Is Anime Artistic?

[LastPoet]

Well art is not my strong suit, at least in the sense of painting or writing, and shit, dancing. Would there other forms to perform art?

[Neo-Scholastic]

After graffiti anything is "art". And we need a new word for the good stuff.

It's generally called realism.

[Shell B]

I'd say I favor realism, but then there's van Gogh and Monet. I can't then argue that only realism makes art objectively good.

[vulcanlogician]

I'd say I favor realism, but then there's van Gogh and Monet. I can't then argue that only realism makes art objectively good.

Van Gogh is amazing. I don't really favor realism, but at the same time, I don't "get" a lot of abstract stuff.

I don't like Pollock. For the life of me I don't see any emotion or (really) much of anything in his work. But cubist stuff can be good though... Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase is awesome. Here are some not-so-famous works that I like...

View of Colliore- Andre Derain

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Nude in Bathtub- Pierre Bonard

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[Shell B]

I don't like Pollock, either. Moreover, I don't like much surreal stuff, other than a few pieces. A lot of modern art is lost on me too.

I heavily favor classical and neoclassical pieces that are usually realistic, even if they're not "realism," per se. Probably one of my favorite artists is Antonio Canova, on top of those already mentioned. His marble work is unreal. You feel like you could reach out and pinch an inch of flesh.

The two paintings you shared are just weird to me. I get that they're the way they are on purpose, but perspective and proportions are all fucked up, and I find it hard not to think of it as amateur, though I'm sure they're very talented artists. It's just the way it gets interpreted in my mind.

[KevinM1]

Anime, as visual art, has been stagnant for decades.  Even with Studio Ghibli's prowess, the overall look of anime has changed little since the 1970s, mostly just following cultural trends of fashion and hair than anything else.  I mean:

Akira Kogane/Keith (~1981)


Ryo Sanada (~1988)


Edward Elric (~2001)


There's some differences with eye and nose shape, but the overall style has remained the same.  More modern anime follows the trend.

Anime, as a storytelling medium, is like all others.  There's lots of absolute shit, and some things that range from entertaining to smart.  I'm a big fan of Ghost in the Shell, as it pokes at the ideas of gender, individuality, what actually makes a person them, etc.

[Amarok]

Anime, as visual art, has been stagnant for decades.  Even with Studio Ghibli's prowess, the overall look of anime has changed little since the 1970s, mostly just following cultural trends of fashion and hair than anything else.  I mean:

Akira Kogane/Keith (~1981)


Ryo Sanada (~1988)


Edward Elric (~2001)


There's some differences with eye and nose shape, but the overall style has remained the same.  More modern anime follows the trend.

Anime, as a storytelling medium, is like all others.  There's lots of absolute shit, and some things that range from entertaining to smart.  I'm a big fan of Ghost in the Shell, as it pokes at the ideas of gender, individuality, what actually makes a person them, etc.

Only because it has not needed to change . I don't call that stagnation . I call it not fix what's not broken .

[KevinM1]

I call it boring. *shrug* Even Disney changed styles every decade or so.

[Amarok]

Not always for the better in fact often the opposite  . And now all they makes is CGI . Sorry i like my animation traditional .

[vulcanlogician]

The two paintings you shared are just weird to me. I get that they're the way they are on purpose, but perspective and proportions are all fucked up, and I find it hard not to think of it as amateur, though I'm sure they're very talented artists. It's just the way it gets interpreted in my mind.

Look at those two paintings THIS way. They are not "trying to be weird." They express emotion mixed in with realism. For Nude in Bathtub, it may help to realize that the subject of the painting was the artist's wife who died of cancer years before he painted it. There is a lot of emotion conveyed in the distortion. The actual painting is really big too. Hard to coney it online. It's like 8 feet tall. When you stand in front of it, the colors really work on your eyes.

One does not need to know the cancer story in order to appreciate it, but it may help to view it with this in mind, as you can see it more as a peice that encapsulates the inward feeling involved in the expression... much like Van Gogh.