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Classical statues were not painted horribly

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Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#251

Post by ZeWaka »

somenameforme wrote: post #103

This reminds me of efforts to reproduce Ancient Greek music. [1] It's very similar in that there's a lot of hints, but still enough missing parts that there seem to be two schools of thought, that can even present within the same project. That linked audio is unpleasant, but perhaps they just liked it? Yet, this solo [2], comes from the exact same project - and is amazing. I do not think tastes can change to such a d…

Hijacking this to point out Peter Pringle, who researches Sumerian music and even makes replica instruments for the songs: https://youtu.be/QUcTsFe1PVs

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#252

Post by marcellus23 »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #239
marcellus23 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poorly painted reconstructions undermine that image, but it does not mean this was done intentionally If I'm understanding you right, you're suggesting the author thinks that researchers are intentionally doing poor constructions to undermine public perception of classical art as part of some sort of culture war? I don't see anything in the article to suggest this

> The enormous public interest generated by garish reconstructions is surely because of and not in spite of their ugliness. It is hard to believe that this is entirely accidental. One possibility is that the reconstructors are engaged in a kind of trolling. It's towards the end of the article. He doesn't directly mention culture war stuff but he does talk about it being "iconoclastic." I think it's a reasonable inter…

I don't think it's reasonable. If there's context I'm missing and this guy has written about culture war stuff before, fair enough, but based on this article alone, I'm not seeing any indication of that.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#254

Post by Der_Einzige »

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #234
Der_Einzige wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So were the Japanese better at painting circa the 1700s and 1800s? Because you got a whole lot of paints of, uhhh, octopi…

Octopuses or octopodes. Octopi is incorrect.

Tell that to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s...

(warning, NSFW)

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#255

Post by wang_li »

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!…

All of those CRT simulators? Largely bullshit, and we still have them around to look at!

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#256

Post by rayiner »

Geonode wrote: post #28

I will die on this hill, because I'm right. Painters put on the first layer in saturated colors like this, then add detail, highlight and shadow. The base layer stuck to the statues, and the rest was washed away. This whole thing just won't go away because many people are operating outside their area of expertise on this subject. Painters layer paint, starting with a saturated base color. These archaeologists are sim…

Thank you. I know nothing about painting, but I bought the original story about the statutes being painted these garish colors.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#257

Post by bee_rider »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #241
bee_rider wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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),…

I think it is hard to say to what extent there actually is even borderline deception. The internet amplifies random and funny things. In this article (which, we should note, is even-handed but leaning skeptical toward the garish reconstructions), it is noted that the images that have spread are the ugliest of the exhibit. If the exhibit tells the full story, and the internet just amplified the silt bits, that’s not deception on the part of the exhibit.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#258

Post by nyeah »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #244
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.

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 "su…

Do you just want to generalize, or do you want to provide a counterexample? Fine either way.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#259

Post by mistercheph »

arrrg wrote: post #230
mistercheph wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, these researchers have cultivated a public perception that the classical statues we admire looked totally ridiculous and were actually hideous. It is difficult to interpret it as unintentional, when the more absurd your reconstruction, the likelier you are to get press attention and get invited to special events at international galleries. https://journals.openedition.org/tec…

To get closer to an answer to this you should still talk to the people doing the actual work? I know that many scholars have an uncomfortable relationship to the PR work their research institutions are doing, but they themselves don’t strike me as unapproachable or closed to nuanced discussion. Seems weird to ignore that perspective and wildly speculate from the outside.

Who is inside and who is outside depends on your (subjective) spatial interpretation of the situation.

It could just as well be said that a bunch of scholars disconnected from the culture, history, and technique of fine arts (except as objects of scholarly interest) are wildly speculating from the outside about the nature of the objects, and people interested in these things are starting to ask "Why are these silly things being said about the topic I'm interested in? Are the people behind this pranksters?"

Anyways, if there is a misunderstanding here, which I don't doubt is the case for at least some of the people involved, why can't the discourse be had in public about it? The question has been asked as you suggest...publicly. Polychromic revivalists are free to respond in public, and we can all benefit from hearing the more nuanced perspectives get expressed.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#260

Post by anthk »

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.

Go read the Book of the Games from the 1200's and now you'll learn something. The Middle ages were centuries wide. The last centuries had nothing to do, say, with the 5th century.
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