Modern art has loads of examples of people making all sorts of things. Picasso is notable for mastering realism before going into abstract art. Realism still go

Modern art has loads of examples of people making all sorts of things. Picasso is notable for mastering realism before going into abstract art. Realism still goes strong today and still serves as a foundation for learning art professionally before branching out into individual styles. And I’m not saying realism is the pinnacle of art. I’m an artist myself. I just know that virtually every society made rapid gains into mastering realism pretty quickly, but I don’t know of any examples of truly realistic work or high craftsmanship in the European Middle Ages until cathedrals became a big thing. My amazement isn’t that this is “realistic=good”, it’s that amateurs can’t crank something like this out easily. That’s what makes it impressive—someone was either devoting loads of leisure time to studying the human form and how to represent it independently 3500 years ago, or people were being taught it. Most people who do some art today with loads of resources at their hands and leisure time but no formal education don’t reach this point, which makes it all the more impressive that ancient people did. Egypt is also flooded with impressive work and people are amazed with it 6000 years later, and I used to think they were unique. But I’m seeing more and more that societies basically everywhere achieved similar degrees of craftsmanship.