# What is art? Volume 261



## Designer (Feb 22, 2017)

We have had the opportunity to expound on this topic from time to time, but because the issue is never resolved, I offer yet another thread for discussion.

Please watch the video and discuss.


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## table1349 (Feb 22, 2017)




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## Ysarex (Feb 22, 2017)

He's got a poop problem -- probably somewhat poop retentive.

Joe


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## Ysarex (Feb 22, 2017)

Ysarex said:


> He's got a poop problem -- probably somewhat poop retentive.
> 
> Joe



He's also a bigot. For centuries before and during his "score of centuries" artists also enriched non-western societies with equally good art.

I'm goin' with closed minded bigot with a poop problem.

Joe


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## Trever1t (Feb 22, 2017)

I don't know anything about that guy but I wouldn't disagree with everything he said, I mean, some of what he said sounded grounded.


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## Derrel (Feb 22, 2017)

And Wm. Shakespeare was the LAST DECENT PLAYWRIGHT that ever lived! The absolute PEAK of literature was achieved hundreds of years before the Americas were colonized by Europeans. The standards of Wm. Shakepeare's time were the BEST ONES --EVER!!!! Everything after him is utter $Hi+!!!

Reminds me of the old Mike Meyers SNL character, the proprietor of the shop named All Things Scottish, the guy whose catchphase was, "_*If it's not Scottish--IT'S CRAP*_!"

Sound familiar?


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## table1349 (Feb 23, 2017)




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## table1349 (Feb 23, 2017)

Derrel said:


> And Wm. Shakespeare was the LAST DECENT PLAYWRIGHT that ever lived! The absolute PEAK of literature was achieved hundreds of years before the Americas were colonized by Europeans. The standards of Wm. Shakepeare's time were the BEST ONES --EVER!!!! Everything after him is utter $Hi+!!!
> 
> Reminds me of the old Mike Meyers SNL character, the proprietor of the shop named All Things Scottish, the guy whose catchphase was, "_*If it's not Scottish--IT'S CRAP*_!"
> 
> Sound familiar?


Watch what you say there Laddie, yer treadin on some mighty thin ice.  We know where Portland is and we know how to fine ye.  We may not be able to whip the damn brits but we can sure take care of the likes of you Portlandiers.


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## jcdeboever (Feb 23, 2017)

He is obviously a close minded teacher since his students couldn't recognize that his apron wasn't a Pollack. He lost all credibility with me at that point. I noticed it in a split second. He reminds me of many of the dealers I ran across, the kind you would like to punch in the face.

I once knew a professional and talented copy artist (he passed away) and he could copy the masters with precise accuracy. I asked him who was the hardest artist to copy and he said, "Mark Rothko". He said no matter what he did (he knew of his technique and materials as it is documented) he could never copy the depth, luminosity, and the sense of stepping into a painting that Rothko rendered. But he could copy a Chuck Close, Rembrandt, Cezanne, etc.

What this man misses is the evolution of art. Standards are created by man but to separate them as good or bad is not important and ignorant. Evolution of the creative mind is much larger than can be taught. Art in of itself is almost everything. If I were picking a College for my sibling to attend, his would be a quick scratch off the list.


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## Derrel (Feb 23, 2017)

After approximately 400 years of making representational art, western artists grew tired of the salon rules, and impressionism was born. The world had changed. Cars, electricity, x-, rays, machine guns, airplanes, the telephone,germ theory, indoor plumbing,and more-- and this professor thinks people would continue to paint scenes of ancient mythology and ancient Christian religious scenes? Wondering if this guy understands anything about the role of art within a society. Idolizing 500 year-old flat Earther ideals in 2017? Idolizing representational painting of religious and mythological paintings designed to support say, a 1688 understanding of Europe as the center of the entire world?


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## vintagesnaps (Feb 23, 2017)

The title of the video was enough for me to not want to watch it.

So instead I got curious and looked up Prager thinking maybe it was one of those for profit schools that isn't actually a university even if it's called that. But this isn't even a school, just a website with 5 minute videos. No instructors or courses that I saw. Edit - And shows up as a foreign corporation. Hmm.

There's a PragerU foundation registered as a nonprofit but I can't find a board or officers or anything. Shows up in CA and Maryland/DC. Made 3 mil last year. Not sure if that includes sales from the PragerU site. Found a CEO and some other dude so not quite a one man show but doesn't seem like much more than that.

Not just BS but seems fraudulent to pretend to be any sort of university.


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## jcdeboever (Feb 23, 2017)

vintagesnaps said:


> The title of the video was enough for me to not want to watch it.
> 
> So instead I got curious and looked up Prager thinking maybe it was one of those for profit schools that isn't actually a university even if it's called that. But this isn't even a school, just a website with 5 minute videos. No instructors or courses that I saw. Edit - And shows up as a foreign corporation. Hmm.
> 
> ...



Figures


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## vintagesnaps (Feb 23, 2017)

OK so I looked... I couldn't get thru all 5 min. So now I had to go look up that guy! What grad students???  Not finding anything about him teaching college courses much less grad school. 

It's just getting piled higher and deeper the more I look.


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## table1349 (Feb 23, 2017)

vintagesnaps said:


> OK so I looked... I couldn't get thru all 5 min. So now I had to go look up that guy! What grad students???  Not finding anything about him teaching college courses much less grad school.
> 
> It's just getting piled higher and deeper the more I look.


Sharon, Sharon, Sharon.   

We are living in the time of Alternate Facts.  Reality and honesty are as dead as the idea that the earth is flat.  One no longer needs to be enrolled in school to be a student as one does not need to be employed by a college to call themselves a teacher.  

All one needs to do now is say it loud enough, long enough and there are suckers, er I mean people that will believe it.  You must not forget my dear Sharon that if it is on the internet, especially on YouTube then it has to be correct, for remember you can not lie on the internet.  

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go meet my daughters date.  She met him on the internet.  He's a French Model.


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## Designer (Feb 23, 2017)

Who all watched the video?


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## table1349 (Feb 23, 2017)

I found his grad student............


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## Ysarex (Feb 23, 2017)

Designer said:


> Who all watched the video?



I watched the whole thing -- poop and all.

Joe


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## otherprof (Feb 23, 2017)

Derrel said:


> After approximately 400 years of making representational art, western artists grew tired of the salon rules, and impressionism was born. The world had changed. Cars, electricity, x-, rays, machine guns, airplanes, the telephone,germ theory, indoor plumbing,and more-- and this professor thinks people would continue to paint scenes of ancient mythology and ancient Christian religious scenes? Wondering if this guy understands anything about the role of art within a society. Idolizing 500 year-old flat Earther ideals in 2017? Idolizing representational painting of religious and mythological paintings designed to support say, a 1688 understanding of Europe as the center of the entire world?


The ancient Greeks has muses associated with the creative activities, like epic and lyric poetry, and history (which is one reason I find Herodotus's "History" so much fun. But they had no muse of painting because it was not considered creative, merely copying. The highest praise for grapes painted on a wall was that rhey fooled the birds and they pecked at it.  Talent, of course. Creativity? Another story.


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## Ysarex (Feb 23, 2017)

otherprof said:


> Derrel said:
> 
> 
> > After approximately 400 years of making representational art, western artists grew tired of the salon rules, and impressionism was born. The world had changed. Cars, electricity, x-, rays, machine guns, airplanes, the telephone,germ theory, indoor plumbing,and more-- and this professor thinks people would continue to paint scenes of ancient mythology and ancient Christian religious scenes? Wondering if this guy understands anything about the role of art within a society. Idolizing 500 year-old flat Earther ideals in 2017? Idolizing representational painting of religious and mythological paintings designed to support say, a 1688 understanding of Europe as the center of the entire world?
> ...



My favorite muse is Terpsichore -- poor Rita Hayworth.

Joe


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## table1349 (Feb 23, 2017)

Ysarex said:


> otherprof said:
> 
> 
> > Derrel said:
> ...


You are showing your age.  1947 was a long time ago.


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## Derrel (Feb 23, 2017)

I thought it was ironic that The Prage video crank opined that the old masters "improved upon the work" of each generation before them. Ummmm, I wonder if he's ever seen the documentary done by (famous artist) David Hockney....you know...the documentary in which he proves the secret method of lens drawing that many old "masters" of painting used, as a way to make their paintings as CLOSE to the way the eye sees. Probably not.

Hockney's documentary is entitled *David Hockney's Secret Knowlege*, and it is one of ***the*** most-important documentaries about art and artists that has been made in the last 20 years. Hockney explores, and recreates Vermeer, Caravaggio and Van Eyck masterpieces using the *camera lucida*. "improved upon the previoius generation"....ummm, not so much!

I wonder if the Prager numbskull realized what effect *****photography***** had on representational painting by the beginning of the 1870's....I doubt he's familiar with the idea of paintings that push boundaries, or which make people think. I thought it funny that a guy professing to "teach" about art brought up no really important points as to WHY representational painting was dead by 1940.

For the last 175 years, photography is what "materializes reality, as painting did in the past," as Hockney states.

Watch just the 10:00 to 14:00 segment of Hockney's documentary, to understand how around 1420 A.D., lens drawing hit the world of "painting" like a freight train.


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## Designer (Feb 23, 2017)

What we have here is a failure to communicate.


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## Derrel (Feb 23, 2017)

Check out Caravaggio's transition from a concave mirror-lens camera lucida to a LENS-based camera lucida, in about a one year time span. Start at 43:25. "Projections can now be almost any size you want."

"improved upon each generation". Pfffft.

Did that "professor" ever study anything after he graduated college in the 1970's? Has he updated anything in his brain? Or is he STILL ripping on evetry single artist post 1870? it seems so! Does he not understand that the "old masters" were for the most part, lens-drawers?


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## Designer (Feb 23, 2017)

Not that anybody gives a darn:


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## Derrel (Feb 23, 2017)

Yet again with *the figure skater anaology*!!! Who stole that strawman from who? Did PJ Watson steal that from the Prager crank? Or did the Prager crank steal that analogy from PJ Watson?

The idea that standards of "goodness" or of quality, in ANY area of human endeavor, MUST stay rooted in the pre-1870 era is kind of stupid. Even stupider when one realizes that these "old masters" that are so revered were basically, tracing marks onto canvases for hundred of years!

I would love to hear why modern medicine is crap....and hear a Prager crank relate to us his defense of doctors of the 1860's as representing the *ne plus ultra* of medicine, because that's EXACTLY the (so-called) logic he is attempting to use when he devalues modern art, and elevates pre-Civil War painting to the highest level!

They Don't Make Em Like They Used To is a sure way to get clicks. Now, who wants to go back to a time when bubonic plague and smallpox killed millions, and when a cut finger might mean death in a mere two weeks' time?


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## table1349 (Feb 23, 2017)

Designer said:


> What we have here is a failure to communicate.


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## table1349 (Feb 23, 2017)

Now *THIS *is ART!!!!

Bob where are you when we need you most?


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## Derrel (Feb 23, 2017)

Bob Ross was an expert at crafting well-refined kitsch, or what many people call "art". His paintings were to fine art what Two Broke Girls are to Shakespeare's works.

Credit Card Worries

Kitsch - Wikipedia


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## table1349 (Feb 23, 2017)

Have you ever read Coriolanus?  Makes Bob Ross's work look pretty good.


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## Ysarex (Feb 23, 2017)

gryphonslair99 said:


> Now *THIS *is ART!!!!
> 
> Bob where are you when we need you most?



Bob loved what he did and it made him happy. He made lots of other people happy -- "no mistakes, just happy accidents." And if you don't appreciate his paintings it's because you don't know how to view them appropriately: https://www.leafly.com/news/pop-culture/5-things-youll-watching-bob-ross-high

Joe


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## jcdeboever (Feb 25, 2017)

Derrel said:


> Bob Ross was an expert at crafting well-refined kitsch, or what many people call "art". His paintings were to fine art what Two Broke Girls are to Shakespeare's works.
> 
> Credit Card Worries
> 
> Kitsch - Wikipedia


Bob Ross was a marketing guru. I loved his TV show, I'm surprised him and his son didn't spark up a bowl during a show or two. I used to love his oil medium, it made everything smooth as butter.


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## table1349 (Feb 26, 2017)

Bob Ross was an Artiste of the highest order.  Rembrandt..........Bah!    Monet...........Phhhhhhh.      Van Gogh........... Child's Play.  None of them had the skills that Bob had.  Did you ever see Rembrandt paint a happy little tree?   Did Monet ever put in a happy little bush?   And Van Gogh, why the only thing he ever had that was happy was his ear that managed to escape him.   Bob Ross sets the standard that all other so called Artiste should be judged by.   

Bob was a Artiste of the People, by the People, for the People.    It is time that we *Make Art Great Again.  *


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## bribrius (Aug 11, 2017)

They are right. Much art in my opinion has declined along with the mentalities of the people that promote it. But this isn't simply a art problem as art mimicks society to a extent. The west is in decline. As a country as a civalization rises it produces great art at its pinnacle. On the civilizations decline and its societys decline it produces chit. As that is what civalization has succumb to. Not to say a individual variance cant be found but if you look at the rise and fall of civalizations i believe you will find a trend with arts and crafts produced


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## davidbeckphoto (Aug 28, 2017)

First of all, that guy is full of ****.

The art industry depends on people like to make their business legitimate, but it's not always for the better. Compare the art industry to more traditional industries like manufacturing or finance - without standards, rules, and predictable patterns, it's nearly impossible to quantify what's going on, what something is worth, and who is winning. It's easier for a person or organization to sell tons of high-dollar art when they can "objectively prove" that it is, in fact, finer art than the next guy's art. 

Unfortunately for the art world, there are established formulas for selling massive volumes of uninspired, soulless "art". It's like pop music - it's technically perfect, it uses algorithms to appeal to the largest audience, and the record labels decide what's going to be a hit and what isn't before the song is even recorded. 

My point is, this guy is speaking purely out of self-interest. He's selling art school, and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even believe half the **** that came out of his mouth.


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## timor (Sep 4, 2017)

WOW !! That was really interesting discussion of art connoisseurs. Very academic. I thought I see CNN blasting at Trump. I mean the intensity, almost like trowing up, almost like shooting self in the head. Are you afraid, that all your art and your believes is, after all, a crap ? Somewhere in the middle of 20th century we were firmly made self lying, self applauding society, living mostly on gossips and lies of so called, very often self appointed, authorities. And this is easier, to become an apostles of loudest bully. Some weed to calm our senses, some booze to forget conflicting emotions. The path is clear, anything goes in search of personal happiness. Finally we free ! What a happy thought ! No one has a right to take this away from us. Right ?


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