6 ms·
Good read! The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at be
by numlocked 10mo ago
Good read! The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best.
> Why, then, are the reconstructions so ugly?
> ...may be that they are hampered by conservation doctrines that forbid including any feature in a reconstruction for which there is no direct archaeological evidence. Since underlayers are generally the only element of which traces survive, such doctrines lead to all-underlayer reconstructions, with the overlayers that were obviously originally present excluded for lack of evidence.
That seems plausible -- and somewhat reasonable! To the credit of academics, they seems aware of this (according to the article):
> ‘reconstructions can be difficult to explain to the public – that these are not exact copies, that we can never know exactly how they looked’.
- ActivePattern 10mo agoI still don't understand is why they don't even make an attempt to apply overlayers, when (as the author notes) there is ample secondary evidence that it would be present. It's not like there isn't already some element of inference and "filling in the blanks" when reconstructing how something was painted from the scant traces of paint that survived.
- mbo 10mo agoThis is somewhat an unfounded theory of mine and I was hoping if anyone has any insight: but I sense that this is perhaps a construction of Western restoration/preservationist theory. A lot of effort seems to be taken to either preserve original material, not take liberties etc. While touring temples and museums in Japan, I got a sense that restorations were much more aggressive, and less regard was taken to the preservation of material (or building "fabric"), with a greater focus on the use of traditional techniques during restoration.
- CGMthrowaway 10mo ago> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best. Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeval-art https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva... The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.
- mminer237 10mo agoThose are a few examples of weird art from hundreds of years of examples, but even then, those aren't super unskilled paintings. Medieval artists still used shading.
- nyeah 10mo agoSure, but medieval European art generally sucked. (Call this a hypothesis if that helps.) Compare the damn cave paintings of buffalo to most medieval European art. Some of the 10k-year-old stuff is much better observed. Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. I'm sorry about that. It's just not always taste. Sometimes it's taste. Sometimes people are bad at making art.
- Der_Einzige 10mo agoSo were the Japanese better at painting circa the 1700s and 1800s? Because you got a whole lot of paints of, uhhh, octopi…
- nyeah 10mo agoThat's hard to call. Both Europe and Japan seemed fine in that time period. Octopi or no octopi.
- MyOutfitIsVague 10mo agoOctopuses or octopodes. Octopi is incorrect.
- Der_Einzige 10mo agoTell that to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s... (warning, NSFW)
- Ekaros 10mo agoI have my own take that painting as art peaked long ago. And now we are mostly at similar level to that in middle-ages... Paintings used to be better, and before that they were worse.
- cgh 10mo agoYou graciously omitted the article’s follow-on conclusion: the public is being gently trolled. “On the other hand, at a time when trust in the honest intentions of experts is at a low, it may be unwise for experts to troll the public.”