What sets us apart from the old masters?

>>2946931
KJG> ALL THOSE UGLY ASS KEK EUROTRASH MASTERS

Get the fuck outta here.

>>2946931
People always like to pretend the old is better than the new. Objectively speaking, the old masters were worse than the 19th century masters and the current modern masters are about equal to the 19th century masters in technical skill, maybe slightly worse purely because representational art in general is no longer very popular.

>>2946931
Less time. Rich people of the olden days didn't have the internet, work load, etc of today's world. That's why rich children could become prodigies and old rich men could become extremely talented in multiple areas. Not to mention these poor fuckers knew that if they ever faultered talent wise they would end up having to do hard labor and live in literal shitholes.

>>2946931
My theory is that they were high IQ far into the genius spectrum. The high IQ people of today are naturally pushed towards STEM and successful careers while in those times it was more dependent on your circumstances which meant you had some geniuses doing more ordinary occupations a lot of the time. Today it's more like 'I got into art because I sucked at math'.

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Nothing, amigo. Old Masters had "patronage" thing. In modern world no one will pay your money for all you sketches and studies (patron is not even near). They're not impressive anymore because you're not special. Can you paint masterpiece working for 5-30 years? Yes, but who will pay you? Church? King? Emperor? You need stable outcome per month or you will die. Modern "real art" is tough business with money laundering.

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>>2946933
Who are the current masters?

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>>2946942
Richard Schmid, Steve Huston, Zhaoming Wu, Mark Tennant, Mian Situ, Jeremy Lipking.. man I dunno, probably lots I've never heard of. I'm not big into fine art and even I can name a few.

>>2946964
lmao top bait

I think you have to view the masters in the pocket of time that they exist in, you can't really compare artists across time. Like how today there are a ton of concept artists that are very technically skilled, but we wouldnt compare their spaceship paintings to a master painting because its all too commercial even though they might be just as good.

>>2946931
>What sets us apart from the old masters?
Time, materials, societal structure, technology, etc

there are and always have been god tier artists, from the old masters to today. it's just the nostalgia/romanticizing of previous era that makes you blind to the talented artists of the past 200 years.
>>2947009
this nigga gets it. art serves different purposes, is made of different materials, by shops of artisans under the guidance of a master craftsman rather than le fancy fine artist solo demigod, etc. you just can't compare different cultures/era/societies so easily.

>>2946971
give me your choices, because I'm looking up who he said and they seem pretty good

>>2946931
they were not only painters but some of them and best of them were also systemic thinkers

>>2946931
>What holds us back?
Our lives are too good. The old masters lived in a shit time period with shit lives in shit countries. We don't suffer as much in our lives as the old masters did so we are worse.

That is only going to get worse as technology continues to improve our lives. The only way we would be able to paint like the old masters is if we either bombed ourselves back to the Stone Age or found a way to make happiness unenjoyable. The latter is much easier btw.

Religion has been trying to do just that since the beginning of history. "Live a crap life go to heaven" "Live a great life go to hell", except you can't just tell people that and they'll believe you. You have to find a way to make men hate happiness in a more literal way. Not by punishing them for being happy, but by making each man realize on a personal level that there are actual, literal consequences for happiness.

That's all it takes. If men don't want to be happy, then the better life gets for them the worse their lives will be, and we'll suffer again, and we'll have great art again.

But that's not really something to aspire for. Great art is just a consequence of shit lives. To look at the old masters and romanticize that time period is naive because it was so shitty for them. It's like when white teenagers listen to rap music.

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>>2946964
Zhaoming Wu seems like the only one that has his shit down, Steve Huston's figures are bloated and stiff, and everyone else's compositions were awkward locked my eyes on a section of the canvas and made me ignore the rest.

I mean isn't this a terrible composition? I only look at the old lady's face and the truck, nothing leads me anywhere else.

>>2946964
oh god LOL

>>2947079
anon they're not bad, but they're not that great. definitely not master material tho.

>>2947079
Even Steve Huston himself told he's not even near to Old Masters level.

>>2946931
atheism

>>2946931
autism

I think we group a lot of old masters together, but really they are just the best of the best from each time period. At any given point only a couple were alive at a time, and we're looking at the cream of the crop from roughly 500 years of history. So looking just at living artists it's not a huge surprise there are not tons of full blown masters walking around, especially since the 20thC happened which really shook a lot of the traditions to the core. I think too it's something that needs some time to reflect upon. People are notoriously bad at deciding on who the masters are in their own time period, and things only really become apparent over a bigger time span to see whose work still can hold up.

>>2946933
>Objectively speaking
There is no objective speaking in art really. It's hard to compare technical skills between time periods too because the goals often were different. A 19thC realist was aiming for very different things than a Renaissance master.

>>2947038
>>2947009
This is also partially true in my opinion. I think attitudes will shift too with time. A lot of illustrators are seen as lesser during their life then later are reclassified and seen as better than "just" an illustrator. Look at Dore or even Rockwell for example. Or guys like Michelangelo were technically illustrators being hired by the church. In 150 years will space marines seem less commercial and it will be like some old master painting knights? Will digital art be seen as real painting?

>>2946931
They're talking shit.

I'm not an artist but I was browsing /ic/ because it's interesting, and I figured I'd add a bit of context with some discussion of music.

Whether masters are appreciated in their own time can vary. Bach was never that famous in his own time, and over his life developed the reputation for writing "old fashioned" music that eschewed the more contemporary style of the time. Handel was much more famous than Bach at the time, and Bach's music was far less well known until concentrated efforts by composers like Felix Mendelssohn pulled his music back into popular consciousness.

For what it's worth, in the musical world the masters are usually regarded as such for a couple key reasons. First off is if they are highly innovative and important figures in the development of a new musical style. Beethoven introduced romanticism, Stravinsky almost single-handedly defined modern music, Liszt and Chopin took the technique of piano to places it had never been before -- all moments where music was taken somewhere it had never been before by a force of artistic genius.

The second reason is just pure composer skill. While composers like Brahms or Scriabin were never as directly responsible for major shifts in style or technique, they made up for it by pure composing chops.

Something that all the great works have in common is that they are multifaceted, and work on many levels. They are ambitious in theme, construction and technique. Every composer adds many subtleties and details that would not exist in a lesser work, and they all have very considered meaning on both a large scale as well as being incredibly compelling moment to moment.

The question as to what modern musicians will be considered along the great masters is up for debate, but I think the criteria I mentioned give a bit of context to what might be considered important to future generations.

roberto ferri is the closest artist I know of that's similar to the classic biblical style that so many of the old masters had

>>2947367
lol he's a bastardized version of them, and is appealing if you are new to art, but as you get better and expose yourself to more artists you will realize he is total pleb tier

>>2947385
what artists do you like anon

>>2946933
The 19th century painters could paint the much more realistically than most old masters, but that's it. Besides spirit, the old masters knew more about their materials and how to use them effectively.

There are many today who could paint very realistically, like real life, and their works are still not worthy to be called art. Michelangelo never rendered anything half so realistically as many we see now and in the 19th century, but his sketches are still undeniably the work of a greater genius.

>>2947367
Other anon is right. Ferri mostly appeals to arcfags and beginning grinders who are angry at modern art. The moment that an artists categorizes old masters as one collective to draw inspiration from, he's lost, because it speaks of no true vision to take from such irreconcilable systems in order to create one art. Hence we have such jumbled up works from Ferri. Add to that the poses that one tends to see from studio life drawing models that he can't seem to get himself rid of. The reason he creates such strange subjects is not a sign of talent or vision, but a desperate attempt to compete with true mastery.

This whole thread is just people suggesting artists they feel are good and other people shitting on them without giving their opinion on who would fit better or why x artist wouldn't be a good fit.

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>>2947432
>The 19th century painters could paint the much more realistically than most old masters
No they couldn't... heres a drapery study, i repeat, study, for an oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

They were the greatest artists who ever lived, without comparison. And we are lucky that any of their work survived at all. A study for a hand by one of them is objectively better than the greatest masterpieces of the 19th century

>>2947474
The 19thC guys COULD paint more realistically though, but that's because the Renaissance guys weren't aiming at a strict realism. Advances in technology like better pigments and cameras also helped. A lot of the Renaissance paintings were based on their drawing studies and not done from the model and a lot of their forms and the lighting is stylized.

I do think that the Renaissance masters are some of the best to have ever lived, but it's certainly not because of them being masters of realism. By that logic you might as well choose some photorealist who paints every pose with a single hair instead of a brush.

>>2947474
The vast majority of Renaissance works are not that realistic. Even for Leonardo, who is not the average Renaissance painter, that level of finish is unusual.

Realism also isn't to be equated with tightness of finish. Sargent, for example, has more natural realism to his works, but not so much finish as Correggio. Rather it has to do with the initial impression of closeness to sense perception.

>>2947360

>Something that all the great works have in common is that they are multifaceted, and work on many levels

Thanks for this.

when you live in 17th century italy you have literally nothing to do but draw

>>2947458
>arcfags

so much butthurt

>>2947557
Butthurt? I'm not even him but he's right and it's not butthurt. ARC is a joke of an organization and has horrible taste. They're incredibly closeminded and not even consistent in their own beliefs. I used to put up with them simply because they would post hi-res images of old master paintings and it was one of the only places to see them online years ago, but then they paywalled some of them and also other sites have since started putting even better images online. If you try reading any of their articles or rants you will quickly see how insane they are. Or just look at their "living masters" and see how crap a lot of them are, then read through the page on how to become a "living master" for a good laugh--hint, it involves lots of fees before you can slap a trademarked term next to your name.

>>2947529
i mean you can always get the plague or farm radishes or something.

>>2946931
>People often say the masters of this age haven't even got an ounce of the mastery the old masters attained.

anyone who says that is plain wrong. the old masters would be blown away if they could see some of the art that's being done today.

the old masters are impressive mainly because they were the first to do a lot of what they did, and because the tools and information available at the time were more primitive. they deserve a revered place in art history for their innovations. but to say that modern masters are technically less competent draftsmen or painters is so wrong it's not even funny. we know so much more now about light and anatomy other fundamentals. our materials are so much better. There's such a bigger tradition of knowledge to draw from.

>>2947609
and yet you're still not gonna make it, anon

>>2947609
That's kind of what I was thinking. The artists of today are really impressive. When someone paints/draws from life every day for the majority of the day for years, it's hard to imagine that they're still nothing compared to someone like Raphael who only lived to be 37, or around there. I don't completely remember.

>>2947633

already did :)

If anything, it seems like old masters studied drapery more in-depth and paid more attention to form rendering vs. Detail rendering.

>>2947609
I don't think you know much about old masters methods and materials. Much better materials now? In many cases simpler-made materials are better than the mass-produced materials we have now. Their paints had better handling properties and they knew more about how to use them because of experience and an artistic culture that was more involved. Many of the materials that are superior for painting are very difficult to come by now. Many of the materials are being sold commercially and are widely used that are not actually good, while the superior materials are now so expensive, if you even have the luck or the tenacity to find what materials are good and what are not.

Information about old master techniques require a lot of minute research and experimentation to get right, as many have deemed it worthy to look into. This comes first from an honest evaluation of aesthetics. People study them for decades and still can't quite get what they want so what use is all this tradition of knowledge? Not to mention a lot of the information, despite the "bigger tradition of knowledge to draw from" are outright wrong, particularly when subsequent generations of painters tried to recreate the qualities of older masters, but the information has been lost. The gradual influx of hobbyist artists also required that art materials learning would be simpler.

It is not only because they are the first to do what they did -- that is, history -- that they are revered. No one since Botticelli has done what Botticelli has done, unless one would say that all he did was paint with good proportion and volume, and that was the end of his art.

If being first is the main grounds for honor, then the Modernists should be as highly revered.

No one is saying that our modern artists today can't make anything good according to their own standards. But what is light and anatomy? Those are not the inner working of great art and not the reasons why old masters are revered.

They started with the greeks.

>>2946931
Back in the 16th century there was literally nothing else for these guys to do besides draw and do art. I mean what else are they going to do? Stare at a goat? Walk around in the mud? Sure there were a few books, and of course drinking, and women (and boys). But you can't spend all day doing that. So basically you could work on your art hours and hours a day without getting bored, since there was basically nothing else interesting to do.

Meanwhile nowadays, there's video games, TV, internet, social media, apps, etc. Super fun, super entertaining, and sper addictive. Laboring hard work on doing art just can't compete with today's digital pleasure boxes. I guarantee you if Rembrandt had a smart phone he wouldn't have done shit.

>>2946942
Proko's pretty good

Who's your favorite old masters?

>>2947360
>I'm not an artist

Stopped reading here. Why do so many outsiders think they are qualified to comment on fields they know nothing about? You might as well ask a homeless guy for stock tips, for all the good it'll do you.

When the camera was invented, representational art died. If you're looking for true skill nowadays, look at the illustrators, the concept artists, the cartoonists. Not the "artists" who put a tampon in a teacup with a neon sign behind it that say SLUTPUSSY.

>>2947714
Yeah IP creation seems pretty masterful right?

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Get this book. It shows exactly how great the old masters were, and what they did that made them so great. After you read it you'll never be able to appreciate modern """artists""" ever again.

>>2947687
Also don't forget this: safety. Many of the best pigments with the best colors are extremely toxic, and so they can't be sold today. Lead white, Arsenic yellow, etc. In the old days artists could use them because no one knew they were dangerous, or if they did they didn't care. As a result their paintings had much richer colors. Nowadays all you can get are knockoff colors made from safe materials. Sure we don't want random people getting cancer from paint, but to get that we have to accept that our colors will never be as vivid as the old ones.

>>2947719
Can digital not reproduce vividness?

The human person and the architecture of his world are objects which can be rendered beautiful in many ways.

Old generation artists gathered their mental image from a time that is forever gone. Mathematically, culturally, so on.

The question for every artist is how far can you reach aesthetically into the past and the future.

>>2947717
Realism is just one style of artwork. It takes just as much skill to make a great work in another style as it does to make one in the realism style. Nowadays noone cares about realism, so if you're looking for skill you have to look at other styles.

And no, skill isn't defined as painting and drawing in the realism style. It is a more relative term, skill is succeeding and showing mastery of the goals and aesthetics of a particular style. For realist masters, their greatness is shown through mastering of reality. For illustrators, their greatness is shown through mastery of illustration concepts. Neither is better or worse than the other, just different.

>>2947720
No, especially not on shitty consumer grade monitors. Digital can barely reproduce as good as shitty prints, and that's only if you get an extremely good top of the line specialist display.

And when comparing digital to real paint... IT's not even close! Seriously, look at a picture of a painting on your computer, and then look at the painting in real life. The colors aren't even comparable. It's like saying a porn pic of a pussy is the same as the real thing.

Maybe one day future digital display tech could catch up... But that day is certainly not today.

>>2947719
Lead pigments aren't extremely toxic. It's not good for house paint though, because it chips into dust especially around hinges, which is where most of the lead scare comes from. If you don't ingest it or inhale it, it's fine.

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>>2947709
Andrea del Sarto

>>2947739
https://carolineroberts.blogspot.com/2009/01/toxicity-of-pigments.html

For your reading pleasure:

Highly Toxic Pigments

antimony white (antimony trioxide)
barium yellow (barium chromate)
burnt or raw umber (iron oxides, manganese silicates or dioxide)
cadmium red, orange or yellow (cadmium sulfide, cadmium selenide)
chrome green (Prussian blue, lead chromate)
chrome orange (lead carbonate)
chrome yellow (lead chromate)
cobalt violet (cobalt arsenate or cobalt phosphate)
cobalt yellow (potassium cobalt nitrate)
lead or flake white (lead carbonate)
lithol red (sodium, barium and calcium salts of azo pigments)
manganese violet (manganese ammonium pyrophosphate)
molybdate orange (lead chromate, lead molybdate, lead sulfate)
naples yellow (lead antimonate)
strontium yellow (strontium chromate)
vermilion (mercuric sulfide)
zinc sulfide
zinc yellow (zinc chromate)

Just look at that list and note how many of those pigments are considered the most vivid and best visual quality in their repsective colors.

>>2947742
Raw umber highly toxic in the same rank as lead white? I don't believe it.

No lead read or lead-tin yellow either.

>>2947458
I've been into him, but see what you mean too. Who would you cite as an good example in opposition? How about Jenny Saville?

>>2947742
>>2947748
No, burnt and raw umber are not toxic. Anon is talking out of his arse.

Right now, drawing "war", "9/11", "teracts" etc considering as kitch. But 100 years later it will be art.
>>2947714
>everything is shit except Old Masters.
Everything in lit is shit because Odyssey exist!

>>2947687
I think you're being to anal about your particular concept of art. There's always a trade-off between different factors when considering materials, and art isn't something that belongs to this ethereal realm of sensation. Maybe when we're able to download information directly into our visual cortex and represent images like that you'll have a point about monitors not representing the real quality of paint and all that, but there's always limitations that, in fact, are excellent at providing the artwork with character. This particular style of comics that we generally have today has only come about because we needed a certain kind of image due to the low reliability and fidelity of old printing technology. In the age of the highest fidelity we've ever had, we still use that same style even though we don't need to have strong lineart, screentones and whatnot, because that limitation allowed the artwork to transcend itself and gave us something of value that was new.

I'm sure there are limitations to paint that digital doesn't have (not talking just about convenience, but also the actual qualitas of the thing). The Mona Lisa wasn't made to be looked through a glass box, but that's how it'll ever be, except in - gasp! - digital form.

You're taking the same attitude as those autistic audiophiles that spend 5k dollars on Valhalla speaker cables or that discuss endlessly the different qualities of tonewood on guitars even though all the sound comes from the magnetic vibrations on the pickups. A very basic consideration that modern artists need to have is making sure their images look good in different digital displays, and old masters just had to look at the fucking thing and they were done. If you think any one of those attitudes has more merit than the other, that's just your opinion, man.

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>>2947714
bruh you know i exist right

>>2947719
You can still get lead white from Winsor and Newton.

>>2947720
Is this a joke?

>>2947134

I think I get what you're trying to say here, that pain was the incentive for creators to fully invest in escapism or their craft. Sam Peckinpah and J.R.R Tolkein participated in wars and saw gruesome things, then they later created great material.

I think that remaining miserable is a bad thing in this era. Not because it makes you less pragmatic, but because you can potentially sink into activities that give you easy happiness/pleasure. Like mobile games, movies, video games, etc. They're huge timesinks that don't fulfill much for you in the long run. I lapse into those activities constantly.

It's kind of why religion discourages those fun activities. It's not because it wants people to remain miserable, but because it wants you to obtain the juiciest fruit out of every second.

>>2947712

If you want a tl;dr, he's stating that innovators are recognized in the long run despite being obscure initially. He isn't saying that contemporary artists are bad, just they aren't as experimental as the Old Masters who discovered linear perspective and anatomy without a book.

>>2948028
Digital is a completely different art. So different that I was only talking about physical painting materials compared to now, apples to apples. There really isn't a comparison with viewing art on a display and looking at the real painting. I thought by better materials you meant for actual oil painting as the old masters did, which isn't always true (there are a few cases where it is but you'd have to do research), but now it seems you're contrasting physical painting with digital painting. You may as well say that we have so much better materials now for sculpture because there is zbrush. I don't know what you mean by ethereal realm of sensation. Sensation is to do with the earthly realm, and it is important still. What can monitors do to compete against dimensions of a canvas?

In the art of physical paintings, particularly with oils, it isn't false that there are materials today that we are taught by the prevalent artistic culture to use that simply are not as good, and many good materials that are in scarcity. I could give many examples, but you seem to think searching after perfection and archivability is autism.

You truly show your lack of knowledge about old painting. There are written documents by artists about ideal situations for the viewing of paintings, and how the surface should be... And I really don't know why you would equate contemporary artistry with digital. Digital is only a small part of modern art-making.

But this is only talk of materials of painting. There are still qualities of old masters that many still sense as lacking in our modern artists, and not simply for historical reasons or qualities that have to do with representation.

>>2948094
Rumor is they stopped production. Their cremnitz white is alright, but not the best. It's in safflower oil, and they also sell a "flake white" that has zinc in it. The other good lead whites are quite expensive as a result of being hard to come by.

Пoтoмy чтo eдинcтвeннaя дeйcтвyющaя aкaдeмичecкaя шкoлa нaхoдитcя в Caнкт-Пeтepбypгe и вce coвpeмeнныe мacтepa pyccкиe.

Because the only current academic school is located in Saint-Petersburg and all modern masters are russians.

>>2948061
>he thinks hes good

Repeat after me "MEME STROKES"
Tree is nice, hilltop is okay, everything else is shit
Get gud you egotist

>>2948547
Except there's barely any good Russians at the moment. The tradition is still alive, but it's been in decline for over a century. They still can teach reasonable drawing skills even though it's not what it used to be, but their paintings have gone way downhill and so has their composition and ability to make anything beyond a study.

>>2947672
Got em! Glad if you made it man

>>2946931
Realism.