The Computer in the Visual Arts

Notes

Anne Morgan Spalter's survey of computers as tools for making art, written while she taught computer graphics at Brown — a textbook that treats paint programs, colour space and 3D modelling as artists' materials rather than software features, and illustrates the argument with work by practising artists. The plate sections are the reason to keep it. The Color Plates work through mixing, colour-matching systems and slices of 3D colour space; the Gallery Plates run to contemporary work of the late 1990s, including Manfred Mohr's p306/p350B (1980–94, acrylic on canvas, 180 × 150 cm), James Faure Walker's Lost in Aesthetics, Shopping, and Kitchen Distractions (1996–97), Michele Turre's If Things Were Different (1997) and Annabel Safire's Hell's Fury (1998). Spalter is, with Michael Spalter, the collector behind the Anne + Michael Spalter Digital Art Collection — one of the reference holdings for early computer art, and a source this catalogue leans on when identifying works. Addison-Wesley, 1999, first edition, hardcover, 650 pp. Bought secondhand from Half Price Books; the jacket still carries their sticker.