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thewoodenaisle  ·  3146 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why is Modern Art so Bad?

I'm very much in the camp of "what's the point of having realistic paintings when we already have cameras?" If you want to talk of "obsolete art," then to me, realistic art has been rendered obsolete by the invention of cameras that can take colored pictures. The only reason why paintings like this even exist is because photography wasn't invented yet. I am, are realistic portraits even a thing anymore in the 21st century?

Going back to the video, I'm really having trouble finishing the video because it's so terrible. It's the whole stereotypical, "The ancient Greeks/Romans were awesome! The Renaissance was awesome because they recognize how the ancient Greeks/Romans were awesome! Progress was straightforward until these shitters from the early 20th century ruined everything!" It ignores everything outside of the West. It presumes that there was "inferior art," presumably medieval art, that we "grew" out of. We might have developed more types of paints and more technique, but art isn't something that can be progressed in a meaningful sense.

All of this is opinion, of course. I think Girl with a Pearl Earring is a thoroughly unremarkable painting and Mona Lisa is a horribly overrated portrait that only got popular because Napoleon liked it and the painting was stolen from the Louvre in a famous heist during the 1900s. But proclaiming my own personal preferences and tastes as the only right one, or worse, an objective one, is complete asinine.