7 ms·

Post Modern art is terrible. At least with early modern art (think Vienna Secession or other movements ~100 years ago), most of the artists had classical traini

by dexwiz 5y ago

Post Modern art is terrible. At least with early modern art (think Vienna Secession or other movements ~100 years ago), most of the artists had classical training and moved into modern art. Now they are just all terrible. The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. Contemporary artists with any skill now work in classical styles, illustrations, or graphic design. EDIT: I should clarify by Post Modern I mean a specific genre of art focused on deconstruction. Not all contemporary art is Post Modern, and there are many genres alive today that are not Post Modern.

silicon2401 5y ago
> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. This is an incredibly concise and effective summary of the situation. I agree completely. I think aesthetics have really been devalued in the modern world. Even comparing distant lands like Ancient Rome or Ancient China, there are still commonalities in their approach to aesthetics compared to modern culture.
- sjg007 5y ago
  Oh to appreciate the aesthetics of pornography.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    It exists, e.g. DOMAI.
guardiangod 5y ago
While I don't know anything about art to disagree with you, I'd imagine people say the same thing no matter if it's 100, 500, or 2000 years ago. I suspect the situation is the same with old appliances- only the Good Stuff survives the test of time.
- tokai 5y ago
  They definitely said that about Monet and the impressionists in general. Lazy brush strokes and blobs of paint. People find it very pretty though and reproductions hang everywhere.
  - Jugurtha 5y ago
    Still, I could not have painted like Monet or Sisley. I can, however, pick a marker and a canvas and write "I just did that" to reply to the "I could have done that" asshole. Then I'm sure someone will come up and retroactively insert some meaning into that piece of shit "Ah, yes... That is the purpose of that piece. It is to be discussed in a world where meaning itself is to be discussed. You understood it perfectly". How about someone take a massive literal dump just under that metaphorical crap that says "I could have done that". Technically, someone looking at the two together could say the same thing about both, or mistake the piece of canvas as a label for that actual steaming piece of art.
    - imagine99 5y ago
      I think you may have fallen prey to a common misconception about art: Art - not only the modern kind - has and always very much had a "first mover advantage". It's not about the fact that you couldn't paint coloured squares on canvas Rothko-style. Quite possibly you could. It's that he did it first. There are tons of artists in certain Chinese villages who have perfected the art of pointilism possibly almost as good as Seurat (certainly indistinguishable for an amateur's eye), yet their paintings sell for a couple dollars, not a couple million. You could also easily extrapolate your argument about scribbling on the canvas to the realm of software development and argue that creating e.g. Facebook or Amazon or Wikipedia is really nothing special. A few lines of code will get you a usable MVP. I'm sure you could have done it (I'm saying this completely unironically). However you didn't. Someone else did it first. There may be dozens or hundreds of copycats but the original idea and/or the successful marketing of said idea is all that counts. The rest is noise (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not).
      - 5y ago
okwubodu 5y ago
> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. Your description of this phenomenon is perfect to me. I find it interesting that nearly the opposite has happened in some areas of music, but you still hear that the lack of “meaning” is what makes modern music terrible.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  It's an interesting comparison actually. I think it's more common for people to say they don't like classical music than that they don't like modern music. There is such a huge variety of music being made that there is something for everyone. Whether that's hiphop, death metal or electronic. But here's the thing, the same thing actually goes for drawing. There are a huge number of people drawing various stuff, such that anyone could find something drawn recently that they would like. Whether that's murals, concept art, manga, street caricatures or memes. But here's the kicker: Music isn't defined to be the music played by the annointed elite. But art is defined as drawings (/sculptures, etc) made by the annointed elite.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > I think it's more common for people to say they don't like classical music than that they don't like modern music. By "modern music", do you mean pop, jazz, or classical? Each of these (and many more genres, e.g. country) all have "modern" versions. But the idea of "classical" music is music that was itself popular when it was contemporary but has stood the test of time, so people continue to listen to it and enjoy it 500 years later. The same with visual arts, architecture, etc. It is the same thing with literature. Some works flash into popularity, but 50 years later very few have heard of them or read them. And so this is fundamentally a question of whether you are chasing fashion or permanence. There are good and bad aspects of both -- when you chase fashion you will find something unique to your time, but which just a couple of decades later people often laugh at or don't bother with. If you chase permanence, you have to make some concessions to the taste of previous generations but will benefit from hearing only the best of the very best. It is the exact same situation with art, or anything that can be preserved across time. You have to choose between something disposable but more closely suited to your needs or something permanent but less suited to your specific needs because it is also enjoyed by others who are very different from you.
routerl 5y ago
I upvoted both you and the OP, for making good, honest observations. And for relating stories about thoughtful, controversial engagements with art. Because that's kind of the point of art. The Mona Lisa isn't "art" anymore; it was once, and now it's a pretty artifact with a lot of historical significance. But that's not art. Art is the kind of thing that makes educated people say, in public, "that's not art". And, thus, by its existence and the reception to its existence, true art makes our conversations about art richer, more emotional, and (over time) more precise. And once all of the nuances of this conversation are exhausted, we need new art. Which is why the Mona Lisa isn't art. At least not anymore. And if you disagree with that, then we need to have a deep conversation about art, and history, over the course of which both of us will have hopefully learned new things about both art and history. Art is a recursive question, not an engineering problem. Edit: I should point out that this comment is intentionally recursive.
- jalgos_eminator 5y ago
  Honestly this is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on HN, and yes I mean that perfectly literally. Its almost as if this comment is itself a piece of performance art, because the Mona Lisa is (sometimes literally) the standard for all art (at least paintings).
  - routerl 5y ago
    Agreed, it was a ridiculous comment. I did, however, try to design that ridiculousness to make a point.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      For those of us who aren't subtle enough, could you state your actual point?
      - routerl 5y ago
        Ok, you know how people thought Cantor was crazy because he proposed that there were both countable and uncountable infinities? In retrospect, those of us who are mathematically inclined can understand the value of Cantor's work, since it gave rise to set theory and many more things that are clearly useful and important. But they weren't always clearly useful and important. The value of Cantor's work was once so not clear that many serious and influential people dismissed and attacked it. Would you like to not be one of those people? Then you should probably practice talking about why certain art is bullshit, and certain other art isn't bullshit, because it will strengthen your "is this bullshit" muscles, so you can more expertly apply those muscles to really important questions, like "are self-driving cars feasible within the next few years", or "do covid booster shots make sense".
micromacrofoot 5y ago
No one gives a shit about classically trained painters beyond upvoting their work on reddit, and even commercial illustrators struggle to make ends meet. The most stable avenue for working in graphic design is advertising. It seems everyone has an opinion on what makes good art, but no one wants to fucking pay for it. The top 1% of artists are basically con artists trying to trick the rich into impulse buys.
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  >impulse buys Or financial instruments for all kinds of shenanigans, to include tax evasion using freeports to park nearly arbitrarily-priced assets (the best kind!).
SavantIdiot 5y ago
> unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, OTOH, if you do have context on the subject, it can be profound. It's a bit like certain gamer groups who have subreddits and generate tons of content that outsiders don't get (Warhammer, Genshin Impact, Hololive, ApexLegends... these are few groups I do not understand but they seem to generate a ton of their own internal content.) Aesthetic art is a product of a particular need, and it will always have admirers. IKEA sells tons of pretty art. People will flock to Versailles to see the Mona Lisa. An occasional brave soul will do a long-viewing of Rothko. That kind of art is for the masses, and historically commissioned pieces in public have been just that. And it hasn't gone away: murals, sculptures in parks, installations at large government buildings. What people are focusing on here is completely different. It's a bit ignorant to criticize art that is outside your context. I have the right to say "Warhammer memes are childish bullshit," but it is ignorant. Much like vegan-bashing, people love to rip on "post modern" art without really knowing much about it. Perhaps there is a legitimate claim that some hot new artist is "classically untrained" so they "actually" suck. Is that true if their art resonates with the current culture? I say, "no." EDIT: I have attempted to study "postmodernism" many times over the last 30+ years (for fun) since I graduated college. I've failed every time. I don't like to use the term anymore because I can't really explain it to any real depth other then banal platitudes like "nothing has meaning." EDIT2: I find "take the money and run" to be a brilliant piece of contemporary art. It is so on the nose for today's culture: conniving, ironic, duplicitive, a rip off, ... I think it spurs conversation about the monetary value of art that has been brewing for decades. Heck, even the monetary value of what museums should EXPECT from an artist. That's a big one I'd like to talk about. What if EVERY artist did this from now on? How do you prevent it? Should you? How do artists that put in massive physical effort feel about this? Screwed?
- SkipperCat 5y ago
  Agreed. Post-modern art by itself means nothing to me, but when I learn about the artist and their journey to create a piece of work, I really enjoy it. It's like they say - its not about the destination, it's about the journey.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
spoonjim 5y ago
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria
biztos 5y ago
It's true that some art -- and most big-P Postmodern cultural products -- require a lot of prior knowledge of their context in order to get much out of them, and I agree this is hostile to a general audience. But first, some of it does manage to be engaging and even fun ; and second, I blame the universities and not the Art World per se. There's a lot of very idea-centric work in the museums and in private collections, but the stuff that (probably) makes your eyes roll is not a big part of it. And the business of speaking in a priestly tongue unintelligible to the laity is absolutely a product of our (mostly US) universities in the last 20 years or so. Art critics within that caste do their best to promote artists of the same caste -- and have done for ages -- but it only goes so far. That said, this: > Contemporary artists with any skill now work in classical styles, illustrations, or graphic design. ...is obviously and demonstrably false for, I dunno, say >= 90% of all professional artists making a living at it today. Which leaves you with a pretty circular definition of "skill" I guess.

by dexwiz 5y ago

silicon2401 5y ago

> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. This is an incredibly concise and effective summary of the situation. I agree completely. I think aesthetics have really been devalued in the modern world. Even comparing distant lands like Ancient Rome or Ancient China, there are still commonalities in their approach to aesthetics compared to modern culture.

sjg007 5y ago
Oh to appreciate the aesthetics of pornography.
- int_19h 5y ago
  It exists, e.g. DOMAI.

guardiangod 5y ago

While I don't know anything about art to disagree with you, I'd imagine people say the same thing no matter if it's 100, 500, or 2000 years ago. I suspect the situation is the same with old appliances- only the Good Stuff survives the test of time.

tokai 5y ago
They definitely said that about Monet and the impressionists in general. Lazy brush strokes and blobs of paint. People find it very pretty though and reproductions hang everywhere.
- Jugurtha 5y ago
  Still, I could not have painted like Monet or Sisley. I can, however, pick a marker and a canvas and write "I just did that" to reply to the "I could have done that" asshole. Then I'm sure someone will come up and retroactively insert some meaning into that piece of shit "Ah, yes... That is the purpose of that piece. It is to be discussed in a world where meaning itself is to be discussed. You understood it perfectly". How about someone take a massive literal dump just under that metaphorical crap that says "I could have done that". Technically, someone looking at the two together could say the same thing about both, or mistake the piece of canvas as a label for that actual steaming piece of art.
  - imagine99 5y ago
    I think you may have fallen prey to a common misconception about art: Art - not only the modern kind - has and always very much had a "first mover advantage". It's not about the fact that you couldn't paint coloured squares on canvas Rothko-style. Quite possibly you could. It's that he did it first. There are tons of artists in certain Chinese villages who have perfected the art of pointilism possibly almost as good as Seurat (certainly indistinguishable for an amateur's eye), yet their paintings sell for a couple dollars, not a couple million. You could also easily extrapolate your argument about scribbling on the canvas to the realm of software development and argue that creating e.g. Facebook or Amazon or Wikipedia is really nothing special. A few lines of code will get you a usable MVP. I'm sure you could have done it (I'm saying this completely unironically). However you didn't. Someone else did it first. There may be dozens or hundreds of copycats but the original idea and/or the successful marketing of said idea is all that counts. The rest is noise (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not).
    - 5y ago

okwubodu 5y ago

> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. Your description of this phenomenon is perfect to me. I find it interesting that nearly the opposite has happened in some areas of music, but you still hear that the lack of “meaning” is what makes modern music terrible.

im3w1l 5y ago
It's an interesting comparison actually. I think it's more common for people to say they don't like classical music than that they don't like modern music. There is such a huge variety of music being made that there is something for everyone. Whether that's hiphop, death metal or electronic. But here's the thing, the same thing actually goes for drawing. There are a huge number of people drawing various stuff, such that anyone could find something drawn recently that they would like. Whether that's murals, concept art, manga, street caricatures or memes. But here's the kicker: Music isn't defined to be the music played by the annointed elite. But art is defined as drawings (/sculptures, etc) made by the annointed elite.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > I think it's more common for people to say they don't like classical music than that they don't like modern music. By "modern music", do you mean pop, jazz, or classical? Each of these (and many more genres, e.g. country) all have "modern" versions. But the idea of "classical" music is music that was itself popular when it was contemporary but has stood the test of time, so people continue to listen to it and enjoy it 500 years later. The same with visual arts, architecture, etc. It is the same thing with literature. Some works flash into popularity, but 50 years later very few have heard of them or read them. And so this is fundamentally a question of whether you are chasing fashion or permanence. There are good and bad aspects of both -- when you chase fashion you will find something unique to your time, but which just a couple of decades later people often laugh at or don't bother with. If you chase permanence, you have to make some concessions to the taste of previous generations but will benefit from hearing only the best of the very best. It is the exact same situation with art, or anything that can be preserved across time. You have to choose between something disposable but more closely suited to your needs or something permanent but less suited to your specific needs because it is also enjoyed by others who are very different from you.

routerl 5y ago

I upvoted both you and the OP, for making good, honest observations. And for relating stories about thoughtful, controversial engagements with art. Because that's kind of the point of art. The Mona Lisa isn't "art" anymore; it was once, and now it's a pretty artifact with a lot of historical significance. But that's not art. Art is the kind of thing that makes educated people say, in public, "that's not art". And, thus, by its existence and the reception to its existence, true art makes our conversations about art richer, more emotional, and (over time) more precise. And once all of the nuances of this conversation are exhausted, we need new art. Which is why the Mona Lisa isn't art. At least not anymore. And if you disagree with that, then we need to have a deep conversation about art, and history, over the course of which both of us will have hopefully learned new things about both art and history. Art is a recursive question, not an engineering problem. Edit: I should point out that this comment is intentionally recursive.

jalgos_eminator 5y ago
Honestly this is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on HN, and yes I mean that perfectly literally. Its almost as if this comment is itself a piece of performance art, because the Mona Lisa is (sometimes literally) the standard for all art (at least paintings).
- routerl 5y ago
  Agreed, it was a ridiculous comment. I did, however, try to design that ridiculousness to make a point.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    For those of us who aren't subtle enough, could you state your actual point?
    - routerl 5y ago
      Ok, you know how people thought Cantor was crazy because he proposed that there were both countable and uncountable infinities? In retrospect, those of us who are mathematically inclined can understand the value of Cantor's work, since it gave rise to set theory and many more things that are clearly useful and important. But they weren't always clearly useful and important. The value of Cantor's work was once so not clear that many serious and influential people dismissed and attacked it. Would you like to not be one of those people? Then you should probably practice talking about why certain art is bullshit, and certain other art isn't bullshit, because it will strengthen your "is this bullshit" muscles, so you can more expertly apply those muscles to really important questions, like "are self-driving cars feasible within the next few years", or "do covid booster shots make sense".

micromacrofoot 5y ago

No one gives a shit about classically trained painters beyond upvoting their work on reddit, and even commercial illustrators struggle to make ends meet. The most stable avenue for working in graphic design is advertising. It seems everyone has an opinion on what makes good art, but no one wants to fucking pay for it. The top 1% of artists are basically con artists trying to trick the rich into impulse buys.

aerostable_slug 5y ago
>impulse buys Or financial instruments for all kinds of shenanigans, to include tax evasion using freeports to park nearly arbitrarily-priced assets (the best kind!).

SavantIdiot 5y ago

> unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, OTOH, if you do have context on the subject, it can be profound. It's a bit like certain gamer groups who have subreddits and generate tons of content that outsiders don't get (Warhammer, Genshin Impact, Hololive, ApexLegends... these are few groups I do not understand but they seem to generate a ton of their own internal content.) Aesthetic art is a product of a particular need, and it will always have admirers. IKEA sells tons of pretty art. People will flock to Versailles to see the Mona Lisa. An occasional brave soul will do a long-viewing of Rothko. That kind of art is for the masses, and historically commissioned pieces in public have been just that. And it hasn't gone away: murals, sculptures in parks, installations at large government buildings. What people are focusing on here is completely different. It's a bit ignorant to criticize art that is outside your context. I have the right to say "Warhammer memes are childish bullshit," but it is ignorant. Much like vegan-bashing, people love to rip on "post modern" art without really knowing much about it. Perhaps there is a legitimate claim that some hot new artist is "classically untrained" so they "actually" suck. Is that true if their art resonates with the current culture? I say, "no." EDIT: I have attempted to study "postmodernism" many times over the last 30+ years (for fun) since I graduated college. I've failed every time. I don't like to use the term anymore because I can't really explain it to any real depth other then banal platitudes like "nothing has meaning." EDIT2: I find "take the money and run" to be a brilliant piece of contemporary art. It is so on the nose for today's culture: conniving, ironic, duplicitive, a rip off, ... I think it spurs conversation about the monetary value of art that has been brewing for decades. Heck, even the monetary value of what museums should EXPECT from an artist. That's a big one I'd like to talk about. What if EVERY artist did this from now on? How do you prevent it? Should you? How do artists that put in massive physical effort feel about this? Screwed?

SkipperCat 5y ago
Agreed. Post-modern art by itself means nothing to me, but when I learn about the artist and their journey to create a piece of work, I really enjoy it. It's like they say - its not about the destination, it's about the journey.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria

biztos 5y ago

It's true that some art -- and most big-P Postmodern cultural products -- require a lot of prior knowledge of their context in order to get much out of them, and I agree this is hostile to a general audience. But first, some of it does manage to be engaging and even fun ; and second, I blame the universities and not the Art World per se. There's a lot of very idea-centric work in the museums and in private collections, but the stuff that (probably) makes your eyes roll is not a big part of it. And the business of speaking in a priestly tongue unintelligible to the laity is absolutely a product of our (mostly US) universities in the last 20 years or so. Art critics within that caste do their best to promote artists of the same caste -- and have done for ages -- but it only goes so far. That said, this: > Contemporary artists with any skill now work in classical styles, illustrations, or graphic design. ...is obviously and demonstrably false for, I dunno, say >= 90% of all professional artists making a living at it today. Which leaves you with a pretty circular definition of "skill" I guess.