/jp/ - Otaku Culture

OHHH, MUSHROOMS WITH EYES SO NEW AND ORIGINAL.

God is dead.

>>23128

Cirno, stop making up stories. You're barely literate. Your letting Letty type up your posts again aren't you?

This is how Japan feels about art.

>>23160

Tell me, the famous of statue of Lady Justice outside the Old Bailey in London 'devoid of meaning'? Is Laocoon and His Sons devoid of meaning? Or is it that these works do not require ten A4 sheets of printed word to understand and ergo do not have a concept? Your elitism is stunning, the vast majority of people DESPISE modern art, and so it will continue.

I like art

>>23372
Pulls words out of context to create an inconceivable retort. Keeps reusing one inconceivably pretentious word.

>>23554

Exactly...

>>23593

Well, I'm assuming you're not trolling.
What do you make of the Lascaux cave paintings?

Can you point to a better contemporary painter/drawer in the ability to capture the bare essentials of motion and form as tangibly as these simple finger-paintings?

They're so simple, yet you can almost feel the weight, tug and roundness of their horse stomachs, with a just a big smear of blood.

>>23616
>Yours is the art of the mediocre, able only to craft what they see. If you can't make what has never been seen, your art will always be simply that of the boardwalk caricaturist.
;-;

>>23628

My solid Iron, pre-colonial Yoruba head begs to differ.

This stuff was being made in the 13th and 15th Centuries, few people in continental Europe could work with metal this carefully, and sculpt the human form (in a remarkably Greek tradition) as skillfully.

That said, you should remember that just because the Greek interpretation of the human form has dominated western art for over two thousand years, doesn't somehow make it the absolute, ultimate (or "true") system of describing humans.

That said, I somewhat regret this Yoruba example because it looks so much like something out of a Greek formal tradition (mind you your Greek statues were painted idols in their days of glory, they had a very concrete utilitarian purpose and they looked the part). I think maybe ought to break out some Chinese painting or something.

>>23913

If we're talking about aesthetics, than Athens is only interested in a very narrow, rather anachronistic view of the western tradition as something triumphant above the horrid and degenerate shadows of savage peoples. Some time in the middle of the 20th Century, after the colonial imperialist era ended, our ideas about this began to change. It might have something to do with the success of modernists like Picasso who basically adapted African art and brought all kinds of new attention to it.

Non-western art has had a Huge and Immeasurable impact on our modern visual language. You have to really have your head dug in the sand to try to deny its importance behind a smelly racist diatribe.

Things HAPPENED. Jazz happened Rock happened, Modernism happened, I'm sorry, but they happened, and they are having an extremely important impact on our culture.

We began to see the Western tradition WITHIN the BROADER CONTEXT of human art of the time. It's within this context that we can even begin to understand "classical" greek sculpture as it was then: painted, life-like (as realism was understood then) within a long tradition idol worship that would continue into European medieval art, figuration, and indeed, our modern conception of what a human looks like.

Because you see Athens, if we think a beautiful woman looks like a Greek statue and not the woman in the picture, as it did for 18th Century Japanese, it was because of Greek art is what we had, it's how we understand the world, and in its defence, it had an amazing power and longevity which is still very much with us today in ways we can't even begin to measure.

>>24193

>>24200
>The vast majority of those statues looked probably more like colorful versions of plastic manequins in our malls

Oh god fail harder.

Yes they were painted. But they weren't painted *garishly* so.

I am rather enjoying the personal attacks and the shoehorning of viewpoints that's happening in this thread.

No really. I'm enjoying it. Keep up the good work.

ITT CULTURE WARS

>>24643
You're getting too obvious.

Super flat isn't an art style.

>>22147
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superflat

other than, you know, it is.

"Art is what you can get away with."

-Andy Warhol

http://www.moca.org/murakami/

Heh. I like Murakami. I just saw an exhibit of his work a couple weeks ago, the sculptures are pretty great in person.

>>22252
I do too. I just wish more people got the point that it isn't about producing SUPER COOL CUTE THINGS in ULTRA LIMITED SUPPLIES to make them rarer. its calling that marketing bullshit the cancer that is killing japan.

>>22214
I always have found this quote to be a one of the most important statements about the direction of our culture, on par with Nietzsche's "God is dead", though in this case the thing that died was art.

>>22316

Too bad 95% of the people who use the quote "God is Dead" don't know what the fuck it means, or even the rest of the quote.

>>22359

Enlight me.

>>22296
Yeah, marketing and selling cheap and useless shit is such a heavy part of modern Japanese culture that, the way I look at it, Murakami is doing his part as a culturally-relevant artist to exploit it. And anyway, I think he's genuinely creative and talented unlike a lot of post-modern artists who try to say something about society.

>>22376
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

basically, "God said so" was no longer functioning as a source of moral authority, and an need to create a non-biblical value system.

I dont care for Murakami's work, but Yoshimoto Nara and Mr.'s stuff is really great.

>>22376

Most assume that "God is Dead" is some sort of Atheist statement--hence the annoying "joke" "Nietzsche is Dead - God" that Christfags like to toss around.

The real quote, the longest and most well known version, is "God is dead, and we have killed him." It relates to his ideas on Perspectivism, and how a secular, more scientific European world has effectively "killed" the old Christian God, the basis for their moral judgement and most of society's laws. Nietzsche's statement is more one of fear--people must now "create" God in a modern image, or replace him. It was also a statement of fear that humans would never again think of the "cosmic" order--they would put themselves in front of that which they did not understand.

>>22420

So, what would be the equivalent in art? How does Murakami fit here? Just asking; my brain works slowly.

>>22376
"God is dead" doesn't mean that he literally died and neither is it a celebration of atheism. He is lamenting the fact that God can no longer act as the sole source of teleology and moral codes.

>>22466
>>22476
>>22420

Woah. Thanks, but still my question here>>22468

>>22490

I don't know if there would be an artistic equivalent.

>>22468
The existence of art requires faith in its status as "art", and thus requires the artist to walk on a tight rope between form and feeling. Andy Warhol reveals the fact that art is only what we have faith in and states that anything that you can "get away with" can be given the status of "art". In the same way, Murakami is trying to see what he can get away with. However, such an attitudes towards art is admitting it's transience, and thus kills it. Thus, art is dead.

>>22214

What a bunch of fucking shit. Warhol = A hack.

>>22476
1) He's not lamenting. He considers it an improvement.
2) Not not the sole, but rather no kind of moral source at all. He even goes into how dangerous it is to take moral guidance from a god we treat as non existent for all "important practical matters".

>>22562

Ooooooooooooooooh.

So...

Art is dead.

We're giving Warhol too much credit. This shit started with Dada. I refuse to call people like Murakami and Warhol artists, when they're main goal is to destroy art. It's disgusting.

>>22591
>2) Not not the sole, but rather no kind of moral source at all. He even goes into how dangerous it is to take moral guidance from a god we treat as non existent for all "important practical matters".

His message wasn't nihilistic if that's what you mean. Too many people interpret it as such, and there are literally reams and reams of papers online (check JSTOR) that describe the famous 'God is dead' passage as a 'lament'. Not so much on the death of religion, but fear over what comes after it (if nothing at all!)

>>22591

>1) He's not lamenting. He considers it an improvement.

I don't know much about this Nietzsche guy, nor in which circumstances he said that, but if the quote in >>22420
is accuarate, it sounds like a lament. Or was he being somewhat sarcastic?

>>22622

Dadaism is an infantile disease, a festering cancer upon culture in general.

>>22622

>I refuse to call people like Murakami and Warhol artists, when they're main goal is to destroy art.

Well, I must say that makes sense.

Holy shit man, Superflat on MY 4chan?

I tried, but I always had trouble getting discussions about Superflat going in /a/, where you'd figure it would be most at home.

For one thing, I've always thought of KyoAni as a semi-Superflat studio, so whenever people would start trashing it on /a/ I couldn't help but try to point out a connection between the self-referencing and frivolity in Haruhi and Lucky Star with the kinds of trends in superflat. It actually works pretty well, especially in Haruhi, which can be seen as an apocalypse story, so it works a little like Evangelion, the narrative apocalypse that is also an aesthetic apocalypse.

But I guess those two works shouldn't really be compared with Anno's work in Gainax.

>>22641

He's lamenting not perhaps because God is "dead," but because he doesn't think people, as a whole, are ready to deal with the consequences of what that means.

>>22717

Oh got it. "Poor us".

>>22622
I agree with this.

>>22692
Seems like a very shaky argument considering Haruhi and Lucky Star were both adapted from outside sources. And in those sources I don't see any major or non-coincidental superflat influences worth noting.

>>22593
well, yes and no.

"Art for art's sake" has ALWAYS been dead, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Creative energy is more and more put into purely capitalist ventures, though. Where someone would once make a living as a painter selling specific works for a modest living, or as a pianist, now we have "visual design coordinators" and "sound engineers" in shit like video games.

it's still intensely creative work, but generally robbed of the layer of impracticality. It is art designed to be used, not unlike the vases and similar art works of the ancient world.

the difference from THAT, though, is that the use isn't "to hold shit" or "to form a wall" or even "be a paperweight." the function of these works, like all products in a capitalist system, is to be consumed. in pre-capitalism, bread is used when eaten. in post-capitalism, bread is used when purchased. so, the purpose of this art is to be purchased.

I know, sounds kind of marxist, but keep in mind this doesn't mean it can't be good. but on some level, there does need to be some "art for art's sake." a little bit of "fuck you, this is personal." which commercial art lacks in a fundamental sense. the best compromise is to include a bit of the personal in the commercial.

It's like how you draw a distinction between Justin Timberlake and Johnny Cash.

"The two most potent post-war orthodoxies—socialist politics and modernist art—have at least one feature in common: they are both forms of snobbery, the anti-bourgeois snobbery of people convinced of their right to dictate to the common man in the name of the common man."

- Roger Scruton

>>22622
I think art as a formal convention has little direction to go if not straight into fucking with itself. Art definitely still lives on in our culture and media, from magazine covers to graffiti'd trains, but art in the traditional Western sense, only hung in museum galleries and wealthy townhouses, is becoming entirely impractical to maintain under its own weight.

In any case, this is just my opinion as an artist (and before anyone asks - seriously - not a "deviantartist" or some shit, an actual studying artist), and art itself can only be precisely defined in the mind of the individual.

>>22622


But I thought this was the point.
As a civilization, for the last fifty years or more, we have no idea what to do with this object we keep around our elitist upperclass, "Art". We have no idea where to put it, it takes up too much room, as a distinction it seems increasingly irrelevant whenever you turn on a television, a radio, or the internet.

These superflatists started out trying to galvanize the "Japanese Art Scene", but when they realized that it was non-existant, just an imitation of western traditions, they went ahead and embraced the non-sacred nature of Japanese commercial art, the only art, as far as they're concerned, of Japan. I think Murakami even went as far as to put traditional Buddhist art on the same level as floating world art.

I think his argument was that Japanese art has never had the transcendent qualities that European art saught to achieve in the religious paintings of the Italian Rennaissance. A classical burden that even in 1950 was still somehow the basis of the Western Art scene.
What exactly are you looking for in your
Pollock?
The Japanese monks would frequently encourage their students to "burn the Buddha". I think it's in this spirit that a lot of Japanese religious art was never as significant, there was never a practice of reliquary in Japan. donno.

>>22865
>In any case, this is just my opinion as an artist (and before anyone asks - seriously - not a "deviantartist" or some shit, an actual studying artist), and art itself can only be precisely defined in the mind of the individual.

Right, and by studying artist you mean someone who is taught that any attempt at realism is 'backwards' and that the 'impressionists led the way' right?

>>22750

>Justin Timberlake and Johnny Cash.

I lol'd.

Thanks. I get the part of art as a consumer product, but yeah, a little bit of personal touch can make a huge difference in the final (oops) product.

>>22838
Ironic. Grouping socialism with trashy, postmodern art is just as snobbish.

>>22888
Haha. If you're just going to ignore and nullify everything I say, then I'll just drop it. I'm not in this thread to argue, anyway.

>>22750 >a little bit of "fuck you, this is personal."

Try telling that to /ic/.

>>22562
Art is being driven to create something beyond consideration of living a pleasant life. You have something to express, and you HAVE to express it. You might hate it. You can't explain to anybody why your throwing your life away doing playing with paints or clay, spending money and time on an English major, or getting shit for money despite years of effort. But you can't stop. You can't live without trying to get across that something.
You try things. You learn about expression. You specialize in one or a few mediums, and you keep striving to put 'it' into your work, so that sometimes, someone will see it and get what you mean, and immediately try to tell you in words, and fail.
That's the payoff. "Ok my god, I did it. He gets what I'm feeling. We can talk about it. We can try to figure it out." That is my understanding of what art is supposed to be.

>>22936

I *know* for a *fact* that that is how art is taught in colleges and academies around the western world.

>>22922

Both Modernism and Postmodernism are two sides of the same coin. As a Historian I can tell you that this period of our history in artistic terms will be looked at with nothing more than a cursory derisive glance in years to come. Great art is art about life, shit art is art about art.

>>22970

>shit art is art about art
>art about art

META-ART

Artists complaining about elitism are a joke. The designation of things as "art" requires the elite, otherwise art destroys itself in postmodern faggotry. Not to mention that comparing Warhol's egalitarian perspective to Nietzsche, who believed strongly in social classes, is ridiculous.

>>22970


oh! oh!

Can I please borrow your crystal ball?

Mine broke a while back in an accident after I misread what it meant to say.

>>22970
Same thing they said about Monet and his friends.

>>22975
Oh, I know. You're *generally* right in thinking that. But just because I have an education under an institution doesn't mean I have to agree and conform to everything they teach. You're making foolish assumptions that learning from them makes me "one of them."

>>22838
it is worth noting that Scruton is, however, a colossal jackass.
He makes Richard Dawkins look moderate and respectful.

and his sense of aesthetics is terrible. He seems to think Western Civ, in art and music ceased any development in 1680.

nevermind his PRO-Fox-Hunting arguments. it takes serious asshole-cojones to argue in support of something as absurdly archaic, demonstrably cruel, and decadently aristocratic as chasing a fucking fox through vast tracts of privately owned wilderness.

>>23021

I never liked Monet, or impressionism or proto-impressionism in general. But Monet at least had a realistic core, albeit altered by the influence of light. It can't really be compared to purely 'conceptual' (of which the concept is not comprehensible at all) art.

>>23008

Agreed, but if you're an artist today, what do you do?

Do you make video games? Do you make porn? Do you make Touhou music CDs? Do you partake in one subculture (significantly more productive than the Tokyo Art Scene) or do you take part in another subculture, the traditional elite one? I have nothing against elitism, but it seems like if superflat and "postmodern faggotry" are good for anything, it's pointing out that today it seems like the only thing we have is an increasingly colliding field of subcultures that have an increasingly difficult time differentiating themselves from one another.

I would call it "mass culture" but it seems more like a conglomeration of niche cultures competing for the same wavelength of mass culture.

>>23043
>chasing a fucking fox through vast tracts of privately owned wilderness
you make it sound kinda fun, anon.

>>23024

But that's exactly your opinion.

>>23043

Wow... Fucking libtard of EPIC proportions spotted. Are you a troll or something?

>>23010

Take it from me, you and your 'art' is nothing but a blemish.

SO WHAT IS AN ASPIRING ARTIST SUPPOSED TO DO

Who's saying art is dead? I don't believe that. This is a little unrelated, but:

What about people like me? I'm currently writing a book. It's not so I can sell it and make a ton of money, even though I'd love that as a result. I'm writing it with literary integrity, and will not pander to any would-be buyer and make it accessible for the masses. My viision will be reaching the pages as if I weren't selling it at all.

So even with capitolism, how is art dead? I am not the only person in the world, I'm sure there are much more like me.

>>23128

Im writing a postapocaliptic book just for the sake of it.

Who's saying art is dead? I don't believe that. This is a little unrelated, but:

What about people like me? I'm currently writing a book. It's not so I can sell it and make a ton of money, even though I'd love that as a result. I'm writing it with literary integrity, and will not pander to any would-be buyer and make it accessible for the masses. My vision will be reaching the pages as if I weren't selling it at all.

So even with capitalism, how is art dead? I am not the only person in the world, I'm sure there are much more like me.

>>23109
I wasn't aware they allowed fascists to be weeaboo. but hey, enjoy your shitty "realism" that is utterly devoid of emotional content. Painters should be like photographers or they're just hacks, right?

>>23138

You'll be looking less for the art crowd and more for the lit crowd on this one.

Although, most novels published since the 19th century have been done in such a way as to make money--so you'll probably have to concede somewhere down the line.

>>23160

Give him a break he's Greek.

>>23169
Shut the fuck up with the cirno hate fgt

I don't get the whole "baaaaaaaaaaaaw modern art killed art!" shit. Seriously, who the hell cares. Art isn't dead. Art will never be dead. Art is whatever the hell you make of it, and to each his own.

Good god, you're ruining art by trying to define it, can't you see? You can't separate between what is art and what is not, or what is "high" art and what is "low" art. Art is, simply, the work of an artist, who, simply, takes his view of the world, and commits it to a form that can be seen by others. No matter how base, how trivial, how terrible something is, it's art as long as it shows the way that someone views the world.

That's why we have art, damn it. It's not so we can look back on it in fifty years and say how good it was. It's not so we can hang it in galleries and get people to look at it and go "Ooh!" It's not so we can gather round, lift it high as the product of our generation, then proudly place it against the works of other generations.

No, instead, art is simply the way in which one communicates how he sees the world to another.

>>23126

starve, motherfucker

>My vision will be reaching the pages as if I weren't selling it at all.

and it won't. that is, no one will read it.

because that shit only works if you actually have talent and passion and creativity and a soul.

and if you had any of those, you wouldn't be on 4chan. or a tripfag.

>>23212
>Good god, you're ruining art by trying to define it, can't you see?

No, you have to draw the line somewhere. If art is everything then art is nothing.

>>23138
The argument has little to do with capitalism, and a lot more to do with socialism. Taste, or the designation of things as "artistic", requires an elite class of people. Once the class system is taken away, we don't know what art is anymore and, as one anon put it, art destroys itself in a fit of postmodern faggotry.

>>23212

And so we pray...
Unlimited Blade Works.


Except we can't....
fucking Mirror Moon.

>>23245
Then art is nothing.

>>23233

Not that I really want to get into this argument you two are having, but the Marxists would tell you that the main reason people hate "modern" art is because the mainstream viewer is now too stupid to get it and the upper class viewer sees it as something breaking with their rank and file.

I'm not agreeing with either of you, but there are plenty of theories about why "most people hate modern art" that don't boil down to "because it sucks."

>>23212
So art is either base entertainment or postmodern sophistry, eh? Disgusting.

>>23172
Literature with integrity is still art. My goal is to create art with words. I have one story that's going to be written in prose, and while I can't tell you much more about it - it's important to the narrative.

I know very well that shit isn't going to sell. Ever. I will probably just give it away to as many people as I can. Things I do will become naturally accessible on its own. I got done with the planning stages of a different story and thought to myself "This one is actually accessible, it can be marketed." So I will be marketing it. Simple, and I don't have to sacrifice any of my work to do it.

There are still plenty of artists out there. I'm not the only idiot with this mindset, I can assure you. There will always be art.

>>23245
Art is like cooking. Heating up a frozen dinner isn't cooking, and everyone knows it. But your mom making meatloaf is cooking, and everyone can tell. So is a chef a famous French restaurant that ends up costing the diner $500.

It's so damn simple. The line needs not be drawn, because it's already there.

>>23256

You would destroy art because you have no talent and want to see even the talentless become 'great'.

Surely if you want to express multilayered concepts, write a play or something! Or write a book! A painting, modern or postmodern, does not have the capacity for depth that the written word does in terms of conceptual meaning.

Each medium has it's place. Painting and sculpture should have concepts that are readily identifiable, in short, the concept should be comprehensible or the art itself is failure.

>>23270
No. Art is me, taking what I see, and allowing you to see it. No matter if I do it with oils, with verse, with instruments, or with pencils, it's art, because I took my world, and let you take a glimpse.

>>23273

I know that literature is art, but you tend to get a forced seperation by other "arts." I work in a Literature department, and I'm about to get my MA in lit, and I'll tell you that from here, it really sucks to see how the "Humanities" all seemingly throw themselves at Literature as if to tear it asunder or push it away.

Anyway,

Literature with integrity is really all that's worth studying. So, if you're not trying to be Stephen King, I say all the power to you. If your work ends up being of considerable critical value, you won't have to worry about it selling. People will look for it--hell, Faulkner sold miserably for a long time.

>>23256

agreed.

>>23233
There's nothing elitist about it. There is nothing fucking wrong with confusion. Something can mean MORE THAN ONE THING.

Your concept of art is little better than playing connect the dots. You look at it, you see the shape, you identify the shape, and you're done with it forever.

Great works of fiction, great pieces of art, there's room for discussion, for debate as to the meaning. And it's great because ANYONE CAN PLAY. You don't NEED a doctorate in Art Appreciation. If the only level you want to look at is "it kind of looks like a shell" that's fine. If you feel like going deeper, "The warm colors, the way that line draws your eye over the picture to the center. it makes me feel safe" that's fine too. If you REALLY want to go "well, it's derivative of Rembrant" that's fine, I guess, but people are going to call you a dick. Critical theory doesn't require anything outside of the work itself to analyze it.

You're no better than the Soviets with their "Social Realism." That shit looks just like what it's supposed to. no confusion, no muddled thinking, no difference of opinion.

>>23245
Actually, that's a great idea. Art is nothing. When people take their hearts, their souls, their minds, and truly express themselves using them, without the vanity inherent in attempting to create "art," then we will see great masterpieces.

I do art to be better than my parents.

>>23349

Ahah! So now all the old masters were 'vain' because they were better than you and your hacks?

Your artspeak is strong, but it is nothing more than a web of lies spun by an elegant sophist.

>>23336
>Your concept of art is little better than playing connect the dots. You look at it, you see the shape, you identify the shape, and you're done with it forever.

Bit of an exagerration? I love the way you take and twist my words into something I didn't mean. If art is to have a concept (which is a near universal belief) then that concept should be comprehensible. How hard is that to understand?

>>23281

So the Bolsheviks have hijacked our art as a kind of internal "barbarian invasion" and now in our Dark Age of cultural decadence we're made to believe that our fast food is really good food?

Sounds about as credible as anything else, exept by my book they're still both food, and your crass supeflat culture is still the art your civilization is producing. From an art historical perspective it's all invaluable in figuring out the spirit and mentality of our times.

As for the aesthetic discussions, well, that's also interesting, but I could never draw any aesthetic conclusions myself, I would never dare.

>>23372
No, not at all. Just as creation should be done from the heart, so should absorption. If you don't feel something is good, it isn't. If you feel it is, it is.

Why revere something simply because it has been revered? Why hate something simply because it has been hated? Why not look at something, and inside yourself, judge it, freely?

>>23349
Art requires form, and art must have a basis in concepts we can identify. Otherwise, you'll only have the misplaced feelings of our primal selves.

>>23238
I have plenty of talent, passion, and creativity. I believe people will want to read the things I write, and I believe they will enjoy it.

>>23405
I agree with you on some points, but feel that you didn't get the idea on others.

I argued not that fast food is as good as "fine" food. Simply that both are food, and that is obvious. No one said that art has to be good.

>>23372
If I twisted your words, it's because you made a grand condemnation of everything you think isn't art, which includes everything that is quite objectively art, but doesn't fit your tiny definition of "stuff that looks purdy and sucks the dicks of a bunch of pederasts on the balkan peninsula from thousands of years ago."

Art makes you think. Your demand that the art exactly represent something demands that it does NOT make you think. You ask for nothing but to be pleasing to the eye.

You don't need to be able to figure out what it is. Something doesn't have to be anything at all. You're trapped in a small mind.

>>23442
>No, not at all. Just as creation should be done from the heart, so should absorption. If you don't feel something is good, it isn't. If you feel it is, it is.

You are purposefully using vague terms like 'feel' rather than any technical dimension so you can't be rebutted properly. You are also straying off topic. If somethin has no concept, no meaning and no element of expertise then how can one enjoy it? Apart from posturing on 4chan and pretending they can of course.

Make no mistake, you haven't killed realism, it simply lies dormant.

>>23448
>misplaced feelings of our primal selves

Perhaps the same could be said of all human expression.

>>23482
>"stuff that looks purdy and sucks the dicks of a bunch of pederasts on the balkan peninsula from thousands of years ago."

Nice rebuttal there, straying well into ad-hominem territory, regardless my scope is not 'small'. It encompasses everything from the Archaic age of Greece to the Academic Age of the late 19th century.

Thread started off pretty nice but degenerated into a reminder of why I chose sciences.

Abstract discussions of art on a forum made because moot wasn't sure where all the visual novel and figurine threads were supposed to go.

>>23490
But the vaugeness is my point. All people need not feel the same way about something.

I can feel that I don't like Raphael while I admire his technical skills very much. But the feeling is what matters.

Enjoy grading things on absolute scales while I can take the enjoyment of looking at something, and then simply saying, "It's beautiful."

Also. The whole nature of evaluating the goodness or badness of something arises from how that thing relates to some purpose or goal. Is a rain storm good or bad? Well, that depends on whether you are a farmer hoping for a drought to break or a backpacker hoping to keep his sleeping bag dry. The goodness or badness isn't an intrinsic property of the thing itself (as if there's drop of goodness or evil somewhere inside the thing), but rather how the properties of the thing relate to some contextual goal against which it is being judged. It is important to note that this is not in any way the same thing as a relativist view of the good. The fact that something impedes or promotes a goal is a matter of objective fact which can be studied and evaluated and there are right and wrong answers to the question. It's not just a matter of subjective or relativist opinion, it's a matter of objective fact.

>>23535

You are the kind of person that would find an industrial wasteland beautiful. You are a worthless piece of shit and you deserve to die a thousand deaths.

>>23514
It also conveniently Eurocentric, and excludes entire artistic movements of substantial artistic merit.

And you have the nerve to call everyone else elitist.

>>23554
Perhaps I am.

But does that make me a bad person? Hardly. Sure, it may say, that in your circles I'd be considered to have bad taste, but bad taste is hardly a sin.

>>23562
Of course it's eurocentric! European art is the greatest in the world, do you think African art compares? lol....

>>23535

Fine, fine, vagueness and what it means to you, but the fact of the matter is a work of art whose comprehension depends on esoteric knowledge (like what the artist had for breakfast for example) can't very effectively express anything to anyone but him. There's nothing inherently wrong with this as long as the artist and his promoters remember who the art is for. A work intended for the comprehension of a single person doesn't belong in a museum. A work exclusively intended for the comprehension of Masai warriors belongs where those people can see it, not in some American museum. It isn't accomplishing its artistic goal anywhere else.

>>23562
That's almost all education. History, politics, architecture, and even mathematics and science to some degree are taught in American schools as if they only existed in Europe. They have one or two classes of "non-Western" aspects of whatever they teach, despite the fact that "non-Western" is a great deal larger than "Western."

>>23585
Art, then, is a heartless, one-function machine, meant for a single purpose and not a single thing more?

>>23554
and you said I strayed into Ad Hom.

Just so you know, you're arguing with more than one person. But yeah, Industrial Waste CAN be beautiful. And you'd be required to agree, as your definition of art is strictly based on technical merits, so any painting that accurately produces the image is good art.

Yours is the art of the mediocre, able only to craft what they see. If you can't make what has never been seen, your art will always be simply that of the boardwalk caricaturist.

>>23610

I'd definately promote the teachning of East Asian History and Culture moreso than it is now. But as for the likes of Sub-Saharan African blacks and their 'culture'... There is not really anything to 'teach', same with native americans. No written history, to alphabet even...

>>23616
>But yeah, Industrial Waste CAN be beautiful.

Hahahaha, I'll bet you are an egalitarian too.

>Yours is the art of the mediocre, able only to craft what they see.

You dismiss 2500 years of western tradition so easily. It's amazing how arrogant you are. Do you think history will treat you and your disgusting kind kindly? You are nothing but a blotch upon the contiguity of brilliance.

>>23538
I agree with this man for the most part, though I believe there is more to art than naturalism. What makes Chopin "better" than Green Day isn't its intrinsic "goodness" but what we correlate the value of "good" with. In this case, good means nuanced emotion and technical complexity.

>>23585
You're an idiot who can't pay attention. It doesn't matter what the artist had for breakfast that morning. you need NO KNOWLEDGE OUTSIDE THE WORK to examine it. If you choose to learn that knowledge, and draw another level, fine, but it isn't needed. the only thing that matters is a visceral reaction, how it makes you feel, and it doesn't have to LOOK like anything to make that so.

Are you really so mediocre an art student? Are you that bitter? failing your coursework because the only thing you're capable of is figure drawing, exact reproductions of what you see?

>>23610
yes, that's a failure of the educational system, though. that tripfag of art school dropout hackery and Deviant Art TOTALLY AWESOME FIGURE DRAWINGS wants to DEFINE ART to the exclusion of other cultures.

>>23639

Sure Bouguereau for example... Shit, I mean *any* European artist from prior to the impressionist disaster. Motion and it's effects have been understood in artistic times since the Minoans, who possessed many of the same types of art in your picture, except we MOVED ON from those times.

>>23644
hardly. Da Vinci could craft things no one had ever seen. countless artists of various schools have been able to create work that shows dynamic motion, and vast imagination.
but I don't define art as Rodin's Thinker to the exclusion of everything else.

>>23628
You exclude the proud traditions of the Indian subcontinent, the Mesoamericans, the Egyptians, the Arabs, and many others in your ignorant and outright stupid disregard.

>>23670
>Are you really so mediocre an art student? Are you that bitter? failing your coursework because the only thing you're capable of is figure drawing, exact reproductions of what you see?

You dont know anything about me, I'm a History student (Ancient History specifically).

You butthurt modernists are just angry that the old masters are infinitely more talented than you could possibly hope to be.

>>23708
>the Egyptians, the Arabs

The Egyptians were not black firstly.

Secondly their art is crude, art begins in 5th century Greece with a fuller understanding of the human form.

Secondly, the mesoamericans are what? Incas you mean? Their art too is very crude and blocky! The only other art perhaps worth mentioning is East Asian. Arab art is just calligraphy and miniatures in literature.

God damn libtards and their 'all races are equal' bullshit.

"Talking about art is like dancing about architecture"

>>23717
For a historian you sure do suck shit at anthropology

>>23746
New York, NEW YOOOOOORK!

>>23717
figures. you have no talent, so want to pretend no one does.
I'm a historian too actually. The difference being, I'm not an ancients snob who thinks no one else got it right.

I define art broadly, allowing room for countless forms of creative expression.
you condense it tightly, to forms that have been dead for centuries, as I said, in the interest of sucking the cocks of pederasts from the southern balkan peninsula.

there is no pure state of art, there IS no end point. the new is not better than the old, nor vice versa. there is neither progression nor degradation. simply change.

>>23746

Modernism rears it's ugly head in architecture too. The best modern buildings are skyscrapers with classical simplicity as their bedrock, symmetry, curvature etc...

If you look at say... some of the more degenerate elements of the modern architecture it is quite sickening.

>>23719

Between the 13th and 15th centuries the Renaissance was beginning in the Northern Italian city states. Try again.

>>23745
>libtards
This term should have died with that shithole that was /n/.

>>23767
>I'm a historian too actually.

You are? What are you qualifications, what university do you attend?

>I define art broadly, allowing room for countless forms of creative expression.

You define it broadly because it fits with your egalitarian agenda. In doing so you cancel out anything that doesn't have the same 'broad' worldview, hence narrowing your scope ironically enough. Your pathological hatred of the old masters is testament to this.

I am a Romanticist, I stand tall against Modernism.

look, we get it, you're butthurt because Greece hasn't contributed anything artistic in centuries, whereas the Turks have produced art, architecture, hell, even furniture that is known and loved the world over.

They also invented pita. man, I love pita.

Athens, maybe I misunderstood something, but I want to go back to your comment on wastelands.

You said a depiction of a wasteland is not beautiful, or art? Why? I'm not a visual artist, but if you were to ask me to create a wasteland with beauty, meaning, and relevance, I could do so in a second. Why is form and art, but the regression of form (With just as much meaning) not an art?

Again. Maybe I misunderstood.

>>23788

What 'Greek tradition' are you talking about exactly? Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Late Hellenistic? We are talking about several hundreds of years of history here.

>>23798
Making a correction
>Why is form an art

>>23793
Turkey is fucking awesome. All predominantly Muslim states should strive to be even half that cool.

>>23793

What Turkish tradition of oil painting is there? In fact it was the Turks who took inspiration from the Munich School of Greek artists after the creation of the Kingdom of Greece because they had no tradition of their own whereas Greeks had the Byzantine tradition and those that were influenced by it in oil painting (Theotokopoulos - El Greco) for example.

Greek architecture is not just classical anyway, it is Byzantine also. Ottoman Architecture is just a mold of Persian and Byzantine. So your theory goes up in smoke.

>>23745
So, art, then, is only that which captures the view of the world from the most objective standpoint possible?

Hahaha, I'm sure blind men can't make art then, can they?

>>23786


What are you talking about you insane faggot?

You are indeed a Romantic, racist and all. You sound like someone out of the turn of the last century. But your grand ideas bellie simple ignorance, sadly.

>>23786
attendED. past tense. See, I actually graduated, though I intend to finish up additional graduate work in the near future.

Romanicism is the mistake of kiss ups. Mom and Dad always know best, so THEIR mom and dad must have been even better, and eventually you get to some pure past where everything was perfect.

Never happened.

I don't know where you get "pathological hatred of the old masters" from. I'm just not intent on saying THEY ARE THE ONLY GOOD THAT HAS EVER OR WILL EVER BE. and YOU are only so intent on saying that because of some deformed nationalist pride. as if Ancient Greeks actually have anything in common with you aside from vague geographical area.

I kind of like how you try to use egalitarian as a dirty word. as if "equality" is something horrible and disgusting.

The only people who do shit like that are morons who play in Renn Faires because they just *know* in the middle ages, they would have been the chivalric aristocracy. as opposed to a dirt farming peasant.

>>23826
>>What Turkish tradition of oil painting is there?
>>tradition of oil painting
>>oil painting
>>oil

Oh Gawd.

Facepalming so hard right now it hurts.

I also wonder where my oil painting tradition in Greece and Italy is?

>>23768
Isn't it a little early in the morning to be discussing Gothic architecture?

>>23829

That's one liberal way of interpreting it, the other of course, the more correct way is that technical mastery of the medium of sculpting marble is a necessary step forward. If the Egyptians could have sculpted Parthenon friezes they would have, believe me, they didn't inhibit their artistic talents purposefully.

This thread is like a shitty community college class come to life

>>23798

With what? The written word? Yes you could, but not with a visual medium, except to evoke a concept of horror at the disgusting appearance of it all.

>>23838
You're exhibiting moral outrage about aesthetics, a field that has nothing to do with morality. Your egalitarian agenda is painfully obvious.

>>23893
Please answer my question >>23798

Now I love /jp/, walls and walls of text without a single loli joke even though we're talking about superflat.

>>23899
see
>>23713

>>23745
You fail to take mention of the Indian subcontinent, or correctly address Muslim art. Simply because the Arabs did not depict human beings on the part of a prohibition of their religion hardly makes them losers in the world of making things worthwhile.

>>23911
I'm not talented enough to do a drawing or painting on my own, but I'm confident if I were to work closely with a real visual artist, I could create a visual wasteland with inherent beauty and meaning through regression of form.

The image itself would be a mess, but doesn't beauty, by definition, come from contrast?

>>23874
>Romanicism is the mistake of kiss ups. Mom and Dad always know best, so THEIR mom and dad must have been even better, and eventually you get to some pure past where everything was perfect.

Why not? Our current mantra is 'lets outdo mom and dad', is it not? Lets be wilder than they, more hedonistic than they, more reckless than they... If they drunk once a week with friends we shall drink twice a week, and their own children will drink EVERY day of the week... What does this achieve except a spiral into nihilism through generations?

>as if Ancient Greeks actually have anything in common with you aside from vague geographical area.

I never brought this up. But if you want genetic evidence in terms of halogroups I can provide it. Also, groups are assessed in terms of their languages, there is only one other language comparable to the contiguity of the Greek language and that is Chinese. Surely if we are not the descendents of the Ancient Greeks we would have had a far more noticeable bastardization of our tongue?

>I kind of like how you try to use egalitarian as a dirty word. as if "equality" is something horrible and disgusting.

Bell Curve faggot, do you like ignoring science where it doesn't fit your egalitarian objectives? Google 'The Color of Crime' too.

>>23899
so, we're confirming that when you say "Romantic" you mean "GREEKS UBER ALLES IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE"

good to know, Dirtfarmer.

>>23964
>The image itself would be a mess, but doesn't beauty, by definition, come from contrast?

Again, the beauty would come from the fact it evokes a feeling of horror from the barreness off it all. Not from any 'oh, thats such a beautiful landscape'. Aesthetically the value would come from the art itself, and the concept of course, as with all good art, would have to be comprehensible.

>>23964
Now that I think about it, in order to create beauty in a wasteland, I'd need to bring my focus on something other than the wasteland itself, and that's not what you were saying.

Whoops.

>>23967
If bell curve had been debunked any harder, it would have caused a quantum singularity.

We get it, you're a refugee from /n/ who wants a place to talk about how great his cocksucking pederasts are. I'm sure Aristotle is the end-all be-all of everything from philosophy to cosmology, too.

fuck those jews and their jew physics, everyone knows Earth materials are compelled toward the center of the universe by their earthy nature.

>>23970

Greeks, Han China, Romans, Italian Renaissance, Enlightenment... It's all good. I'm not going to give credence to sub-saharan africa though, as they have achieved nothing.

>>24006
>fuck those jews and their jew physics, everyone knows Earth materials are compelled toward the center of the universe by their earthy nature.

Yep, lets score points over a man who died 2400 years ago to the advantage of our civilization. You're such a big man, so noble!

Go suck Pollock's cock.

>>24006
>If bell curve had been debunked any harder, it would have caused a quantum singularity.

bwahahahahahaha! Can you get any more stupid than this? The Bell Curve hasn't been debunked at all! Keep on trying to pretend IQ is 'environnmental'.

>>23913
You keep using the word egalitarian like a political party.

>egalitarian
>adjective
>1. favoring social equality; "a classless society" [syn: classless]
>noun
>1. a person who believes in the equality of all people [ant: elitist]

What kind of equality to you believe not to hold in the context of artistic expression?

>>24010
What, so Tang China doesn't get any love?

Or are you implying that the Manchu and the Hui were culturally worthless?

>>24027
He died for the advantage of civilization?

so, you're calling him Jesus?

no wonder you have Turk envy.

>>24042
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms
right. just more than half of the wikipedia article is dedicated to quotations and links from sources debunking it.

>>24068

Try again faggot. I said that you are scoring points for our civilization over a man who died 2400 years ago. Kind of pathetic, dont you think? Science requires a tradition, it doesn't just unravel magically in the space of a few decades.

Intelligence is purely contextual. It doesn't matter how high an IQ you have if you don't pick up a book. Thus, arguing that Africans are intrinsically inferior is ridiculous. However, I will agree that their culture is utter shit, but that has more to do with other factors than anything else.

>>22214
Goddamn you Warhol.

/jp/ - News

>>24091
Why exactly? Is africa so shit, why do african immigrants cause so much crime in their host countries? Please explain this to me. I'm at a loss here. Is it because evil Europeans invaded them? Is that why they make up half the prison population of the US?

>>23967
>Bell Curve faggot, do you like ignoring science where it doesn't fit your egalitarian objectives? Google 'The Color of Crime' too.
OK, mathfag here. This guy is an utter troll. Would you non-mathfags please stop feeding him.

>>24102
well, if you'd done anything of note since then, I'd have more to discuss, wouldn't I?

And Aristotle has fuckall to do with science. he set science back for more than a thousand years. NO research was conducted because Romanticist morons like you just accepted everything he said at face value, even without any evidence to support it.

>>24127

Just as planned

>>24103
>We began to see the Western tradition WITHIN the BROADER CONTEXT of human art of the time. It's within this context that we can even begin to understand "classical" greek sculpture as it was then: painted, life-like (as realism was understood then) within a long tradition idol worship that would continue into European medieval art, figuration, and indeed, our modern conception of what a human looks like.

Not all statuery was created for the purposes of idol worship you know.

>>24129
>>24127
trolling is what you can get away with.

>>24150

Romanticism has nothing to do with science you fucking RETARD, it has EVERYTHING to do with art. Romanticism occurred in the 19th fucking century, AFTER the englightenment.

Egalitarian libtards like you are just incensed he saw the world for what it was politically and socially and thus he came up with his Republic. An oligarchy of the intelligentsia is the best method of governance and always will be. Why do you think the Republic of Rome was so stable?

The method of scientific inquiry began with Thales by the way, not Aristotle, sure Aristotle was off the mark on a lot of things, but he was on the mark on a lot of others, how rainbows are formed for example.

EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP

YOU'RE HAVING A CIRCLEJERK ART FAG DISCUSSION/PISSY FIGHT IN A FORUM WHERE PEOPLE TWO THREADS AWAY ARE TALKING ABOUT INTERACTIVE PORN GAMES

YOUR OPINIONS ARE NULL AND VOID SHUT UP

>>24150
>well, if you'd done anything of note since then

What about the Byzantine Empire? Would you have rather the counter-attacks against the Arabs in the 9th-10th centuries would never have happened and Constantinople would have been rolled over and Europe become Islamic? Because your United States of America wouldn't even have fucking existed if that was the case.

>>24152

But you Romanticists love to pretend like they never had paint on them.

The vast majority of those statues looked probably more like colorful versions of plastic manequins in our malls than the bare, pure marble, pure form, geometrically-sublime shit we still see for some reason in historical reconstructions, because everyone is traumatized for some reason when they suddenly see a real Greek statue (with eyes).

>>24193
Best shit I've ever heard. Well done Anonymous.

>>24193
Just hide the thread if you don't like it, genius.

>>24193

little butthurt there arn't you?

>>24179
>Egalitarian libtards like you are just incensed he saw the world for what it was politically and socially and thus he came up with his Republic. An oligarchy of the intelligentsia is the best method of governance and always will be. Why do you think the Republic of Rome was so stable?

FAIL. The Republic was NOT about an actual country. Because it wouldn't fucking work, as humans have ambitions and desires.

It was a metaphor for the human mind, how a body must be governed, putting your rational mind in charge, powered by courage and driven by the base mechanical needs of hunger.

that is the ONLY level it works on.

And if you think the Roman Republic was stable, you're a lousy Ancients historian.

>>24227
WRONG! THEY WERE STRIPPERS FROM BLADE RUNNER GARISH! HOT PINK AND ULTRAMARINE!

>>24196

And so what?

There's a reason the Byzantime empire crumbled and gave way to the Ottoman. There's a reason the barbaric Visigothic states of Iberia gave way to Al Andalus and its golden age of Sephardi Jewery, intellectual development, and translation of ancient texts. They fucking gave us our numbers 59435436565 motherfucker. But you rarely see the most glorious western European civilization for over three centuries appear as prominently as the barbaric nations of Francia and Germania in history text books. Gee I wonder why? Is it because they're muslims?

For some reason, the retreat at Tours of the moorish invaders is seen as a bad thing? Why?

I'm not a Frank, neither am I a Christian, why should I hold on to these illusory communities, these conceptions of nationhood that make me defensive against an ancient Islamic civilization? WHAT THE FUCK HAS ROMANTICISM DONE TO OUR THINKING TO MAKE US WANT TO KILL AN ARAB BECAUSE OF THE MOORISH INVASION OF SOME GOD-FORSAKEN BARBARIC FRANKISH KINGDOM?

>>24247
>It was a metaphor for the human mind, how a body must be governed, putting your rational mind in charge, powered by courage and driven by the base mechanical needs of hunger.

Oh god... You are such a fucking stupid modernist you even apply your lousy methods of analytical study to philosophy from millenia ago. Both Plato's and Cicero's Republics described a theoretical city state, read his fucking Laws you retard. Also, dont pretend to be able to comment in any depth on any ancient author if you can't read them in their greek or latin, so much subtlety and nuance is lost in translation.

>And if you think the Roman Republic was stable, you're a lousy Ancients historian.

Right, so having no less than 4 consular armies virtually wiped out during the second Punic War and STIL being able to go about the daily business of Government (electing Praetors and Consuls and Tribunes, holding trials, calling assemblies of the people....) as before is not 'stable'? After having lost a massive part of your citizen body?

Goddamit sir, you fail so hard it's quite worrying.

>>24193
*applaudes*

Valerie Solanas didn't shoot the right spots

>>24193
Those interactive porn games could be considered art by some.

>>24326


THEY ARE

FUCK YOU

>>24282
>I'm not a Frank, neither am I a Christian, why should I hold on to these illusory communities, these conceptions of nationhood that make me defensive against an ancient Islamic civilization? WHAT THE FUCK HAS ROMANTICISM DONE TO OUR THINKING TO MAKE US WANT TO KILL AN ARAB BECAUSE OF THE MOORISH INVASION OF SOME GOD-FORSAKEN BARBARIC FRANKISH KINGDOM?

I guess it's different values. You are a retard, one of the fifth column, you probably believe that Islam promotes scientific development. It wasn't Islamic that promoted this. Al Gazzali vaunted that if Plato and Abu Ali Sina were alive, he would have killed them. Zakaria Razi wrote a book refuting all prophets, calling them bearded billy goats, liars and charlatans.

>For some reason, the retreat at Tours of the moorish invaders is seen as a bad thing? Why?

Because Europe would have stayed and remained Muslim long after the fracturing of the Ummayad Caliphate. Dying a slow death, without any impetus towards change that the death of Byzantium brought (flocking of Greek scholars to the university towns of N. Italy).

>>24297
You've a demonstrated hatred of the subtle.
and you're wrong.
and you're a troll.
and I read latin. though it's been years.

fail elsewhere. You're probably not even greek. You're probably some fag from Detroit or something.

>>24356
>and I read latin. though it's been years.

Good kop-out.

>You're probably not even greek.

I am, though it's you that keeps on bringing this up. I'm not really nationalist, I just believe in the superiority of European civilization as a whole.

>>24286

This is the most subtly awesome post in this entire thread

Just got here and this thread is tl;dr

But I have to say: Welcome to /jp/, Armchair Art/Animation Experts from /a/. Your trolling was missed

>>24381
I can't wait for Katawa Shoujo either.

Auto-sage imminent.

i hart art

>>24346


Well as it is, your Cradle of Western Civilization was Ottoman territory for most of its modern history, and they didn't turn out so bad. The Ottoman Empire was by far the greatest and most powerful force in Europe for centuries, and was a serious contender even after European states had seized the world in their colonial grips. Since you seem to equate stability with worth, maybe that counts for something. Or maybe that of the stagnant Qing Dynasty's 250 year run even after European nations were carving it up as a hypo-colony and it had survived several major revolutions and massive unrest.

"Dying a slow death"

Says who? Europe languished for centuries while the muslim natiosn were thriving intellectually, artistically, and economically.

Aesthetics is inherently hierarchical. Don't need to be a racist and accuse everyone else of being "libtards" to believe so. The problem is here is that everyone thinks that by making an aesthetic judgment, they are simultaneously making an ethical one. African "culture" is only called as such for anthropological reasons. Nobody here can seriously say that African art is more sophisticated than the rich schools of Europe. However, this doesn't mean that Africans are intrinsically inferior, for societies with less sophisticated cultures could hypothetically be better in other areas.

Saw Murakami's exhibit in MOCA. Actually really intersting shit.

>>24367
and yet true. 4 years of latin, through middle and high school. and it's spelled cop out.

and you're still a racist, crazy fucktard with no sense of aesthetics or historical perspective. and while it might only be 10 am for you, those of us who aren't self important unwashed failures who dream of an age when their country wasn't utterly irrelevant are approaching 3 in the morning and need our beauty rest.

I no longer have time to waste on you, sadly, so this argument must die. but it was fun arguing with you. it's always fun to get some exercise with the mental equivalent of a tennis ball launcher, firing the same shot over and over.

Why is it that people only think about visual art when discussing "Art?" Why not music or literature?

You're naming off countries that have contributed something worthwhile, but leaving off music and literature doesn't seem fair. Even the United States, in the short period of time it has existed, has contributed plenty to musical arts (despite being the major cause of commercialization of it.)

You can't look down on countries just because they don't contribute visual art. There are other kinds. I understand that's not the discussion, but you're giving Africa the shaft when it doesn't deserve it.

Why is it that people only think about visual art when discussing "Art?" Why not music or literature?

You're naming off countries that have contributed something worthwhile, but leaving off music and literature doesn't seem fair. Even the United States, in the short period of time it has existed, has contributed plenty to musical arts (despite being the major cause of commercialization of it.)

You can't look down on countries just because they don't contribute visual art. There are other kinds. I understand that's not the discussion, but you're giving Africa the shaft when it doesn't deserve it.

>>24404

The 'Muslim nations' were not 'thriving' in the late 11th century or beyond, they were fracturing and falling apart. My own country, which you seem so keen to berate *was* under Ottoman Occupation for 400 years, but how strange that from the areas not under Ottoman control (Crete, Corfu etc...) we have a steady stream of poets and artists yet from the areas under Ottoman control there is nothing? Could it be perhaps that the Ottoman Empire was intellectually sterile from it's inception?

And how about artistically eh? Can you name a single piece of great Turkish literature? Fuck, the Erotokritos was more ambitious and had more of a legacy than ANY piece of Turkish literature ever written and that's but a footnote in the history of Greek literature. They have one author of note, Orhan Pamuk, who doesn't in any way compare to any good modern Greek author such as Kazantzakis of the Nobel laureates Seferis and Elytis. And as for poetry, well, 3 words are all that is required: Constantine Petrou Cavafy.

So much for that cultural center, eh? Their only 'achievement' was the massacre of 3 million minority christians in the interior of Anatolia. As Gladstone stated:

“Let me endeavor, very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by force as opposed to government by law.—Yet a government by force can not be maintained without the aid of an intellectual element.— Hence there grew up, what has been rare in the history of the world, a kind of tolerance in the midst of cruelty, tyranny and rapine. Much of Christian life was contemptuously left alone and a race of Greeks was attracted to Constantinople which has all along made up, in some degree, the deficiencies of Turkish Islam in the element of mind!”

>>24428
>and you're still a racist, crazy fucktard with no sense of aesthetics

Go admire a urinal on the wall and postulate about it's brilliance. The creators of such works are laughing their asses off at people like you when their bank statements come in.

>dream of an age when their country wasn't utterly irrelevant

What does it matter to you what the US' stature in the world is? Are you a political leader? A General of the Army? Or is it just nationalistic posturing, like you were accusing me of doing. God you've contradicted yourself so many times throughout this 'exchange' it's become almost redundant to bring it up.

I see /n/ has come here.

>>24473
Yes,they were. A lot of grat Persian literature was made at that time,and the Muslims in Spain were doing great scientifically and culturally.

Ironically the ones that destroyed the Muslim civilization weren't the Mongols nor Christians,but the Turks. Vile creatures that knew nothing but destruction.

welcome, former /n/ews trolls

I'm in your thread, Posting my arabness

I might have contributed but I was busy playing melty blood in the other thread

>>24473

Your prejudices with regard to this matter have more to do with the 19th century nationalistic-racialist ideals that caused us massive suffering over the course of two world wars than any legitimate consideration of the authors during their time. Besides, the Greek authors you site, you site during the period of Ottoman decline during the 19th Century, not during the height of its influence.

>>24473

Your prejudices with regard to this matter have more to do with the 19th century nationalistic-racialist ideals that caused us massive suffering over the course of two world wars than any legitimate consideration of the authors during their time. Besides, the Greek authors you site, you site during the period of Ottoman decline, not at the height of its influence.

>>24521

what?

Why do you guys even bother to discuss with greek people?

Modern greeks = bigots who won't fucking shut up about their former greatness.

>>24539

What authors, Kornaros? Author of the Erotokritos? He was born during Renaissance times on Crete. Seferis and Elytis are both 20th century poets. As for the Ottoman Empire, it was nothing but a barbaric Empire, it achieved nothing of note intellectually. I mean, I'll pick say... one Greek scholar from the Renaissance, let's say... Bessarion.

Name a greater Turkish scholar than Bessarion, who was but a footnote as far as the entirety of the Renaissance goes.

The Romantic ideals of nationalism of the 19th century gave birth to countries also, peoples who had long lived under the yoke of great powers and who desired independence. Is that a bad thing? You are like these idiots who blame Nietzsche for Nazism.

>>24571
>Modern greeks = bigots who won't fucking shut up about their former greatness.

Jesus Christ, after being attacked 5 or 6 times on my ethnicity I decide to launch a rebuttal. That's hardly 'nationalism' or 'bigotry', most of my commentary in this thread has been about the Renaissance anyway, not classical anqituity.

>>24471
Africa hasn't contributed in the other fields either. Though it's important to make the distinction between race and culture. There are no "races". We are all of the human race, and biologically there's no group of people superior to another. My point is purely that art is defined by the European tradition, and according to that tradition, Africa is behind.

>>24601

>>and according to that tradition

>>24601
>There are no "races".

Jesus christ.... Come on, you cant be that ridiculous...

>>24601
>biologically there's no group of people superior to another.
Are you nuts? Not even treading into internal differences, there's obvious structural differences in appearance. What gives you credence to say "There's no difference." That's not sensible, that's just foolish.

>Africa hasn't contributed in the other fields either.
Music?

>>24643
>Music?

What about it? Any African music that compares with a Chopin piano concerto? Thought not.

>>24632
How the fuck is that ridiculous? Why do all the defenders of taste have to be archaic racists? Your attitude is disgusting.

>>24660
Jazz and blues >>> Chopin

>>24660
Not complete pieces, but saying they haven't contributed anything because they haven't assembled a complete piece is just, for lack of a better word, stupid.

Other cultures borrowed from their music to make better music. That's a valid contribution.

>Go admire a urinal on the wall and postulate about it's brilliance.

Duchamp may be one of history's greatest trolls. 90 years later and faggots are still bitching about that urinal.

>>24643
All of humanity came of Africa 60,000 years ago. 60,000 years isn't enough time to create a race different enough to be considered "superior". How am I the fool?

>>24674
That's American, but those contributions is what I was thinking of when I was speaking before.

>>24676 put my thoughts into words.

>>24662

Racist is an unfair term. I believe that Europeans should govern Africa because they cant govern themselves. Is that racist? Am I racist for stating they are incapable of self-rule?

>>22140
That looks like Led Zeppelin's third album cover.

>>24690
>Am I racist for stating they are incapable of self-rule?
No. You would be a racist if you're saying they're incapable because of their race.

I think I'm gonna go to sleep now.

>>24688
It was created by black slaves, and those black slaves weren't American,but African.

How does this relate to Superflat?

>>24690
It's true, though. Just look at Zimbabwe.

>>24674
Jazz and blues uses a structure that originates from the European tradition even if there is some influence from Africa, and it's still measured by that tradition. Also, all of that came from America. Certainly the people who created jazz were predominantly black, but they were all Americans.

Wow. I want to be educated so I can have art fag discussions like this some day.

>>24715
Left to their own devices in Africa, it wouldn't have happened.

Jazz is an American creation by African slaves. I still credit Africans for their contribution however, so why are you even arguing with me?

>>24736
FUCK YES, YOU ARE THE BEST PIECE OF ART EVER

>>24721
In a 7 Degrees of Kevin Bacon sense, it does.

Superflat-->Art-->Culture-->Racial superiority

>>24732
Fuck off nigger.

Ah, so the new post limit is 250?

That's good to know.

Sage.

Africans have made valid contributions to art. So has everybody else. That isn't the point. The point is that not all art is equal, and we must have standards, most of which come from the European tradition. Thus I can say that the culture Sub-Saharan Africa is less sophisticated than other cultures according to the standards by which we measured art before the postmodernists came and ruined everything.

>>24643
>Music?


Just to elaborate, one of the more prominent forms of music from Africa would be West African (Ghanan) Drumming - which is referenced by such prominent western composers as Steve Reich.

>>24660
That's unfair, you're comparing them to the single most genuinely brilliant, unique and sophisticated composer of all european classical music.

I cannot say frankly that I know an African composition that can compare with what Chopin's piano pieces (This may be partially due to the fact that Africa didn't have an instrument as capable and sophisticated as piano.). But take all those uninspired, repetitive orchestral works of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and I can safely say Africa has a lot of music on par with them. (And we're only talking Africa here, not India or Japan - ragas and gagaku are vastly superior.)