5 ms·

True, not to mention performance art which by definition is ephemeral. I wish there was some middle ground between the avant-guarde that Collins decries and so

• ghaff 11y ago
  >I think he's not correct in wholesale rejection of everything post-1870. It comes down to taste, of course, but I take strong exception to the post-1870 cutoff. I actually like a lot of Pollock's work but do find the artwork that grabs me post-1950 or so at somewhere like MOMA pretty thin. On the other hand, I can also live without yet another Renaissance Madonna--however technically proficient it may be.
  • entee 11y ago
    Precisely. I think he also ignores that as far back as Leonardo, artists intended to push limits, paint new subjects and invent new techniques. Take the methods of the old, sure, but try to take them somewhere new. Surely modern subjects and concerns can be described using traditional techniques? Wouldn't that be interesting?
  • douche 11y ago
    Why couldn't we have technically impressive art of modern subjects? I would agree that I've seen enough Christs and Madonnas and Zeus's (what the heck is the plural of Zeus?) and other traditional themes. I'm a philistine, I suppose, but I used to get military history magazines, back when magazines were a thing, and one of my favorite parts were the ads for prints of beautiful paintings of P38s and Mustangs dogfighting, panzers and T-34s squaring off at Kursk, Picket's Charge, and U-Boats running on the surface in a stormy sea. Two of my favorite paintings that I have seen in an actual art museum are "In the Troops' Quarters outside Paris"[1] and "Eisenwalzwerk"[2], both of which would fail the 1870 cutoff... [1] https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/in-the-troops-quarters-outside-paris/sgHs0ePrEKaoNQ?hl=en https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/in-the... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adolph_Menzel_-_Eisenwalzwerk_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adolph_Menzel_-_Eise...
    • ghaff 11y ago
      I assume by "technically impressive," you mean in classical European style. And, I suppose the answer is that you're probably not going to be regarded as a leading painter if you follow that path. I'm not saying I agree, but scenes from Middle East conflicts in a classical style is probably not the way to get gallery exhibits. Another difference is that we have photographs today and those have probably reduced the interest in a lot of realist paintings or illustrations. [Edit: I'd just add that painters don't generally exist outside of a market--which comes back to my comment about gallery exhibits. There probably isn't a big market for large-format expensive oil paintings of modern warfare.]
      • douche 11y ago
        I agree with you that it's not "arty" enough, and even stylized reproductions of reality are not post-modernist or up-their-own-ass-enough to move the dial in the art world. But those could be some powerful paintings, if well executed. Even the best photographs feel somewhat sterile - a well done painting can evoke a real sense of emotion and life that's on a different level.
        • clock_tower 11y ago
          There's still a living tradition of military oil paintings, which have a symbolic or stylized arrangement of realistically-depicted subjects; this is well becoming familiar with. (There's some discussion of this subject in a book on the modern Japanese military by a female German author -- I don't remember the book's name.) Also interesting, for modern war depicted in a traditional style: Afghan war rugs. The classic "red-figure war rugs" depict the Soviet war, but fighting never really stopped in Afghanistan, and neither did depictions of the fighting in traditional Persian-style carpets.
    • anon4 11y ago
      Those are reports. They merely show things as they are, without conveying a message. Therefore, they are not art.