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Comment by hestipod | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but I know with age and I hope "maturity" I appreciate many more forms of art. Things I didn't have the life experience or emotional depth to grasp when I was younger can deeply impact me now. An example would be Mark Rothko's paintings. I would have said "pfft anyone can do that...just some stripes or blocks" when I was a kid, and probably did, but have recently rediscovered his work and absolutely love it. Same with a lot of poetry as you mentioned. I really regret not having more openness and ability to grasp these things before. I really wish I had more health and life stability, and the resultant time and means to explore and experience creative things.

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I never really understood modern art until I a) saw it in person, and b) saw it in the context of its time.

I was at the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg. I'd done museum tour after museum tour in both Moscow and Petersburg. Nearly all of this art was classical/neo-classical or romantic, rococo, etc.

By the end of your 1000th neo-classical painting, you get exhausted of the sameness of the realistic style. The themes, colors, sensibilities all appear similar.

Then I walked into the modern and post-modern hall and there was a massive Matisse painting on the wall. The bright blue was such a revelation. You see a painting like that after 400 years worth of realistic painting style and it takes your breath away. It was particularly impactful when contrasted against the neoclassical architecture of the museum itself.

The worst way to appreciate modern and post modern art is on a computer screen. These things have to be experienced in person. For one, their sheer size can't be captured on screen. A 12' x 10' canvas has a visual impact that's not possible to replicate anywhere. Second, their experimental quality has to be contrasted against the dominant art forms of their time. Anyone can technically paint like Matisse. But they didn't.

I had a very similar experience with Pollock. I'd of course seen his famous drip paintings in books, and never understood what the big deal was. But seeing one in real life completely blew me away. Both the size of it and most importantly the 3D nature of it. The paintings aren't simply 2D images, but rather sculpted 3D surfaces that change as you look at them from different angles.

> Anyone can technically paint like Matisse. But they didn't.

That reminds me (in a rather postmodern way, I suspect) of an interview I recently read with a celebrity whose claim to fame is basically nudity:

Anyone can show their boobs. But they don't.

I don't think the size of any painting can make it better. Especially if it's something a 2 year old can and will paint. As an artist myself, I've always disliked and never understood why people like modernist artworks. Picasso's best work was his early work, before he gave up on painting life. That some people think they get this crap artwork is just hilarious and just goes to show you can hock anything if you pretend it's high minded.

And your statement "Anyone can technically paint like Matisse. But they didn't." That's probably because noone wants to paint like a child and wants to be considered a good artist not a joke.

Believe me, in 1000 years no one will care about Modernist artwork.

What a sad and myopic take on art, especially coming from a self-proclaimed artist. Obviously you're entitled to your opinion, but why make such bitter sounding absolutist statements about what other people create or enjoy? There's enough negativity in this world already.

Additionally, the fact that you're judging the relative worth of a piece of art based on it lasting for 1000 years is pretty sad, in my opinion. What is wrong with art being created for a specific time and place? Life is ephemeral, and there is beauty in that.

The irony is that the 1000 year old 10th century art we do care about today looks like it was drawn by a child.

You make very good points and I'd have to agree with you if this was anything other than "modern art".

Modern art is not art in the sense it's not a highly crafted work. It's minimum effort.

The time frame was given to acknowledge the fact that we think this is "art". In the future we will know this is junk and not art.

I really dislike most pop art, but at least it's art. A big yellow square canvas in no way should constitute artwork.

You're conflating craftsmanship with art.

There are literally factories in China where painters paint replicas of classic art works at scale. They paint hundreds, even thousands of such pieces every year.

They're undoubtedly very skilled painters. But would you call their work "art"?

How much time and effort something takes has no bearing on whether or not it is art. Something that takes 5 years to make isn't automatically better than something done in 5 minutes.

Painters like Picasso and Matisse were also classically trained and had all the skills to paint like the painters of old. They just chose not to.

I would call their work art. You don't call it art? Now you are being just like me.

Exactly my point about Picasso, his early work was awesome. What everyone likes from his is terrible.

Imagine you're a wealthy man in late 19th century Europe. You own a nice neo gothic home in the fancy part of the city.

Like other wealthy men, you too dabble in collecting some art. You own a few romantic pieces with exceptional craftsmanship. You proudly display them in your living room amid all your fancy, ornate furniture.

But something is amiss. All your artwork starts looking the same. And why wouldn't it - all these artists have honed their craft at similar art schools. They look good but they've started looking a little repetitive. Like something out of a factory.

You have to see artists like Matisse in this context. Try placing yourself in the shoes of someone from their period. Realistic art was dead because there can't truly be any further innovation in it (and the camera would make it obsolete anyway). The themes, the styles, even the figures had been all tried and put on canvas over the last several centuries.

A Matisse in this context is very new, very exciting, and very full of life. It's bright blue in dimly lit 19th century homes. It's a yellow dancing figure in a room that has only see scenes from the Bible and Greek myths painted.

This is the reason why its art.

"Looking pretty" is just craftsmanship. If it makes you feel something - even acute hatred - its art.

"if it makes you feel something, it's art" is not correct at all.

This is what I'm trying to state. Art is craftmanship then to you, since you can't understand that art requires skill or talent.

My man saying that someone like Picasso did not have skill or talent is just the height of absurdity. All of these guys went to some of the most prestigious art schools around. They had all the raw skills to paint like any of the classicists, but they didn't because that was boring and dated.

> I really regret not having more openness and ability to grasp these things before.

Ironic - modern art has such a lack of this same openness, that the classic techniques it despises were nearly lost. It was not enough for modern art to be accepted - classical art had to be driven out from contemporary galleries:

The Slade school in London used to be world-famous for turning out fine British draftsmen. A distinguished British painter who taught at the Slade asked me, 'How did you learn how to do animation?' I answered that I was lucky enough to have done a lot of life drawing at art school, so without realizing it I got the feeling for weight which is so vital to animation.

Then I said, 'What am I telling you for? You're teaching at the Slade and it's famous for its life drawing and excellent draftsmen.'

'If the students want to do that,' he said, 'then they've got to club together and hire themselves a model and do it in their own home.' At first I thought he was joking - but no! Life drawing as a subject went out years ago. It wasn't even on the curriculum!

-- Animator's Survival Kit, page 32. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-OTUJDZcAzLcDhFbVN3TjdwUnc/...

As somebody who's done a lot of life drawing, and a lot of classical stuff in general, I see the reason why it's no longer central to the curriculum. Ultimately, drawing is just another tool, just like stonecarving, crochet, or dance, and life-drawing is a practice that is good training for a specific use of that tool - portraiture - that was the economic lifeblood of art until daguerreotypes came on the scene.

So really the odd thing is not that they stopped doing life drawing classes. The question is, why did they continue for so long? It would be rather like doing an engineering course where a core competence was the construction and maintenance of steam engines.

Computer Science (usually at least in my experience) both teaches programming and expects proficiency in programming.

My friends who did mechanical engineering had to take classes on tool making.

Meanwhile nowadays you have metal sculpturers who cannot weld.

My friend who was in art-adjacent school did had to do huge amount of technical exercises. It is just not true that artists nowadays don't learn fundamentals. They do, plenty of them both directly relevant to what they will do and not relevant. Pretty much all art schools spend a lot of time on it.

Not the same ones as you would pick perhaps.

> life-drawing is a practice that is good training for a specific use of that tool - portraiture

> The question is, why did they continue for so long?

Well, as said in the original quote, it's apparently also good for internalizing a sense of weight for animation. So presumably they continued at least in part because it's good for things that aren't as obsolete as portraiture -- animation isn't the only way to make money in art these days, but it's not exactly in low demand.

I'd wonder why they dropped it, but at a guess, it's some combination of low demand (first they make it non-required, then students who don't realize the broader applicability stop taking it) and higher cost (you need to hire one or more models).

Well, the Slade is a fine art school - so animation is sort of the 'bad end', where you give up on being a 'real artist' and get a job. But yeah, definitely a lot of the animation/cgi stuff tends to lean a lot heavier on the classic sculpture/draughtsman skillset. That's actually one of the things I really enjoy about it.

I think the arts are in a weird situation because they're sort of like an ascended craft. Basically, when the bread-and-butter of portraiture died, art had enough social clout to be able to survive without it, doing just art, without any particular service attached. That rapidly unpinned art from any particular set of skills - so now you get artists who do dance, or cut holes in buildings, or send postcards.

So while some of the traditional craft side of art has value to other industries, it's not really that important to what art has become.

You have whole youtube channels with models for life drawing. There are whole web pages offering paid courses on life drawing.

Doublin art studio: https://www.dublinartstudio.com/monday-life-drawing.html

Edinburgh university course: https://www.course-bookings.lifelong.ed.ac.uk/courses/DP/dra...

For beginners: https://www.course-bookings.lifelong.ed.ac.uk/courses/DP/dra... Yeah, it totally disappeared.

It certainly is not true of everybody that appreciation of modern art comes with age. I'd wager the majority of people, young or old, consider it inaccessible or worse.

I surmised in my case had to do with life experiences and emotional growth allowing me to see things differently, but maybe that's self righteous nonsense. All I know is I can enjoy a lot more art than I used to and I am glad for it.

I remember going to the museums on field trips and we kids would all love seeing what would've been the "modern" pieces that were on the tour list (I had some somewhat eccentric teachers in middle school). Even in young adulthood (read: in college) I took many a date to MCA in the summers because, and maybe chalk this up to typical youth rebellion, I liked it. Only recently, because I can travel more now, have I gotten to see more Classical and Renaissance period art in person and, honestly, I feel completely robbed - or like I robbed myself. I look back on some of this stuff that we all looked at as "genius" (and would attempt to recreate in art class as kids with construction paper and elmer's glue) and it's just crap to me now. So I guess I disagree that "modern" art isn't "accessible". It seems that there's been a culture invented around it in order to make it look and feel more sophisticated than it actually is.

The use of Abstract Expressionism as a deliberate propaganda tool to promote a politicised concept of "individual freedom" is well-documented.

If there's nothing of lasting value there, that would be - ironic.

I wouldn't go that far, but I also don't think you can recreate it with construction paper and Elmer's glue. As the OP says, a big element in Modernism is breaking (up) with the past, and you can only really do that once.

The thing that gets hung on a wall is a snapshot of a process, and in Modernism the process is more important than the snapshot.

What hasn't changed is the use of art as a status marker for the rich and powerful. Those glorious Classical and Renaissance pieces were painted for the same reason.

In Modernism the-thing-on-the-wall is more of a repository of intellectual, cultural, and historical and commercial associations as a thing to look at for its own sake. The obvious manual labour - the representational brushstrokes in traditional art - were replaced with the intellectual labour of commercial self-justification as a value in itself.

Essentially it's a semi-corporate sales exercise - which of course captures the culture around it much better than classical figurative painting would.

We had to go to see many classic drawings and renaissance etc. It was mostly boring to me whole time. It does not have that awesome feel when you are a kid who is not artist and seen a lot of the same already.

It also helps to see some of these modern artworks in person. Rothkos are huge! And seeing the thickness of the paint on a Pollock really adds to it.

I would love to see some of his stuff up close. I live in rural nowhere middle Murica so it's not accessible. I have heard it's pretty amazing to see how big they truly are. Nothing is as good as in person. I recall seeing the Mona Lisa in person later in life and being shocked at how small it was, and turning around and seeing how massive The Wedding Feast at Cana was. It completely...sorry for this...reframes your impression of things relative to books and photos. I envy people who live in places with so much culture accessible.

I've often wondered if there wouldn't be value in creating a series of truly world class reproductions of the great pieces of art and distributing them around the world.

If you want to experience the great works of classical literature, you can get them from any library in the world. If you want to experience the great works of classical music you can again pick up a CD at your local library, and most mid sized cities in the world have halfway decent symphonic orchestra with a rotating reportoar. If you want to experience the great works of art you have to jet set off to a dozen+ cities around the world.

In the next few years I expect experiencing great art to become much more accessible with virtual reality recreations, e.g. https://store.steampowered.com/app/515020/The_VR_Museum_of_F.... It's not the full experience yet, but it's already much better than a picture on a screen, and it gets closer to reality all the time.

Also, sorry, but *repertoire.

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