Manifesto

 QUANTUM POP MEDIA ARTIST   

My art is called ELECTRONISM.I use all available electronic technology in combination with existing art methods to create new work for today's hyper media world.

Original Digital Art made on Cubicomp in 1986 with a grant from the French Ministry of Culture, Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Nouvelles Images. ©Beau Tardy 1986-2024

Art is Media. Media is Art. I sample from everything. I am an Art Scientist.

Art is a flag a badge a medal a dress a coat of arms. Wear it proudly and stake your claim in the battle. Gather your troops and sound the trumpets of war. The culture war is here, which side are you on?

Post-Modernism is dead. Welcome to the Digital Age. Everything is up for grabs. Ownership of ideas is made obsolete by Insta-steal and Face-book’em. Nothing is real anymore. Everything is memory. It is a sampling culture; what Marshall McLuhan calls the ‘Instant Replay’. The artist is in the special effects business. By sampling every facet of the culture the artist brings about special effects that resonate. The audience then participates in the artistic process by re-sampling the art on their iphones and posting it to their ‘social media’ tribe. This way they signal to their peers that they are ‘part of the art’. They in fact are wearing the art. The audience wears the art and wears out the artist. Which is why artists need to wear armor to protect themselves the way witch doctors wear gris-gris.

‘Copyright’ is the new battleground. When everything is digitally copied who gets to say what’s right? Who owns what? Beware the cyber-barrons becoming the cyber-bullies. The ones who have everything own everything. Stop giving art away!

Tagged wall installation at Barrister's Gallery in New Orleans. Series of 12 panels of high resolution 5 color HP z-6100 thermal laminated and mounted digital prints. Digitally painted featuring actress Ashley Greene. ©2013

As a 360º artist my weapons are computers, painting, drawing, music, video, installations, happenings, writing and media. I need to avail myself of all the technology of media in order to be effective. Painting alone is not enough anymore. I publish comics, do graffiti art, play dj shows, make computer animation, produce video and write books.

Test Line for Lower Third. Photoshop digital art. ©2015

Heart of Fire. Photoshop. Digital print on canvas. ©2014

The National Endowment for the Arts defines a Media Artist as "utilizing a fundamental understanding of the mediums of analog and digital media to integrate digital technologies with traditional forms of artistic expression". Physics defines Quantum as the smallest measurable discrete amount of any physical property. Pop Art uses the modalities of Popular Culture and Mass Media. I am a Quantum Pop Media Artist who uses the modalities and technologies of Popular Culture and Mass Media in association with all other traditional art forms as Art Quanta.

Live Perfomance VJ/DJ. Axelrad Houston. Beau Tardy ©2022

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***My new and revised terms and conditions***

Right after the congressional hearings on Facebook where Zuckerberg showed himself to be an Orwellian doublespeak agent, they changed the algorithm at Instagram. Immediately my android tablet crashed and I had to do a complete reset losing all my apps, photos, videos, music, etc. Additionally my posts on instagram went from getting 100+ likes to 7. That's right,SEVEN! At this point Facebook and Instagram have become mind control gulags. There is no rationale for my art being censored, throttled, downgraded, hidden or ghettoized. I reject them. The arbitrary whims of technocrats who posit themselves as cultural wranglers is not in conjunction with my world view insofar as my content and artistic production are not theirs to abuse as they please. THEY SHOULD BE PAYING FOR THE PRIVILEGE TO USE MY CONTENT. Unless and until there is a fair compensation system put in place for content producers and/ or a VERIFIABLE level playing field, my content will no longer be theirs to pilfer and profit from. From now on my content will be displayed the way I intend on a website that I control. 

Please enjoy my art, buy it and support me as an artist. Thank you.

Why I support tariffs as an artist.

Digital Art by Beau Tardy produced on Quantel Paintbox - 1992

Starting at about age 10 is when I realized how much I liked TV Cartoons and Comic Books and so right then and there I decided I wanted to learn how to draw. For the next 14 years I traced and copied my favorite characters, studied how animation was done, got mentored by cartoonists and eventually ended up in art school. As I grew older I came to understand that there was a wider world of visual arts out there that went back centuries. From Roman and Greek sculptures to Rembrandt and Picasso, our culture had a rich tradition of incredible works of art. I became fascinated with learning how to do figure drawing from live models and classical master oil painting techniques. Even Walt Disney himself insisted that his artists study the classics and for that purpose created one of the most reputable art colleges in the world known today as Cal Arts. 

While at Parsons’ School of Design in the early 80s, I became acutely aware of something that was happening with technology that would impact the arts. Computer Graphics were just starting to appear on TV and the movies and I knew right away that this was the future. This prompted me to want to learn computer graphics and how to shoot and edit video. In 1985 the path forward wasn’t very clearly defined for an art student who drew comics but also liked computers and video. However, I knew that TV Graphics could be a lot better if only trained artists could get a hand on those extremely expensive computers. At the time a TV Graphics computer cost upwards of $150k and would rent out for $1000/ hour and so nobody was eager to let some grubby art kid mess around on their cutting edge systems. But with perseverance I was finally able to convince a video post-production company to give me a shot and that launched my professional career. 

Following that, for the next 25 years I worked as a Broadcast and Motion Designer for TV Networks in the US and around the world. Most famously I worked at MTV doing graphics for Yo! MTV Raps, MTV News and The Real World. I also worked for Nickelodeon, VH1, NBC Sports, The Food Network, Cartoon Network, Fox Networks, etc. Internationally I worked for Global Japan, MTV International and Australian TV. You get the picture (pun intended)!

MTV Logo design by Beau Tardy on Quantel Paintbox - 1992

But in the early 2000s, something happened that shifted everything. Up until then, my profession was a very specialized field with expensive equipment and big budgets. Almost overnight it seemed, the production budgets collapsed. This was due to two factors. The first was the availability of cheaper computers such as Macs, but the second factor was much more insidious. Work was being shipped overseas. Hollywood and TV Networks had figured out that they could buy a bunch of cheap computers and install them in bunny warrens overseas in third world countries like India, South America and China. They could then hire locals for pennies on the dollar and ‘train’ them to do VFX and graphics work. This is why today when you watch a movie all the VFX credits feature a bunch of Indian and Chinese names. There was no way that highly trained professionals like myself could compete with those budgets. As a result, the entire VFX and graphics industry has now moved exclusively overseas. 

Predictably, I had to re-orient my career and readjust my lifestyle. I could no longer work in the field I had spent almost 30 years of my life perfecting. Increasingly, movies and TV shows developed a strange ‘bland’ esthetic, where it seemed the locations, the actors and even the stories didn’t feel authentic. That’s because they would shoot and produce everything overseas, replacing American cities with ‘generic’ shots taken in South Africa or Argentina. If you ever asked yourself why movies don’t seem as compelling as they used to, perhaps that has something to do with it. What’s worse is that the industry blatantly decided to indulge in paying slave wages, whereby an Indian VFX artist today only makes about $9000 PER YEAR! That equates to $750 A MONTH, or $187 a week, which is $37 a day!!!!!!!!!!! (source: https://blog.internshala.com/vfx-artist-salary-in-india/ )

The quality of the work suffers of course. But the bean counters don’t care, they are looking at the bottom line. This is absolutely terrible for artists. How can an American artist compete when he/ she needs to make 10x what a Vietnamese artist makes? Have you ever noticed those paintings at Hobby Lobby or Pottery Barn that sell for $50 or $100? They are made in sweat shops overseas. Why would anybody buy one of those when there are hundreds of wonderful young artists right here who could make a painting with so much more heart and love? Why are we letting overseas underpaid labor dictate to us what our cultural standards are? This system is broken and that is why I fully support tariffs on imports. My only hope is that these tariffs will apply to digital media and art work as well. This is the only way to quell this disaster for our culture and the arts. The other solution is for everyone to start buying art from artists you know and not generic crap from overseas.

BeLove.Art ©Beau Tardy 2025

Beau Tardy unveiling new Intelligent Art Collection at the Menil.

 

Beau Tardy will be showing his new collection Intelligent Art at the Menil on May 11, 2024.

This new collection of AI assisted digital art seeks to blur the lines between art & technology. Can art be made on machines? Who is to dictate which tools are used to make art? These seem like antiquated questions that belie the myopia that surrounds the acceptance of these news forms of art. The Menil is a veritable temple of 20th century surrealism and as such is the ideal location to premiere this new collection of ground breaking art by Beau Tardy.

View the video here.

 

Location: 1533 Sul Ross St Houston, TX 77006S. Saturday, May 11, 8–10 p.m. Main Building

Paintings On Demand by Beau Tardy

Post Neo-Geo Artist Seeking Validation by Beau Tardy.

 *First there was Video On Demand and now artist Beau Tardy presents Paintings On Demand. 

Post Neo-Geo Artist Seeking Validation. New Art by Beau Tardy. I will paint this on canvas for $500 shipping included (USA only + $50 for overseas) - Acrylic Paint on 24"x24" Square Shaped Gallery Wrapped Canvas - Made with archival-quality, 100% cotton. The medium-weight cotton duck is stretched around 3/4" profile kiln-dried stretcher bars and held in place with a flexible spline. 0.75" (1.9 cm) wood frame profile. Conforms to ASTM D-4236. Please specify with or without tagline - Painted by Hand, Multiples available (numbered & dated) --- 

Link here: https://py.pl/1nWi7c

Susie ™

One NFT copy available here.