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If Orientalist painting is what Google images shows when you query that, those are some damn beautiful paintings.

by euyyn 10y ago

clock_tower 10y ago
I'm pretty sure they are -- and they certainly are a beautiful style. Orientalist paintings are unfashionable in the current Western art world, which likes Modernism and still, 100+ years after its invention, hasn't figured out that the camera didn't make painting obsolete; but they're extremely popular in the Middle East, which used to be beautiful and is now drab, and where the rich want some sort of record of what their world ought to look like. Art has fallen into the same sort of trap as architecture, where you get otherwise-intelligent, otherwise-tasteful students of the field -- like the author of McMansion Hell -- swooning over abominations like Boston's Government Center. Trust your heart, not academia. Refine your heart, to be sure (art is that which doesn't fall apart when you start asking questions about it); but trust it.
alphonsegaston 10y ago
Oh, I'd never argue against the beauty of some of those works or the skills of their creators. And the same is true of many AAA games. But in terms of advancing games as an art form, I think aesthetics that are more "grammatical" and "open" is the way forward (think comics/animation, Studio Ghibli). This doesn't eschew the use of Realism, but changes it from being the pinnacle we're striving for to a tool (among others) to be used in creating better art.
Maultasche 10y ago
They are, but they are idealistic depictions of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia as viewed by Europeans in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They depict some sort of European oriental fantasy world that doesn't look much like what these areas were really like at the time. I think that's why those type of paintings are considered old-fashioned and silly when we have plenty of photographs, movies, and books that tell us what these regions are actually like. Not to mention that travel is now far more accessible to non-wealthy people. I think that it's a fascinating insight into Europe at the time and how they viewed the world. It was also a lot more romantic period than now. Nationalistic paintings showing a nation's ancestors (like the Germanic tribes of the Roman era) were popular and tended to look the same way: a fantasy land ideal of what they wanted it to look like rather than what it really looked like.

If Orientalist painting is what Google images shows when you query that, those are some damn beautiful paintings.

by euyyn 10y ago

If Orientalist painting is what Google images shows when you query that, those are some damn beautiful paintings.

I'm pretty sure they are -- and they certainly are a beautiful style. Orientalist paintings are unfashionable in the current Western art world, which likes Modernism and still, 100+ years after its invention, hasn't figured out that the camera didn't make painting obsolete; but they're extremely popular in the Middle East, which used to be beautiful and is now drab, and where the rich want some sort of record of what their world ought to look like. Art has fallen into the same sort of trap as architecture, where you get otherwise-intelligent, otherwise-tasteful students of the field -- like the author of McMansion Hell -- swooning over abominations like Boston's Government Center. Trust your heart, not academia. Refine your heart, to be sure (art is that which doesn't fall apart when you start asking questions about it); but trust it.

alphonsegaston 10y ago

Oh, I'd never argue against the beauty of some of those works or the skills of their creators. And the same is true of many AAA games. But in terms of advancing games as an art form, I think aesthetics that are more "grammatical" and "open" is the way forward (think comics/animation, Studio Ghibli). This doesn't eschew the use of Realism, but changes it from being the pinnacle we're striving for to a tool (among others) to be used in creating better art.

Maultasche 10y ago

They are, but they are idealistic depictions of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia as viewed by Europeans in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They depict some sort of European oriental fantasy world that doesn't look much like what these areas were really like at the time. I think that's why those type of paintings are considered old-fashioned and silly when we have plenty of photographs, movies, and books that tell us what these regions are actually like. Not to mention that travel is now far more accessible to non-wealthy people. I think that it's a fascinating insight into Europe at the time and how they viewed the world. It was also a lot more romantic period than now. Nationalistic paintings showing a nation's ancestors (like the Germanic tribes of the Roman era) were popular and tended to look the same way: a fantasy land ideal of what they wanted it to look like rather than what it really looked like.