what attracts you first?

[Emil Miller]

I guess I'm prejudiced against rich people. Oh well! It's not going to keep me up at night.

You can be sure that it won't keep them up at night either.

[Alexander III]

I always assumed it to be natural that the masses don't like the rich, it has been that way since the dawn of civilization. I suppose it is that way for the same reason that all the little germanic tribes hated Rome. And those barbarian plebeians which finaly were able to sack and conquer Rome were the ancestors of those men who would later claim to be kings and found the European royal houses. History is funny that way.

But on a more on-topic note, The way people dress is not some constraint created by some establishment to create conformity and oppress. That sounds just as ridiculous as when a 17 year old comes on the forums and says meter and rhyme and metaphors in poetry are constraints created by the establishment to oppress, and then they show us their free and amazingly radical work which makes Wolf Larsens poesy seems conventional.

Clothes like art are following a tradition, and you can choose to work without knowledge of the tradition and not caring to be part of the tradition, but that which works within the tradition will always be superior, because it has thousands of years of history and genius upon which it is building. So no, Jeans and a baggy t-shirt and a getho hoodie are not just as valid and aesthetically pleasing, they are about as aesthetically good as the amateur to poetry thinks that Eminem lyrics are just as good and equal poetry to Robert Frost.

Please don't be alarmingly ignorant in public, it is contagious and other people might just get it.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

You can be sure that it won't keep them up at night either.

Oh man, thanks for letting me know, because I totally thought it did!

I always assumed it to be natural that the masses don't like the rich, it has been that way since the dawn of civilization. I suppose it is that way for the same reason that all the little germanic tribes hated Rome. And those barbarian plebeians which finaly were able to sack and conquer Rome were the ancestors of those men who would later claim to be kings and found the European royal houses. History is funny that way.

But on a more on-topic note, The way people dress is not some constraint created by some establishment to create conformity and oppress. That sounds just as ridiculous as when a 17 year old comes on the forums and says meter and rhyme and metaphors in poetry are constraints created by the establishment to oppress, and then they show us their free and amazingly radical work which makes Wolf Larsens poesy seems conventional.

Clothes like art are following a tradition, and you can choose to work without knowledge of the tradition and not caring to be part of the tradition, but that which works within the tradition will always be superior, because it has thousands of years of history and genius upon which it is building. So no, Jeans and a baggy t-shirt and a getho hoodie are not just as valid and aesthetically pleasing, they are about as aesthetically good as the amateur to poetry thinks that Eminem lyrics are just as good and equal poetry to Robert Frost.

Please don't be alarmingly ignorant in public, it is contagious and other people might just get it.

Well, that doesn't change that some actually do find Eminem more aesthetically pleasing than Robert Frost, now matter how backwards we may think that is. One's opinion of clothes is the same as art: it's subjective. It's one thing to point to an Armani suit and some jeans and a t-shirt and point out which is superior in terms of style, craftsmanship, and quality; it's quite another to choose which one someone would rather wear, or think looks better.

Plus, we're just talking clothes. I don't think one can put clothes on the same artistic playing field with things such as art, literature, or even film. It's a necessity. As Oscar Wilde says, all art is quite useless. Clothes aren't useless.

[Emil Miller]

Oh man, thanks for letting me know, because I totally thought it did!

Don't mention it dear boy.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

"Dear boy"? That sounds creepy.

[qimissung]

I always assumed it to be natural that the masses don't like the rich, it has been that way since the dawn of civilization. I suppose it is that way for the same reason that all the little germanic tribes hated Rome. And those barbarian plebeians which finaly were able to sack and conquer Rome were the ancestors of those men who would later claim to be kings and found the European royal houses. History is funny that way.

But on a more on-topic note, The way people dress is not some constraint created by some establishment to create conformity and oppress. That sounds just as ridiculous as when a 17 year old comes on the forums and says meter and rhyme and metaphors in poetry are constraints created by the establishment to oppress, and then they show us their free and amazingly radical work which makes Wolf Larsens poesy seems conventional.

Clothes like art are following a tradition, and you can choose to work without knowledge of the tradition and not caring to be part of the tradition, but that which works within the tradition will always be superior, because it has thousands of years of history and genius upon which it is building. So no, Jeans and a baggy t-shirt and a getho hoodie are not just as valid and aesthetically pleasing, they are about as aesthetically good as the amateur to poetry thinks that Eminem lyrics are just as good and equal poetry to Robert Frost.

Please don't be alarmingly ignorant in public, it is contagious and other people might just get it.

I guess the Roman rulers should have been nicer then, lol.

Yes, it's a decent analogy, but it doesn't quite hold up. I disagree that knowledge of the tradition and working within it are superior. I think it works, though, more along the lines of the Latin saying "Vestis verim reddit," which means "The clothes make the man." Clothing can be art. I think haute couture is art. But clothing is mostly a marker of a person's place in society and also their outlook. Artists themselves often wear clothing that is more casual, or bohemian, the very definition of which is:


a person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices.


So yes, baggy jeans (here it's baggy jeans more than a baggy t-shirt), a t-shirt, and a hoodie, are aesthetically pleasing,at least to the person wearing them,and who else matters?

[stlukesguild]

I disagree that knowledge of the tradition and working within it are superior.

Another statement of opinion sans any examples to support said opinion. Every naive teenager scribbling what he or she imagines to be "poetry" or scribbling what he or she imagines to be "art" embraces this notion when confronted by any criticism. The reality is that the greatest revolutionaries in art have rarely been iconoclasts ignorant of the tradition that they are working in... or against, but rather, they more likely are those with the deepest and most profound understanding and respect... even love... for the tradition. Cervantes shook off the limitations of the European Romance narratives of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance... and in the process invented the European novel. But he did this will a full grasp and love of the very Romance narratives. Manet and Degas were both profoundly knowledgeable in the history of art. Both brought to their knowledge a love of art that had long been ignored in the dominant tradition of European painting. Manet "re-discovered" Spanish art... especially Velazquez... as well as Vermeer. Degas discovered photography and Japanese art. In the process these two artists form the basis of Impressionism... and Modernism as a whole. It should be just common sense to recognize that an individual largely ignorant of a given discipline is far less likely to discover or create something likely to shake up that discipline than an individual well versed in the history and tradition of the same discipline.

...we're just talking clothes. I don't think one can put clothes on the same artistic playing field with things such as art, literature, or even film. It's a necessity. As Oscar Wilde says, all art is quite useless. Clothes aren't useless.

Clothes are a necessity as a protection against the elements. Quite honestly... at today's heat and humidity anything beyond a pair of shoes to protect my feet is something more than a necessity. Indeed, in the studio I wore little else than a pair of thread-bare shorts... and I only NEED these to wipe my brushes on.

Returning to your argument, where does this leave Architecture? Most courses on Art History spend the majority of the time studying Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. But Art also includes tapestries, carpets, armor, ceramics, metals and enamels, book arts, posters, furniture... and yes... fashion. It was the rejection of Oscar Wilde's (and Pater's and Gautier's and Baudelaire's, etc...) concept of "art for art's sake" and the Modernist notion that placed personal expression above form and any concepts of "beauty" that led to the notion of the separation of "fine art" vs "decorative art".

Interestingly enough, the concept of a division between decorative and utilitarian art forms (LOW) and art as "self expression" (HIGH) is foreign in many Eastern cultures. The ornate patterns of Islamic art or the elegant calligraphic writings of Iran, India, Japan, or China are in no way though as inferior to painting or sculpture.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that fashion is still revered as an art form in such cultures:




Note: Scher... I'll gladly post these as thumbnails once you post a thread giving a tutorial as to how to upload a thumbnail that links to a larger image.

[Varenne Rodin]

I'm pretty tired of people fixating on any excuse to hate other people.

Some people have pretty eyes, or warm smiles. Isn't that nice?

This may sound weird, coming from an atheist, but some of us could benefit from watching Christmas movies.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Note: Scher... I'll gladly post these as thumbnails once you post a thread giving a tutorial as to how to upload a thumbnail that links to a larger image.

St Lukes and others who are curious.
Your image hosting site should offer a "thumbnail" code as an option along with IMG, "direct link", HTML, etc.


I happen to use Photobucket for example. When I place my cursor over an image, a list of available image sharing codes will expand below the image (including thumbnail). Move the cursor down to the option you want and click. Clicking copies the code to your clipboard allowing you to paste it in your Forums post.
However, this does mean you will have to first load images into your image hosting site.
You could create a "junk" folder to hold Forums post images temporarily.

[JuniperWoolf]

I think it might also work if you wrap link tags around the img tags, hold on I'll check...



Yep it works. So, you don't have to wait for it to upload to an image hosting site, you can still just use google images.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

It's still a pain in the *** to click every individual thumbnail when StLukes posts an epic art lesson.

Anywho...

I disagree that knowledge of the tradition and working within it are superior.

Another statement of opinion sans any examples to support said opinion. Every naive teenager scribbling what he or she imagines to be "poetry" or scribbling what he or she imagines to be "art" embraces this notion when confronted by any criticism. The reality is that the greatest revolutionaries in art have rarely been iconoclasts ignorant of the tradition that they are working in... or against, but rather, they more likely are those with the deepest and most profound understanding and respect... even love... for the tradition. Cervantes shook off the limitations of the European Romance narratives of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance... and in the process invented the European novel. But he did this will a full grasp and love of the very Romance narratives. Manet and Degas were both profoundly knowledgeable in the history of art. Both brought to their knowledge a love of art that had long been ignored in the dominant tradition of European painting. Manet "re-discovered" Spanish art... especially Velazquez... as well as Vermeer. Degas discovered photography and Japanese art. In the process these two artists form the basis of Impressionism... and Modernism as a whole. It should be just common sense to recognize that an individual largely ignorant of a given discipline is far less likely to discover or create something likely to shake up that discipline than an individual well versed in the history and tradition of the same discipline.

That's all good, and I don't disagree with any of it, really, but unless I'm mistaken, we're talking about clothes wearers, not clothes designers, so the analogy of teen artists and Cervantes doesn't really work in Qimi's context. I agree with her in the context of wearing clothes. One doesn't need to know the history of clothes design to make informed choices. Just turn on The "Learning" Channel for a few minutes and you're golden.

...we're just talking clothes. I don't think one can put clothes on the same artistic playing field with things such as art, literature, or even film. It's a necessity. As Oscar Wilde says, all art is quite useless. Clothes aren't useless.

Clothes are a necessity as a protection against the elements. Quite honestly... at today's heat and humidity anything beyond a pair of shoes to protect my feet is something more than a necessity. Indeed, in the studio I wore little else than a pair of thread-bare shorts... and I only NEED these to wipe my brushes on.

I'm not quite sure people in the great white north would agree.

Returning to your argument, where does this leave Architecture? Most courses on Art History spend the majority of the time studying Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. But Art also includes tapestries, carpets, armor, ceramics, metals and enamels, book arts, posters, furniture... and yes... fashion. It was the rejection of Oscar Wilde's (and Pater's and Gautier's and Baudelaire's, etc...) concept of "art for art's sake" and the Modernist notion that placed personal expression above form and any concepts of "beauty" that led to the notion of the separation of "fine art" vs "decorative art".

I'm not saying that fashion isn't art, just that it isn't art in its purest sense. It's art in the sense that it can be art, but it isn't always. And aside from those ridiculously lavish dresses seen in fashion shows that no one would even wear in public, all clothes serve a practical purpose.

I do put architecture in the same category, though it's definitely on a grander scale. Buildings serve a practical purpose. The Notre Dame de Paris was probably the single greatest piece of art/artistic thing I've ever seen, but that doesn't change the fact that it was built to be used for a certain, applicable purpose. One can't say the same for a painting hanging on the wall, nor should one have to.

I'm not saying that clothes are a less of an art form just because they serve a purpose (though, honestly, I've never seen clothing as high art, but that's just my purely subjective opinion), just that the fact that they do serve a purpose puts them in a different category. I would out architecture in a whole other category sense it involves so much math and science.

And, really, even the most practical of things can be art if one wants to make it so. There are bookmarks with fancy designs, ornately crafted boxes, video games, clocks, pens and pencils, even doorknobs; and that's just from looking around my room.

[stlukesguild]

Uploading an image to a photo-hosting site isn't the issue. I have used FlickR for years. Nor is reducing the image to a thumbnail. I already did that in the earlier post. FlickR, like PhotoBucket, alows you to choose what size image to share. What I want is a thumbnail that serves as a link to the full-sized image... without spending hours writing code. Juniper's solution turns the thumbnail into a link... but it only links to the same image in thumbnail format. I think it only fair if Scher is going to request we change how we post images, that we be given a decent tutorial as to just how to go about doing that.

...we're just talking clothes. I don't think one can put clothes on the same artistic playing field with things such as art, literature, or even film. It's a necessity. As Oscar Wilde says, all art is quite useless. Clothes aren't useless.

Clothes are a necessity as a protection against the elements. Quite honestly... at today's heat and humidity anything beyond a pair of shoes to protect my feet is something more than a necessity. Indeed, in the studio I wore little else than a pair of thread-bare shorts... and I only NEED these to wipe my brushes on.

I'm not quite sure people in the great white north would agree.

Well... I doubt they're facing temperatures in the mid-90s with all the humidity that Lake Erie can throw up at you when you're sitting right on her shores. I gotta get the A/C out of the attic tomorrow.

I'm not saying that fashion isn't art, just that it isn't art in its purest sense.

What I am suggesting is that this concept of a separation between "Fine Art" and Decorative or Applied Arts is a rather recent concept growing out of the writings of Kant, Hermann Broch, Adolf Loos, the Bloomsbury School, and a good many Modernists. This "exclusive" notion of what "Art" is goes against everything understood by Renaissance and Medieval artists, many involved with the art pour l'art movement, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Bauhaus, etc...

It's art in the sense that it can be art, but it isn't always.

But this, it can be argued, is equally true of any art form. Ultimately, an artifact becomes ART when it is recognized as such by the audience most involved with art. The medieval craftsman who decorated a copy of the Psalms purely as a means of praise to God, never thought of himself as an "artist" in any way approaching our concept of what an "artist" is. But his creation became ART when the art audience deemed it to be so. The vast majority of black velvet paintings (of Jesus or Elvis or a large boobed woman in leopard-skin... or ideally all three at once) or pretty floral paintings by weekend painters are "paintings"... but will probably never be recognized as art for they'll never enter into the context of the art gallery or magazine where their merit will be open to debate.

Personally, I'm a painter... and I value "paintings"... images on a flat surface... above all other art forms. Yet over the last few years I have attended an exhibition of Kimonos that left me absolutely stunned as well as a brilliant show of quilts by the women of Gee's Bend.

And aside from those ridiculously lavish dresses seen in fashion shows that no one would even wear in public, all clothes serve a practical purpose.

Again... one can say this of almost any work of architecture, as well as many other art forms. The "Art" lies in that which goes beyond the mere necessity.

The Notre Dame de Paris was probably the single greatest piece of art/artistic thing I've ever seen, but that doesn't change the fact that it was built to be used for a certain, applicable purpose. One can't say the same for a painting hanging on the wall, nor should one have to.

Arguably, a great deal of painting did/does have a practical purpose. Portraits were clearly a means of remembering an individual before photography. A great many paintings were intended as a means of conveying a narrative to a largely illiterate audience. In other words, it acted as PR for the Church and the Aristocracy. You admit to your own awe in the experience of Notre Dame. Imagine the awe of the Medieval peasant coming to that same church when it stood as the single largest building for miles around... the largest he had ever seen. Imagine the impact of the scale and splendour... the colors streaming through the stained glass, the incredible statuary, all the gold leaf... and the music and the incense. He would have been so completely overwhelmed as to put aside any doubts that this indeed was the house of God on earth. One of the orders given by the Catholic Church following the Reformation (as part of the efforts of the Counter-Reformation) was that all the Arts should be employed as a form of theater to attract the faithful. It is this power... this seductiveness of the visual image that all iconoclasts have feared... even until the present.

I'm not saying that clothes are a less of an art form just because they serve a purpose (though, honestly, I've never seen clothing as high art, but that's just my purely subjective opinion), just that the fact that they do serve a purpose puts them in a different category.

Again... what I am saying is that this very notion of a division is rather new... and it is something many Post-Modernists have begun to question. Kant and many of his Modernist followers argued that "true art"... "fine art" strives toward "self-expression" and "originality"... as well as to communicate good moral or ethical concepts. They argued that conversely that which speaks directly to the senses and strives for "beauty" is "kitsch"... and kitsch is amoral (as Oscar Wilde's quotes suggest) or even immoral... in that it acts in support of the conservative desires of the audience.

Personally, I find the whole dichotomy to be pure BS... but such thinking has had a profound impact on the last 100 years of art. Artists' such as Bonnard... or even Matisse were criticized because their art was too "beautiful"... "decorative"... This idea eventually merged with good old American Puritanism and the belief that if something tastes good or feels good or looks good... it can't be any good for you. Thus we got critics championing the good morally upstanding rigor of the Minimalism of paintings of all one color with a single thin pencil line drawn with a ruler or the Conceptualism of galleries filled with nothing but grainy photographs, a scratch tape recording of some inane repetitive voice intoning some nonsense, or vials of AIDS_infected blood and used condoms. At the same time, such critics would begin to foam at the mouth in a rage if exposed to anything approaching the truly "beautiful"... such as the paintings of Robert Kushner:



I would out architecture in a whole other category sense it involves so much math and science.

You would be surprised at how much math my paintings involve. And we shouldn't need to even bring up Leonardo and Michelangelo and their studies of anatomy, physiology, botany, etc... Any traditional art school training involves a great deal of time spent on optics and color theory, perspective, geometry, anatomy, physiology, etc...

And, really, even the most practical of things can be art if one wants to make it so. There are bookmarks with fancy designs, ornately crafted boxes, video games, clocks, pens and pencils, even doorknobs; and that's just from looking around my room.

The artists of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris or the PreRaphaelites, and many others starting back with William Blake argued that the Modern Industrial world which left the individual living in a world without "beauty" impacted the individual morally and emotionally. Wilde argued that you should not own anything that you do not find of utilitarian worth or find beautiful. Of course few of us can aspire to Wilde's aestheticism... let alone that of Huysman's... but they do present an ideal of beauty set against a Modernist, practical, pragmatic world of "planned obsolescence" in which, as Mallarme noted... the most useful room in our homes is the toilet.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Good points all, StLukes. I can't really rebut, because I don't really disagree with anything you said. I get where you're coming from.

[Scheherazade]

I think it only fair if Scher is going to request we change how we post images, that we be given a decent tutorial as to just how to go about doing that.

It is not my responsibility to run tutorials as it is not a Literature Network Forums site function. There are many tutorials available on the net if you care to ask Google.


Regarding the rich/poor debate: It is not only the people but also nations can be "rich" and show all the characteristics that are listed above as unpleased or undesirable.

English is not a first language for more than half of the regulars of this Forum so it is safe to assume that at least some come from countries and locations where internet access is not as generously offered as it is in the USA, Canada or the UK, where they hand out phones for free, and having multiple images on the same page makes it very hard viewing/downloading.


PS: Where can I get one of those freely handed out phones? Still paying £30 a month for mine.

[cacian]

St Lukes and others who are curious.
Your image hosting site should offer a "thumbnail" code as an option along with IMG, "direct link", HTML, etc.


I happen to use Photobucket for example. When I place my cursor over an image, a list of available image sharing codes will expand below the image (including thumbnail). Move the cursor down to the option you want and click. Clicking copies the code to your clipboard allowing you to paste it in your Forums post.
However, this does mean you will have to first load images into your image hosting site.
You could create a "junk" folder to hold Forums post images temporarily.

Gilliat that is an interesting portrait picture. Who is it supposed to be if you do not mind me asking?