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Classical statues were not painted horribly

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Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#241

Post by lo_zamoyski »

bee_rider wrote: post #190
pqtyw wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have direct evidence of, and this is just the saturated underlayers Why do they even bother with the "reconstructions" if they know that they are inherently inaccurate, though

Bare marble and garish underlayer reconstructions could be seen as two extreme ends. The article points out that the garish underlayer reconstructions have (maybe accidentally) been successful at correcting the widely held misperception of bare marble. There’s also something in… the bare marble reconstruction maps somehow to our idea of sophisticated. Garish underplayed reconstruction, our idea of silly, frivolous, o…

Borderline deception is a bad way to correct inaccurate knowledge.

And frankly, if I wanted to ridicule the ancients and flatter my own age, I could think of no better way than to make the old stuff look bad.

I would much rather have an exhibit that showed the bare marble, then a conservative reconstruction based on what direct evidence merits (to the degree possible, noting that it is not a complete reconstruction), then more liberal but reasonable reconstructions based on indirect evidence.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#242

Post by the_af »

pqtyw wrote: post #131
the_af wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you prevent introducing a bias that then becomes what we "know" about how statues were painted? By introducing modern aesthetic sensibilities and present them as plausible, we then reinforce that this is how statues were painted back then, and we don't know . I think the article is mostly begging the question, and is not particularly rigorous. At most it's appealing to some sort of common sense, and we know ho…

We do have a non insignificant amount of ancient frescoes, mosaics and even a handful of paintings. As the author has pointed out they generally seem much more appealing to modern aesthetic sensibilities. That seems like reasonably strong evidence than whatever thought processing went into making these so called. "reconstructions". > To me TFA reads mostly as "this reconstruction looks bad, I refuse to believe ancien…

> Imposing the garrish 5-yeard old colouring book style is no less biased.

I don't think they claim this is what the statues actually looked. In fact, the article quotes an expert saying the opposite: "we can never know what they looked like".

These are conservative but incomplete "this is the part we have strong evidence for".

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#243

Post by nextaccountic »

xp84 wrote: post #143
griffzhowl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is what tfa says, and it's a good point. But tfa also points out that the archaeologists/reconstructionists know that what they're producing differs from the original. The thing is the discipline of reconstruction means that they only use pigments that they have direct evidence of, and this is just the saturated underlayers. The problem is this is seldom explained when the reconstructions are presented to t…

This practice of defining a reconstruction so pedantically as to be wholly unlike real life is just so dumb to me, as a layperson. This would be like “recreating” the experience of using a Commodore 64 but we can’t find any intact copies of the software at all so we provide a fake “OS” that requires the user to write code in ASM only, and say “Ladies and gentlemen, behold our reconstruction! This is what it was like!…

The alternative is no reconstruction at all on one hand, and adding fake detail on another hand

And if one wants to add fake detail, why should archeologists be involved? Just have AI generate them

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#244

Post by lo_zamoyski »

nyeah wrote: post #120
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best. Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva... The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.

Sure, but medieval European art generally sucked. (Call this a hypothesis if that helps.) Compare the damn cave paintings of buffalo to most medieval European art. Some of the 10k-year-old stuff is much better observed. Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. I'm sorry about that. It's just not always taste. Sometimes it's taste. Sometimes people are bad at making art.

Your exposure to medieval art must be very limited. I have seen some very magnificent pieces of medieval art personally. And paintings are a small part of what falls under "medieval art". Include those in the category, please.

And there is another element to consider, which is the purpose of the art. Medieval art was not concerned so much with realism, but with the symbolic.

I wonder: do you think Byzantine icons "suck"? I suspect you do.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#245

Post by lo_zamoyski »

Sharlin wrote: post #186
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best. Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva... The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.

Weell, there's a reason the Renaissance is called "renaissance" and not something else.

The Renaissance is really the tail end of the Middle Ages historically, and the name is a bit of propaganda, just like "Enlightenment".

People flatter themselves.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#246

Post by mikkupikku »

mkoubaa wrote: post #146
mikkupikku wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statues were obviously carved by expert artists but these "specialists" would have us believe they were subsequently painted by half-assed amateurs. It fails the sniff test so badly, that trolling is a reasonable conclusion. You don't put that much effort into making something only then let some unskilled intern ruin it by covering up all your work with a flat coat of primer and leave it at that.

Not amateurs, artists. Look at any modern art and you'll understand that looking like crap is kind of the point nowadays

Look at the statues themselves, its obvious that these people valued realism.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#247

Post by Bayart »

Sharlin wrote: post #186
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best. Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva... The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.

Weell, there's a reason the Renaissance is called "renaissance" and not something else.

That reason is self-hype. The Renaissance was dreadful in comparison to the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in much of Europe.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#248

Post by bdr »

griffzhowl wrote: post #173
kijin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who produce dinosaur illustrations don't seem to have as much of a problem with adding all sorts of details (extravagant plumage, wacky colors/patterns, starry eyes and acrobatic postures) that are neither directly supported nor contradicted by available evidence.

They only started adding feathers after they found evidence of them being feathered, though. Plus there's zero direct evidence for their colours so there's no option but to use guesswork in these cases. And a lot of dinosaur reconstructions may be more for edutainment value rather than reflecting a scholarly best-guess. There's no uniform methodology across all these disciplines.

> Plus there's zero direct evidence for their colours

This is no longer true! Starting with Sinosauropteryx in 2010, paleontologists have identified what they believe to be fossilized melanin-containing organelles. These organelles, called melanosomes, have different shapes depending on which color they produce, and those shapes are preserved well enough to be visible under an electron microscope.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#249

Post by Bayart »

nyeah wrote: post #120
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best. Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva... The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.

Sure, but medieval European art generally sucked. (Call this a hypothesis if that helps.) Compare the damn cave paintings of buffalo to most medieval European art. Some of the 10k-year-old stuff is much better observed. Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. I'm sorry about that. It's just not always taste. Sometimes it's taste. Sometimes people are bad at making art.

I won't bother getting into trying to demonstrate Medieval art doesn't "suck", it's not worth dignifying. But you should be aware you might be placing too much emphasis on painting and drawing specifically as opposed to other art forms.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#250

Post by nyeah »

Bayart wrote: post #249
nyeah wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but medieval European art generally sucked. (Call this a hypothesis if that helps.) Compare the damn cave paintings of buffalo to most medieval European art. Some of the 10k-year-old stuff is much better observed. Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. I'm sorry about that. It's just not always taste. Sometimes it's taste. Sometimes people are bad at making art.

I won't bother getting into trying to demonstrate Medieval art doesn't "suck", it's not worth dignifying. But you should be aware you might be placing too much emphasis on painting and drawing specifically as opposed to other art forms.

Fine, good point. Medieval paintings and drawings suck, but the pottery may have been incredible.

Yeah, why sacrifice dignity by providing a counterexample? Dignity is important.

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