Why did Europeans draw/paint so horribly for so long?

>horribly

How do you go from this.

To this?

let me see you draw something then

I blame Germs.

As opposed to? It wasn't until the Renaissence that artists made a massive leap forward and discovered all the tricks about painting (perspective, proportions, use of light and colour, etc)

European (Italian) artists, ofc.

how do you call this style?

"Ugly Medieval".

More seriously it's not even the same style man.

>It wasn't until the Renaissance that artists made a massive leap forward and discovered all the tricks about painting (perspective, proportions, use of light and colour, etc)
As opposed to Romans and Greeks.

Different regions. The first is Greco-Roman, it changed style over time in the East to become later Byzantine iconography (pic related, a transition phase of the art). The second is Anglo-Norman, which is a completely different artistic tradtion

Anglos confirmed for sub-human.

this is pretty good
not cringe at all

Anglo-Norman means most probably by Norman hands.

And the reason you hate it is because you are looking at it as a painting instead of a tapestry. If you consider it in the later context, as something huge hanging on your wall during a feast, telling the story of a great victory, you might understand it more,

Yes. Show me a roman/greek painting that isn't a close-up head portrait comparable in realism to the paintings ofthe Renaissence.

Most of the Medieval "art" were illustrations made by monks rather than artists.

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Yeah, just like most Medieval "books" were written by monks rather than scholars

Remember to thank the monks for preserving Roman scrolls :^)

That would be the Byzantine Imperial Library, which among many other things preserved the last entire copy of the Iliad.

General consensus is that it was commissioned by Normans and produced by Anglos

>thread needs more Insular Art

So was it a style, a conscious choice? Because OPs pic looks like ass.

It was considered sacrilegious to produce realistic artwork, so they adhered to standards of stylization.

The European art style during the early middle ages was heavily influenced by Byzantine art, which was extremely religious and had rigorous rules for depicting deities, saints, people, the world.

The laws of optics was different in medieval times.

Most of the medieval miniatures, like most of the medieval maps and medieval literature itself were replicas of replicas done by people who didn't particularly excel in drawing but their monastic job forced them to take the pen and draw anyway.
See, this is a miniature from the fifth century, compare it to say a eleventh century manuscript and you can see the progressive deterioration despite showing the same models in the same position doing the same gestures.

Forgot the pic

Didn't the Western half of the Roman empire go down on artistic level already during or after the crisis of the third century?

yfw cave men had more skills

The Romans never had perspective, at their best, they still eyeballed it.

As far as we can tell, Linear Perspective was only discovered in the 15th century by Brunelleschi

It's more impressive when you realize it's not a drawing or a painting but an embroidered cloth.

>Haha medieval art sucks, those retards had no idea what they were doing!
>Haha Ancient Egyptian art sucks, those retards no idea what they were doing!
>Haha Medieval Islamic art sucks, those retards had no idea what they were doing!
>Haha Ukiyo-e art sucks, those retards had no idea what they were doing!
Can this dumb shit end finally? It's a fucking style.

modern art is literally just ass though

OP's pic is literally a colored doodle

Whats associated with medieval art is usually drawing made by monks in books they made ie untrained artists or tapestry pieces where the medium held back intense realism. Their still was actual painting that was decently realistic back then but it wasnt a popular medium because of how hard it was to preserve at this point in history, oil paints wouldnt be invented for quite some time and styles like the egg tempura would start to decay and lose color after like 5-10 years.

what would the ancients have thought of, say, a HUD-less tastefully taken screenshot of the witcher 3 pre-release build taken at maximum settings? Would it have blown their minds?

They would probably experience some ridiculous uncanny valley.

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No Egyptian Art is good. Its literally just Middle Ages stuff which is mostly '3 yearold's first crayon set' tier.

I wouldn't be surprised if most people in this thread could do better.

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>If common art today were Medieval style, but of contemporary subjects, it would be great
senpai read more books and you'll see that there were quite a few modern art movements that did something akin to this

i was trying to find an example then i stumbled upon this qt russian artist i've never heard of before
>tfw no qt

I actually enjoy Medieval art. Plebs gonna hate.

t.b.h.

It's because they couldn't into perspective until much later. You cal literally see art evolve as they rediscovered perspective

They'd be freaking out because they'd think it was a portal in a box or some shit.

OP's pic is probably the size of a postage stamp and hand drawn by a monk in the corner of a book.

That's an encaustic portrait, but not really in Medieval encaustic portrait style. For one thing even pre-Christian portraits were impassive, a style that actually even predominated to the early photographic portrait; this took on special significance during the Middle Ages, as it conveyed godliness..

why do artists now draw/paint so horribly?

its a matter of taste and fashion at the time.

Medieval artists were artistic geniuses compared to (((modern))) artists.

For fuck's sake
quora.com/Why-do-medieval-drawings-look-very-badly-drawn-in-comparison-to-Renaissance-art

Why are they doing rap gestures like 50 cent.

Fucking this.

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I thought that was the rainbow pony from the thumbnail

Isn't that a tapestry.

i didn't say it was medieval. I just posted it cause i stumbled upon it and it gave me feels

Holy fucking shit. It's ok to critique some CONTEMPORARY art but you can't call picasso shit you reddit brainlet. This piece is almost 100 years old and still shitheads like you can't comprehend it

Remember kids, there was no dark ages.

From what I've seen in Museum replicas, Egyptian art looks a lot better in person than it does in photos.

Static as fuck though. A thousand years of the same damn one foot forward shit. People don't even walk like that, you daft gypts. It's not a real pose.

Ancient times were cash

They didn't read Loomis

probably around the same time but the arc of constantine is notable for having both classical naturalism and 'new' styles we associate with the medieval which was probably inspired by the art of the east

I really do wish people would use Quora or that history subreddit instead of creating throw-away threads for every stupid question they could have answered with a google search.

>Egyptian Art is good.

i can't even put into words how pleb tier that is.

Still better than the rest of the world.

1. Different styles

2. The picture you posted was from a book, called a Psalter, usually drawn crudely by an unprofessional monk for the enjoyment of the reader.

3. Materials were hard to come by

As the kingdoms grew richer and could trade with far away places, advanced parchment and advanced paints suddenly became more abundant. The growth of the middle class meant the birth of professional art schools.

Was it autism?

Keep dreaming.

Picasso was a genius.

But his genius wasn't in his shitty painting "skills", it was in convincing pretentious idiots that the worthless crap he created was worth something.

Shitty artist, brilliant philosopher and bullshit artist.

it was worth something. someone had to save the west from shitty aestheticism and a stagnant academy and cezanne was dead

>But his genius wasn't in his shitty painting "skills"
wasn't Picasso a classicaly trained artist who had good technical skills?

>Keep dreaming.

lol don't be angry at me, it's not my fault we europeans always were and always will be superior to you

>WE

That doesn't really work on Europeans, since you know....they really were kings

>pay tons of gold for an artist to make a tapestry
>It's fucking ass
>No refunds or redos

Commissions never change I see

Does it help you to know Picasso was drawing realistic renaissance style art in his early teenage years before he got bored? And the really abstract stuff evolve out of more "normal" forms over decades of experimental drift?

I think a lot of people shit on "modern art" because they suspect they might be getting trolled and are afraid they'll look foolish if they praise it. Pablo isn't trying to trick you user, he really can draw/paint VERY well. He was more interested in aesthetic innovation once he maxed out his illustration level though.

A return to Medieval styles would save art. Art as a stand-in for photography is banal and dead, the nude is dead, and that current impulse--that the avant-garde is the sole important quality in new art--is killing art. We need a departure from formalism, a departure from avant-garde-ism, but not a return to "academic art". The Medieval conception of art is the only solution.

are you capable of posting a coherent response?

WE

there isn't a single 'current impulse' in contemporary art

This.
Also just look at medieval cathedrals, there was great 'art' in the medievals.

I learned a lot of renaissance patrons would request artist paint them into New Testament scenes like Christ birth or death.

Was this the equivalent of photoshoping your anime waifu into a photo with you?

i'm not sure what this has to do with picasso

mfw this actually happened. Shit medieval art gets preserved because it was thrown in the basement in embarrassment.

Or like ye olden deviantart furry commission where you have to draw your clients OC into a smut scene

>I think a lot of people shit on "modern art" because they suspect they might be getting trolled and are afraid they'll look foolish if they praise it.
err no, it's the other way around my friend, the pretentious try to understand the meaning behind a turd on a canvas else they might be looked down upon by the "astists" who "get it".

Only the free and open minded are not afraid to say that shit on a canvas is nothing more than shit and belongs in the trash

Yes, another thing they did was paint Biblical scenes in a modern setting. Such as Christ raising Lazarus from the dead while standing outside of a Gothic cathedral, with a Roman centurion in medieval armour, etc

But don't you want more "art" of a woman putting canned spaghetti into her cunt?

Oh wow, just like artist who will draw a fantasy anime figure in modern clothes.

Mankind never changes huh?

That's a Norman tapestry....The Bayeux Tapestry. It's incredibly long, and it was quilted literally as the battle was taking place.

It's exclusively a Norman style of art, and is actually a great source of historical information, which is why it's extremely important

you're the one literally making shit up about modern art in order to prove some weak point. it's pretty obvious that anti-moderns don't know what they're talking about