I feel extremely sad that classical art will never flourish again.
We will never see classical painters become gods and public icons like they used to.
The 20th century destroyed art, in my opinion.
Here's one of my favorite artists: Gallen-Kallela. I wish you could still become famous by painting like this.
>>2288958
Well we can't predict the future. There may very well be a resurgence in public interest. Perhaps when people grow tired of photography and everything digital they will yearn again for things made by hand with expression in it.
And I think it's silly to chase fame. Chase beauty and authenticity in your art.
It's still possible to be successful doing oils. Terpning, Nerdrum, Situ and other contemporary realists sell their paintings for millions and get showered in awards.
Anyways, good taste with Kallela, he's a favourite of mine too.
I don't believe that classical art is dead. Most art schools still use classical techniques in their curriculum. Perhaps we'll get our own renaissance to battle post-modern fluffery.
Here's a question: why has surrealism taken such a hold of contemporary artists? Is it purely for aesthetics or something deeper?
>>2288973
>I don't believe that classical art is dead
It is essentially dead. Or more like it suffered a stroke and now can't talk properly. If you compare modern classical art programs they are not particularly close to ones of the past, and the general skill level is much much much lower.
>>2288958
Why? ffs who cares. The people who want to use visual media to actually say things that matter have long since either moved into different media or have taken traditional media in different directions.
Look beyond your own autistic obsession with technique and you'll see what most educated people see when they look at a painting like you posted; something competent, kinda boring, and generally not worth much attention.
I have now invented neo-realism.
It's a thing, get your hipster glasses on and start spreading the word.
>>2288993
>The people who want to use visual media to actually say things that matter have long since either moved into different media or have taken traditional media in different directions.
What do you mean, faggot?
There is space for everything and everyone, and a great work of art will always be great, no matter when it was done. If someone paint something as great as the Sistine Chapel frescoes today it will still be a supreme manifestation of human power and achievement; if someone write a play as great as the ones of Shakespeare today it will still be much more meaningful than any film script.
Greatness is greatness, no matter when it’s done.
>>2289012
>a great work of art will always be great, no matter when it was done
This.
I'm an art collector and I know that amazing-looking paintings bring thousands and thousands of dollars in auction houses no matter when they were painted.
Millionaires just want gorgeous paintings on their walls, and let's face it, most Rothschild-level millionaires decorate their homes with 19th century French antiques and they want classical art to go with it.
>>2289012
Look, people (who aren't autistic technique fetishists, which seems to be the main population of this board) like art because it gives them experiences that they couldn't get otherwise. The feeling you're supposed to get when you look at the Sistine Chapel isn't "wow look at that modeling. Michelangelo really got gud"; it's "I feel like I'm looking at the the glory of god expressed in his perfect creations" or something like that. THAT is the sort of experience that makes art worthwhile; at it's best it makes life itself worthwhile. No one will ever give a fuck about paintings like the OP pic because the only people who look at that sort of image and think it gives them a remarkable experience are socially crippled, borderline uneducated NEETs and maybe tea sipping middle american grandmothers.
The people who want to use art to actually say something that's meaningful don't waste their time with crap like this.
...srsly dude.
>>2289029
Aesthetic value is a value in itself.
Are you saying you need to constantly shock viewers by painting with your own shit and whatever artists do these days?
>>2288973
Sabine Howard: this man is a genius. His drawings show how great at sculpture he is.
>>2289029
But technique and technical skill is what helps people to be able to say something meaningful
Learning art is like learning a language in that way, the more competent you are at it the easier it is get what you mean across
No, not everyone needs to know every word in the dictionary to say something, but learning the right words for the right subject certainly helps
>>2289046
I think that drawing is crap. I honestly thought a student doodled that on their notebook.
>>2289029
I guess we started with the wrong foot. I agree with you: the impact of an artistic work is not “whoa, look at the technique he used”: it is much more than that, but the feeling of pleasure derived from an work of art is very personal, and yet I think that, the more one is able to dominate several techniques, such as light and shade, structure, perspective, color, etc, the more one can do a work that will take the breath away from the viewer.
I was thinking that you wanted to say that painting, sculpture, poetry, etc. were not relevant to the world we live in anymore, that only digital art and movies and TV series were the real deal now. But I can see what you wanted to say.
Now, be honest: the drawing in th\t post, the Sabine Howard drawing, isn’t it beautiful? I can’t stop looking at it. I tought you were of that kind of people who would say “Yeah….no, this style of drawing is irrelevant to today’s world, for we live in other times, and after Picasso and Pollock art is now this or that and you should pay attention to the manifestos of the artists, and blab la bla”.
I am glad you are not one of those guys.
>>2289052
C'mon man, dont be a dick
>>2289046
>Sabine Howard
Eh, looks like a better version of Burne Hogarth's stuff, it's not god tier imo.
>>2289035
>Aesthetic value is a value in itself.
Eh, think that if you want but don't whine about time gone past when all the cool kids don't come to your party. People stopped liking classical painting because after about 400 years of it we'd gone through pretty much all of the ways it could be used to speak to our experience. You can rehash over old ideas, defended under the precept that "aesthetic value" is worth anything, but the reason this sort of art is dead is because it just doesn't speak to people's experience anymore. Whatever aesthetic exploration was leftover in the representation of the human figure was taken over by photography, film, ... hell even videogames at this point.
It's dead. It's dead because it's boring. This isn't a big deal; just ask anyone who doesn't masturbate to getting gud on /ic/.
>>2289058
Well, I respect your opinion, altough I loved his drawings.
Can you give me some names of people who are good at drawing the figure, the human body?
>>2289067
John Raynes, Richard MacDonald, Steve Huston, Phil Hale.
>>2289055
Do you think you'd even care about technique if it didn't give you a simplistic measure of quality? Most people don't care about art cause it's like carpentry; they care about it because it's like poetry.
>I was thinking that you wanted to say that painting, sculpture, poetry, etc. were not relevant to the world we live in anymore,
Eh, images are a basic thing. They'll prolly never die. Images created using specific techniques or that fixate on specific types of subject matter; ya that can die. And it has died, numerous times. Hell ... unless you're willing to say some wacky shit like suggesting that chinese painting is shitty because they don't use western style representational drawing, the only arguement you'd need to make for the mutability of a society's aesthetic language is to compare the western tradition to other traditions. There's nothing special about " light and shade, structure, perspective, color" in the manner they're handled by classical artists that makes their place in culture necessarily relevant.
>Sabine Howard
Eh, he clearly worked really hard. It's pretty like a postcard. But I don't care about postcards.
>>2289072
Robert Liberace, Francis Vallejo
>>2289081
>Robert Liberace
This one is sublime
>>2289078
>Most people don't care about art cause it's like carpentry; they care about it because it's like poetry.
Most people are very unsophisticated when it comes to appreciating and digesting visual information. We teach kids how to parse texts and poems, and we teach music theory and stuff, but we don't teach anything about art.
The fact of the matter is the general public has horrible taste and they genuinely can't tell the difference between good and bad art. If you put a Sargent next to your local portrait painter they wouldn't tell the difference.
Ever notice how they tend to like photorealism? It's because they lack the ability to tell when something is good, so they just become impressed with detail and photorealism because it is an easy thing to measure.
>>2289089
You might like some people from the Russian academic lineage--Nikolai Blokhin, Andrey Kartashov, Sergey Chubirko etc.
Some student work: http://www.academicart.com/chistyak.htm
It's a shame that all the talent ends up in the work-for-hire plebertainment industry.
>>2288958
what exactly is classical about square daubs of paint
>>2289152
Money is money.
>>2289029
Please explain 99% of our modern art, then.
We have fantasy illustration for games that's even more generic than OP's pic, yet it's almost made with a stamp.
One mood, one composition, one level of detail, one reference/influence.
Yet these go crazy in the videogame industry, for example.
Explain the tumblr comic strips while you're at it, too.
Tell me all those things are meaningful, or just more meaningful than OP's pic.
>>2289152
>Old masters are worked for free
Topkek
>>2289915
I think he's referring to the fact that many of them had patrons who covered all their expenses for years on end.
>>2288980
This is "the skill level is much lower" is a retarded premise, because people are always comparing the skill level of the average popular contemporary artists to the fucking cream of the crop in human history. For every old master there were thousands of mediocre artists, nobody remembers them because they were mediocre.
We have considerably more shitty artists nowadays because we have considerably more artists period, and self-promotion has been democratized. Before, if you were shit nobody would see your stuff anyway. Now anyone can see anyone's work.
>>2289926
The skill level IS lower. Compare the best of today to the best of then. And considering we have more artists as you say, shouldn't we have more guys at the top too? And yet the people today don't compare. It's also worth looking at the typical work of students coming out of schools. You'll find that the work today is (on average) still much lower. And you can find literally hundreds of people from the late 19thC that are superior technically to the top few people today.
Never mind the issues of people today sticking with school studies their entire life. Yeah Jacob Collins can paint pretty darn well, but what does he do? Still life, nudes, portraits on blank backgrounds, occasionally a little landscape......compare that to the work of old masters who would create whole compositions and handle different subject matters, stories, history paintings, or even just themes of things. Their work was generally more ambitious, larger, and had more meaning behind it. Almost none of the people around today are even attempting that stuff, and when they do it is laughable (see Graydon Parrish). The very fact that someone like Odd Nerdrum feels the need to rely on shock tactics with his art show that he's not able to handle things on the same level as old masters. Or you get the opposite like Lipking who despite great skills is afraid of saying anything and just does empty meaningless nudes that would never challenge anyone or make you think and lacks any real substance.
>>2289935
>compare that to the work of old masters who would create whole compositions and handle different subject matters, stories, history paintings, or even just themes of things.
Boring bible shit
>>2288958
>I feel extremely sad that classical art will never flourish again.
Is the world ending in the next couple of years?
>>2288958
> I wish you could still become famous by painting like this.
Nobody is painting like that, and that huge criteria wasn't common back then.
>>2289942
well memed
>>2288980
>It is essentially dead.
It really isn't. You just don't know shit about fine art and modern masters. You make the typical delusional elitist mistake of confusing your own narrow horizon with the reality around you.
>>2290228
>thinks the ARC salon is comparable to the Paris Salon
And I'm the delusional one.
>>2288958
It's a good thing. sub-culture>general culture everytime.
>>2290228
Not him and not egging you on at all, just genuinely curious
but who today is considered- or in your opinion- are modern masters?
