Why is medieval art so bad? Like holy fuck was there not a single good artist?

also this thread is asinine clearly made by a stem fag. take an art history class if you're so bothered

it's not very very good, it's still considered bad

>implying I'm STEM

most of the artists were just artisans doing art as another job when the church needed it
and I think it's fair to say that they didn't really care about presenting things realistically, simplistic symbolism was more important

Medieval art was more about adornment (eg the incredibly intricate art of the Book of Kells or the Lindesfarne Gospels) and about symbolism (eg most manuscript illuminations). Renaissance art came about as part of a movment back toward realism and set expectations of "good" art as being realistic for the next 400 or so years. This is why medieval art was derided as being "barbaric", or "primitive" or just plain "bad" in the nineteenth century. It was not until the move away from realism in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that medieval art came to be seen as rich, complex and skilled despite not being realistic. The Post-Impressionists, for example, were inspired by the way early medieval Romanesque art suggested things without depicting them realistically. Picasso was also a great admirer of medieval art.

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It's like an actual child wrote this.

haha i didn't imply mate, i said you clearly were.
only a stem fag would be bothered by the fact that the same people who were constantly dealing with war, plague, and famine were also coincidentally not very good at painting

>implying that drawing is bad
>"b-but it doesn't look like muh renaissance paintings"

Most medieval artists considered realism as being secondary to symbolic meaning.

Medieval art was realistic when it was supposed to be - you can see this most clearly in sculptures and reliquaries.

Why would a STEM person care about medieval people being anachronistic Renaissance men?

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Autism mainly

>one of the treasures of the National Gallery
>visted and photographed by thousands of tourists and students every day
>considered bad

Sure thing buddy.

To ask a real question out of OPs shit one:
Why were the great artistic skills of antiquity lost in the middle ages?
How does a society just lose the ability to produce realistic art?

They still knew how to sculpt people. They just weren't obsessed with anatomy and physique like the Romans and Greeks were.

They had humor

People like you fucking infuriate me. Your question is far worse than OP's is. There's plenty of realistic medieval sculptures. Actually your question is way fucking stupider than OP's because to explain why drawn medieval art might look worse than antique art you have to get into the artistic zeitgeist of the time and the merits of symbology vs realism and why medieval artists thought symbolism was more important.

Whereas you could've taken five seconds and just googled "medieval sculptures" and proved yourself wrong.

How did we from this to this ?

you are a retard and your thread isnt even good enough to be considered as bad bait

>They just weren't obsessed with anatomy and physique like the Romans and Greeks were
tfw christfags always deny the delights of sweet bp

>google medieval sculptures
great, thank you for making my point for me

LOL

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You got me dude. lol your so rite.

How did we go from this to this ?
How have memes fallen so far from the middle ages?

There's more to art than making realistic images. You might as well be comparing Picasso to realism/naturalism painters and call him shit as well as a lot of modern and contemporary artists because their work doesn't look as detailed/realistic while considering random amateurs at DeviantArt to be the best artists of today.

>You might as well be comparing Picasso to realism/naturalism painters and call him shit as well as a lot of modern and contemporary artists because their work doesn't look as detailed/realistic while considering random amateurs at DeviantArt to be the best artists of today.

Well I do

>he's actually using gargoyles as an example of bad medieval art
>he apparently doesnt know the entire point is that they are as crude and ugly as possible

Great bait mate.

i think he's that same dude who jerks off to egyptian art too so take him with a grain of salt

same style and everything

Picasso first mastered realistic painting before changing his style, but the goal of an artist is not always to just paint what he sees in front of himself, especially when he's hired by the Church/nobility to make symbolic imagery. The world of art got bored of realism. Modern architects can still design all kinds of majestic palaces, but that's not what they're into now, people are going for functionality and simplicity. These trends keep changing with the times and always will.

What century is this sculpture from ? Because from what I learned in [spoiler]high school, plz no bully[/spoiler], art improved greatly with the Renaissance, people rediscovering perspective, etc

Literally Hindu tier gaudyshit

Yeah I was kidding, Picasso and most modern artist do know their shit, they actually studied realistic art and yes, they're trying to push the boundaries of the field, and there are non realistic paintings/piece of arts which are very beautiful and aesthically pleasing, but we also have pic related

I'm stil wondering what the muse trap on the right with the red cross is symbolising.

So far noone could tell me

>zeitgeist of the time

A bit redundant, no?

you were obviously molested as a child
i'm sorry

I was about to post this.
One of my favorite paintings.

Holy shit you are retarded

Alot of what we have of medieval art from books. Is the fifth edition. Copied entirely by some monks on the cheap so someone else could have a copy.

Imagine trying to commission someone local to do that with an illustrated book today. Let alone multiple times. It'll eventually be shite.

>implying

Mid 15th century

Its bronze, not gold.

>Mid 15th century

Yeah so it's already Renaissance. When people talk about medieval art it's more like and

Because the rennaisance was a singular event that happened everywere, equally, all at once, right?

People just woke up one morning and suddenly the town crier ran in shouting "ITS HERE ITS HERE! THE RENNAISANCE IS HERE!".

That first picture is also a mid-late 15th century miniature by the way.

Considering what they were trying to do by producing this kind of art it is pretty good.

Of course not, but it implies more refining and knowledge into the artistic field, and is probably not representative of the whole middle ages era.

Ok, now that's interesting

Most "artists" today wouldn't be able to paint a portrai to save their own lives.

It was done by bored, lewd monks, not professional artists.

Once European society got enough wealth to pay for a class of artists, during the 14th century in Italy and the Low Countries, it got good again.

I don't think it was a planned change. Skills declined after the fall of the empire and it became more stylistic to compensate. They didn't forget about perspective on purpose.

>They just weren't obsessed with anatomy and physique like the Romans and Greeks were.

Greek idealistic statues aren't even anatomically correct.

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

>lewd monks

How ?

Almost reminds me of a gondola kek

By whom?

The fact that a century on people are still furious about Duchamp's Fountain is a pretty good indicator of its success, no?

As an aside, most of the art in this thread is early Renaissance, or falls in the transition between that and the late medieval.

underrated post. It wasn't until the Italian renaissance that art started to be treated like an end in itself, rather than as just another trade like milling or cobbling.

In fact most artists consider Leonardo Da Vinci as being the grandfather of all artists because he broke the mold by doing things that modern artists consider indispensable, like studying anatomy and doing color and composition studies before putting a single drop of paint to canvas. He was also known to sit in public and do sketches of passerbys with a piece of conte , and he was an extraordinarily prolific drawer who was constantly pushing his own technical boundaries. Though he certainly wasn't the first great artist in history, there is a reason why he is still a household name.

Just because you don't understand the context of Duchamp's fountain doesn't mean that it's bad or worthless art. When Damien Hirst suspended a shark in a vat of formaldehyde, gave it a goofy name, and sold it for 25 million dollars and was asked by a lay person how it could be art when the lay person himself could have made it. Hirst's response was "so why didn't you?"

Sort of related question lads: whats some top-tier patrician's artwork from the late Middle Ages or Renaissance?

I want to decorate my new place with prints of artwork that isn't the usual muh Van Gogh or muh Warhol, and historical artwork is way more appealing to me anyway.

>why didn't you
Countless artists do produce le random bullshit like that, they just never get publicity. It is only widely considered art because the media is telling people it is art.

Everyone has their niche subjective tastes and it is great you think this is the shit. However if you think I'm an idiot and can't see what is actually happening or that my subjective tastes are somehow magically inferior you're mistaken.

>naturalism and illusionism are the only ways art can be good
Nuh-uh

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See, people were taller back then.
That's how they were able to build rock structures.
Ancient Giants confirmed.

>The_Magdalen_Reading
>Created: 1445
>Medieval art

Why do you lie like this?

>Countless artists do produce le random bullshit like that, they just never get publicity. It is only widely considered art because the media is telling people it is art
There's nothing "random" about it, it only seems that way to an outsider who either didn't bother catching up with the latest developments in art theory, or has an insincere appreciation for the arts that exists solely as a vehicle to support his political views.

And yes, in some aspects art is a business and the strength of a business is always a function of the strength of its salesmanship, knowing who your clients are, what they want, and how much they're willing to pay for it.

And blaming the media is fucking laughable. Fine art isn't popular art its a niche interest aimed at a specific clientele of discerning aficionados. Most of them fucking hate the media for promoting lowest common denominator commercial art, which is what made Andy Warhol so groundbreaking because he was the first fine artist to say "y'all are just fucking snobs good art is good art."

You obviously don't know any artists, because if you did you'd know that portraiture is fucking everywhere. Every art school has a portraiture class. There are fine artists who specifically devote themselves to portraiture. Heck, when a big employer like the Walt Disney Company comes onto campuses to recruit, they don't want to see pictures of princesses, they want to see how good you are at drawing realistic people.

bing.com/images/search?q=Painting Portraiture&FORM=RESTAB

The reason why portraiture is no longer valued the way that it used to be is because it is far easier, cheaper, and more convenient to simply take a picture, so that's what lay people opt for instead of hiring an expensive artist who will take tens of hours to complete a decent oil portrait.

that doesnt even make sense

My father is an ancient giants and ancient aliens believer which makes me so buttmad when he says something coulden't be built because our modern cranes can't lift the stone blocks ALONE.

God I hate the modern PC apologist nothing-can-ever-be-wrong-or-bad culture.

>They are not realistic, but are they "badly drawn"? Of course not
YES. THEY ARE. The Celtic crosses might be very nice and aesthetic but there is a very clear display of an amateurish command of human anatomy and perspective also. One that didn't exist post and even somewhat pre-medieval ages. God fuck this relativism excuse crap. What even motivates people to lie like this? Feeling smart going "well aktually.."?

And I love the strawman all these answers start to imply where only medieval art with it's ba- whoops I mean not-"realistic" illustration cares about symbolism and emotion rather than pure realism. Yeah, no one post 1400 in Europe was capable of those things. You can only pick one or the other for an entire super culture group: realism or aesthetic feeling.

No one in the renaissance could do a sick celtic cross like they could in the medieval. But all the medieval artists were merely pretending to not know perspective and could pull out a work like Raphael if they ever felt like it.

Pic related. The robotic obsessive focus on realism has robbed this painting of any ability to be beautiful emotionally and symbolically through things like, say, light experimentation.

>amateurish command of human anatomy and perspective also

Most of the paintings done before and after the Middle Ages were not realistic, neither generally nor in particular. Human anatomy was idealized and human portraits were romanticized. They deviated from your definition of realism about as much as your average Medieval piece save for the VERY monggy ones.

>Yeah, no one post 1400 in Europe was capable of those things

Pretty much, the Renaissance was a crushing blow to European art. The scope of any and all paintings was qualitatively and quantitatively reduced to a pinhole.

Also, a reminder that STEMlords are so desperate that they're trying to claim that Gothic architecture as well as ALL paintings done after 1399 anywhere in Europe were totally part of the Renaissance, even if the consensus is that it took a whole 200 years for the Renaissance to actually happen.

Although there isn't a fixed time period that's considered 'medieval', the 1400's were definitely medieval.

>it only seems that way to an outsider who either didn't bother catching up with the latest developments in art theory
I'm an outsider to ancient Mayan art, medieval Chinese art, Minoan art, Polynesian art, Anglo-Saxon art, Tlingit art and Cambodian art, and yet I and pretty much anyone else can appreciate and enjoy the art produced by those cultures. By studying the meaning and context of the art produced by those cultures one can gain an even greater appreciation of them, but you don't need to study anything to see the inherent value and beauty in a Minoan fresco or a Haida wood carving. That's because good art, in addition to having specific cultural values like a meaning or a message, also has universally-appreciable value such as beauty and intricacy.

A urinal or a dead shark in formaldehyde don't have these values. They have no value beyond the inane message of the 'artist'. They cannot be enjoyed or appreciated for their own sake; instead the only thing of any supposed value is the message, which can only be understood by having it explained to you, thus making the 'artwork' itself completely redundant. The artwork only really exists as a signpost meant to draw attention to the message, hence why they try so hard to be 'outrageous and offensive' and thus attention-grabbing. They're as artistic as political comics.

People don't enjoy this kind of art because it's good; they enjoy it because they like the message behind it, because it makes them feel smart, or because they've been told by 'smart' people that it's good and that they're stupid if they don't like it. People pay money to learn to appreciate this shit, maybe even to buy some of it, like a cult where people pay ever-increasing sums of money to gain some trash esoteric knowledge that they're convinced has some kind of value which makes them special for knowing about it. The only thing that makes it different from the average cult is that the leaders are just as deluded as the followers.

The 1400s are pretty widely considered a part of the Renaissance, at least when it comes to art. Gothic art produced in the period could still be called medieval, but not Netherlandish painting like .

I bet you think hitler was a great painter and modern art is a jewish conspiracy to destroy the western civilization

>I don't get it
>therefore, it's not art

Well obviously it wasn't "planned" but the stylistic changes came about before an actual degredation of artistic skills. That being said the Romans weren't quite as good as the Greeks before them, and the quality of sculpture did decrease during the mid-imperial period, before Rome had actually waned significantly.

This dude was the master of "images that will make your balls recede, but you keep looking into".

Nice work not addressing anything I said, you idiot.

a better question is why did everyone have bad haircuts

>2016
>still falling for the fountain

Ya just got Duchamp'd

>missing the point of conceptual art this hard

That's the best facial expression in this thread and it still looks off. Did artists in those days actually draw from life?
It just looks so goddamn dull and lifeless. It feels like I'm being smothered with a pillow just looking at it

>Japanese guy see this
>Freaks out, thinks it's anatomically correct for the time
>Goes home, writes up a manga and story universe for a world where the ancient Europeans took over the entire world save for one megacity of modern humans
>Calls it Shingeki no Kyojin
>It becomes an actual anime
>Guy starts getting paid handsomely
>Buys new computer
>Starts thinking of how the story could unfold
>Looks up further art from the time
>Oh shit
>It was symbolic exaggeration
>Phone rings
>"NEW SEASON WHEN"
>sweating.jpg