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Here's a bit of symptom diagnosis. When Quaytman broke out onto the screen, it was concurrent not only with CAD's rise but concurrent with the rise of images everywhere, foodporn or just porn, and our giddiness for this new instant image. This hi-def instantaneity was itself pleasing, interesting. This new retinal access and Apple was designing Retina Displays for. We were seeing everything for the first time coated in glass. Reviewing the iPhone 4 in 2010, Joshua Topolsky commented:
"to our eyes, there has never been a more detailed, clear, or viewable screen on any mobile device. Not only are the colors and blacks deep and rich, but you simply cannot see pixels on the screen…webpages that would be line after line of pixelated content when zoomed out on a 3GS are completely readable on the iPhone 4, though the text is beyond microscopic."The internet at the time felt like so many keyholes to look through. Everything before was found in dusty libraries, had been stuffed into artist catalogs, piecemeal, the one "chapter" you saw in person at Abreu or wherever. And Quaytman's paintings magnified the pleasures of this, of a good mystery. Chapters like the catalogs which were being replaced by exhibitions online. The doors of new media opening along with the mystery of Quaytman; it provided its own meta-detective story.The new chapters becoming immediately available and better resolution with each one. Go look at 2008's documentation here. Compare it to today's. We see it all, now pornography is the mainstay, all at once as much as you want. There is little left to the imagination, to mystery. What we had all at the time been following in higher and higher resolution, eventually returned itself as an endless and inconclusive hall of mirrors. They revealed themselves as paintings.
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