David Hockney. Keith Haring. larry rivers. Jennifer Bartlet. These are just a few of the artists who experimented in the 1980s with the Quantel paint boxa precursor to Photoshop.
Decades later, graffiti artist and photographer Adrian Wilsonhimself one of the first users of Paintboxfound artists’ long-lost pieces made using the obscure computer graphics machine.
NOW, To print reports, Wilson is bringing a selection of 20 Paintbox artworks to the public for the very first time in “How Quantel’s Paintbox Changed Our World», an exhibition of Computer Arts Society At Phoenix Film and Arts CenterLeicester, United Kingdom
“At $250,000 to buy, or a minimum of $500 an hour to rent, Paintboxes were the Rolls-Royce of computer graphics and hard to get to,” Wilson told Artnet News. But when artists got their hands on it, the results were extraordinary. “It was this incredible new thing that was groundbreaking and exciting, and launched many careers, mine included.”
David Hockney, Cecila Birtwell (1984). © David Hockney. Courtesy of Adrian Wilson Paintbox Archive.
The Paintbox became a footnote in history after Quantel lost its patent infringement lawsuit against Adobe, and Photoshop became the industry standard. Although largely forgotten today, the Paintbox helped pioneer digital art and animation. More than just a computer program, the Paintbox was a stand-alone machine, with a drawing surface and stylus combined with a user-friendly interface designed to make artists forget they were using a computer to make art.
He was hugely influential in television broadcasting. ABC bought new Paintbox before the 1984 Summer Olympics. The early adopter was Weather Channel, which moved from physical stickers depicting the sun and storms to weather maps with broadcast-quality graphics. Paintbox was also an integral part of defining MTV’s visual appearance and was used for music videos like Boy George’s “You are my heroine», created by the graphic designer Kiki Picasso.
And then there were the artists, whom Quantel had courted from the start.
“They knew that as end users, artists were critical to their success,” Wilson said. “Quantel gave away literally millions of dollars of these things, because they wanted to encourage artists to use the Paintbox. And one happened at my art school.
It was 1986 at the Blackpool School of Art in the UK, and it changed her life. Wilson believes he was the first photographer to digitally manipulate images.
Ian T. Tilton took this photo of Adrian Wilson with his work on a Quantel Paintbox workstation in 1987. Photo courtesy of the Adrian Wilson Paintbox Archive.
“You didn’t have to go into the dark room and cut out pieces of paper or do it manually. You might have an idea and the Paintbox made that idea come true,” he said. Although other photography students were put off by the Paintbox’s low resolution, Wilson saw endless possibilities in the machine – and he wasn’t alone.
In 1989, eight months before his death, Haring flew to Italy just to use the Paintbox after someone offered him access to the machine for three days.
“This Paintbox I used in Rome could mix colors like a palette, as well as grab colors from photos and duplicate them. It was like mixing paint, except there was no mess. This are just electrons and light,” Haring wrote in his diary at the time, marveling at the ability of his personal style to adapt to this new medium. “It totally revolutionized the notion of art and picture, why hasn’t anyone noticed?”
Richard Hamilton, What makes today’s home so different (1992). ©The Estate of Richard Hamilton. Courtesy of Adrian Wilson Paintbox Archive.
Quantel invited six artists to try out the Paintbox for the BBC2 series painting with light in the mid 80’s. Richard Hamilton And Sidney Nolan were so impressed that they bought their own personal paint boxes.
Hockney spent eight months working on the Paintbox at Quantel’s headquarters with the BBC. He made what he called his “first drawings on colored glass”, sparking a decades-long commitment to digital art that continues to this day with his iPad Drawings And animated projected art showon view until June 4 in London.
The new Quantel exhibition includes a Hockney portrait of British textile designer Celia Birtwell, one of the artist’s recurring muses. The image never made it to the BBC show. Wilson got his hands on it when someone came up to him with a box of slides and other Quantel ephemera that had been rescued from the trash.
In February, the company that bought the Quantel brand, Black Dragon, closed the Newbury factory where the Paintbox was once produced.
“A lot of stuff got thrown away,” Wilson said. “But this person kept them for maybe 20 years. They came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I have these boxes of slides that say Quantel.’ They didn’t even have a clue what they were.
Quickly, Wilson realized that the slides had been made during the production of painting with light using a film recorder, an early graphics output device that could transfer digital images onto photographic film. When he went to see Hockney and the other artists and their estates, even they didn’t have copies for their own archives.
For decades, even Wilson had forgotten his formative years on the Paintbox. But in 2021, as the world went crazy for NFTs, a friend mentioned that the latest developments in digital art had sparked some interest in the origins of the medium. Wilson, who lives in New Jersey, recalled that all his Quantel work was put away, with boxes of Kodachrome slides and Cibachrome prints stored at his mother’s house in the UK.
Part of the Quantel Paintbox interface. Screenshot by Adrian Wilson.
Since then, the Paintbox has become a renewed passion for Wilson, who said the current exhibit is only a fraction of what he has found, extracting old picture diskettes and rescuing files from l ‘darkness. (Artists not featured on the show who have also used the Paintbox include Nam June Paik And Andreas Gurskywho is known to have continued to use it until at least 2008.)
“Everyone involved loved Quantel and the Paintbox, which is why they gave me so much,” Wilson said. “All these foundations and artists gave their approval.”
Rediscovering the Paintbox also inspired him to co-produce a documentary film about the pioneering technology that gave birth to digital art. Wilson’s old friend Trudy Bellingerwho commissioned numerous Paintbox music videos while she was creative director at EMI Records, is directing.
The film will offer a story of the rise and fall of the Paintbox, from its quiet domination of the airwaves to its ultimate defeat at the hands of Adobe. There are historic footage of Queen Elizabeth II watching an artist create her portrait on a Paintbox and interviews with Quantel developers.
“We have all these images of artists using it for the first time who are absolutely bowled over,” Bellinger told Artnet News.
Adrian Wilson works Quantel Paintbox in his New Jersey studio. Photo by Adrian Wilson.
Wilson even tracked down a second-generation version of the machine on eBay for $1,500. Wilson enlisted Mark Nias, a vintage computer expert in the UK, to restore it to working order, so he could use it to create all the graphics for the film.
In the meantime, Wilson has an open invitation to all Paintbox veterans to come try it out – and he’d also like a contemporary NFT artist to create new works made using the 40+ year old technology.
“Beeple on that would be so amazing,” he said. “Following in the footsteps of Haring and Hockney’s early digital art!” »
“How Quantel’s Paintbox Changed Our World” is on view at the Computer Arts Society at the Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre, 4 Midland Street, Leicester, UK, from 9 May to 30 June 2023. It will travel to British CComputer Society Moorgate, 25 Copthall Avenue, London.
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