Painting, sculpting, disappearing?

[Belacqua]

Completely agree with the part about the recognition of a social issue everyone knows about. It seems nowadays for a movie to be considered “artistic” and be displayed on the Cannes Festival it needs to be about a social issue. It feels shoehorned.

It occurs to me that social issue art may be the only way for an artist to be accepted in the official art world while aiming at -- or groping for -- the kind of transcendence which has nearly always been the point of great works.

Traditionally art has been about the ideal, or the real envisioned in a way which makes it timeless and non-contingent. This is obvious in Christian or Buddhist art. But any artist or movie maker who was openly sincere in his religion would be confined to a niche market these days. The Guardian wouldn't take him seriously. Yale wouldn't give him a degree. 

Non-religious (or not obviously religious) artists like Chardin also achieve transcendence, by seeing the perishable world in a timeless way. Most people don't know that Van Gogh became an artist because he wanted to be a Christian pastor like his father, but the parishioners found him too intense. His art, it seems to me, is alive with a (Spinozist?) spirituality. But a Chardin or a Van Gogh wouldn't get an NEA grant these days -- they would be dismissed as old-fashioned and superficial. 

To appear as serious and more than decorative, your heart has to be on your sleeve. While traditionally transcendence was achieved in other ways.

[Belacqua]

Last month:

Ukiyo-e woodcut by Toyokuni III, showing (in anachronistic Edo-period dress) the famous e-awase scene from the Tale of Genji.

The most modern things I have are woodcuts by Munakata Shiko, who died in the '70s sometime.

Maybe you personally, yes, but in general there is no real middle class market for visual art. And quality options to middle class patrons are very niche and limited. So it is really just a matter of the cost of production being so high that ownership is a luxury. It takes a great deal of time, skill, and dedication to make a fine art oil painting. As a society we get what we pay for...if we're lucky...which is why visual art died long ago, giving way to cheap naratives. Twenty years ago it seemed to me you could not be expected to 'appreciated' a work of art without reading the Artist's Statement first. The story about the art became more important than the art itself. We are now a culture driven by competing made-up perspectives that may or may not have any correspondence to what is actually happening. The truest art always seems to transcend its origin into something primal and uniquely human. Art reveals what Story obscures.

Yes, this makes sense. And it goes some way toward explaining the kind of two-tier system of painting we have now. 

The middle class non-art-history-majors get schmaltzy mall art, with an instantly obvious nostalgia or heartwarming message. 

While the Art World gets a different kind of heartwarming message, largely about how we are woke and the other, bad people, aren't. 

And I guess I should add that it is a good thing to work on social improvement, and anything that actually raises awareness is worthwhile. But if this is in galleries for rich people, it teaches nothing. We're stuck with either preaching to the choir about social ills, or collectible brand logos, like Yoshitomo Nara or Murakami.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Once the reduced attendance caused by the pandemic is factored out, people continue to visit art museums in staggering numbers. While fewer oil paintings and sculptures may be produced now than in the past, it seems clear that people still appreciate these media.

So I wouldn’t worry overmuch about the perceived death of art.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps painting and sculpture are simply changing? Started out with coiled clay and cave walls, after all. I have serious doubts about the love of art of people who really mean that they like a particular form of a particular media. Damn all this hippity hop and rock music! Doesn't really have anything to do with art or the death of art, it's a pretext for culture war by proxy - in every age, at all times.

In mere reality, there's a larger and more talented pool of artists making more art today than there ever has been at any previous point. One wonders if The Greats™ themselves would seem so uniquely great if they had as much competition, and how many of them would have abandoned their own tools of their own time for just the slightest whiff of CGI or CAM today. Damn near certain that alot of the great composers would be doing club music. That's what they were doing then.....

[Macoleco]

Perhaps painting and sculpture are simply changing? Started out with coiled clay and cave walls, after all. I have serious doubts about the love of art of people who really mean that they like a particular form of a particular media. Damn all this hippity hop and rock music! Doesn't really have anything to do with art or the death of art, it's a pretext for culture war by proxy - in every age, at all times.

In mere reality, there's a larger and more talented pool of artists making more art today than there ever has been at any previous point. One wonders if The Greats™ themselves would seem so uniquely great if they had as much competition, and how many of them would have abandoned their own tools of their own time for just the slightest whiff of CGI or CAM today. Damn near certain that alot of the great composers would be doing club music. That's what they were doing then.....

That is part of the question.

Regardless of the technological advances, some techniques are objectively a better display of the human skills? For example, comparing oil paintings to digital art. What illustrations made on Photoshop or Clip Studio compare to the great paintings? And I think even artists accept that digital is a lot easier than analogue drawing.

[The Grand Nudger]

What gets compared and what is equal or better than are not interchangeable. Cinema is digital art, at least nowadays. It combines a ton of things to accomplish what those before could have only dreamed (and certainly did). The writing is better, the acting is better, the art is better, the whole experience more compelling.

The idea of a great artistic age is a variation on the theme of a golden age. It's never been true - it's always been useful. We even convince ourselves that The Greats have been chosen out of a neutral pool of aspirants based on their skill..rather than being among what (small) amount remains that is useful to the organization of culture. If we're concerned that a specific style in a specific media has run it's course...well, ever was it thus. If we take from that that "art is dying" put any of the many ways it's expressed, that's just boiler plate culture war. If it's any consolation, things come back all the time. Kitsch and nostalgia are never far away. Collecting old shit from the supposed golden age, though, is antiquing. Not art appreciation. Art is alive.

Human artistic skill isn't measured in chiseling, or dragging a brush. That's just craftsmanship. Craftsmanship has always been the enemy of culture war - because it routinely shows that no great work is unforgeable, because it fundamentally threatens the monopoly that favored producers have on The Right Cultural Artifacts.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Robert Heinlein once opined, ‘Commercial art gets steadily better and better, while so-called “fine art” continues to look like the work of retarded monkeys.’

Right or wrong, he makes the underlying point that it’s ALL art - cinema, Mozart, rap music, the Old Masters, Jackson Pollock - all of it.

Boru

[Neo-Scholastic]

Robert Heinlein once opined, ‘Commercial art gets steadily better and better, while so-called “fine art” continues to look like the work of retarded monkeys.’

Right or wrong, he makes the underlying point that it’s ALL art - cinema, Mozart, rap music, the Old Masters, Jackson Pollock - all of it.

Boru

Yeah, it's all art...but that doesn't mean it is equal in all regards to various degrees.

[Belacqua]

Robert Heinlein once opined, ‘Commercial art gets steadily better and better, while so-called “fine art” continues to look like the work of retarded monkeys.’

Right or wrong, he makes the underlying point that it’s ALL art - cinema, Mozart, rap music, the Old Masters, Jackson Pollock - all of it.

Boru

Yeah, it's all art...but that doesn't mean it is equal in all regards to various degrees.

Nobody's saying that bad art isn't art.

It's art, but it's bad.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Yeah, it's all art...but that doesn't mean it is equal in all regards to various degrees.

Nobody's saying that bad art isn't art.

It's art, but it's bad.

I don't really think you (or anyone else) can say something is 'bad' art. There is simply art you like and art you don't like.

Boru