Charitable answer: two world wars happened. A LOT of the “ugly” 20th century art people complain about are a direct reaction to those events, created by artists who lived through unimaginable devastation and could no longer believe in the grand heroics, romantic beauty and pious devotion previous forms of public art were full of. Many artists thought that the visual language of the past could not fully describe a post-industrial, post-nuclear, post-holocaust world, so they experimented with different materials and forms that they thought better suited their present. Raw concrete, metal, industrial forms, monumental shapes, inhuman motifs.
michaelnoir on
Would it not be a bit strange if, in the 1970s, art styles were exactly the same as in the 17th century? But why were people releasing rock albums and not writing madrigals anymore?
TraditionalGas1770 on
That fountain is in San Francisco. In general Americans don’t value beautiful architecture that will stand the test of time. (Don’t come at me with a cherry picked counter example). 98% of the country is cheap disposable buildings.
borgol on
Commenters on this thread should be aware that they may be inadvertently discussing a favourite topic of white supremacists, the “return to tradition” (RETVRN) or “the West has fallen” message conveyed through knee-jerk responses to architecture and art.
Is the OP acting in good faith when asking this question and sharing this image? What point are they trying to make people agree with by cherry picking beautiful and ugly architecture from different periods of Europe’s history?
1971 one looks like the aftermath of a fight from Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood :))
Ur_mama_gaming on
Minecraft
OmniSzron on
Why should we keep building the same kind of fountain forever?
GrandTheftPotatoE on
Oh god will people start posting the same garbage here that those users with philosopher profile pictures on twitter do?
Electronic-Record-86 on
One was created by a true sculptor the other looks like someone’s demolition
Lopsided_Quarter_931 on
Just watched a video how modern CNC machinery makes creating the marble carving art viable again so we might be in for a flood of the top style.
Drag_king on
Some thoughts:
Then: Materials are expensive and people cheap, so it made sense to decorate your buildings, fountains etc. because the main cost was the materials and you wanted to showcase that and it didn’t add that much to the overall cost.
Now: Materials are cheap but labor is expensive. So there is less incentive to invest in making pretty sculptures.
Also from a talking to my parents and grandparents and being middle age myself: There was a brief window in time when older architecture just looked old. People wanted new stuff. Don’t forget that until the 90’s when pollution from cars and coal fired heating finally got sorted all these old statues and buildings looked grimy and streaky. The newer buildings we now hate were still in their prime and looked much cleaner compared to their surroundings.
They were not that appealing to look at.
The great cleanup only started in the 90’s. (My country, Belgium looked so grey and dirty when I was a kid before they started sandblasting the older buildings.)
sodoff42 on
i thought the brutalist building was rubble
FluffyGreenThing on
The deep rooted things that make people people hasn’t changed, and will not change. What does change is culture. Just look at the way we dress now compared to a hundred, two hundred or a thousand years ago. Does that in any way imply a change in people?
Beauty standards change. What’s “in” and “modern” changes. It’s all part of exploring life, searching for something new. Moving forward. Sometimes that means creating something that will be considered “ugly” just a couple of decades later and sometimes it means creating something that will stand the test of time. Exploring new concepts and ideas is a good thing because you never know what it will bring about in the long run. Art builds on what has come before either in a reactionary way -as in “eww, we don’t like this anymore! Let’s go the complete opposite way!” Or in a fundamental way as in “I like some things about this certain style, but what happens if I play around with its basic concepts and exagerate or change parts of it in new ways?”. Those are obviously just simple examples.
There’s also the fact that art, like many things, is subjective. The comparison made in this post is an unfair one at its core.
The question “Have people changed?” combined with the two pictures representing this proposed “change” is nonsensical. Two different fountains made at very different times and places says nothing about people today or people of yesteryear. Not if you’re really asking about the very nature of humanity. Tastes change, but they are also cyclical. They tend to come back around in new reimagined ways. In fifty years something like that 1971 fountain may be considered very cool, and to some it looks cool and even beautiful today. As I said, it’s subjective. You, personally, may prefer the top one, but that doesn’t make that preference right or wrong. Just as someone preferring the bottom one isn’t right or wrong. Personal preference when it comes to almost any art is opinion. There’s no facts about it, unless you are specifically talking about craftsmanship, techniques or materials used.
I always like to say that people don’t change, technology does. Our daily lives may look very different from when the top fountain was made, but humans, people, haven’t changed. We still want the same things that people have always wanted, again at our very core, all we want is to feel safe, eat and drink, have a family or at least feel that we truly belong to something greater than ourselves, and lastly something that many are looking for -purpose. Why are we here? What is our purpose? What is MY role on this planet during that blink of an eye time that I’m here?
14 Comments
Charitable answer: two world wars happened. A LOT of the “ugly” 20th century art people complain about are a direct reaction to those events, created by artists who lived through unimaginable devastation and could no longer believe in the grand heroics, romantic beauty and pious devotion previous forms of public art were full of. Many artists thought that the visual language of the past could not fully describe a post-industrial, post-nuclear, post-holocaust world, so they experimented with different materials and forms that they thought better suited their present. Raw concrete, metal, industrial forms, monumental shapes, inhuman motifs.
Would it not be a bit strange if, in the 1970s, art styles were exactly the same as in the 17th century? But why were people releasing rock albums and not writing madrigals anymore?
That fountain is in San Francisco. In general Americans don’t value beautiful architecture that will stand the test of time. (Don’t come at me with a cherry picked counter example). 98% of the country is cheap disposable buildings.
Commenters on this thread should be aware that they may be inadvertently discussing a favourite topic of white supremacists, the “return to tradition” (RETVRN) or “the West has fallen” message conveyed through knee-jerk responses to architecture and art.
Is the OP acting in good faith when asking this question and sharing this image? What point are they trying to make people agree with by cherry picking beautiful and ugly architecture from different periods of Europe’s history?
Analyse your knee jerk response to the OP, then analyse your knee jerk response to my comment. This post format and content is a very common trick among these people in online circles. [Further reading](https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2018/08/how-architecture-themed-twitter-accounts-became-magnet-white)
Edit: oh, they just outright come out and say it https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/BJKzjQZD1j
The 1971 fountain is really cool. I love it.
1971 one looks like the aftermath of a fight from Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood :))
Minecraft
Why should we keep building the same kind of fountain forever?
Oh god will people start posting the same garbage here that those users with philosopher profile pictures on twitter do?
One was created by a true sculptor the other looks like someone’s demolition
Just watched a video how modern CNC machinery makes creating the marble carving art viable again so we might be in for a flood of the top style.
Some thoughts:
Then: Materials are expensive and people cheap, so it made sense to decorate your buildings, fountains etc. because the main cost was the materials and you wanted to showcase that and it didn’t add that much to the overall cost.
Now: Materials are cheap but labor is expensive. So there is less incentive to invest in making pretty sculptures.
Also from a talking to my parents and grandparents and being middle age myself: There was a brief window in time when older architecture just looked old. People wanted new stuff. Don’t forget that until the 90’s when pollution from cars and coal fired heating finally got sorted all these old statues and buildings looked grimy and streaky. The newer buildings we now hate were still in their prime and looked much cleaner compared to their surroundings.
They were not that appealing to look at.
The great cleanup only started in the 90’s. (My country, Belgium looked so grey and dirty when I was a kid before they started sandblasting the older buildings.)
i thought the brutalist building was rubble
The deep rooted things that make people people hasn’t changed, and will not change. What does change is culture. Just look at the way we dress now compared to a hundred, two hundred or a thousand years ago. Does that in any way imply a change in people?
Beauty standards change. What’s “in” and “modern” changes. It’s all part of exploring life, searching for something new. Moving forward. Sometimes that means creating something that will be considered “ugly” just a couple of decades later and sometimes it means creating something that will stand the test of time. Exploring new concepts and ideas is a good thing because you never know what it will bring about in the long run. Art builds on what has come before either in a reactionary way -as in “eww, we don’t like this anymore! Let’s go the complete opposite way!” Or in a fundamental way as in “I like some things about this certain style, but what happens if I play around with its basic concepts and exagerate or change parts of it in new ways?”. Those are obviously just simple examples.
There’s also the fact that art, like many things, is subjective. The comparison made in this post is an unfair one at its core.
The question “Have people changed?” combined with the two pictures representing this proposed “change” is nonsensical. Two different fountains made at very different times and places says nothing about people today or people of yesteryear. Not if you’re really asking about the very nature of humanity. Tastes change, but they are also cyclical. They tend to come back around in new reimagined ways. In fifty years something like that 1971 fountain may be considered very cool, and to some it looks cool and even beautiful today. As I said, it’s subjective. You, personally, may prefer the top one, but that doesn’t make that preference right or wrong. Just as someone preferring the bottom one isn’t right or wrong. Personal preference when it comes to almost any art is opinion. There’s no facts about it, unless you are specifically talking about craftsmanship, techniques or materials used.
I always like to say that people don’t change, technology does. Our daily lives may look very different from when the top fountain was made, but humans, people, haven’t changed. We still want the same things that people have always wanted, again at our very core, all we want is to feel safe, eat and drink, have a family or at least feel that we truly belong to something greater than ourselves, and lastly something that many are looking for -purpose. Why are we here? What is our purpose? What is MY role on this planet during that blink of an eye time that I’m here?
Those are my rambling two cents on it anyway.