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The Quantel Paintbox was one of the first computer systems designed to create and manipulate digital graphics in a manner that was much closer to painting and drawing than computer programming. The technology was launched in 1981, and was essentially Photoshop ten years before Adobe Inc. announced its own image-editing system. Rather like the Fairlight CMI, being a pioneer had its disadvantages for Quantel, one of them being the enormous expense of the Paintbox system. Photoshop was never really cheap if you were buying it new but it was still only a software package; with the Fairlight and the Paintbox you also had to buy the computer and all the peripherals that ran the software. Consequently, Paintbox systems were mostly used by TV studios for on-screen graphics during throughout the 1980s, although Quantel also created a parallel system for print graphics which was used for image processing and photo collaging until Macintosh and Adobe started to dominate design studios.
Painting with Light was a BBC series intended to explore Quantel’s technology by inviting six artists to spend a day playing with the Paintbox. It was the recent news about David Hockney that reminded me of this series. I definitely remember watching the first episode when it was broadcast in 1987 but couldn’t recall anything of the rest, which suggests I may not have seen them all. Each episode is narrated by Leslie Megahey who also receives a credit as executive producer. Nearly everything that Megahey was involved with at the BBC had some connection with art or painting which suggests the series may have been his idea.
It’s been fascinating watching these programmes after 40 years of technological development. In 1987 I was working with pens and sheets of paper most of the time, and didn’t give much thought to the idea of creating computer art since all the most interesting gear was prohibitively expensive. How things change… I now find myself watching the reactions of these artists as they struggle with a rudimentary version of the kind of technology I use every day. I also sympathise with their frustrations. The Paintbox was a magical device for the time but the brush settings are very limited when compared to the endless variety that Photoshop offers. The drawing table and stylus of the Paintbox are also big and bulky in comparison to one of today’s small and very precise Wacom tablets.
David Hockney was an obvious choice to open the series when he was often described as “Britain’s favourite artist”. Popularity aside, he was a good choice for his restless curiosity and interest in all forms of pictorial representation. That curiosity prompted his famous and controversial theories about the use of optical devices in the creation of paintings from the Renaissance on; it also kept him experimenting with different media, leading eventually to the iPad paintings he was making in the last years of his life. Of the other contributors we have an American Pop artist (Larry Rivers), a British abstract painter (Howard Hodgkin), an Australian painter (Sidney Nolan), an American painter (Jennifer Bartlett), and a British Pop artist (Richard Hamilton).
Hockney and Bartlett both use the technology for painterly improvisation, with Hockney drawing continually over the same piece, while Bartlett draws different versions of a glass of water. The latter sounds boring but her curiosity about the new medium makes her the only artist of the six to try out all the available drawing tools. Rivers, Nolan and Hamilton all begin with scanned photographs which they manipulate in various ways, Rivers by painting over his, Nolan (via a Quantel assistant) creating photographic collages that are forerunners of the familar Photoshop style.
Hamilton does something similar but also takes over from the Quantel assistant in order to paint onto the image in a much more careful manner than the rest. Of the six artists he’s the only one who attempts to create something that might be exported as a properly finished piece. He also notices how the cut-and-paste concept which was becoming widespread in word processing was now applicable to digital graphics. As for Hodgkin, I’ve always regarded him as a limited and not very interesting abstractionist, so it was no surprise to see him creating a pixel imitation of the same lines and blobs he was always doing in his paintings. Hodgkin’s film is the least interesting one to watch but his encounter with the technology is just as revealing about his character as an artist as the other films are for the individuals involved.
• Further reading: The Quantel Paintbox
