7 ms·

Sure, but medieval European art generally sucked. (Call this a hypothesis if that helps.) Compare the damn cave paintings of buffalo to most medieval European

by nyeah 10mo ago

Sure, 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 ago
So were the Japanese better at painting circa the 1700s and 1800s? Because you got a whole lot of paints of, uhhh, octopi…
- nyeah 10mo ago
  That's hard to call. Both Europe and Japan seemed fine in that time period. Octopi or no octopi.
- MyOutfitIsVague 10mo ago
  Octopuses or octopodes. Octopi is incorrect.
  - Der_Einzige 10mo ago
    Tell 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 ago
I 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.
- IAmBroom 10mo ago
  Pre-Raphaelites still exist. Your tribe!
sudobash1 10mo ago
I think that the medieval art article is making a different point. The art there had a style that was dictated by its purpose and the beliefs of the artists. For example, most of the examples given in that article are illustrations from manuscripts. This was something (as far as I know) that was new in the western world. The idea that books should be illustrated. And being before the printing press was introduced, each illustration (of which there were often many per page) was hand made. This added a substantial amount of time to an already labor-intensive process. And each image was not intended to be a standalone work of art. Also, some of the other examples are of iconography. That style remains, largely unchanged to this day. If you do an image search for "religious iconography", you will see plenty of examples of sacred art that are not visually realistic but are meant to be metaphorically or spiritually realistic.
- nyeah 10mo ago
  Sure, but for me the standard isn't whether it's visually realistic. Plenty of good stuff isn't particularly realistic. Traditional Chinese landscapes aren't realistic, but a lot of them are great. David Hockney has a lot of good work that isn't realistic and uses primitive-looking technique. The standard is not realism or which style was used. The standard, for me, is whether the artist was any good at art. Hockney is. (Usually.) I'm not particularly basing my opinion on the examples in this article. It's easy to see that a lot of surviving European medieval art sucks. Maybe "surviving" is the problem. Maybe the good stuff got all smokey from being displayed and only the leftovers and student paintings, in storage, have survived. On illustrations, everybody can see the difference between Durer and most medieval stuff. It's not simply style or taste.
  - ianstormtaylor 10mo ago
    So, just to make it clear… you define good art by “whether the artist is any good at art”. Illuminating… —— For anyone who’s interested in a slightly more nuanced take on how people in the Middle Ages perceived of “art” — and how different that notion was to how we perceive it today — Forgery, Replica, Fiction by Christopher Wood [1] is a really interesting read. Here’s the last sentence of the Goodreads summary, which describes the major transition in thinking: “… Ultimately, as forged replicas lost their value as historical evidence, they found a new identity as the intentionally fictional image-making we have come to understand as art.” [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3921524-forgery-replica-fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3921524-forgery-replica-...
joefourier 10mo ago
If you think medieval artists lacked skill, check out Villard Honnecourt’s sketchbook, especially the insects on folio 7 and Christ in Majesty on 16: https://www.medievalists.net/2024/12/sketchbook-villard-honnecourt/ https://www.medievalists.net/2024/12/sketchbook-villard-honn... Medieval art is very stylised, but the quality of the lines, the details in the clothes, the crispness of the composition, all that requires a lot of skill. Check out Jean Bondol’s work for instance https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/tapisserie-de-l-apocalypse-scène-12-le-cheval-livide-et-la-mort-1ère-pièce-jean-de-bruges/2gGUhmS3DhsZWA?hl=en https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/tapisserie-de-l-apoc... You may not like the style, but being able to produce works like that requires you to be good at art on some level.
- nyeah 10mo ago
  Ok, but the Honnecourt sketches are kind of strong. Not professional by today's standards, but decent. I'd be happy to have done them--but I'm not an artist. The tapestry can be appreciated, like Klimt's 2-D-ish stuff can be appreciated. The style is fine. It's not fantastic work, I wouldn't hang it up, but it's reasonably accomplished. In general, though, yes, I think medieval European artists were short on skill compared to artists from Europe in pre-medieval and post-medieval times, and art from other places between ~500 and ~1300. They had some skill, but not as much. Artists with limited technique are a real thing. Not everything is taste or style.
- thaumasiotes 10mo ago
  You convinced me that they lack skill. The clothing does often look good. In folio 16v ( https://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Villard_de_Honnecourt_Album_de_.Villard_de_btv1b10509412z_34.jpeg https://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Vill... ), it's been overdone and appears to be far wrinklier than fabric could support, suggesting that Jesus is embedded in some kind of strange plant. The faces are terrible in all cases. In general, perspective is off, anatomy is off, and you get shown things that aren't physically possible.
  - regentbowerbird 10mo ago
    Are you aware there are artistic styles beyond photorealism?
archagon 10mo ago
Utterly bizarre to claim that a diverse group of people within an 800-year period were simply “bad at art.”
- nyeah 10mo ago
  No need to generalize. Post some clear exceptions. Or if the statement turns out to be "utterly bizarre but correct" I'm fine with that.
  - archagon 10mo ago
    What do you mean by “exceptions”? Who are we, in our own infinitesimal slice of human history, to judge historic taste in art? And is naturalism the be-all, end-all of good taste? If so, we need to throw out the majority of art in the 20th century. This is a question for an art historian, not some anon on a tech forum. (For what it’s worth, I find Medieval and Renaissance art to be about equally tepid despite the difference in execution. And plenty of people non-ironically enjoy Medieval art despite its supposed deficiencies.)
    - nyeah 10mo ago
      "some anon on a tech forum" Don't sell yourself short. Post some art from those 800 years that doesn't suck, and I'll change my views. Sure, there's plenty of crap in 20th century art. I've seen examples of that. But that's a different subject.
      - archagon 10mo ago
        Like I said, I find the majority of European art before 1800 or so to be fairly dull, so I can't really answer this question. The prevailing technique improved remarkably post-Renaissance, and that's enjoyable to an extent, but the same themes get repeated over and over and over again. If you're looking for art with an impact, the iconography of Andrei Rublev (and other icon painters during this period) is still massively influential in the Russian Orthodox Church today. 600+ years of direct use and inspiration! The lack of naturalism is not a deficiency.
lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
Your exposure to medieval art must be very limited. I have seen some very magnificent pieces of medieval art personally. And paintings are a small part of what falls under "medieval art". Include those in the category, please. And there is another element to consider, which is the purpose of the art. Medieval art was not concerned so much with realism, but with the symbolic. I wonder: do you think Byzantine icons "suck"? I suspect you do.
- nyeah 10mo ago
  Do you just want to generalize, or do you want to provide a counterexample? Fine either way.
  - lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
    Stop being an obnoxious pest. What would be the point? Any example given will be met with some snarky and ignorant remark. Veit Stoss's Krakow triptych? Gentile da Fabriano's "Adoration of the Magi"? Byzantine art, like Monreale Cathedral? The Christ Pantocrator icon from St. Catherine's Monastery? Romanesque and gothic cathedrals? Ornate illuminated manuscripts? Shall I continue? You don't have to like medieval art, but claiming it "sucks" is not only generalizing (your very accusation in this thread), but it is boorish and ignorant. You've already gotten more "discussion" out of this topic than you deserve. So, go troll somewhere else.
    - nyeah 10mo ago
      I checked your first example. It's from 1423, well outside the time period 500-1300. If you have valid examples, including the other works you mentioned above, please provide dates. I'm a little tired of doing that for people. Adoration of the Magi, 1423. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Magi_(Gentile_da_Fabriano) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Magi_(Gentile...
Bayart 10mo ago
I won't bother getting into trying to demonstrate Medieval art doesn't "suck", it's not worth dignifying. But you should be aware you might be placing too much emphasis on painting and drawing specifically as opposed to other art forms.
- nyeah 10mo ago
  Fine, good point. Medieval paintings and drawings suck, but the pottery may have been incredible. Yeah, why sacrifice dignity by providing a counterexample? Dignity is important.
- IAmBroom 10mo ago
  Isn't the actual topic of this thread specific to painting? On sculptures, but the skillset is painting; you can't paint a marble bust with a chisel.
YeGoblynQueenne 10mo ago
Well, I mean you find lots of wonky sculptures and reliefs in medieval art but people in Europe still made some really stunning pieces of art, e.g. see The Lady and the Unicorn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn), or the Choir Screen at the Amiens Cathedral (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiens_Cathedral#The_Choir_screen_(15th%E2%80%9316th_c https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiens_Cathedral#The_Choir_scr....)) and so on. So it's kind of a sweeping generalisation to say that "medieval art generally sucked".
- mcmoor 10mo ago
  Mmm both of those are from 1400s and OP do limit it to 1300. And that 1300 limit is for good reason. Renaissance is usually dated after 1453 and that's when European art quality exploded. So yeah, those examples instead prove OP's statement.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - YeGoblynQueenne 10mo ago
    If you want to nitpick, I can point out that the full quote is "Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint"; stress on "about", and those aren't paintings. Besides the comment started by saying that "medieval European art generally sucked", so it covers the work I mention. That's if you want to nitpick. If you don't, both those works are hallmarks of medieval art and while they're not necessarily exemplars, it is important to remember that there were still artists who knew their stuff in and out in medieval times and the Renaissance didn't come out of nowhere. Edit: I travel through Europe by train a lot (mainly France and Italy but also Switzerland and Germany occasionally) and I visit museums, cathedrals, and art galleries in every city I stay. I have seen a lot of medieval art because those places just seem to have it lying around by the bucketload. There is a broad range in quality, but I have seen some very high quality woodcuts and, indeed, paintings, although those tend to be religious icons. Sculptures also, but mainly in statues of saints on the outside of cathedrals (see e.g. the Rouen cathedral). I'm trying to say that I'm not some kind of art authority or expert on medieval art, but I have seen my fair share of it, and no, Europeans didn't just suck at art in the medieval. I think what happened is there was a lot of mostly religious art that was lower quality, sort of like you can find plenty of slop on the internet today, but there were still skilled artists that created shockingly good art. You'd be more likely to find it in the palaces of the rich and powerful, I reckon, because they were the ones who could afford/support talented artists, as opposed to more ordinary craftsmen, who would be paid less. For the same reason you might find less of the good art lying around than the rougher, cruder kind, because the former was more expensive and thus harder to obtain. This also goes for religious art, which tended to include a smorgasboard of art forms, from painted icons and sculptures to reliquaries and liturgical equipment like communion chalices. But good medieval art existed, I've seen it, and it wasn't that rare.
watwut 10mo ago
The medieval art was better then those cave paintings. Like, common. > Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. They could. And they had wide variety of what they painted and how.
- nyeah 10mo ago
  I've given up asking for an example to support that.

by nyeah 10mo ago

Der_Einzige 10mo ago

So were the Japanese better at painting circa the 1700s and 1800s? Because you got a whole lot of paints of, uhhh, octopi…

nyeah 10mo ago
That's hard to call. Both Europe and Japan seemed fine in that time period. Octopi or no octopi.
MyOutfitIsVague 10mo ago
Octopuses or octopodes. Octopi is incorrect.
- Der_Einzige 10mo ago
  Tell 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 ago

I 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.

IAmBroom 10mo ago
Pre-Raphaelites still exist. Your tribe!

sudobash1 10mo ago

I think that the medieval art article is making a different point. The art there had a style that was dictated by its purpose and the beliefs of the artists. For example, most of the examples given in that article are illustrations from manuscripts. This was something (as far as I know) that was new in the western world. The idea that books should be illustrated. And being before the printing press was introduced, each illustration (of which there were often many per page) was hand made. This added a substantial amount of time to an already labor-intensive process. And each image was not intended to be a standalone work of art. Also, some of the other examples are of iconography. That style remains, largely unchanged to this day. If you do an image search for "religious iconography", you will see plenty of examples of sacred art that are not visually realistic but are meant to be metaphorically or spiritually realistic.

nyeah 10mo ago
Sure, but for me the standard isn't whether it's visually realistic. Plenty of good stuff isn't particularly realistic. Traditional Chinese landscapes aren't realistic, but a lot of them are great. David Hockney has a lot of good work that isn't realistic and uses primitive-looking technique. The standard is not realism or which style was used. The standard, for me, is whether the artist was any good at art. Hockney is. (Usually.) I'm not particularly basing my opinion on the examples in this article. It's easy to see that a lot of surviving European medieval art sucks. Maybe "surviving" is the problem. Maybe the good stuff got all smokey from being displayed and only the leftovers and student paintings, in storage, have survived. On illustrations, everybody can see the difference between Durer and most medieval stuff. It's not simply style or taste.
- ianstormtaylor 10mo ago
  So, just to make it clear… you define good art by “whether the artist is any good at art”. Illuminating… —— For anyone who’s interested in a slightly more nuanced take on how people in the Middle Ages perceived of “art” — and how different that notion was to how we perceive it today — Forgery, Replica, Fiction by Christopher Wood [1] is a really interesting read. Here’s the last sentence of the Goodreads summary, which describes the major transition in thinking: “… Ultimately, as forged replicas lost their value as historical evidence, they found a new identity as the intentionally fictional image-making we have come to understand as art.” [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3921524-forgery-replica-fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3921524-forgery-replica-...

joefourier 10mo ago

If you think medieval artists lacked skill, check out Villard Honnecourt’s sketchbook, especially the insects on folio 7 and Christ in Majesty on 16: https://www.medievalists.net/2024/12/sketchbook-villard-honnecourt/ https://www.medievalists.net/2024/12/sketchbook-villard-honn... Medieval art is very stylised, but the quality of the lines, the details in the clothes, the crispness of the composition, all that requires a lot of skill. Check out Jean Bondol’s work for instance https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/tapisserie-de-l-apocalypse-scène-12-le-cheval-livide-et-la-mort-1ère-pièce-jean-de-bruges/2gGUhmS3DhsZWA?hl=en https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/tapisserie-de-l-apoc... You may not like the style, but being able to produce works like that requires you to be good at art on some level.

nyeah 10mo ago
Ok, but the Honnecourt sketches are kind of strong. Not professional by today's standards, but decent. I'd be happy to have done them--but I'm not an artist. The tapestry can be appreciated, like Klimt's 2-D-ish stuff can be appreciated. The style is fine. It's not fantastic work, I wouldn't hang it up, but it's reasonably accomplished. In general, though, yes, I think medieval European artists were short on skill compared to artists from Europe in pre-medieval and post-medieval times, and art from other places between ~500 and ~1300. They had some skill, but not as much. Artists with limited technique are a real thing. Not everything is taste or style.
thaumasiotes 10mo ago
You convinced me that they lack skill. The clothing does often look good. In folio 16v ( https://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Villard_de_Honnecourt_Album_de_.Villard_de_btv1b10509412z_34.jpeg https://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Vill... ), it's been overdone and appears to be far wrinklier than fabric could support, suggesting that Jesus is embedded in some kind of strange plant. The faces are terrible in all cases. In general, perspective is off, anatomy is off, and you get shown things that aren't physically possible.
- regentbowerbird 10mo ago
  Are you aware there are artistic styles beyond photorealism?

archagon 10mo ago

Utterly bizarre to claim that a diverse group of people within an 800-year period were simply “bad at art.”

nyeah 10mo ago
No need to generalize. Post some clear exceptions. Or if the statement turns out to be "utterly bizarre but correct" I'm fine with that.
- archagon 10mo ago
  What do you mean by “exceptions”? Who are we, in our own infinitesimal slice of human history, to judge historic taste in art? And is naturalism the be-all, end-all of good taste? If so, we need to throw out the majority of art in the 20th century. This is a question for an art historian, not some anon on a tech forum. (For what it’s worth, I find Medieval and Renaissance art to be about equally tepid despite the difference in execution. And plenty of people non-ironically enjoy Medieval art despite its supposed deficiencies.)
  - nyeah 10mo ago
    "some anon on a tech forum" Don't sell yourself short. Post some art from those 800 years that doesn't suck, and I'll change my views. Sure, there's plenty of crap in 20th century art. I've seen examples of that. But that's a different subject.
    - archagon 10mo ago
      Like I said, I find the majority of European art before 1800 or so to be fairly dull, so I can't really answer this question. The prevailing technique improved remarkably post-Renaissance, and that's enjoyable to an extent, but the same themes get repeated over and over and over again. If you're looking for art with an impact, the iconography of Andrei Rublev (and other icon painters during this period) is still massively influential in the Russian Orthodox Church today. 600+ years of direct use and inspiration! The lack of naturalism is not a deficiency.

lo_zamoyski 10mo ago

Your exposure to medieval art must be very limited. I have seen some very magnificent pieces of medieval art personally. And paintings are a small part of what falls under "medieval art". Include those in the category, please. And there is another element to consider, which is the purpose of the art. Medieval art was not concerned so much with realism, but with the symbolic. I wonder: do you think Byzantine icons "suck"? I suspect you do.

nyeah 10mo ago
Do you just want to generalize, or do you want to provide a counterexample? Fine either way.
- lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
  Stop being an obnoxious pest. What would be the point? Any example given will be met with some snarky and ignorant remark. Veit Stoss's Krakow triptych? Gentile da Fabriano's "Adoration of the Magi"? Byzantine art, like Monreale Cathedral? The Christ Pantocrator icon from St. Catherine's Monastery? Romanesque and gothic cathedrals? Ornate illuminated manuscripts? Shall I continue? You don't have to like medieval art, but claiming it "sucks" is not only generalizing (your very accusation in this thread), but it is boorish and ignorant. You've already gotten more "discussion" out of this topic than you deserve. So, go troll somewhere else.
  - nyeah 10mo ago
    I checked your first example. It's from 1423, well outside the time period 500-1300. If you have valid examples, including the other works you mentioned above, please provide dates. I'm a little tired of doing that for people. Adoration of the Magi, 1423. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Magi_(Gentile_da_Fabriano) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Magi_(Gentile...

Bayart 10mo ago

I won't bother getting into trying to demonstrate Medieval art doesn't "suck", it's not worth dignifying. But you should be aware you might be placing too much emphasis on painting and drawing specifically as opposed to other art forms.

nyeah 10mo ago
Fine, good point. Medieval paintings and drawings suck, but the pottery may have been incredible. Yeah, why sacrifice dignity by providing a counterexample? Dignity is important.
IAmBroom 10mo ago
Isn't the actual topic of this thread specific to painting? On sculptures, but the skillset is painting; you can't paint a marble bust with a chisel.

YeGoblynQueenne 10mo ago

Well, I mean you find lots of wonky sculptures and reliefs in medieval art but people in Europe still made some really stunning pieces of art, e.g. see The Lady and the Unicorn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn), or the Choir Screen at the Amiens Cathedral (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiens_Cathedral#The_Choir_screen_(15th%E2%80%9316th_c https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiens_Cathedral#The_Choir_scr....)) and so on. So it's kind of a sweeping generalisation to say that "medieval art generally sucked".

mcmoor 10mo ago
Mmm both of those are from 1400s and OP do limit it to 1300. And that 1300 limit is for good reason. Renaissance is usually dated after 1453 and that's when European art quality exploded. So yeah, those examples instead prove OP's statement.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 10mo ago
  If you want to nitpick, I can point out that the full quote is "Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint"; stress on "about", and those aren't paintings. Besides the comment started by saying that "medieval European art generally sucked", so it covers the work I mention. That's if you want to nitpick. If you don't, both those works are hallmarks of medieval art and while they're not necessarily exemplars, it is important to remember that there were still artists who knew their stuff in and out in medieval times and the Renaissance didn't come out of nowhere. Edit: I travel through Europe by train a lot (mainly France and Italy but also Switzerland and Germany occasionally) and I visit museums, cathedrals, and art galleries in every city I stay. I have seen a lot of medieval art because those places just seem to have it lying around by the bucketload. There is a broad range in quality, but I have seen some very high quality woodcuts and, indeed, paintings, although those tend to be religious icons. Sculptures also, but mainly in statues of saints on the outside of cathedrals (see e.g. the Rouen cathedral). I'm trying to say that I'm not some kind of art authority or expert on medieval art, but I have seen my fair share of it, and no, Europeans didn't just suck at art in the medieval. I think what happened is there was a lot of mostly religious art that was lower quality, sort of like you can find plenty of slop on the internet today, but there were still skilled artists that created shockingly good art. You'd be more likely to find it in the palaces of the rich and powerful, I reckon, because they were the ones who could afford/support talented artists, as opposed to more ordinary craftsmen, who would be paid less. For the same reason you might find less of the good art lying around than the rougher, cruder kind, because the former was more expensive and thus harder to obtain. This also goes for religious art, which tended to include a smorgasboard of art forms, from painted icons and sculptures to reliquaries and liturgical equipment like communion chalices. But good medieval art existed, I've seen it, and it wasn't that rare.

watwut 10mo ago

The medieval art was better then those cave paintings. Like, common. > Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. They could. And they had wide variety of what they painted and how.

nyeah 10mo ago
I've given up asking for an example to support that.