6 ms·

Honestly it doesn't look like the Celts were "practitioners of abstract art" and more like they just lacked the concept of mass producing from an original. "Whe

Honestly it doesn't look like the Celts were "practitioners of abstract art" and more like they just lacked the concept of mass producing from an original. "When they tell me make copies of silver staters, I pulls one out of my pocket and I makes the copies." Humans instinctively recognize whether a face is well-smithed and genuine, but you would have to train everyone what these designs were supposed to represent and how to appreciate that. It just seems like they let things degenerate because they weren't trying to do art but just do things the way they'd always done them, with no controls on data degradation between generations.

shakna 1y ago
> One final thing the Celts did that can give the impression of crudeness is that they sometimes created dies that were larger than the flans they used. This means that the full design would never appear on any one coin, and this can make it look like they just didn’t know what they were doing. However, the Celts produced the flans with very tightly controlled weights and alloy compositions, so the idea that they could do this but not get the dies the correct size is absurd. The tooling was improving, becoming more detailed and complex over time. Nothing was staying the same over the generations. The coins changed in the midst of technological revolution.
- card_zero 1y ago
  You're quoting that part as persuasive? I was going to attack it as a wobbly argument, but I didn't want to be cruel, it falls over all by itself. The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse. > Instead, it’s thought that the dies were larger than the flans [blanks] so that part of the image always resided in the unseen spiritual world that the Celts worshiped so much. How about they just weren't keen on thinking ahead? Then they make the dies first, and as an afterthought they make the blanks the correct weight. This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space. But no, no, they were in superb control of every aspect of metalwork at all times, and anything that seems like a fuck-up was actually spirituality. I can accept that part of the reason for abstract coins is that they weren't motivated to make accurate copies, but I think also they couldn't.
  - lmpdev 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - shakna 1y ago
    You're arguing for laziness, where there's more effort. The blanks don't just have to be a certain weight. They use a balanced metallurgy that is difficult to get right - especially as most peoples in that time and place had lost that particular level of skill. If you reject abstract from Celtic culture, you reject the Celts. The Dagda isn't exactly some solid figure. They're an artistic people, in everything from their laws to... Their coins. And as most family meals also intentionally left one part unfinished... For a deeply spiritual people, maybe you shouldn't be rejecting it out of hand.
    - card_zero 1y ago
      What's that about artistic laws? Intriguing concept, can't imagine what you mean.
      - shakna 1y ago
        As a small example, one of the most severe forms of punishment, was to ban an individual from religious rites, and another was to ban them from the construction of anything considered a 'craft' - something that would take skill. Neither of those punishments banned the individual from the tuatha. They weren't exiled. They were still allowed to speak and be heard. They were still allowed to buy and sell. But they were no longer allowed to worship, or to create.
  - Suppafly 1y ago
    >The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse. Some of the copies require as much effort as the originals though. >This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space. That's silly, you could easily start over if ran out of space.
apercu 1y ago
> Honestly it doesn't look like the Celts were "practitioners of abstract art" and more like they just lacked the concept of mass producing from an original. That's an interesting take considering we still marvel at their abstract art and craftsmanship in metals thousands of years later, and contemporary artists and manufactures still copy it.
tengwar2 1y ago
It's not abstract: that would imply that it was not based on any real form. But it is not intended to be realistic. We know a lot about Celtic art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_art) and it often shows very high skill, and is deliberately non-realistic. That's hardly surprising: historically realistic art has been in the minority, with most cultures choosing to show some aspect of a subject selectively. Let me give one familiar modern example: logos. If they are graphical, generally you need to put some work in to understanding what they mean.

shakna 1y ago

> One final thing the Celts did that can give the impression of crudeness is that they sometimes created dies that were larger than the flans they used. This means that the full design would never appear on any one coin, and this can make it look like they just didn’t know what they were doing. However, the Celts produced the flans with very tightly controlled weights and alloy compositions, so the idea that they could do this but not get the dies the correct size is absurd. The tooling was improving, becoming more detailed and complex over time. Nothing was staying the same over the generations. The coins changed in the midst of technological revolution.

card_zero 1y ago
You're quoting that part as persuasive? I was going to attack it as a wobbly argument, but I didn't want to be cruel, it falls over all by itself. The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse. > Instead, it’s thought that the dies were larger than the flans [blanks] so that part of the image always resided in the unseen spiritual world that the Celts worshiped so much. How about they just weren't keen on thinking ahead? Then they make the dies first, and as an afterthought they make the blanks the correct weight. This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space. But no, no, they were in superb control of every aspect of metalwork at all times, and anything that seems like a fuck-up was actually spirituality. I can accept that part of the reason for abstract coins is that they weren't motivated to make accurate copies, but I think also they couldn't.
- lmpdev 1y ago
  [flagged]
- shakna 1y ago
  You're arguing for laziness, where there's more effort. The blanks don't just have to be a certain weight. They use a balanced metallurgy that is difficult to get right - especially as most peoples in that time and place had lost that particular level of skill. If you reject abstract from Celtic culture, you reject the Celts. The Dagda isn't exactly some solid figure. They're an artistic people, in everything from their laws to... Their coins. And as most family meals also intentionally left one part unfinished... For a deeply spiritual people, maybe you shouldn't be rejecting it out of hand.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    What's that about artistic laws? Intriguing concept, can't imagine what you mean.
    - shakna 1y ago
      As a small example, one of the most severe forms of punishment, was to ban an individual from religious rites, and another was to ban them from the construction of anything considered a 'craft' - something that would take skill. Neither of those punishments banned the individual from the tuatha. They weren't exiled. They were still allowed to speak and be heard. They were still allowed to buy and sell. But they were no longer allowed to worship, or to create.
- Suppafly 1y ago
  >The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse. Some of the copies require as much effort as the originals though. >This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space. That's silly, you could easily start over if ran out of space.

apercu 1y ago

> Honestly it doesn't look like the Celts were "practitioners of abstract art" and more like they just lacked the concept of mass producing from an original. That's an interesting take considering we still marvel at their abstract art and craftsmanship in metals thousands of years later, and contemporary artists and manufactures still copy it.

tengwar2 1y ago

It's not abstract: that would imply that it was not based on any real form. But it is not intended to be realistic. We know a lot about Celtic art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_art) and it often shows very high skill, and is deliberately non-realistic. That's hardly surprising: historically realistic art has been in the minority, with most cultures choosing to show some aspect of a subject selectively. Let me give one familiar modern example: logos. If they are graphical, generally you need to put some work in to understanding what they mean.