13 ms·

cmon pg, your interpretation of Cezanne is like Caravaggio talkin about Lisp.

pg 17y ago
Can you give an example of something I said that you think is false? Or is this just a sort of reverse argument from authority?
- huntse 17y ago
  Well the claim that Cezanne couldn't draw is pretty obviously contradicted by his sketches, especially when you look at them "in the flesh".
  - idlewords 17y ago
    Cezanne had at least six years of classical drawing instruction, where you begin by drawing various geometric forms, move on to making sketches of plaster statuary, and then finally draw from the model. It's a highly technical form of training akin to doing scales all day long on a musical instrument. I'm sure there's a folder in some archive in Aix full of extremely boring and careful studies he did at the time. I've linked the one example I could easily find online above. Saying Cézanne couldn't draw is a glorious form of missing the point, like saying Stravinsky couldn't hold a tune.
    - galactus 17y ago
      There are perhaps other qualities in Cezanne's paintings, but PG is far from being the only person who considers Cezanne's drawing skills quite deficient.
- idlewords 17y ago
  False statements you have made about art: "The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed." (easy refutation - go to sistine chapel, look up). "What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that you could actually make the finished work from the prototype." This is not how people painted with oil until the 19th century. It was a very expensive medium requiring careful preparatory work, sketches, and so on. "Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it." - completely unsupported. "Line drawings are in fact the most difficult visual medium" - yes, carving marble is much easier. "When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted." - again, this is how oil paint was used much later. At the time it was painted in thin, transparent layers that did not allow the kind of reworking you learned four hundred years later in art class. And now we have 'Cézanne can't draw" to add to the list. Many of your other statements about art fall more in the 'not even wrong' category - fatuous generalizations based on your own tastes, but presented as deep insights about the world. So it is a little disingenuous of you to keep asking for people to point to specific places where you are wrong. The wrong is diffusely and uniformly distributed.
  - unalone 17y ago
    "The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed." Art has progressed so much in the last 500 years that this comparison is utterly absurd. Francis Bacon comes to mind as a painter whose works simply cannot be compared to earlier pieces.
    - Retric 17y ago
      I am always amazed when people fall in love with an artist I consider a talentless hack. PS: In the tradition of things you can't say. Science killed philosophy as a meaningful activity. And the camera killed painting as meaningful activity. They have become the refuge of talented youths and over-educated idiots.
      - zimbabwe 17y ago
        First point: Just to clarify, you're calling Bacon a talentless hack? Bacon, the master of nightmarish imagery? Second point: Define meaningful. Philosophy, science, photography, painting, all are essentially ways of passing time before death, if we want to use the cosmic scale; on the personal level each activity has different meanings to different people. I'm not a big philosopher, but I enjoy that much more than science. Science bores me. Where is it written that philosophy can't evolve based on scientific findings? And what makes you think painting's not useful? Perhaps portraits aren't as meaningful, but even there, designing a web site for a musician I commissioned a painting of him rather than a photo. With paintings you can specify colors ahead of time and make something that fits for the design. So there's an example of an archaic medium being used for modern purposes. I don't like very much your us-versus-them mentality here. I don't like your suggestion that there's such a thing as too much education. My policy is, to each their own. I'll continue to be fascinated by those over-educated idiots I call my friends, and you can continue to do whatever you choose with your own time.
        deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
        17y ago
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Can you give an example of something I said that you think is false? It's always helpful in discussions here on HN to have the courage to say something like that. Kudos for that. Thanks to those who have replied with specific answers. That puts lots of food for thought into the thread.

pg 17y ago

Can you give an example of something I said that you think is false? Or is this just a sort of reverse argument from authority?

huntse 17y ago
Well the claim that Cezanne couldn't draw is pretty obviously contradicted by his sketches, especially when you look at them "in the flesh".
- idlewords 17y ago
  Cezanne had at least six years of classical drawing instruction, where you begin by drawing various geometric forms, move on to making sketches of plaster statuary, and then finally draw from the model. It's a highly technical form of training akin to doing scales all day long on a musical instrument. I'm sure there's a folder in some archive in Aix full of extremely boring and careful studies he did at the time. I've linked the one example I could easily find online above. Saying Cézanne couldn't draw is a glorious form of missing the point, like saying Stravinsky couldn't hold a tune.
  - galactus 17y ago
    There are perhaps other qualities in Cezanne's paintings, but PG is far from being the only person who considers Cezanne's drawing skills quite deficient.
idlewords 17y ago
False statements you have made about art: "The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed." (easy refutation - go to sistine chapel, look up). "What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that you could actually make the finished work from the prototype." This is not how people painted with oil until the 19th century. It was a very expensive medium requiring careful preparatory work, sketches, and so on. "Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it." - completely unsupported. "Line drawings are in fact the most difficult visual medium" - yes, carving marble is much easier. "When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted." - again, this is how oil paint was used much later. At the time it was painted in thin, transparent layers that did not allow the kind of reworking you learned four hundred years later in art class. And now we have 'Cézanne can't draw" to add to the list. Many of your other statements about art fall more in the 'not even wrong' category - fatuous generalizations based on your own tastes, but presented as deep insights about the world. So it is a little disingenuous of you to keep asking for people to point to specific places where you are wrong. The wrong is diffusely and uniformly distributed.
- unalone 17y ago
  "The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed." Art has progressed so much in the last 500 years that this comparison is utterly absurd. Francis Bacon comes to mind as a painter whose works simply cannot be compared to earlier pieces.
  - Retric 17y ago
    I am always amazed when people fall in love with an artist I consider a talentless hack. PS: In the tradition of things you can't say. Science killed philosophy as a meaningful activity. And the camera killed painting as meaningful activity. They have become the refuge of talented youths and over-educated idiots.
    - zimbabwe 17y ago
      First point: Just to clarify, you're calling Bacon a talentless hack? Bacon, the master of nightmarish imagery? Second point: Define meaningful. Philosophy, science, photography, painting, all are essentially ways of passing time before death, if we want to use the cosmic scale; on the personal level each activity has different meanings to different people. I'm not a big philosopher, but I enjoy that much more than science. Science bores me. Where is it written that philosophy can't evolve based on scientific findings? And what makes you think painting's not useful? Perhaps portraits aren't as meaningful, but even there, designing a web site for a musician I commissioned a painting of him rather than a photo. With paintings you can specify colors ahead of time and make something that fits for the design. So there's an example of an archaic medium being used for modern purposes. I don't like very much your us-versus-them mentality here. I don't like your suggestion that there's such a thing as too much education. My policy is, to each their own. I'll continue to be fascinated by those over-educated idiots I call my friends, and you can continue to do whatever you choose with your own time.
      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
      - 17y ago
tokenadult 17y ago
Can you give an example of something I said that you think is false? It's always helpful in discussions here on HN to have the courage to say something like that. Kudos for that. Thanks to those who have replied with specific answers. That puts lots of food for thought into the thread.