A wall display in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris describes the origins of Impressionism in painting. Included in its description is this passage: “The Impressionists wanted to paint their own era. They uncovered its modernity in the stations, avenues and cafés of Paris, in popular leisure pursuits on the banks of the Seine, and in suburban landscapes where industry was already making its mark. The railways also allowed them to explore the coast and beaches which became fashionable during the Second Empire.”
The last sentence is especially interesting. We can imagine that without the railroads, the artists’ subject matter would have been much more limited, not only in what they could paint, but where ― that the railroads gave them access to settings that they would not otherwise have had.
Though it is sometimes claimed that technology undermines art, or at least clashes with it, for me it is easier to see technology serving the arts. An obvious example of this is how the availability of computers and the internet facilitates writing.
To widen the point further, we could add that, both art and technology being examples of production, they again demonstrate how one act of production can inform or even make possible another. In this way, anyone’s work anywhere can lay the tracks for someone else’s.
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