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> the American cinematic canon, by most measures the greatest body of artistic accomplishment humanity has ever produced …what?! The, I don’t know, Renaissanc

> the American cinematic canon, by most measures the greatest body of artistic accomplishment humanity has ever produced …what?! The, I don’t know, Renaissance would like a word with you….

gruez 3y ago
How many people look at 300 year old paintings vs look at the best movies?
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  So “artistic accomplishment” is judged by eyeball quantity. Making Tik-Tok home to some of the best art produced in the last 50 years… right? QED.
  - gruez 3y ago
    Absent some objective way to measure "artistic accomplishment", I don't see how "eyeball quantity" is worse or less legitimate of a metric.
  - troupo 3y ago
    The amount of drivel produced in any given era is mind-boggling. Very little of it survives even a century. Go ahead an read a non-annotated Don Quixote, and try to find all the references to the great authors of the day. However, a lot of what we think as great art exists and survives because of gatekeepers: from rich men with enormous egos to critics mistaking their taste for objectivity to policy makers elevating some forms of art over others etc. Most Rennaissance art is indistinguishable from TikTok. Go to a few museums and you will recognise the fads, the patterns, the techniques etc. A cross-dressing femboy doing a hundredth uwu on TikTok is no different from a Rennaisance painter doing a hundredth cherub flying over naked women in a forest.
    - dmvdoug 3y ago
      This is not responsive to either the point I was making to the other commenter or to the response I made to the original commenter. It’s just arguing for arguing’s sake. (I recognize it, as a former lawyer. And it’s fine. But it’s just not what I spend my time on these days, so I’m not going to substantively respond, because it’s a tangential rabbit hole, and I’m too stinking hot to chase.)
      - troupo 3y ago
        I literally responded to your point, including your comment about Renaissance art. As to eyeballs... This also reminded me of how "one of the greatest artworks ever" was relatively unknown until publicity and yes eyeballs. I'm talking about Mona Lisa of course: https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made-the-mona-lisa-a-masterpiece https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made... Most of what we call amazing pieces of art are such only because of the many eyeballs on them.
        dmvdoug 3y ago
        That actually was responsive to the previous discussion. And we disagree so much on the idea that artistic merit or accomplishment or whatever you want to label it is indexed wholly or even in large part by amount of people who view it that there’s not much to say except just that: I disagree. Which is not to say that I have some equally objective measure to offer you. I don’t. But then, I’m not the one who made claims about artistic accomplishment “by most measures” (whatever that even means). I simply provided an example of something that self-evidently certainly rivals “American cinema” as universally acknowledged to be profoundly artistically accomplished. Whatever the comment about dreck in every era actually proves, if you think the Renaissance was not the site of profound artistic accomplishment (hello, rediscovery of linear perspective; hello frescos; etc.) I don’t even know what to say. [Edited to add: if artistic accomplishment is just eyeball quantity, then it will increase linearly with the increase in global population and interconnectedness as technology improves. Reducing something like artistic accomplishment to such a simple function of population size serves as the best possible reductio of that position.]

> the American cinematic canon, by most measures the greatest body of artistic accomplishment humanity has ever produced …what?! The, I don’t know, Renaissance would like a word with you….

gruez 3y ago

How many people look at 300 year old paintings vs look at the best movies?

dmvdoug 3y ago
So “artistic accomplishment” is judged by eyeball quantity. Making Tik-Tok home to some of the best art produced in the last 50 years… right? QED.
- gruez 3y ago
  Absent some objective way to measure "artistic accomplishment", I don't see how "eyeball quantity" is worse or less legitimate of a metric.
- troupo 3y ago
  The amount of drivel produced in any given era is mind-boggling. Very little of it survives even a century. Go ahead an read a non-annotated Don Quixote, and try to find all the references to the great authors of the day. However, a lot of what we think as great art exists and survives because of gatekeepers: from rich men with enormous egos to critics mistaking their taste for objectivity to policy makers elevating some forms of art over others etc. Most Rennaissance art is indistinguishable from TikTok. Go to a few museums and you will recognise the fads, the patterns, the techniques etc. A cross-dressing femboy doing a hundredth uwu on TikTok is no different from a Rennaisance painter doing a hundredth cherub flying over naked women in a forest.
  - dmvdoug 3y ago
    This is not responsive to either the point I was making to the other commenter or to the response I made to the original commenter. It’s just arguing for arguing’s sake. (I recognize it, as a former lawyer. And it’s fine. But it’s just not what I spend my time on these days, so I’m not going to substantively respond, because it’s a tangential rabbit hole, and I’m too stinking hot to chase.)
    - troupo 3y ago
      I literally responded to your point, including your comment about Renaissance art. As to eyeballs... This also reminded me of how "one of the greatest artworks ever" was relatively unknown until publicity and yes eyeballs. I'm talking about Mona Lisa of course: https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made-the-mona-lisa-a-masterpiece https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made... Most of what we call amazing pieces of art are such only because of the many eyeballs on them.
      - dmvdoug 3y ago
        That actually was responsive to the previous discussion. And we disagree so much on the idea that artistic merit or accomplishment or whatever you want to label it is indexed wholly or even in large part by amount of people who view it that there’s not much to say except just that: I disagree. Which is not to say that I have some equally objective measure to offer you. I don’t. But then, I’m not the one who made claims about artistic accomplishment “by most measures” (whatever that even means). I simply provided an example of something that self-evidently certainly rivals “American cinema” as universally acknowledged to be profoundly artistically accomplished. Whatever the comment about dreck in every era actually proves, if you think the Renaissance was not the site of profound artistic accomplishment (hello, rediscovery of linear perspective; hello frescos; etc.) I don’t even know what to say. [Edited to add: if artistic accomplishment is just eyeball quantity, then it will increase linearly with the increase in global population and interconnectedness as technology improves. Reducing something like artistic accomplishment to such a simple function of population size serves as the best possible reductio of that position.]