In 2012, David Hockney presented his one-man exhibition of abstraction and realism in his landscape works at the National Gallery in London, which took art afficionados by storm.

He is a reputable plien air artist (which means he paints from live) and some of his live canvas is so huge it can cover a whole length of a big hallway. For the exhibition he created his images from an iPad and then produced them on to a bigger canvas.

The advantage of this innovation opened pathways for genuine artists to add high-tech modern quality to their artworks, which results in a healthy merger of art experience and new technologies.

Unfortunately, the lazy artist (who does not deserve to be called an artist) has taken advantage of this technoartistic method to bypass all the rudiments and academic channels of good artistry and therefore produce mediocre works that do not deserve exposure, let alone exhibiting.

Basic drawing, perspective, light and shade (chiarascuro) and sensible colouring are skills that cannot be omitted to attain good artistic standards. If this merging is not taken seriously and with great preparation and delegation, we will see decadence taking over.

This is not only happening in Malta: it is also happening abroad and we Maltese, who have pride in our heritage, as well as good artists, should not follow this bad habit. I appeal to all artistic stakeholders, such as art teachers, critics, scholars and artistic boards, to use their authority and experience to clean out this virus.

This would give the chance to genuinely good and promising artists to come out of their humble quarters and give Malta what it deserves: appreciation of justified visual art and not a decadent reflection of art culture. Action needs to be taken now before 2018!

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