Art in decadence?

[Anomalocaris]

I have been getting into paintings lately, and I am inclined to believe painters nowadays lack the mastery, elegance and symbolism of the masters of old, such as Vermeer.

Perhaps the same can be said about literature, with writers such as Dante still unmatched?

Is this a subjective perception, or can it be objectively proven?

I love me some Dante, but I don't think his work is necessarily unmatched.

But when it comes to stuff like painting, well, let's face it: the reason there's no more Vermeers in the art world is because they don't need Vermeer. Why spend so much time painting a scene as meticulously realistic as Vermeer did when you could probably get the same effect with a camera?


Photo by Ralph Eggleston.

I'm inclined to think that, once photography hit it big, the sort of realistic detail prized in, say, the old Dutch masters, became obsolete. The objective became obsolete, and, for better or for worse, painting became about the subjective.

Realism per se as would be equalled or surpassed by photography is not the central artistic value of detailed realism.   The central artistic value is the conveying or evoking of more than what could be on any snap shot of reality by the means of a perceptually convincing representation of a counterfeit reality.

The technique that theoretically might equip its wielder with the capacity to rival, say, the old Dutch masters would be computer rendering, not photography.     But computer rendering as is it commonly done now seems to me to still be too wedded to coolness of surpassing the technical mastery of realism, and had not really begun to explore evocative qualities that distinguish great painting of realism.