?

What I have seen in the many submissions to Into the Pixel is a dizzying array of graphic skill and artistry using all manner of techniques in strikingly original ways. As an outsider judging this material using the criteria of traditional fine art, I also have to remember to be sensitive to the context of the work. Context is everything, and no static image can be properly assessed without an acknowledgment that its real life exists in a state of movement.

We have seen startling things happening in the last decade as Japanese anime perhaps the most overt example of video art influencing “fine” arthas infiltrated the world of high art. I predict that, as more and more artistic talent is absorbed into the game world, the crossflow from discipline to discipline, from fine to applied art and vice versa, will become ever more invasive and imperceptible, and that a hybrid art form will evolve stranger than any hybrid race populating today’s video games. Call it life influencing art, or games influencing art, or games influencing life, or art influencing games. Or better yet, why not just call it art?