[Serious] Thomism: Then & Now

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

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I don't think the essence of anything can be boiled down in this way, to something showable or transmittable.

How about to something receivable?

Art is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps?

 Are we REALLY gonna talk about what makes art and what makes good art?

During the renaissance, artists used The Golden Mean .(1.61803399) This ratio was thought to be most pleasing to the eye.

Recently a bloke was given a $5000 art grant. He submitted a blank canvas entitled " Take the money and run". Art? Yeah, I think so. I like Banksy too. Good draughtsman, may have done a course in commercial art, but what do I know..

I've seen the Mona Lisa in the Louvre:  bleh.

Also The Sistine chapel, being allowed to lie on the floor looking at it for half an hour. (this was only a few months after it had been cleaned) Wonderful.  Also Michelangelo's  Pieta and Medici tombs in St Peter's. Also David.  All sublime.

Also an original Sunflowers by Van Gogh. Love it. Love pretty much all of the major French impressionist, and even the odd minor one.  Really like some modern fauvist art. Wonderful use of colour.

Blue Poles  Knocked my socks off.  Great abstract painting is bloody hard, I've tried it. Best I've done so far is not terrible. 

Have been reduced to tears only once by a work of art:  A sculpture of Mary Magdalene in wood by Donatello.   It's in Florence, I forget exactly where.

I really dislike moist performance and installation art. And most modern sculpture which has used wire and or a blow torch.

 I don't have the arrogance to say what makes art or what makes good art.   But, following the  notion that objects have no intrinsic value, I don't agree that any work of art is work even hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

The most I've ever paid for a work of art is $70. It's a nineteenth century Japanese woodblock print. Cost that much again to have it properly framed. Almost all the paintings on my walls are my own. Yes, they're art in my opinion. As for good art, not so much