One word: scarcity.

There's this idea that somehow, music used to be a lot better because if you play a classic rock station you'll hear a whole bunch of songs you recognize that are pretty good. Then you turn to whatever Clear Channel is forcing down your throat and the only good thing you hear is that Swedish House Mafia song from like three years ago and you conclude that music sucks now. What everybody misses is that the classic rock station has thirty years' worth of material to fit into a days' worth of programming, while the Top 40 station gets to fill maybe 30% of its programming with stuff older than a year. Objectively, the "classic rock" station has roughly 30 times as much material to draw from. Subjectively, winnowing any 30 tracks down to the one good one is going to give you a better playlist than picking one at random.

Now extrapolate that out to an art history that calls anything from 50 to 3000 years old "classic" and anything newer than 50 years old "modern."

Was there shit in the renaissance? boy howdy. And lots of it was technically exquisite, but no longer matches our modern ideals.

And that's just the stuff that survived... how do you think we'll feel about Jeff Koons in 400 years?

That's only half of it, though. 400 years ago, an artist could make a living by finding a rich person that wanted some self-aggrandizement. Nowadays sketches are things you get done in dorm rooms and state fairs. If you want to get a rich person's money, you have to do something the rich person wants, and rich people generally want things for non-aesthetic reasons. So what you think is rippin' awesome art doesn't matter nearly so much as what someone willing to spend $12m on a stuffed shark thinks is rippin' awesome and we all end up shaking our heads.

There's awesome "modern" art. It tends to get swept aside in reactionary "herp derp I hate Damien Hirst" rants, of which I am guilty of several. But realistically speaking? Those people who are buying stuffed sharks are betting an unholy amount of money that 400 years from now they'll be remembered like the Medicis, as people who fostered the careers of visionary artists destined for immortality. They won't be craven hedge fund managers whose sole stake in the infinite is they headed the breakup of Washington Mutual, they were the ones that put Bubbles in the MoMA. Those who can, do. Those who can't, buy.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: there's ample consensus about what was good and what was bad 400 years ago. There's very little consensus about what's good or bad now. If you're seeing it in a museum, and it's old, lots of people think it's great. If you're seeing it in a museum, and it's new, someone thinks it's great. Scarcity. "Classic" art has been winnowed to the point where the bad shit is gone. "Modern" art is undergoing that process.

"Art is the knack of making something from nothing and selling it."

- Frank Zappa

Sigh, I feel like I should comment and add to the discussion but I might just end up ranting. I'll try and keep this short.

I believe that there is good and bad art, I'm undecided on how much of that is objective versus subjective though. The problem is that far too often, we only want to analyse art on the aesthetic beauty of a piece. In reality, what makes a piece good or bad is the message it conveys and the impression the piece leaves on your conscience, as well as it's ability to communicate those ideas. Similar to music, dance or any other art form, the visuals are nothing more than the medium to communicate ideas. To put this into perspective, it's like analysing an album for it's chord progression versus the themes presented in the album. Similarly, finding importance in the sentence structure versus importance in the author's message. The problem the man in the video has is that he holds the medium to a higher standard than the idea.

There is always something amazing about someone who can execute their medium to the highest degree. Ideas change and each new artwork offers a new perspective. Medium on the other hand (in the case of art aesthetics) can get boring if you see the same thing over and over again, or a lack of depth in the ideas. In my opinion this is what has been driving the constant desire for new aesthetic looks, no matter how contrary to traditional values of aesthetics they are.

On a side note, I would take most things Prager University says with a grain of salt. They are not a real university, just a youtube channel that likes to publish clickbait titled videos with a heavily right wing stance on most of their issues. Things like dropping the A-bombs was the correct choice, modern art sucks, feminism is wrong and Christians being the most persecuted religion. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but Prager University really gets my blood boiling.

I'm very much in the camp of "what's the point of having realistic paintings when we already have cameras?" If you want to talk of "obsolete art," then to me, realistic art has been rendered obsolete by the invention of cameras that can take colored pictures. The only reason why paintings like this even exist is because photography wasn't invented yet. I am, are realistic portraits even a thing anymore in the 21st century?

Going back to the video, I'm really having trouble finishing the video because it's so terrible. It's the whole stereotypical, "The ancient Greeks/Romans were awesome! The Renaissance was awesome because they recognize how the ancient Greeks/Romans were awesome! Progress was straightforward until these shitters from the early 20th century ruined everything!" It ignores everything outside of the West. It presumes that there was "inferior art," presumably medieval art, that we "grew" out of. We might have developed more types of paints and more technique, but art isn't something that can be progressed in a meaningful sense.

All of this is opinion, of course. I think Girl with a Pearl Earring is a thoroughly unremarkable painting and Mona Lisa is a horribly overrated portrait that only got popular because Napoleon liked it and the painting was stolen from the Louvre in a famous heist during the 1900s. But proclaiming my own personal preferences and tastes as the only right one, or worse, an objective one, is complete asinine.

It amazes me how many people are so attached to ideas of art that have been outdated since before they were born. I can definitely appreciate the old masters for their talent and technique, but it's been a long time since those were the only indicators of an artistic work's quality. There's no way that you can reasonably use the same criteria to judge both David and Rothko. Overall, Florczak's idea of what constitutes "good art" is way too narrow. He discounts decades of European art and completely disregards any non-European traditions, many of which don't adhere to Western ideas of representation. Even his idea of acceptable subject matter is too narrow. I'm not surprised to hear that Prager University is just a right-wing Youtube channel.

I feel like I should also mention that I don't believe his story about the apron. I don't have any instruction on the subject other than a few university art history classes, and it was pretty obvious to me that the image he showed wasn't a Pollock painting. I have trouble believing that graduate art students can't recognize a stained apron when it's shown to them.

There is a lot I disagree with here so this is probably going to turn into a stream of consciousness kind of thing.

Humans are evolving all of the time and art evolves at the same rate. It's hard to say that art is superior to art from before, but it definitely changes. Any film student can say that movies were better in the 70's but back then the director had to be 100% positive that the audience knew what was happening. Today movies have to be quick and changing a lot so that the audience is continually intrigued by what's happening. The themes of art from and now is equal but the form is different. If you want to learn more about this I suggest this book.

The speaker in the video seems to push for some kind of objectively good art to be attained. In my mind though, that goes against the definition of art. Art is anything that changes the emotions of the viewer. The speaker doesn't want art, he wants sport. Art isn't a competition between artists to create the "best art".

My argument was always that classical artists always seemed to be looking for new methods to improve their work; usually citing Da Vinci's use of new materials, techniques, etc.

In fairness, this is like saying, "Modern science is shit, because Newton and Darwin accomplished way more than anyone alive today." Sure, the second part of that statement is factually correct, but it's also a non-sequitur. The filter of generations has been applied, and geniuses happen only ever so often. We're not geniuses, you and I and most people doing art. That doesn't mean there aren't some cool artists out there doing rad shit.

Can't link to their website at work, because of my stupid firewall, but check out the Outsider Art Fair in NYC (or hell, go if you live anywhere within a few hours), as an example. Tons of awesome and stupid shit there, and everything in between.

I think some problems arise from context. If you go to a gallery or an exhibition of a modern artist whose appeal isn't obvious, it could be that it's because the work has been totally decontextualized and stripped of meaning that the artist probably wanted it to convey. In my experience, talking to artists about their work usually makes things way more appealing. This isn't really possible with most art, obviously, but it's totally possible at fairs, art openings, etc. Most people who create are all the happier talking about their creation, because it means someone actually cares.

Personally, the abstract modernist line of art really doesn't do anything for me or the "rocks" or other "shock" art. But I think a lot of this art comes from continuing to push into new creative territories. Imagine if you were an artist and all you could do was use the same style as everyone else had for the last 2000 years? We had a whole discussion about this a couple of weeks ago. I used to enjoy amateur photography for several years, but then google images came out and I realized I could find virtually any picture I ever wanted to take had already been taken by someone with a lot more time and experience. So for me I just didn't bother anymore and moved on, but real artists don't do that. And this same kind of thing happens with writing, visual arts, music, literature, etc. Art must continue to change or it just gets boring, for the artist and the admirer. Plus, almost all the famous artists who created new forms of art were disliked in the beginning.

And don't be misled by the "professors" suggestions that the impressionists were somehow an "objectively" aesthetic and accepted group. They were completely rejected by the established art scene when they first started their work. Their work was seen as lazy, imprecise, and just plain terrible too. Now they command some of the highest prices for any art in the world. And in terms of some modernist art, "aesthetically pleasing" is not the point and it requires a learned understanding of its purpose, historical place, context, etc in order to "get it." And to suggest that Jackson Pollock was some kind of simpleton who lacked a philosophical foundation is an insult. He was continuing on the line of creative artistic development that had come before him, but also trying to add his own self to it so to speak.

In the end though, I do enjoy classical works more though :) Maybe that's just because they are "easy" to enjoy, but who is going to tell me that I can't enjoy them? (I do however enjoy "difficult" works of art in other areas of the arts, so there isn't any consistency for me either)

I don't know, I've seen a lot of modern art in museums, galleries, online, that floored me. Vivid, expressive, immense, stunning. And then there's the acrylic toaster sitting in an empty room, which I just don't get. I think what might possibly be involved is that there are different art movements, different phases of popularity. Much like music. For a period of ten years or so, all the clubs I went to that used to play what I considered good dance music started playing hip hop, and then nothing but hip hop. I got so frustrated, why are you doing this, why is this godawful music infiltrating everything I hold dear? At the same time quite aware hip hop isn't necessarily bad, per se; it's just not something I'm into. It was hard not to take personally, though, because suddenly, I couldn't go to these clubs anymore; it's only been in the past year that I've slowly been noticing hip hop losing its hold.

I'm not sure why this can be such a divisive topic, intellectually, it confuses me. I mean, being an artist myself, I take art seriously, I have definite opinions about what is and is not art, but also I realize: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What's arts and crafts to me is art to another. I've had many people show me their artwork, asking me for their opinion, and I have to heavily censor myself: they don't need excoriation from me, they instead need support.

I remember being part of an art group and attending galleries where someone would put some art piece up, and spend an hour talking about why it was art. And I just stood in the corner, quietly, thinking, if it's good art, you don't need to explain it.

And then there was the time at MOMA where in an effort to get away from the crowd, I stood in a partially walled off section off to the side, next to a stairwell, and a hole in the ceiling opening up to sky above me. I stood there, looking up, entranced, the sky was beautiful, sunlight pouring through the ceiling, illuminating the white walls. People from time to time would come over, thinking, wow, this must be a good art piece, they'd look around, see nothing, and leave. Absolutely cracked me up.

Hoo boy. Prager "University". This stuff is just right-wing neocon brainwashing, folks.

LOL. 26 comments and a bunch of people engaged in an interesting conversation and yet only 1 dot on the Hubski ring?

Was at the AIC a couple weeks ago, spent hours looking at the Impressionists and then laughed my way through the 'modern American art' section in ten minutes.

Generally I'm not a huge fan of modern art, but I read a recent article about Ellsworth Kelly and found it really interesting. There's something I like about his works that I cannot put my finger on, perhaps it's the simplicity, or the idea that he was working with pixels before there was such a thing; to me his works seem approachable and inspire a sense of "I could do this myself!" (in a jolly sense, not dismissively).