Does the new "epic art" being produced by North Korean artists show us that there is an alternative to the degenerate art being peddled by gallery owners and other high culture merchants in capitalist centers like New York and London? The art dealers try to tell us that we live in post-modern times and that beautiful naturalistic art is dead, and that we should be happy to pony up our cash, be it for canvases or museum admission, to see simple shapes and splatters, and the occasional literal turd. The same way aggressive Japanese commercial expansion forced America out of it's 60s hangover with the influx of affordable quality cars and appliances will these new installations of truly epic art force American artists to snap out of their infantile regression into the primitive? Or is commodity art doomed to be inferior to great art commissioned by the strong?
>>7624498
I cant even justify a tiny little aspect of this being literature.
>>/ic/
>>7624586
yeah, but no one else is literate enough to talk about art and aesthetics, or critical enough to consider the affects of the economic system on culture production
>>7624591
The entire population of this board are pretentious English major undergrads, many of whom wear tight pants suggesting an apathy towards capitalism or success. Just because they cruise through books does not mean any have gone to an art gallery.
>>7624498
Nope, your appreciation for kitschy North Korean propaganda art is every bit as postmodern as a literal turd. You can't turn back the clock, OP. Or rather you can, but that would be a very postmodern thing to do.
I'd prefer something with a bit of originality. Anything that separates this art from what's already been done?
>>7624498
>Wife and I go into gallery
>She is doctor, I ran ops for a sales outfit for years
>we have plenty of money
>We browse the gallery, but much of the art is local and marked up into the 5 digits, and beyond that nothing catches our eye
>we start to leave
>gallery owner berates us and our generation, calling us poor windowshoppers and suggesting we lack sophistication
this may be true, but listening to art dealers is not something I take seriously.
>>7624498
>will an industry with lower yield and a lesser ratio of resources available for marketing...
No desu
>>7624617
>tricked by capitalist merchants to fetishize the new
doh hoho stay pleb
>>7624649
Really though, Anon raises the obvious point.
I wonder if "the Renaissance" seemed as kitch to its contemporaries as the Asian retro painters now to us.
>>7624669
I just like what I like. My favorite painter is Thomas Cole, and whatever that says about me, I find historical landscapes and vistas pleasing. Is there an art board on here that assigns people as plebs and patricians based on their art appreciation, because I always found "good" art to be way way more subjective than good books.
>>7624614
actually that painting has nothing to do with North Korean propaganda, it's an installation in Cambodia celebrating the history of Angkor Wat. So, i suppose if you wanted to know what's "new" about it, although it is traditional "history painting" a pre-modern western favorite, it is done by Asian artists to commemorate Asian history, so I guess there's a new twist. Just like the Japanese appropriating Betty Boop to create an entire industry of hyper-sexualize semi-adult cartoon entertainment, the North Koreans have appropriate western history painting to commemorate Asian history. Moreover, the Japanese copied the moderate success of Atari, but ended up completely dominating the video game industry for twenty years. So I wouldn't underestimate Asian copycats.
>>7624639
don't blame him for spotting newmoney trash
>>7624693
>celebrating the history of Angkor Wat
>everything's on fire
Eh?
I assumed propaganda because OP said 'North Korean'. Is it not North Korean artists in the pay of the government, then? Dissidents or something?
>it is done by Asian artists to commemorate Asian history, so I guess there's a new twist
Chinese artists have been doing that for most of the 20th century- I wouldn't really call it 'new'.
Those three sixty artworks are brilliant, I saw one in The Hague.
>>7624938
It's a North Korean "art factory" or "workshop" or "collective" or whatever the fuck you wanna translate it as, they do big ass installations of public art for developing countries. What Chinese artist or even Western history painter ever created canvases on that scale? I think you'd have to look back to Christian art commissioned by the Vatican to find something on the same scale. Is that what rustles your jimmies my friend? Dutch genre painting aside, commodity art has always been pretty shit compared to state sponsored works.
>>7624938
So why feign knowledge and authority about something obscure like this? I can at least understand when people do it with well known or meme shit. Hit the back button every now and then pls
>>7624498
The North Koreans literally copied this form the Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Cyclorama
>>7626036
Is nothing sacred!?
>>7624649
there a difference between "radical new", which in the 20th century was a huge myth that started with impressionism and snaked up to the garbage of today, where art isn't supposed to be "retinal" anymore; and "new" in the seemingly small progressions between what came before and what comes after a genius.
The difference between Marlowe and Shakespeare, formally, is incredibly small. By today's standards Shakespeare wouldn't be an "innovator", since he still wrote plays after Marlowe wrote plays. If he had somehow crossed it with a naked jazz recital in the scene before Hal's betrayal, then it would be innovation (tm).
It's come down to us being to shallow to notice good innovation rather than there not being capability for it. The difference between Dante and Virgil is enormous. The difference between DeKooning and Jasper Johns is negligible.
Visual Art has it the worst though, because of the monetary value of the artwork. When it comes to poetry, I can tell you that while they're "difficult", there are good living poets. There are decent living young poets, and some of them are even accessible. Innovation is coming faster and faster. Poetry is actually doing great right now, but nobody is reading it. Elites don't care, since a poem isn't worth anything in money terms. I don't even know if you get paid for a submission to Poetry anymore. A "bestseller" in poetry is any collection that sells more than 1000 copies. And yet people still read and write it, and tangible innovation is still there. Not formally, since "formal" innovation was killed a long time ago in the large sense. Knowing this, poets have actually learned to write, well, POETRY will content, and ignore the idea of shallow 20th century formalism.
Novels are similar, though I don't see much "new" happening there in the same way. Books are supposed to sell, otherwise they aren't published. Fortunately for poetry, it doesn't sell, so its integrity is strong.
Visual Art, at the museum level, died a long time ago. Photography excepted. And I wouldn't feel bad about it either, the only importance of "formal innovation" in Visual Art is to the rich magnates who buy shitty Warhol silk prints for $100m so they can let their 3 business friends see it in their 10000 square foot fourth master bedroom located in their seventh mansion.the lesson here is to read poetry or novels if you want good art. visual art is split between vapid commercialized retinal art that doesn't afford more than a second glance; and conceptual art that might require many essay's worth of thought, but certainly doesn't deserve it.
first impression
>>7626078
what's good contemporary poetry in your view
>>7626103
well good poets that are on their way to the cemetery are John Ashbery, WS Merwin, Jay Wright, and Geoffrey Hill.
There are a few younger poets who are alright. No, I don't consider Alt-Lit "poetry" to be poetry, and I don't consider fake-experimental poetry like Rae Armantrout to be good poetry.
>>7624498
>degenerate
stopped reading there
global rule 3 senpai
you realize there are painters other than jackson fucking polack right?
>>7624498
There's art comparable to this being made by the West. You are just cherry picking stuff.
>>7626036
ATL has one, too. over by the zoo.
>>7624498
Pure ideology to be honesht, family and so on.
>>7626321
Of course! Warhol, Rothko, Duchamp, the list goes on...
>>7626121
Bro do you even Flarf?
>>7624639
The whole point of being an art dealer is guilting people into overpaying for paintings.
Well, that and money laundering.
![Casshern_Sins_Ep19_Believe_in_the_Flower_that_Lives_in_your_Heart_[1080p,BluRay,x264]_-_THORA.mkv_snapshot_15.18_[2014.05.11_03.44.32].png](https://i.imgur.com/PJDWQL3.jpg "Casshern_Sins_Ep19_Believe_in_the_Flower_that_Lives_in_your_Heart_[1080p,BluRay,x264]_-_THORA.mkv_snapshot_15.18_[2014.05.11_03.44.32].png")
>>7624498
Anime/Animation and Manga/Comic Books are the paintings of Contemporary History, there's been a shift in the expressivity of the media.
>>7624669
It did. Most of the time the commissioners weren't even happy about the work, I'm talking about things that nowadays we judge as groundbreaking.
This is just Jack Vettriano (the shame of scotland) writ large.
>>7626456
Great art has a function. Glorification of a state is no less legitimate than any other function. It's when art is removed from functionality and becomes "art for art's sake" that we get postmodern bullshit.
>>7630009
I didn't say otherwise. The word 'propaganda' wasn't intended as a criticism or dismissal, just a statement of fact.
I'd probably disagree that 'art for art's sake' serves no function and is necessarily bullshit, though.
>>7624498
he doesn't know asian artists only copy what works in the west to sell it to us, including artists who use the technique of ancient masters.
>>7626036
hahaha OP shitted on by a picture and a wiki article. the epitome of /lit/
>>7630232
"north korea"... nevermind: i was thinking of chinese artists mostly, and i presume south koreans do that too. nk is a lost dog , i don't think they got anything going at that level.
>>7630009
>great art has function
w.e.w. L.a.d.
>>7624498
>all the people ITT who think they have some godly authority to say what art is
I agree that a lot of "contemporary" or "postmodern" art is horseshit but you are naive as fuck if you hold the position that just because it's bad it isn't art or that, in turn, if something is good that means its art. Art isn't a title rewarded to something for making you cry
>>7624639
>things that didn't happen
>>7624498
If it isn't in some major western city it doesn't count as art; $, attention, etc.
