The Art Genome Project

We Moved!

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:16:00 -0500

The Art Genome Project blog is now on Artsy! Find us here, but as always, please send questions or comments to us by tweeting @artsy or sending us an email.

The Art of Printmaking

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:05:08 -0500

The act of printing has always seemed to me a miracle, just such a miracle as the growing up of a tiny seed of grain to an ear—an everyday miracle, even the greater because it happens every day. One drawing is sown on the stone or the etching plate, and a harvest is reaped from it.

–Vincent van Gogh

In an age when information is copied and shared instantaneously, it is easy to forget that the reproduction and distribution of an artwork, document, or idea was once viewed as miraculous. Printmaking developed as a medium to meet this most human of desires: to document and communicate images and ideas, and disperse them to regions far beyond their origin. A print is created by incising an image into a matrix—a metal plate, a block of wood or a stone—inking the image, and then running it through a press onto a piece of paper. By repeating this process, multiple impressions of the same image can be produced. Before cameras, copy machines and scanners, the reproducibility of prints allowed thinkers and artists to disseminate their work, and over time prints became an art form in their own right.

Read more on The Art Genome Project’s new Art.sy page!

All the World’s Art

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:09:00 -0400

Venus of Willendorf. c. 24,000-22,000 BCE. Limestone. 4 2/5 inches (11.1 cm). Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo © Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

At Art.sy, we constantly think about what it means to have access to all of the world’s art. Until recently, the art on Art.sy has been largely Western and contemporary, yet with the exciting addition in recent months of more than fifty institutional partners and even more gallery partners from around the world, we are quickly expanding on what we can offer users of the world’s art.

As such, we wanted to keep you informed of a few recent developments:

We have recently added more African art to the site, spanning from ancient cultures to contemporary figurines. An example is this Mende work. We particularly enjoy how (in a very basic sense) it brings together other masks from throughout history and across geographic regions.

There are now more Chinese artworks, such as this Zhao Zhiqian work or this Qing Dynasty scroll. Something that users may find interesting is how this brings to the fore various connections between other scroll paintings, other examples of East Asian Calligraphy, as well as works influenced by East Asian Calligraphy.

We now have a gene for Arabic/Farsi Calligraphy, which provides a helpful comparison to something like Chinese calligraphic styles, and represents another way to understand writing’s relationship to art and art history.

We have increased the number of Ceremonial objects.

We have added more religious art to the site, including well-known works like Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Related to this, now you can search for the manuscript medium gene and more specifically Bible Stories.

One final note, the Venus of Willendorf (seen above) was an exciting addition and expands our grouping of depictions of Venus throughout history.

We hope you enjoy these new additions. As always, please do not hesitate to send us your feedback on any of these new additions or anything related to art search.

-Clare McLaughlin, Research Assistant

What We Talk About When We Talk About "Art About Art"

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:28:00 -0400

Kasimir Malevich, Composition with the Mona Lisa, c. 1914. Collage. Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo © Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

“We know that a picture is but a space in which a variety of images, none of them original, blend and clash. A picture is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture…We can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original.”

-Sherrie Levine

We created a gene called Art About Art a long time ago to capture aspects of artworks that were self-reflexive, i.e. that dealt with historical artworks, the art world, or individual artists. In this way it was definitely one of more “art nerd” genes on Art.sy and always very satisfying for all of us here. It was like a homemade quiz for the art and art history crowd.

Yet as time passed we realized more and more that the gene was becoming too large and was trying to do too much. Artworks that appropriated historical artworks had a value for Art About Art, as did works that focused on or critiqued the art world, as did works that featured images of famous artists. Art about Art thus was starting to say very little.

Our solution was to delete the Art About Art gene and create genes out of what it had been capturing.

One of these is Visual References, which captures visual references to an existing work of art in another. Certain works of art—such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes can paintings or Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa—have become such an important part of the art-historical canon that they take on a meaning far beyond their original time and place. Subsequent artists (like Malevich above) who self-consciously refer to these previous works are often doing so to insert themselves into the narrative of art history and add some commentary or self-conscious adjustment or amendment to the art of the past.

Another is Spaces of the Art World, which captures the places where works of art circulate after they leave the Artist’s Studio. From Matthew Pillsbury’s long-exposure photographs of the Louvre, to Christian Jankowski’s Strip the Auctioneer, this gene allows one to see the fascinating diversity of the art world’s physical environments.

Additionally, we added a gene for Figures of the Art World, which, like Spaces of the Art World, is a lens through which you can explore the way the art world works—but this time, through the people who make, display, buy, and care for art—from the art student to the collector.

A more conceptual engagement with the art market will be captured in another gene: The Art Market. The works in this gene take as their subject the art market itself, but do not always make overt visual references. For example, Jennifer Dalton’s Art Guide March and April pokes fun at a standard art world publication: the exhibition guide.

As the genome has grown, we have redoubled our efforts to make sure genes remain relevant, clear, and interesting. Please check them out, and, as always, send us your feedback.

- Jenny Tang, Summer Arts Intern

Discussing The Art Genome Project

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 23:56:00 -0400

Last week, Matthew Israel, Director of The Art Genome Project, spoke about Art.sy and The Art Genome Project at DataGotham. DataGotham aimed to celebrate New York City’s data community and brought together professionals from finance to fashion and from startups to Fortune 500 companies. The day-and-a-half event took place September 13th and 14th at at NYU Stern’s Paulson Auditorium.

Also, Matthew’s discussion with Suse Cairns about The Art Genome Project has been posted on her blog, Museum Geek. Museum Geek focuses on issues around museums, technology and ideas, and seeks to establish a site for debate about the future of museums.

Stop Reading! Look! On Bikeshedding and Furry Genes

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:10:00 -0400

“Bikeshedding” is a term for the tendency to give minor issues disproportionate weight in the decision-making process. In a famous example from the naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson, a finance committee agrees to build an atomic reactor within a couple of minutes, but then deliberates for hours on what materials the clerical bike shed should be made of. Why does this happen? An atomic reactor is incomprehensibly complex, which means that most members of a committee have a difficult time wrapping their head around what it means. In contrast, everyone knows what a bicycle shed is and what it could be made of. Thus, everyone has an opinion about it.

For months, the little-used “Hairy/Furry/Shaggy/Fluffy” gene was The Art Genome Project’s bikeshed. Humorously, we often found ourselves debating its existence. We wondered how other controlled vocabularies delineate the furriness of artworks. We asked ourselves what the difference is between fur and hair or what to do in instances where you can’t tell if something is composed of faux fur, human hair, or real fur. Everyone on the team had some level of investment in it. We theorized that maybe people feel protective of hairy and furry things, i.e. their pets or other people. But then when we looked at the issue closer, we realized we were consistently preoccupied with whether this gene was supposed to capture content (what an artwork is depicting, e.g. dogs) or its physical qualities (e.g. furriness). When we stepped back and asked if every other appearance gene properly made this distinction, we realized that we had found our atomic reactor.

More on the atomic reactor…

In reference to writing, David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief of The New Yorker, has said “revision is all there is.” One could say this is our approach to The Art Genome. We create but then we revise, revise, revise. We realized months ago that our appearance genes (which concern literally the appearance of artworks) needed a revision. In addition to confusing content and appearance, we found there were too many overlaps between genes. Also, some genes simply did not make sense to users. Additionally, some genes were heavily populated and others were applied to no works at all. So we went to work.

Our initial attempt at clarifying our genes looked something like this…

The mess may speak for itself.

Yet we kept at it. To bring some clarity to the picture, we decided to identify the genes we found most problematic (what we often refer to here as “worst offenders”): large, very general genes like Geometric, Emphasis on Line, and Thin Brushwork. We put them aside and evaluated whether they were even useful enough to keep.

Secondly, we realized that to clearly see redundancies we needed to be more strict about what areas of appearance we were concerned with. As a result, we created the following divisions of appearance genes: Composition, Painting/Drawing Technique, Lines and Shapes, Overall Look, Concept, and Color Attributes.

We then spent a lot of time looking at artworks—analyzing shapes and lines; finding similarities and differences, in the attempt to provide conceptual clarity for this area of the genome and our users.

This is what our “map” of appearance genes looks like now. Red indicates genes that we have decided to delete, green indicates new genes, and blue indicates genes that we are currently testing out.

(Zoom in here)

We think these new categories of genes bring more rigor to Art.sy’s visual analysis, while leaving a lot of room to grow.

Among other things, we’re excited that Emphasis on Line led us to a gene for Cloisonnism; that a gene we had for Fluids led us to capture Fluidity; and that we took the step of combining overlapping genes into individual genes, e.g. Sfumato and the “Hazy” part of Faded/Washed Out/Hazy have now become Haze.

So what happened to poor “Hairy/Furry/Shaggy/Fluffy?” Well, after a quick clean-up, we realized that it’s just not a very interesting way to describe works. We had two artworks on the site made using taxidermy: Spectre 11 and misfit (Schwan / Esel / Nutruía)and Spectre 11 also used feathers. And then there were a few images of furry things with hair-like fur…Yes, we spent a lot of time talking, i.e. bikeshedding, about that dog. As for fluffy works… turns out there were none. This is all not to say that artists don’t make fluffy works, it’s just that a work’s fluffiness tends to be only one of many more important traits, and we cannot account for every single texture and phenomenon in the world. (Maybe we will have more of these works in the future and need to once again consider this gene.)

One final note: it’s important to ask why visual genes matter at all. Appearance is important not only because it has an immediate impact on viewers, but also because certain physical properties—such as the mirrored quality of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s works—might not translate in an artwork’s digital reproduction, even given a powerful zoom feature.

On a more theoretical level, concepts may inhere in appearances. Take this Max Bill work, for example. Is the form of an infinity strip separable from the concept? Or, rather, is it separable from the concept most people have of the concept of infinity? What do we make of the fact that the fluid, undulating form is ossified in a material—granite—that is anything but? Or that the unbound vastness of infinity is tied up and anchored down by a heavy, immobile form? As Jerry Saltz has said, “Artists embed thought into materials.” In other words, the line between a purely formal quality (a visual trait you can see) and a concept is constantly being toyed with, exploited, and exploded by artists. For this reason, a few of our appearance genes actually became concept genes, such as Decayed/Aged/Deteriorated.

A second, final note: The title of this post is drawn from a now-famous 1928 essay by Johannes Molzahn which asked Germans of the Weimar Republic to embrace the visual culture of the age. Despite its antiquatedness—it is, in fact, an almost utopian paen to mechanization—this essay shows that sometimes we need to be reminded of the most basic aspect of art appreciation: looking.

-Jessica Backus, Researcher on The Art Genome Project, with Natalie Baker, Content Partner Liaison and Researcher on The Art Genome Project, Clare McLaughlin, Research Intern on The Art Genome Project, and Sergey Karayev, Developer Intern.

The (Continued) Evolution of Art.sy’s Economics Genes

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:02:00 -0400

“I’d asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, ‘Well, what do you love the most?’ That’s how I started painting money.”

-Andy Warhol

Though rarely dealt with as directly as Warhol, the history of art has often concerned money, and more broadly, the economics of art, and the economy. For over a year now, we have debated how to involve these concepts in The Art Genome Project.

Initially, artists and works that engaged with both the economics of art and the economy in general were dealt with through our Institutional Critique gene, which at one point included works that fell outside the historic meaning of the term—the critique of solely art institutions—and as such, involved critique of cultural, governmental and economic institutions.

Yet as time went on, we realized this was an inappropriate way to deal with these works—especially because it misrepresented the historical meaning of the term.

So what next?

We were left with two groups of works:

Those that engaged with ideas such as world markets, commerce, and issues of wealth and poverty.
Those that focused on art as a commodity, especially the value of art objects.

However these two groups lacked sufficient cohesion to be understood as two distinct ideas, so we decided to go through both groups and create more specific genes and tags.

One of the major themes that emerged from the first group was commentary on consumer culture. As a result, the Consumerism gene was created. This gene includes both artwork taking on the issue as subject matter as well as artworks featuring what could be understood as the iconography of consumerism. The most immediate example would be the branding and logos seen in Pop Art. Another example would be contemporary photographer Brian Ulrich’s documentation of empty malls and stores.

The dual nature of Consumerism—as both capturing an idea/concept as well as immediately identifiable imagery—eventually resulted in an internal debate over whether we should divide the gene in two to make it clearer to users. We decided we didn’t need to split it, but that a good idea would be to create very concrete groupings out of it, such as Advertising & Brands and Industry, and tags like Workers, Shop, Store, Mall, etc. These genes and tags, although related to Consumerism have provided great connections and nuance. Our thinking about Consumerism also spawned the creation of a Globalization gene, however we realized that Globalization (like Consumerism) is also a very general term prone to misunderstanding. We’re currently considering more specific genes such as national identity, migration, and poverty/wealth.

All of this is to say that the development of Art.sy’s economics-related genes is a work in progress. Further proof of this is the fact that based on the two groups mentioned above, for a time we created an Art as Commodity gene that quickly became a confusing catchall for works that dealt with the art market, the gallery system, and contemporary art production. Examples were the readymades of Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skulls, and Terence Koh’s gold-covered feces. The gene has since been retired to make way for new genes. For example, genes such as Luxury Objects and an Institutional Critique-esque gene focusing on the art market are in development, so keep on the lookout.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this, i.e. where we’ve been and where we’re going with these economic genes. Email me or tweet to us @artsy.

-Ibiayi Briggs, Content Partner Liaison/Specialist and Researcher on The Art Genome Project

Mapping Serendipity

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:10:00 -0400

“You’re mapping serendipity,” an art history professor recently told us. As former teachers and students who believe such “happy accidents” (in which a professor happened upon a great connection between artists or artworks not initially apparent to him/her) were often the best parts of lectures, this comment made us feel good.

This comment also begged a question though: Since we talk about Art.sy as a place to learn about art, in what specific ways do we believe Art.sy to be educational?

We thought spending some time to discuss this would be helpful to our users. We also hope that in response to such a discussion, those in academia or museums (or elsewhere) will contact us to provide feedback regarding educational features they like or would like to see.

To begin with, let’s return to this idea of serendipity. The Art Genome Project provides the structure for related art search. This type of search can be understood as a new tool for learning about art and art history. It provides an educational experience quite different from other art-historical resources like books and journals, lectures or films. Related search is an active, exploratory, and self-motivated experience that opens up seemingly infinite pathways.

What particularly excites us about related search is you can start almost anywhere on the site—with any artist, artwork, gene, or tag. Often when we are introducing the site to someone, we start with the example of searching for Andy Warhol, as he might be one of the only artists a user has ever heard of.

A search for Warhol brings you to a page with a biography about him, genes related to his works, and then related artists. You can then click anywhere on the screen and be taken somewhere else. Let’s say you scroll down and click on Richard Hamilton’s Toaster Deluxe 6 (2008), and then on Engagement with Mass Media, and then on Hannah Höch’s Das schöne Mädchen (The Beautiful Girl), 1920, and then on Dada, and then you read the definition for Dada. You’ve now learned about Dada even though all you started with was Andy Warhol. (We are still amazed by this process.)

Another idea: Recently, we have been getting excited about the possibility of professors using Art.sy as a teaching tool. Art historians, for example, have expressed interest in Art.sy as a means to explore the history of a movement or to see how a term’s interpretation has changed over time.

For example, sort Collage or Biomorphic by date. You can immediately see the beginnings of a history of collage or understand how the term biomorphic over time has come to represent imagery much more “molecular” than critics in the 1930s might have envisioned.

You can also use gene searches as a jumping-off point for a discussion on the variety within certain styles, movements or techniques—both contemporary and historical.

For example, look at the various results in a search for Documentary Photography. Use this large set of images to enter into a discussion to compare and contrast the different approaches of Timothy O’Sullivan, Paul Strand, Taryn Simon, Jeff Wall, or JR. For starters, there’s Wall’s concept of the “near documentary,” versus JR’s attempt to “change the world” by gluing pictures of people on buildings “to say they exist.” Or you could begin the discussion with the story of how O’Sullivan and Alexander Gardner moved bodies around battlefields to make better “documentary” images of the American Civil War…

As a final note, we wanted to talk about the value of having high-resolution images for research. Did you ever notice, for example, that the chair-caning in Pablo Picasso’s Still-life with Chair Caning (1912) was textured to the extent that it shows through in areas where it has been painted over? Zoom in and see for yourself.

-Matthew Israel, Director of The Art Genome Project

The Substance of Painting is Light

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 15:00:00 -0400

“The substance of painting is light.”

-Andre Derain

“Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation.”

-James Turrell

To say that most artists think about light as it pertains to the creation and perception of their work is an understatement. For hundreds of years, artists as seemingly different as Joahnnes Vermeer and James Turrell have been investigating how light affects not only their work but also the perception and experience of their work.

I’d like to use this post to—can’t help it—shed some light on how we have dealt with light as it pertains to The Art Genome Project.

In the early days of Art.sy—when there were less than one thousand works in our database—the genome team created one “Light” gene. Light was intended to capture any and all artists and works that dealt with the subject of light. Yes, it was a general idea, but we felt it could well identify works that prioritized a concentration on light. A couple of months later, we added an “appearance gene” titled “Luminous/Halo Effect.” (For more on our gene types, see this earlier post.)

Nearly two years later (in January 2012), our “Light” gene had swelled to 1200+ artworks with another 115 in “Luminous/Halo Effect.” In some ways, we should have anticipated this happening, since one could argue that most artists’ work—especially painters (as Derain suggests)—are involved in some respect with light. With so many works lumped together, searches were becoming equally muddy and we decided that the “Light” gene required further clarification.

After a thorough review of the roughly 1500 works, we realized that most works fell into three categories:

Paintings in which the artist is concerned with light as it is visually affecting the world around them (ex. Impressionist paintings such as Pierre Auguste-Renoir’s A Girl with a Watering Can, 1876, Tonalism works, Peter Paul Rubens).
Abstract sculptures or installations containing neon/LED (such as works by Dan Flavin) or material or environments intended to intensify or foreground the effects of light (such as works by California Light and Space artist Peter Alexander, or Mon Levinson’s plexiglass wall hangings)
Images that literally depict sunlight or skyscapes (such as David Ligare’s Landscape, 2010 or Robert Longo’s Study for Underwater Lights, 2010).

With this in mind, we concluded that the most meaningful (and satisfying) result to our users was to group the second and third categories together into a new gene titled “Light as Subject.”

Into this “Light as Subject” gene we included both abstract Dan Flavin works alongside Robert Longo’s Study for Underwater Lights, 2010. Although both works look different, they both take light as their subject matter in an specific and visually apparent way.

To accompany this new subject matter gene, we created a new medium gene simply titled “Light,” which captures all works that incorporate such things as LED light, Flame/Fire, Lightbulb, Neon, etc.

In conjunction with these two new genes, we decided against creating a gene that would incorporate works which concern the visual effect of light on the world. It seemed way too broad and in this way less informative as a gene than others might be. However, in the future we may consider again the possibility for having such a gene, especially due to its art-historical significance. We are still keeping track of these artists and artworks for further research.

-Alessandra Henderson, Content Partner Manager/Specialist and Researcher on The Art Genome Project

"Double Genes"

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:13:00 -0400

In the early days of The Art Genome Project, when our inventory was still in the four-digits, we sometimes combined two separate but related characteristics into one gene, knowing that eventually the time would come when each characteristic would gather enough artworks and artists on its own.

Primary/Austere was one of the those unique “double genes” but it quickly outgrew its slash. It began as a way to capture an aspect of Primitivism, a term we were—and still are—hesitant to use on the site. (We have preferred to try and break down the multiple aspects of what one might call “Primitivist” works.) The particular aspect we were trying to capture with Primary/Austere was what one might consider “childlike,” simplified or rudimentary marks in an artwork, such as in this Paul Klee etching. We were really interested in making links across time with this idea. For example, we thought how great would it be to show users correspondences between a historical artist like Jean Dubuffet and a contemporary one like Jonathan Meese.

As the gene continued to grow we noticed that there were a lot of works given values for it that lacked figurative subject matter and often presented basic shapes in solid or primary colors, and were primary or austere in a very different way than we had conceptualized. To explain further, these works were not executed in a kind of rudimentary manner or mark but in them the abstract qualities of geometric forms stood out, as in this Otto Peine watercolor. Appearing in search results more and more, these differently “austere” works formed a powerful presence to the extent that it became clear that Primary/Austere needed to be broken up into a few different genes, at least one that would capture a rudimentary type of mark-making and another than would capture simplified shapes and compositions, marks notwithstanding.

Our first step was to do exactly this: divide Primary/Austere into Primary Mark and Primary Abstraction. Then we decided to maintain Austere as a third gene, that would better represent what austerity was, a simplification of pictorial space or construction, and in so doing, could combine aspects of childlike drawing or basic, elementary shapes, but did not necessarily require either of these elements.

We definitely struggled with what to call Primary Abstraction. It needed to speak to a tendency in art that is at once very specific—the use of simple shapes—but which does not necessarily encompass all abstract works. For example, Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings—some of the best known examples of abstract art—don’t resemble concrete shapes, nor are his compositions simple. Ultimately we chose to combine the word “primary”—to highlight the cool, geometric forms—with the word abstraction, to indicate that these repetitive patterns rejected figurative subject matter. The title also nicely references “Primary Structures,” arguably the first exhibition of Minimalism. (And minimalist artists like Donald Judd and Carl Andre became well-known for their use of markedly simplistic and streamlined sculptures.)

While this by no means offers a comprehensive explanation of abstract art, we see this as substantive steps towards creating a diverse vocabulary for abstraction, especially the many different types of (what historically has been referred to as) “primitive” expression.

-Holly Shen, Researcher on The Art Genome Project

Intern for The Art Genome Project

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 17:10:00 -0400

We’re looking for Research Interns to make vital contributions to our growing, living tool for discovering art, The Art Genome Project.

How Collecting Was Born

Thu, 31 May 2012 17:33:00 -0400

Johann Georg Hainz, Cabinets of Curiosities, ca. 1666, Oil on Canvas (Collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle)

It all started with a routine gene “clean-up” of the Group of Objects gene. Clean-ups are one of the many ways we maintain the integrity and accuracy of The Art Genome Project. They entail looking at every artist and artwork with a value for a particular gene, and ensuring that the application is correct, i.e. that the artist or artwork presented has a connection to the gene and its definition. Clean-ups often lead to ideas for new genes, since what does not fit correctly in one gene might be better explained through another.

Group of Objects had originally been conceived as a gene for capturing two-dimensional depictions of multiple objects whose arrangement did not conform to compositional strategies of traditional still lifes. Yet it turned out that there were a number of three-dimensional works with this gene applied that were not depictions of groups of objects, but real-life groups of objects themselves, such as this diorama by Gianfranco Baruchello. In fact there were so many instances of this that the human error of our genomers alone could not account for it; instead it indicated that there was a significant need to capture such works via some yet-to-be-identified category.

This was now a whole other problem. Our plan of attack was to first identify the many different ways to describe different configurations of physical objects. We sifted through lots of related genes, such as Commodity (currently being re-worked), Typologies, Assemblage, and Use of Everyday Objects, and ended up proposing three new genes along with working definitions. They were were as follows:

Collections of Objects:
What Umberto Eco has called “poetic visual lists.” In their organization, they are indebted to the Baroque cabinet of curiosities, and their organization is specifically personal and oftentimes whimsical. Example: Fos, A Collection of Dark to Light Greens, 2008.

The Archive:
Refers to works that explore the configurations of knowledge as embodied by the archive, which is defined as a collection of historical documents or objects and/or the place where such records are stored, oftentimes as a means of critiquing or destabilizing the supposed objectivity, authenticity and authority of the archive. Significant examples: Dieter Roth, Flat Garbage, 1975-6 (a series of file cabinets housing 1160 files of refuse) or the Atlas Group Archive.

Accumulations:
A concept first proposed by Karl Marx in the 19th century as a behavior endemic to capitalist production. As a process, it involves amassing or gathering objects or documents as part of a continual, additive process, often to convey a sense of excess, cornucopia, sheer volume, or even infinity. A recent example: Dash Snow and Dan Colen, Nest, 2007, installation at Deitch Projects.

These ideas were all interesting, and, arguably, very relevant to contemporary practice. Yet “interesting” is not a sufficient criterion for inclusion in The Art Genome. Instead, we always consider the following:

A gene needs to be concrete enough for its definition and application to be clear to both our users and genomers.
A gene has to be broadly applicable so that we can use it to make connections amongst different artists or artworks. If only two artworks on the site have the gene “The Archive,” it may say a lot about their work, but it doesn’t relate them to anything else.
A gene has to be grounded in reality, i.e. what artists are actually doing. Here we have to guard against considering contemporary theoretical frameworks as genes without making sure they relate to specific works of art.
It should try to capture one aspect of artistic production at once. Otherwise, there should be more than one gene.
It should not overlap too much with existing genes.

Accordingly we made the following decisions:

Collections of Objects, though interesting, did not satisfy the 1st, 3rd, or 4th criteria above. It combined both a concept, “Collecting,” with a definition we imposed on the concept—collecting solely as the “personal” cabinet of curiosities.
Though The Archive was a more concrete idea, we found it did not satisfy the second criteria; there were not that many works to which this would have applied. So we decided not to introduce this to the site, but to return to it at a later date should the need arise.
Accumulations was, like The Archive, deemed too rare. It was also too theoretical and arguably did not fulfill the 3rd and 4th criteria. Also, some artists produce works that one could describe as an accumulation of things, but in fact have little to do with the process of accumulating or the concept of excess. In other words, as conceived, this gene combined a physical property of objects (the accumulation) with a concept (the pathology of accumulating), and thus was doing double duty. We decided to table this for the time being.

So on one hand, we talked ourselves out of all of our “new” genes. On the other hand, in the process of rejecting these genes, we realized one thing these proposed genes shared was an interest in collecting. Collections of Objects were about personal collections of naturalia and artificialia, The Archive was about an official and rational collection of documents, and Accumulations focused on the seemingly unchecked collecting of mundane things.

Collecting as a concept gene was also inclusive enough to fulfill the 2nd criterion, it also captured one concept at a time, it was relevant and concrete, and it did not overlap with other genes. It additionally allowed us to avoid making speculative judgments regarding artistic intent.

That is how Collecting was born.

As implemented, Collecting now encompasses both depictions of and critical approaches to myriad types and spaces of collecting, from museums, libraries, and archives to collections of scientific specimens. It includes artworks like Marcel Duchamp’s seminal Boîte en Valise—a selection of miniature renditions of the artist’s own works presented in a box. It also includes images of collections, such as this early photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot, The Articles of Porcelain, 1844, and artworks like these five plaster casts of the artist Terence Koh’s head. Housed in glass vitrines, their mouths open as if they are moaning. I like to think of Koh’s work as a macabre cabinet of curiosities that makes trophies of the beheaded artist. The sound of his voice is muffled by the vitrine. It functions as an apt reminder to leave the work of art the space to speak, even if it does get put into a box.

-Jessica Backus, Researcher on The Art Genome Project

Sources and Further Reading:

Umberto Eco. The Infinity of Lists. New York: Rizzoli, 2009.
Charles Merewether (Ed.). The Archive. Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art: 2006.
Jeffrey Slonim. “Consummate Consumption – artists’ collections.” ArtForum, Dec. 1994.
Philip Ursprung. “Who’s Afraid of Accumulation?” College Art Association Annual Conference. Los Angeles Convention Center. Feb. 23, 2012. Part I and Part II.

The Art Genome's Roots

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:51:00 -0400

From the moment we began working on The Art Genome, we wanted to better establish how it compared with previous structures that have encouraged and guided inquiry into art, artists and art history.

Last fall, we were able to dedicate the necessary time and resources to answering this question.

We cast our scholarly net wide. Our research brought us to the 18th century and back again. We looked at thesauri, encyclopedias, and some of the first art history books ever printed. We were consistently amazed at the variety and volume of attempts that have been made recording, cataloging, classifying, and sharing art throughout history. We developed a new appreciation for engravers who trekked to Greece and Italy to painstakingly document antiquity’s artistic treasures, well before the invention of photography. We thought about polyhierarchies a lot; probably too much.

It turns out that The Art Genome is related to a lot of things (and yet is exactly like none of them) all at once…
Is The Art Genome similar to The Human Genome?

Yes, in very broad strokes. Both are combinatorial frameworks of attributes.
No, more specifically. The Art Genome has roughly 800 unique genes. The Human Genome has between 20,000 and 25,000 genes, though it is comprised of roughly 97% junk or redundant/repetitive DNA. The Art Genome is also descriptive and inherently incomplete while the Human Genome is generative and complete.

Can The Art Genome be compared to Pandora’s Music Genome?

Yes, since both aim to create comprehensive (though by no means exhaustive) analyses of types of art by identifying a set of criteria (which both call “genes”). These are both broadly applicable to their respective art forms, as well as useful for generating interesting connections for users.
No, because while The Art Genome is currently one extensive list of genes for all works of art, Pandora has separate genomes (lists of genes) for each genre of music. Also, musicology generally studies quite different attributes than art and art history.

Is The Art Genome a taxonomy?

Yes, in part, because The Art Genome, like a taxonomy, classifies things to show how they are related to each other. Biological classification (i.e. genus, species) is probably the best-known form of taxonomy. Library catalogues are also taxonomic. Taxonomies are useful to us because they help people browse, and browsing is a significant goal for The Art Genome.
No, because taxonomies are monohierarchical or pyramidal, like the structure of a tree (where there can be many branches but they all flow back into the trunk), whereas Art.sy’s genome is polyhierarchical. What does polyhierarchical mean? In short, there are many relationships: many trunks and many branches. What this means in terms of the genome is that the characteristics of art can never be simplified into a basic hierarchical structure. Some characteristics relate so superficially or almost not at all (such as Romanticism and Kinetic Sculpture) and that’s OK.

Is The Art Genome an encyclopedia?

Yes, because it is a compendium of terms with verifiable definitions agreed upon by committee.
No, because encyclopedias include mostly facts - knowledge about specific people and places. The Art Genome on the other hand contains almost entirely “generic” terms, or terms which are not proper nouns, people, or places, such as “Painting” or “War,” and these can potentially be applied to any artwork on the site.

Is The Art Genome a thesaurus?

Yes, because like a thesaurus, The Art Genome includes only generic terms.
No, for two reasons. First, The Art Genome provides definitions of its terms; and second, thesauri group words together based on similarity of meaning to help the user retrieve the specific term they need for a particular context while The Art Genome is not focused on retrieving similar terms but on browsing and making connections between artworks.

Stepping back now from this series of questions and comparisons, which show how The Art Genome is related to many preceding classification systems but is not identifical to any of them, the next question is, so what? Put simply, this project allowed us to understand the limits and capacities of the genome. Or put another way, it provided those of us working on The Art Genome with a well of historical inspiration and locations for advice.

-Matthew Israel, Director of The Art Genome Project, and Jessica Backus, Researcher

What is The Art Genome Project?

Thu, 17 May 2012 17:54:00 -0400

The Project has two parts.

Part 1 is a list of all of the possible characteristics/terms you might apply to art.

Think about an art object, say a painting by Andy Warhol. You might say it is a painting, that it is a work of Pop Art, that it is a silkscreen, that it features an image of Marilyn Monroe, that it is very “high contrast,” or even that it emphasizes the flatness of the image.

These characteristics or terms (e.g. Pop Art, flatness, bright colors) are what we call “genes.”

There are currently over 400 genes in what we call “The Art Genome” and they fall into the following categories. (In parentheses are examples of genes in the category.)

Time Period (Pre-Impressionism, Modern, Contemporary)
Medium (Painting, Sculpture, Installation, Video)
Style or Movement (Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, Young British Artists)
Contemporary Tendencies (Tendencies occurring in contemporary art but that people might not yet be comfortable calling “movements,” such as Contemporary Gothic or DIY)
Concepts (Color Theory, Institutional Critique, Related to Film)
Content (Portrait, Landscape, The Studio, Cityscape)
Techniques (Monochrome Painting, Multiple Exposure, Sfumato)
Geographical Regions (Where an artist has lived and worked)
Appearance Genes (The look and feel of an object)
Labs (Genes in development; not public)

We also have hundreds of other genes. These capture individual art-historical and artist influences, such as the fact that Jackson Pollock was influenced by (among other things) Mexican Muralism or Thomas Hart Benton.

Where did all of these genes come from?

Hundreds of years of art-historical scholarship that we are the beneficiaries of
Discussions in books, periodicals and on the web surrounding contemporary art
Many Art.sy genome team meetings and debates
Consistent communication with all of our partners, i.e. the galleries, museums, foundations, collections and estates that feature their work on Art.sy.

Part 2 is applying relevant genes to each of the 3,000 artists and 15,000 artworks on Art.sy.

The list of genes applied to artists and artworks we call their “genomes.”

Like the process of coming up with genes, the application of genes to artists and artworks is a group effort, involving the genome team at Art.sy, extensive research, and consistent communication with our partners.

A few clarifications about genomes and genes:

Every artist and artwork has their own genome. Why? To show how different, for example, Warhol’s oeuvre (his collected works) is in comparison to individual works and how greatly individual works can differ from each other.
Genes are not tags — though we have many tags on the site — because tags are binary (something is either tagged “dog” or not). Genes, in contrast, can range from 0-100, thus capturing how strongly a gene applies to a specific artist or artwork. This nuanced connection between works of art is impossible with a simple tagging mechanism.

So this is The Art Genome Project, the source of all the terms and related searches users see on Art.sy. As always, we welcome your questions and comments.

In the coming weeks, look forward to further posts on topics like precedents for The Art Genome Project (such as art-historical taxonomies or thesauri, encyclopedias and dictionaries, image atlases, and Pandora), what appearance genes try to capture, how algorithms relate to The Art Genome Project, and how and why “Most Similar Artworks” was created.

— Matthew Israel, Director of The Art Genome Project

The Art Genome Project Tumblr

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:57:00 -0400

Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing—with each species in its folder, like a stamp in its prescribed place in an album; but taxonomy is a fundamental and dynamic science, dedicated to exploring the causes of relationships and similarities among organisms. Classifications are theories about the basis of natural order, not dull catalogues compiled only to avoid chaos.

—Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life (1990)

Many believe categories and terminology for art compromises art’s nuances and inherent mysteriousness. However, classification is central to understanding the order of things, particularly their relationships and similarities.

Art.sy’s Art Genome Project aims to create a classification system that retains the nuances and mysteries within art and allows anyone with an Internet connection the opportunity to learn about art and art history.

From today on, members of the Project will post here the ideas, discussions, arguments, successes and failures we have had in our ongoing attempt to create The Art Genome Project. We hope you enjoy it and we look forward to your comments. Please feel free to comment on any of our posts or to contact me directly at matthew@art.sy.

— Matthew Israel, Director of The Art Genome Project