Have we surpassed the old masters?

>>3017332
I had a* sorry

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>>3017332
yes because the old masters didn't have the knowledge or resources that we have now. Leonardo Da Vinci had to steal corpses from burial sites in order to dissect them to learn anatomy.

No, because I can't think of anybody that has surpassed people like Bouguereau. Doing that would probably require 70 years of practice just like he probably had.

>>3017345
is it even legal to hire infants for figure drawing nowadays? I don't think i even know if itd be considered porn if i had kids in my refs folder.

>>3017345
>dat shitty perspective on the vase
>dat lifeless expression
>dat awkward angel
>dat fucked up angel foot
>dat mushy drapery
Lenoir may fool some people, but I see right through that discount Boogeroo.

Old master would've BTFO every artist currently alive if they had the same resources that we do now. Objectively speaking, yes, we're "better", thanks to cameras, infinite reference, infinite knowledge, books, resources, teachers, etc.

>>3017332
The only way to surpass the old masters is to invent a new concept, a new way to see things, to study things and to think, that's what they did during the renaissance and it's what happened with the great artists of the Baroque period, it's what happened with the Impressionists and the rise of modernism and so on.

So no, illustrations, anime girls and concept art did not surpass the old masters.

when you get really good art is more about spirit than technique, and the renaissance had spirit in droves

We got better tools, they got better mastery...

If given the same tools as them you can surpass them, you'll be right. Otherwise : NOPE...

>>3017843
>Spirit meme
What does it even mean?

>>3017359

Thank you, nearly all of his pieces have that issue. It was tough to do studies without fully sighting most of the time.

>>3017938

Well-rendered, naked, pretty, european, and white women are more puuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrre, you pleb.

>>3017332
> Comparing most artists of the modern pleb age to one when artists lived like rock stars via the patron system which included their own studio, free board, food, supplies (quality art supplies were cost prohibitive to say the least. Textile material, spices, and raw material used for certain paints were the reason for major trade endeavors. Remember America, you're the unintended byproduct of Columbus trying to find a shortcut to India's spice rack), naked girls to model for you, alcohol and drugs.

>>3017842
>The only way to surpass the old masters is to invent a new concept, a new way to see things, to study things and to think
No it isn't. Inventing new things doesn't mean anything. If that were so, the Impressionists would have surpassed the Renaissance.

>>3017332
What's perhaps more facinating is how many people have better abilities. Obviously not everyone is going to be a master level artist but the fact that intermediate art skill is so common (and honestly in comparison to a lot of other abilities surprisingly easy to acquire) is impressive.

>>3017332
A lot of old master lines are better than KJG even if their drawings don't make you aware of them, and they also drew from imagination very well.

Astonishing doesn't necessarily mean of a greater level, and especially not even beauty.


>>3017345
Bouguereau is not an old master. He didn't have 70 years of practice before he could paint at his usual level either. That doesn't make sense. He had decades of successful career.

>>3017332

Well, SOME of the living "great masters" probably did. Most of us? Not so much. Not even fucking close.

And as >>3017334 implies each generation looks up to the greats that came before them and use them as reference to their own accomplishments and skills.

>>3017332
"Old masters"? You can't say for sure that prehistory masters didn't shit out the most astonishing landscapes from imagination in different angles with maintained proportions but the work was simply lost to time, so the argument is moot.

Yes, though it's a shoulders of giants scenario.

An artist today just has so many more resources at his disposal and can learn from the old masters before him. They were the pioneers, but we benefit from their experience.

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>>3018092
>You can't say for sure that prehistory masters didn't shit out the most astonishing landscapes from imagination in different angles with maintained proportions but the work was simply lost to time, so the argument is moot.

The argument isn't moot just because you throw out some unfalsifiable (and incredibly unlikely) hypothetical. He's obviously referring to the old masters we know. If Gyarlor over in the Andromeda galaxy shit out a better landscape 20,000 years ago it doesn't make the argument moot either.

>>3018094
>The argument isn't moot just because you throw out some unfalsifiable (and incredibly unlikely) hypothetical.
why not
>He's obviously referring to the old masters we know.
he didn't say that
> If Gyarlor over in the Andromeda galaxy shit out a better landscape 20,000 years ago it doesn't make the argument moot either.
why not

>>3018096
>why not

Because you can use unfalsifiable claims for literally anything. A unicorn told me the argument isn't moot.

>he didn't say that

If you weren't an autist you'd understand the subtext, seeing as his post was accompanied by a michealangelo drawing.

>why not

See first point.

You might think that being a pedant makes you sound smart, but the only people you impress are other retards.

>>3018114

You're missing his point. His point was that we can't be certain for sure as we're compares the very few greatest artists in that particular period with the millions of greatest illustrators in our time period.

I don't agree, but it's a good answer. Quit being irritated.

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>see artists OP mentions
>shitty anime/cartoonish drawings

>>3018158
>not knowing Kim jung gi and feng zhu
>not recognizing Kim's skill
How new and how shit are you?

>>3017345
>bouguereau
either bait or complete pleb

>>3018354
>thinking that messy pencil scribblings and lazily made concept art is anywhere near as good as what the old masters did.

FUCKING KEK!

>>3018338
>>3018339
>these
>good

>>3018403
Post some of his work that you think is shit

>>3018403
>haha old masters, u cant win against my argument hahahaha
Fucking retards that think like you should just die.

>>3018426
not an argument
>>3018423
All of it, is anime crap, the mere fact that you compare to serious art shows how clueless you really are

>>3018428
Okay, you had me going for a bit but now I realize this is b8. Good job 7/10

>>3018152

>His point was that we can't be certain for sure as we're compares the very few greatest artists in that particular period
Those few greatest artists are colloquially known as "the old masters" and it was entirely the point of the thread. "His point" was that "hurrdurr we can't know if some caveman did better so why even discuss it!" which is a patently stupid reason to dismiss a discussion. We can't be certain about virtually anything, I can't even be CERTAIN that anybody but me actually exists, I'm sure we can understand why me going "I don't even know if you or the old masters even existed so it's a moot point" is fucking dumb and pointless. And I'll be as irritated as I want on a Taiwanese leatherworking forum.

>>3017334
3rd panel totally knew they were the best and top panels are objectively worse.

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>>3018428
>All of it, is anime crap

really activated my almonds

I don't think the old masters are better than today's masters. As you get close to the top the skill gap narrows pretty tight.

I would say there are more artists with master skills today than in the past. There are more people, and information is more readily available than ever before. Plus not many of us are having to fight wolves while painting. Seems reasonable right?

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Well, they had the freedom to trace. Even DaVinci traced, but modern copyright laws educated modern people to think that it's wrong to do it.

I say that we are regressing because of retarded modern standards.

>>3018511
oh, cartoon trash then, really different anon

>>3018535
You're NGMI bro.

>>3018507

>"I don't even know if you or the old masters even existed so it's a moot point"
Where did you get that from? He just said that you can't compare a few great people from the past with millions of contemporary ones. Ideally, it should be millions compared with millions. Proportion or balance is his point.

I disagree, but there's nothing wrong with varied discussion. If you want to hear what you want to hear, then this community is not for you. Tumblr and Twitter might be up your alley.

>>3018509
What do you mean "worse"? The second panel is a dude animating Bugs Bunny, and the first one is *starting* a digital drawing.

>>3018509
The renaissance artists believed the ancient greeks to be better though. They fetishized the past.

>>3017938
it's about your personality and the underlying worldview

like you could draw the worlds greatest anime characters at the skill of 10 renaissance masters, but you're still just a simple nerd drawing fapbait

No, we can't surpass them. Not even if we trained decades just to do that - and that's completely idiotic and senseless, something done by delusional people who doesn't really know anything about art.

Art is a product of its time; you can relate all masterworks to a precise time and location; you can even be more specific and search the relationships of the authors with the environment they lived in, the masters they had, the happenings in their lives, their prejudices and the money in their pockets. That's part of the critique of an art piece itself, and you should always consider it as part of the image you are seeing and not as something unrelated.

Otherwise you could say that ancient Egyptians didn't know about volume, illumination, line of action, form... While their sculptures actually tell us that they DID know about that, it just wasn't their priority to express that in their pictures. They had a different use than the paintings of, for example, Leonardo or other Renaissance masters.

If we didn't consider the period in which the work was realized, critiques against classicists painters in the 1800-1900 wouldn't had sense; why criticizing authors that are objectively good, with lot of knowledge? Because they weren't considered relevant anymore: some critiques thought that they were trying to express something that was not original of their period only to linger in the classicist-confort zone artists all over the world were still basking into. Even Bouguereau was quickly set aside because of this, even if his talent and skills were maybe the most impressive ever existed.

I'm disappointed to see, though, that a board about art critique is completely ignorant about how art critique is actually done.

>>3018958
>>>/Thread/

>>3018978
Except he is a pretentious idiot and the thread is about technical skill.

>>3018980
And my point was that it was useless to argue about that because many factors count against what's pure technical skill; but go ahead, waste your time.

It depends on how you look at it.

The old masters learned more from a limited standpoint.

We've learned less, but ultimately we're capable of more, because we have more effective tools for training.

Essentially, they're impressive because they had to go through trial and error to figure shit out. Today, everything is on the internet, and someone has the answer.

>>3018958

I unironically believe that the best comic artists today are better at drawing figures from imagination than past masters.

>>3019007
>but ultimately we're capable of more
Lmao like what

>>3017345
>Leonardo Da Vinci had to steal corpses from burial sites in order to dissect them to learn anatomy.
w-where could I get one these days? just curious

>>3019008
Doesn't matter, the finished product is inferior

>>3017332
Yes, we stand on the shoulders of giants, etc. etc. etc.

>>3017332
>have we surpassed the old masters
>kim jung gi
>feng zhu

plebs gonna pleb

Old masters are a meme. Your average comic book artist is probably a better draftsman than 90% of old masters.

>>3018890

I didn't say he said that, it was an extension of the argument "we can't know for sure so why bother discussing it". It's a stupid rabbit hole of unprovable and unfalsifiable "what ifs".

>He just said that you can't compare a few great people from the past with millions of contemporary ones.

First off, no he didn't say that, he said "You can't say for sure that prehistory masters didn't shit out the most astonishing landscapes from imagination in different angles with maintained proportions but the work was simply lost to time, so the argument is moot." I said the argument wasn't fucking moot because you can't say anything for sure and this rationale dismisses literally any argument we could have about anything.

We don't have millions of old masters, we have the ones that we've been exposed to who were, generally speaking, the best of their field. If there were better artists that died obscure and their paintings rotted, which is feasible, it's still stupid to dismiss comparison with the ones that survived based on that premise. The argument isn't whether they existed, the argument is that even if they did exist it doesn't change the discussion.

>I disagree, but there's nothing wrong with varied discussion.

The guy fucking said "it's not worth discussing because we don't know" and I disagreed with that.

>Tumblr and Twitter might be up your alley.

Not only did you misunderstand my post (and his post IMO), but immediately after boasting that you like varied discussion you tell someone who disagrees with you to fuck off.

This is beating a dead horse at this point, I'm not sure why you're jumping to the guy's rescue when it feels like you didn't even read the post I originally replied to, or his half-witted "why not" answer which shows he was exactly as stupid as he sounded.

>>3018532
The argumentation of those claims are always the same stupid 'logic'
>oh look this drawing is way too correct so it must be traced
>oh look this painting has some measuring errors so it must be lens distortion - clearly traced!

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the old masters used stuff like that for some of the paintings, but this shit gets way too hyped up out of proportion so everyone can feel good about the fact that they can't draw for shit. Great justification for today's art universities to keep disregarding fundamentals because everyone traced anyways right?

>>3018532

>believing in sensationalist clickbait from uninformed journalists

>>3018535

can you post some good art so I can achieve enlightenment?

>>3019008
well you're just delusional

>>3019007
a figure drawing from a person who draws comics will always be worse than a figure drawing from an old master.

>>3020457
But why?

>>3020457

Why?

Which old master? Which comic artist? There are old masters who mostly drew portraits and landscapes, why are they magically better than a comic artist who draws fucktons of figures?

And worse how? There are different criteria for quality when it comes to drawing figures. You can draw a stiff unappealing piece of shit with spot-on anatomy.

>>3020457
>implying you can't be both

>>3018958
>No, we can't surpass them. Not even if we trained decades just to do that - and that's completely idiotic and senseless, something done by delusional people who doesn't really know anything about art.
The Renaissance did not have the same point of view from which you are coming from, and they did well enough. They dedicated their art to be like the ancient Romans and Greeks, and some very note worthy things of beauty came from that. It's not completely delusional or worthless.

>>3017334

Fourth panel should be an Ancient Greek jerking it to the butt of a male statue. When the Renessaince artists said "Old Masters," they meant the Ancient Greeks, not fucking Cave men.

Post Persian War but Pre Peloponnesian War, the Ancient Greeks truly did believe they were the best.

>>3021358
If anything, it's impressive that it only takes a life time to be able to create realistic sculptures.