The collective unconscious shows up simultaneously in art, I have experienced it first hand with a select group of artists observing and noting such occurrences in real time “posts” by other random artists.
Why? Well a particular artist was very into Jung, and we had certainly noted the occurrences, so he created a thread for us to record them. And whether your record them or don’t, they happen as over the top synchronisation.
The collective unconscious shows up simultaneously in art, I have experienced it first hand with a select group of artists observing and noting such occurrences in real time “posts” by other random artists.
Why? Well a particular artist was very into Jung, and we had certainly noted the occurrences, so he created a thread for us to record them. And whether your record them or don’t, they happen as over the top synchronisation.
Those synchs will tend to get one's attention, even if one is a skeptic.
This interests me because the reason for Impressionism always seemed obvious to me given it's timing.
I'm intrigued. What's your theory?
Photography was invented in the early 19th century and wiki has the Impressionist movement starting in 1860. I'd say it was - at least in part - a reaction to artists finding themselves obsoleted.
If you or anyone else here has some art history knowledge, I guess, the question is, was realism the standard prior to he Impressionist movement? I'd always assumed it was. Ever see the Rembrandt hanging at the Met that used to be at the entry to all the galleries?
Photography was invented in the early 19th century and wiki has the Impressionist movement starting in 1860. I'd say it was - at least in part - a reaction to artists finding themselves obsoleted.
If you or anyone else here has some art history knowledge, I guess, the question is, was realism the standard prior to he Impressionist movement? I'd always assumed it was. Ever see the Rembrandt hanging at the Met that used to be at the entry to all the galleries?
Fascinating. I'm sure you're absolutely right that photography had influence that way.
I know little about art history, but I guess the question is what is meant by realism... it seems like "Realism" as a formal art movement did immediately precede impressionism, but whether realism more broadly was the rule before photography seems harder to say. It seems like the first actual photograph that people might have known about happened somewhere around 1825 or so.
So I looked around at some random paintings before that by acknowledged masters.
No, I'd have to agree that Blake was most definitely not a realist. Wasn't familiar with him. Thanks! Now, by "standard", I'm referring to what people valued and where their attention was/is concentrated. My "impression" (heh heh) was that painting, in particular, as a craft, right up until the early 19th century, embodied a collective sense of value that favored realism.
Certainly, from Lascaux to Van Gogh, for example, there are these patterns of similarity in expression over time. We could digress into the notions of cycles and progression, and that might be fun. Another example, for instance, would be the childlike medieval tapestries that seem to me as echoed by a guy I think of as at least, in part, a cynical con-man.
And it further seems to me that this impetus of displacement to blur the lines by the Impressionists wasn't wholly conscious, as in, at the forefront of their awareness as an influence as it was happening. Without having lived through those times, it's difficult to discern. I think one of the most important transitional figures -- that to my knowledge isn't characterized as an Impressionist - is Turner.
What emerges from all of this, is what I'd describe as a cultural expression of the existential dilemma, and, that, is of course, why I started this thread.
No, I'd have to agree that Blake was most definitely not a realist. Wasn't familiar with him. Thanks! Now, by "standard", I'm referring to what people valued and where their attention was/is concentrated. My "impression" (heh heh) was that painting, in particular, as a craft, right up until the early 19th century, embodied a collective sense of value that favored realism.
Certainly, from Lascaux to Van Gogh, for example, there are these patterns of similarity in expression over time. We could digress into the notions of cycles and progression, and that might be fun. Another example, for instance, would be the childlike medieval tapestries that seem to me as echoed by a guy I think of as at least, in part, a cynical con-man.
And it further seems to me that this impetus of displacement to blur the lines by the Impressionists wasn't wholly conscious, as in, at the forefront of their awareness as an influence as it was happening. Without having lived through those times, it's difficult to discern. I think one of the most important transitional figures -- that to my knowledge isn't characterized as an Impressionist - is Turner.
What emerges from all of this, is what I'd describe as a cultural expression of the existential dilemma, and, that, is of course, why I started this thread.
Yeah, very interesting. I wish I knew more. I'm sure you're right that this is all a kind of grappling with the existential dilemma. And you may well be right that, overall, realism before the 19th century was the regnant theme.
I do think, though, the question remains what it means to be realist. In a deeper sense, I'm sure the impressionists thought they were the real realists -- in that they were capturing the reality of visual and/or emotional impression, and that so-called realists were actually fantasists.
The same sorts of things happened in literature (though I'm no expert in literary history). You go from pre-Romanticism, which was supposedly realistic, to the Romantics, who would claim emotional realism, and were arguably the counterpart of the impressionists, and then again to a different kind of realism more focused on social conditions with, say, Tolstoy and Emile Zola and so on... and then to modernism which was unrealistic as to external reality but arguably hyper-realistic as to internal reality... and then minimalism for the last 50-70 years, which is say a kind of camera-capture view of realism again.
No, I'd have to agree that Blake was most definitely not a realist. Wasn't familiar with him. Thanks! Now, by "standard", I'm referring to what people valued and where their attention was/is concentrated. My "impression" (heh heh) was that painting, in particular, as a craft, right up until the early 19th century, embodied a collective sense of value that favored realism.
Certainly, from Lascaux to Van Gogh, for example, there are these patterns of similarity in expression over time. We could digress into the notions of cycles and progression, and that might be fun. Another example, for instance, would be the childlike medieval tapestries that seem to me as echoed by a guy I think of as at least, in part, a cynical con-man.
And it further seems to me that this impetus of displacement to blur the lines by the Impressionists wasn't wholly conscious, as in, at the forefront of their awareness as an influence as it was happening. Without having lived through those times, it's difficult to discern. I think one of the most important transitional figures -- that to my knowledge isn't characterized as an Impressionist - is Turner.
What emerges from all of this, is what I'd describe as a cultural expression of the existential dilemma, and, that, is of course, why I started this thread.
Yeah, very interesting. I wish I knew more. I'm sure you're right that this is all a kind of grappling with the existential dilemma. And you may well be right that, overall, realism before the 19th century was the regnant theme.
I do think, though, the question remains what it means to be realist. In a deeper sense, I'm sure the impressionists thought they were the real realists -- in that they were capturing the reality of visual and/or emotional impression, and that so-called realists were actually fantasists.
The same sorts of things happened in literature (though I'm no expert in literary history). You go from pre-Romanticism, which was supposedly realistic, to the Romantics, who would claim emotional realism, and were arguably the counterpart of the impressionists, and then again to a different kind of realism more focused on social conditions with, say, Tolstoy and Emile Zola and so on... and then to modernism which was unrealistic as to external reality but arguably hyper-realistic as to internal reality... and then minimalism for the last 50-70 years, which is say a kind of camera-capture view of realism again.
Not sure what to make of it all
You've taken it to the heart of the matter with this notion of each group making a claim on realism. The overt question that gets asked is "what is art?", but underlying that is, "what is reality?", and, we all know where that one's goin'.
To me it's a subtle and beautiful irony that the hyperrealist achieves their effect by means of optical illusion. I've got all sorts of speculative ideas as to why it's rising to the top on reddit all these decades after it became a thing.
Yeah, very interesting. I wish I knew more. I'm sure you're right that this is all a kind of grappling with the existential dilemma. And you may well be right that, overall, realism before the 19th century was the regnant theme.
I do think, though, the question remains what it means to be realist. In a deeper sense, I'm sure the impressionists thought they were the real realists -- in that they were capturing the reality of visual and/or emotional impression, and that so-called realists were actually fantasists.
The same sorts of things happened in literature (though I'm no expert in literary history). You go from pre-Romanticism, which was supposedly realistic, to the Romantics, who would claim emotional realism, and were arguably the counterpart of the impressionists, and then again to a different kind of realism more focused on social conditions with, say, Tolstoy and Emile Zola and so on... and then to modernism which was unrealistic as to external reality but arguably hyper-realistic as to internal reality... and then minimalism for the last 50-70 years, which is say a kind of camera-capture view of realism again.
Not sure what to make of it all
You've taken it to the heart of the matter with this notion of each group making a claim on realism. The overt question that gets asked is "what is art?", but underlying that is, "what is reality?", and, we all know where that one's goin'.
To me it's a subtle and beautiful irony that the hyperrealist achieves their effect by means of optical illusion. I've got all sorts of speculative ideas as to why it's rising to the top on reddit all these decades after it became a thing.
Ah, that is an irony. Ok, now I've got to hear this second vein of speculation... are we on the verge of a Great Awakening or something?
Certainly seems like Matrix-like themes have been increasingly in the air for the last 20 years. The Internet/media environment is making it clear how much of so-called reality is, as Churchill put it, "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma"... we seem to be living more obviously inside an acid trip.
You've taken it to the heart of the matter with this notion of each group making a claim on realism. The overt question that gets asked is "what is art?", but underlying that is, "what is reality?", and, we all know where that one's goin'.
To me it's a subtle and beautiful irony that the hyperrealist achieves their effect by means of optical illusion. I've got all sorts of speculative ideas as to why it's rising to the top on reddit all these decades after it became a thing.
Ah, that is an irony. Ok, now I've got to hear this second vein of speculation... are we on the verge of a Great Awakening or something?
Certainly seems like Matrix-like themes have been increasingly in the air for the last 20 years. The Internet/media environment is making it clear how much of so-called reality is, as Churchill put it, "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma"... we seem to be living more obviously inside an acid trip.
Ah yes, movies, now you're speaking my dialect. I've actually been to a few Russian plays but my interest in literature is far too shallow and dilatory beyond Shakespeare and sci-fi to ever sit through a read of a Russian novel.
The search for meaning will of course never end, but, in so far as we can conceive of the "Western Mind", the world sure did get alot smaller after the inventions of the steam engine and the telephone. Fight Club and The Matrix (1 .. ) certainly are an interesting cultural mile marker. The "counter-culture" that emerged after WW II was certainly foundational to that, the collapse of the material assumption happened in the 1920's, and the lines of thought that led up to that trace back to the series of scientists and philosophers that stretch back to Galileo and before.
So in our time, we have alternative facts, legal weed, and deep fakes in what some are trying to coin as the "post truth" or "post facts era". Ultimately, all the uncertainty and apparent chaos is far from anything new under the sun. My generation was the first to be born into a world of mutually assured destruction, and that led to some interesting psychological undertones, collectively speaking, and extremes of politically persuasive speech that dead-end in propaganda are as old as the printed word.
From what I can tell, this cultural signal that "reality, is not what you think it is", comes and goes. It sometimes finds artistic expression, in the moment, but of course, there's no possibility of ever codifying it by technique. Personally, I can definitely relate to where the hyperrealists are coming from, and I appreciate the craftsmanship involved.
Right around '99, when those two movies came out, I remember a trip to the Guggenheim. They had a display of a permanent collection that included 4 blank canvas, I think by Rauschenberg. It was an ultimate, (** shakes head sadly **) moment, and I remember a look of sort of puzzled and amused compassion from some urbane and well-healed boomer couple passing by. Dude had a sweater tied around his neck .. or, well, maybe that's an embellishment of my mind.
Last Edit: Nov 6, 2019 14:23:12 GMT -5 by laughter
Oh yeah, I got into the "what is art" thingy long before I knew what non-duality was all about. That was one of my first major koans that I resolved in a more logical way than usual. LOL. After reading countless books about art theory and art history, and thinking about what was going on in the art world, it gradually dawned on me that art is whatever we decide that it is, and that led to dozens of other koans about language and its relation to reality. Many years later, when I was a member of a local Rotary Club and was asked to give a program, I decided to have some fun with the art thing. In the past I had won awards in art competitions for "realistic" drawings that I did while taking art courses, but my main style of "art" that no one "understood" was abstract sculpture and some architectural structures that I mounted on canvas using chipboard and paint (all highly abstract and often geometrical in nature). I enlisted my then 6 year old daughter to help me, and we went through our household trash and created some rather large pieces of "garbage art" using glue and a wide range of strange stuff.
At the Rotary talk I began by explaining that for thousands of years humans had created "realistic art" beginning with cave paintings of animals (even though some of those paintings might now be considered more stylistic than realistic). I showed examples of realistic art, and then I explained how expressionism, impressionism, and other art movements gradually led to abstract forms of art such as cubism, surrealism, etc. I told the audience about an artist friend of mine who didn't care at all about what was on the canvas other than the paints. He would paint canvases with 150 coats of paint because he liked the translucent effect that increased as the depth of the paint increased. I then explained about "conceptual art" which was all the rage in the period from 1970 through 1990 (and some of which is still going strong). This included one artist whose art show was closing the art museum for one month! haha. Another artist created a work of art titled "Leaves" which was a room filled 3 feet deep with autumn leaves.
Finally, I dealt with the issue of universalism and how money and fame are involved in the artistic world. I explained that when Picasso first exhibited "Five Women Descending a Staircase" art critics became enraged and claimed that it was not art at all, yet today that work of art is worth millions of dollars. I asked the audience how that could be, and whether art could be defined in such a way that any new form of art could be accepted as legitimately claiming the status of "art." I had already showed the audience examples of realistic art, surrealistic art, impressionist art, abstract art, pop art, op art, and much else, so then the fun began. I brought out one of the "garbage art" sculptures that my daughter and I had created using discarded McDonald coffee cups, trash, and all kinds of weird stuff we had gathered from our home trashcan. I said, "Imagine that some guy really got into this kind of artistic activity, and got really turned on by creating these kinds of things. At first his "works of art" might be dismissed by both critics and the public alike, but if he kept with it, and produced more and more similar pieces, it's possible that people would begin to recognize his stuff as unique, metaphorical, satiristic, etc. and talk about it. Someone might see his stuff and say, 'Hey, that's a piece of garbage art created by John Doe the garbage artist.' It's possible that at some point, Doe's works of art might become worth a lot of money and give him fame, which would give him more incentive to create bigger and better assemblages of such art." The audience got the point, and afterwards, one of the men said to me, "I never before understood any kind of art other than realistic art, but now I get it. Anything can become art if it produces an aesthetic experience for one or more people." I said, "That's right. An artist usually creates something artistic for him/herself, and whether it will ever become accepted as "good" depends upon a lot of other stuff. If the artist creates something that lots of people can identify with, such as works by Shakespeare, it will become popular and well known and perhaps valuable because it has more universalism than a work of art that is so personal no one else can relate to it.
AAR my daughter had tons of fun selecting the garbage that eventually became the talk of the Rotary Club!
Last Edit: Nov 7, 2019 10:05:20 GMT -5 by zendancer
Certainly seems like Matrix-like themes have been increasingly in the air for the last 20 years. The Internet/media environment is making it clear how much of so-called reality is, as Churchill put it, "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma"... we seem to be living more obviously inside an acid trip.
Ah yes, movies, now you're speaking my dialect. I've actually been to a few Russian plays but my interest in literature is far too shallow and dilatory beyond Shakespeare and sci-fi to ever sit through a read of a Russian novel.
The search for meaning will of course never end, but, in so far as we can conceive of the "Western Mind", the world sure did get alot smaller after the inventions of the steam engine and the telephone. Fight Club and The Matrix (1 .. ) certainly are an interesting cultural mile marker. The "counter-culture" that emerged after WW II was certainly foundational to that, the collapse of the material assumption happened in the 1920's, and the lines of thought that led up to that trace back to the series of scientists and philosophers that stretch back to Galileo and before.
Certainly both the Matrix and the Fight Club had many precedents, too... The Matrix is Plato's Cave or Descartes' evil demon. Fight Club is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
So in our time, we have alternative facts, legal weed, and deep fakes in what some are trying to coin as the "post truth" or "post facts era". Ultimately, all the uncertainty and apparent chaos is far from anything new under the sun. My generation was the first to be born into a world of mutually assured destruction, and that led to some interesting psychological undertones, collectively speaking, and extremes of politically persuasive speech that dead-end in propaganda are as old as the printed word.
Definitely true that chaos and uncertainty are nothing new. I do wonder what the changes in media consumption do. The move from orality to literature, I'm sure, changed something about the collective psyche, as did the advent of radio, and then TV. And certainly the Internet and smart phones are doing something somewhat different to the way we perceive the world and each other. But just what that is is hard to say.