Why literature looks like crap?

>if we were gommunists we wouldn't need as many books xD

>costed
Holy fuck, that's tasty.

>costed fortunes
Answered your own question.

>Images in books
This explains everything.

no, if we were commies then the books someone produced would be unique because to each to their own and to whome for their own

They still exist, pic related.

Books in the past were unique works of art.
It's just that, now, each book is very cheap to produce, even artsy books like these, and the idea fell out of fashion(Atleast for books that aren't religious):

uanews.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image_large_600px_w/public/images/blog/IMG_1992.JPG?itok=15QHrzrl

commdiginews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/koran.jpg

You meant "thank"
BOOKS ARE MASS PRODUCED NOW
How the fuck is this a bad thing?

There are more books but fewer worthwhile books

Blame society. If there was demand for "pretty" books, then capitalism would produce pretty books

funFact: Printing press entered Ottoman Empire 1-2 centuries later, because "hattats" (penmans) and bookbinders lobbied against it, as they depended on it. As a result of this, OE never catch up to European innovations on a communal scale, because the books kept being a luxury that only the rulers and governors and their court enjoyed.

And as others said, there are still books that "look good". They are just expensive, normally. It is no different then chess sets: The mass produced stuff are sold for 10 dollars, but the unique, hand-made, gold-covered, "Crusade themed" set is sold for a thousand.

I think the other user call the comic books, which is something related.

but comic books give too much important to the image rather than finding a balance of text and images.

like other anons have said, comics are mass produced now.

but the question still remains, why not something like a miniature can be mass produced now, at least in digital terms?

>books were used to look beautifull, were once done by hand and literally looked like works of art that were gifts to kings and costed fortunes.
do you not understand why that would change?
do you think this is a bad thing?

please stop talking about things you dont understand

In a non-autocratic society where art is no longer practiced as a privilige on an individual basis, but conductive in an all pervasive competition for the capital of attention in all manners of life, I can see how people might get jaded and become unable to appreciate art in its current all-encompassing manifested form. Like many power mechanism the clear delineation of what constitutes art and what isn't is very much a thing of the past. But the integration of aesthetics and function does not intrinsically remove its beauty in of itself.
I try to look at it this way, art is not everywhere, in everything and although produced as they are in mass quantities, which shouldn't make them any less valuable for it it enables the mass distribution of sensual undertakings as opposed to a selected few. This is a positive developement imo.
As such stating that all art is now commercial art is inherently cynical but also wholly ignorant, there are (in numbers) more dedicated, "non-commercial" artists practising today than ever in history. It is just that since art has penetrated into every aspect of society, and continually doing so, the ones people see and notice are the ones that also carry economical incentives.

Essentually capitalism has helped art at all levels and in all directions. They work synergistically and has an interdependent relationship as strong as any other.

Be happy that you live in a world where are is so prevalent that one can lose sense of its existance in the first place.

They still exist, but the short answer is people want books for very little money, don't want to keep them after they read them, and are going digital. The long answer is my doctoral thesis on William Morris, which you're welcome to read.

This, capitalism takes the humanity out of everything

people tend to save and protect beauty.
look how much care does ancient buildings get, how much care does medieval art, old master art gets.
I'm sure an old master drawing or painting gets more attention than some modern shit painting.
how many of modern art works actually get preserved?
how many mediocre pieces of art get protected by people?

I'm sure even mangas and comics gets preserved, even while they're mass produced, because people see value in them.

but what value does a pile of text have?
unless is don quixote or some shakespeare shit, most of literature is trash.

The preservation of the old art must take up a significant portion of the market, therefore, the modernist and post modernist and so on also take up a large part of the resources-these are so called imperatives, in that the ensuring of their preservation are equally essential. All this leads to the current predicament that the best resources are locked up in the institutions that issue the most resources in the tasks of preservation, and so therefore contemporary movements are bound to a state of undergound- therefore commercialized or resource lacking endeavour.
You may not hear about them, but they exist in ample quantities.

However there are major spaces for the exhibitions of contemporary art in most major cities, the MoMAs, the Met and Guggenheims

Post thesis

Contain your ideology, retards.

The OP clearly seemed dissatisfied with the loss of whatever authenticity he thinks works have lost, hence the 'blame capitalism' comment.

fucking autists

Because no one is going to pay another person in this day and age to sit down and create an illuminated manuscript when it is far cheaper and less time consuming to produce a book with a printer.

Even if people are willing to pay for such a service and assuming there are even people out there to render that service, laborwise I'm sure it'd be prohibitively expensive for your average person. The heart of literature is in the words anyone.

That being said, they do look rad as fuck and I appreciate that you lament the death of such a beautiful form of literature, OP. Just shows that paradigm shifts in media forms have been happening for a lon time.

It's a very niche market and it's cheaper to mass produce.

Mass production is good though since now poor people can afford to read and have access to knowledge like other people, also it's easier for some people to have boring pages on books so they don't always worry about ruining the priceless art.

It's sad that there aren't as many of these beauties, but we can start making some of our own I guess.

why do you assume a medieval manuscript couldn't be printed or mass produced today?

we mass produce rockets and planes and luxury cars, why can't a single author makes a manuscript digitally in photoshop?

>but is not the same
there's diferent kind of papers and printing shit.

Yeah, because communism is supremely geared toward individuality and humanity.

Well, if you're asking if I think a pretty book with drawings and raised portions can be mass produced, yeah I think so.

But it's debatable whether its the same. Is a poster of a Rembrandt painting the same as the original? No, it isn't; one is a copy. But, depending on the individual, the poster is still able to evoke the same sense of awe at the artistry and expertise of the original, an ecstasis or elevation brought on by consideration of the heights of mastery a human being can achieve. I suppose a mass produced illuminated manuscript, in that sense, could achieve the same thing.

I think as long as the copy is a good quality, in most cases it doesn't matter.

is a FLAC of the nine symphony of beethoven worse than hearing it IRL?

Are you autistic, or is this a really brilliant and subtle troll thread?

It's not worth the fucking time or money to do that retarded bullshit anymore. Not only that, but that you care so much about the physical form of the book itself rather than what's "in" it (in the sense of the story itself) shows that you're a retard who doesn't really care about books, just cheap physical aesthetics.

I agree with you in principle, especially concerning physical artifacts of human skill, but I would say that the exprience of live music transcends any recording.

Although, you could get put in a concert hall into an absolutely shit seat. In which case, give me the FLAC.

>aesthetics are not important

>implying aesthetics do not have their own inherent merit

If two copies of the same book were the same price would you want the classy looking hardcover or the paperback with the shitty picture of the movie adaptation? Are these two equal in your eyes?

Actually, you know, maybe hearing a FLAC of it on a good sound system in a room with the proper acoustics has an equal amount of merit to hearing it performed live. Definitely depends on the individual though; personally, I like getting dressed up for stuff like the theatre and that probably elevates the live experience for me. If I put on a suit and sat in front of my computer to listen to it, I'd feel like an idiot.

I mean, everyone misses the point.

most anons think about doing it manually or doing it like they were made in the middle ages.

but there's not point in that, I'm sure some modern version could be done today with photoshop or digitally.

there's no reason why something like a modern version of the voynich manuscript or those hours of the day astrology books would need to be done manually.

today we have digital tools, there's not need to forbid their use.

Yeah, that's very true. And using digital methods doesn't imply that the person doing it lacks artistic skill to appreciate. I couldn't use Photoshop and what-not to make anything visually appealing, so I can appreciate the time and skill it would take another individual to do it.

From the thumbnail, that pheonix(?) looks like Mario.

Well mastered 16bit 44.1Hz exceeds the limits of human hearing, but stereo isn't sufficient to capture full directionality. We only have two ears but we constantly move our heads, so for true replication of a live performance we need something like high order ambisonics (which could theoretically be played over stereo headphones with DSP+headtracking).

I think some of you guys don't understand what's involved in illumination, or the fantastic and bizarre components of the medieval pigments. You can't replicate it with a printer--any printer--without greatly changing the materials and physicality of the page. I've spent a lot of time with both originals and copies, and they're worlds apart.
Here's the barest summary of the process and issues.
I. Graphite powder dots create the outline
II. Silverpoint drawings are sketched
III. Illustration is retraced with ink
IV. The surface is prepared for the application of gold leaf
V. Gold leaf is laid down
VI. Gold leaf is burnished to make it glossy and reflective
VII. Decorative impressions are made to adhere the leaf
VIII. Base colors are applied
IX. Darker tones are used to give volume
X. Further details are drawn
XI. Lighter colors are used to add particulars
XII. Ink borders are traced to finalize the illumination
The application of gold leaf or dust to an illumination is a very detailed process that only the most skilled illuminators can undertake and successfully achieve. The first detail an illuminator considered when dealing with gold was whether to use gold leaf or specks of gold that could be applied with a brush. When working with gold leaf the pieces would be hammered and thinned until they were “thinner than the thinnest paper.” The use of this type of leaf allowed for numerous areas of the text to be outlined in gold. There were several ways of applying gold to an illumination one of the most popular included mixing the gold with stag’s glue and then “pour it into water and dissolve it with your finger.” Once the gold was soft and malleable in the water it was ready to be applied to the page. Illuminators had to be very careful when applying gold leaf to the manuscript for fear ruining the color already placed in the illumination. Gold leaf is able to “adhere to any pigment which had already been laid, ruining the design, and secondly the action of burnishing it is vigorous and runs the risk of smudging any painting already around it.” The careless implementing of gold could ruin the labor already placed in the illumination and thus cause the entire folio to be discarded.

It put quantity over quality.
Books are shit now.

Books were LITERALLY some of the most valuable objects in the west during the middle ages, do you know why? Because a bunch of monks spent MONTHS hand writing and hand illustrating a book personally made for a few nobles (98% of the time it was the bible). Jesus christ dude, before the printing press shit fucking sucked because ideas couldn't spread and nobody could READ ANYTHING because there was no point. You little ungrateful bitch boy do you know how much of your little pathetic life you owe to the printing press?

Are you the user who has two shelves filled entirely with William Morris books ?

>if you criticize capitalism you must support communism

I'm all for capitalism, that doesn't mean it doesn't have downsides

I'm going to take a leap of faith here and assume you're a Communist, because I feel the need to point out it would be even shittier under Communism. State approved literature only and with the same sort of awful generic covers you see on that one Pengiun series where it's just block orange and white with black writing. Mass production may have made books over all less pleasing to look at, but it's also made them drastically more affordable. I'd have to be in the top echelons of society to afford a collection like I have at the moment in medieval times, but now I'm a poor student and can buy books without even worrying about the cost.

Thanks, Capitalism, I think.

Oh no, the capitalists are making books cheap and easily accessible by anyone. Shame!

Great post

>thread is littered with false dichotomy of capitalism - communism

Nigga What The Fuck Did You Just Type

I think the summary is "Protestants".

You're damn right

Those damn Protestants with their mass distribution of the Bible, missionaries across the globe and belief in the sufficiency of scripture.
They have such a low view of the Bible.

I hope you realise that religious freedom is the fault of Protestantism and that what happened in those wars is absolutely nothing compared to what the Roman Catholic Church has done throughout history. Not to mention that orthodox Protestantism has always been in favour of smaller government and non-violence.

It was just a joke my friend

Orthodox protestantism was born from pride, greed and violence in the first place. Small government is only the excuse for lust for land and money.

A bit more than that, but yes, I think you mean me. When an interviewer in 1895 started giving Morris the usual hard time--"How can you be a socialist when you're making these beautiful small-press-run books that only rich folks can own?"--he basically said "No, dude. I want all books to be beautiful, and held in trust. Nice libraries in every town should have them and people come, sit down in comfy armchairs after work, and read in peace. The books stay where everyone can enjoy and share them. People can own their own books, of course, but libraries are there so valuable and rare books can be shared." He and his artist friends spent so much time in the British Museum library looking over works like the15th-century French manuscript of the Roman de la rose that he thought it would be obvious to folks that you didn't need a Kelmscott Chaucer in every house, you just needed one in every library.

>costed fortunes

theres your answer right there you goof

>pride, greed and violence
How can you say that with a straight face knowing what Catholic authority was like leading up to the reformation?
>Small government is only the excuse for lust for land and money
Or maybe it's a legitimate movement toward peace? Maybe large government is an excuse for power, land and money? That is, unearned power, land and money that is taken from people who actually work.
Anyway, keep making accusations. I'm sure Luther was some greedy businessman who wanted to kill Catholic aristocrats and take their money without getting taxed on it.

MUH SPECIAL AESTHETIC BOOKS MUH ART

What a bunch of queers. I bet these fags carry record players around as well.

It's pointless. A book is to be read, not gawked at.

A simple "yes" would have done

>The long answer is my doctoral thesis on William Morris
lol fag

With communism the same exact thing would happen

Which is your favorite?

Sorry. It seemed relevant to the capitalist/mass production discussion going on. How can hand-made precious books have a place in such a world? They'd have to be shared. Really though, I'm just happy to see a thread on this board that doesn't look like a teen troll started it.

But it does look like a teen troll started it, moreso than many other threads on this board. Look at the grammar in the OP, and of course the questions that are being asked.

I just assumed OP was ESL. And against threads like ">Divine Comedy >Not funny" "Why don't plebs read?" "Write the most awful opening to a book you can think of" "Greentext the Plot of your New Novel" and all the anti-woman bait, philosophy crap, and "I don't understand iambic pentameter," this was appealing. The competition isn't stiff.

All the commie shills ITT don't realize that you wouldn't even have books under their failed ideology.

You wouldn't even have time to read books under the tyranny of a communism; you'd be too busy starving to death while harvesting wheat that'll just get redistributed to nothing before it reaches your dinner table.

>I'm going to take a leap of faith here and assume you're a Communist

of course you are

Those types of books were extremely expensive to make.

In the times when books were painted with gold leaf and done by several artisans they would take years to produce just one book and the people who made them were descended from other artisans. So on top of their own years of practice, they also had a family history doing it which made it even more of a massive investment.
A modest estimate of a hand crafted book like that and the years put into it would be somewhere around $200,000 in modern times.
Considering how few people in the entire world actually knew how to make books and an even smaller group that knew how to paint them and add gold leaf to them, they'd probably be closer to several millions of dollars to make.

To replicate something similar in mass production today, the books would probably cost around $50 if there were a demand for them.
Capitalism literally does not stop anyone from commissioning artists to do this sort of thing for themselves.
No one is stopping you from going to an art college and saying "Make me this book with pretty pictures and gold leaf and I'll pay you $300".

but op,

This guy is right.
They're basically comic books for people who weren't really interested in what the books had to say.