Help me out a little here

I think that's a little disingenuous. Those things are examples of
mankind's creative and artistic impulse - they just took religious
forms at those points in history because that was the culture then.
Art hasn't stopped because religion has became less significant in
culture.

 

Michaelangelo's Pieta, completed 1499
Sistine Chapel, built 1481
Spanish Inquisition, commenced 1478

 

But it's become (mostly) shit.

 

You know you love it.

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/images/lists/work/17_3_lg.jpg

 

heh, that's become my de-facto "modern art is shit" piece!

 

Philistine.

 

Is it your contention that "post-renaissance non-religious art is
mostly shit"?

I'm sure you don't mean that.

http://www.penwith.co.uk/artofeurope/turner_fighting_temeraire.jpg

http://www.topofart.com/images/artists/Claude_Oscar_Monet/paintings/monet230.jpg

http://www.softpedia.com/screenshots/Pre-Raphaelites-I-Screensaver_2.png

http://www.join2day.net/abc/P/picasso/picasso188.JPG

(OK, I slipped a Picasso in there just to see if you were paying
attention)

 

Since you used the present tense in your statement, I was actually
alluding to present day, modern art.

Maybe not, but since I don't know what post-renaissance really means...

<fx:googles furiously>

OK - anything after the 17th century?

They're OK, I suppose, although I'm not keen on the last one.

Oooh - boobies!

Eh? What? Beacause it's more modern, you mean? Well, some of his
stuff is OK, sure. That one, hmmmm...

Maybe, as ogden says, I am simply a philistine, but no, I don't "get" a
lot of art. It simple for me - either I like it or I don't.

 

I suspect his contention is more that "post-war art is mostly shit", in
which case I'd say he has a point, to an extent. But it's still
enjoyable shit for the most part.

I *still* don't understand what's so great about Rothko.

 

"Modern Art" started about 100 years ago, you know.

I which case, probably a lot of all art produced, from whatever era,
falls into your "mostly shit" category.

 

Quite.

 

I'm completely with you on this, although I've been known to go
further and suggest that the very concept of 'art' is somehow flawed.

Probably not. It's only in the 'modern' era that factors other than
pure aesthetics were allowed to influence art. Up until then, millenia
of artists had striven to achieve an accurate, recognisable view of
the world in a visual medium, in such a way that the finished result
would be pleasing to the eye.

Techniques, and issues such as perspective, developed over time, but
fundamentally that's all they were doing. Only once people started to
abstract this ideal did the really shit stuff start to appear.

 

How old are you?


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/munch.scream2.jpg
http://kawilmes.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/claude-monet1.jpg
http://www.theintellectualdevotiona.../09/van-gogh-vincent-starry-night-7900566.jpg

None of these make any attempt to be entirely accurate, does that make
them shit? Rather, they attempt to capture something that wouldn't be
there if a purely technically accurate image were reproduced.

If you strive for accuracy, you end up with superrealism and
photorealism, both of which are, as far as I can see, utterly pointless
genres.

 

I didn't say it would. I only said that the move away from that idea
was the starting point that allowed shit to be produced in the name of
art. The fact that it also allowed some extraordinary strokes of
genius to develop is not something I'm trying to deny.

As it happens, of the three you list (and yes, I'm familiar with them
all), only the second one really falls into the 'stuff I'd like'
category.

Sure. And sometimes the end result is a nice picture, with values that
wouldn't have been possible in earlier eras.

 

heh. And I probably woudln't disagree on either count.

Let's not forget that "90% of everything is crud".

I have a Rothko reproduction hanging in my bedroom.

 

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&safe=off&um=1&sa=1&q=mark+rothko&aq=f&oq=&start=0

Sheesh. That's pretty uninspiring stuff. Or "shit" for short )

 

I bet you think it's a coincidence.

 

Got it in one.

 

I like it a lot.