There is no such thing. What might be considered “tacky” and “kitsch” are culturally determined. There is no global or historical absolute by which to judge such things.
Indeed, art from 17,000 years ago is as good as works produced much later.
I’m currently reading A History of the World in 100 Objects. While some of the objects have great artistic merit, others were intended for everyday use, or were manufactured in large numbers to be used as ritual offerings, etc. All of the objects are discussed in terms of their value in providing information about the society they represent, but not necessarily in terms of their artistic value.
The book goes into some detail about the Greek objects portraying homosexuality. They were not generally accepted at the time, or something you would display in your home. They were treated more like pornography is treated today, as something that is enjoyed privately, not displayed in the public square.
Wanna offer any evidence that the statues were considered tacky in their own time?
Thanks. That was one of the images I was thinking of. I’m all for cultural relativism in moderation sometimes bad is just bad.
As a coincidence, there is a thread in Cafe Society started right about the time I started this one about Japanese Fart Scrolls that are one type of example. I don’t they are worthless or trash because they are so bizarre but I wouldn’t exactly call them tasteful art.
For all of you cultural relativists out there, how are people in the future going to know that Black Velvet Elvis paintings weren’t in the same category as a Rembrandt? Should they assume that all of our art is equally worthwhile and worthy of study?
Can you explain exactly why you think that’s tacky?
Why do you think that that particular statue is the equivalent, in its own time, of a Black Velvet painting and not a Rembrandt? Please state some objective criteria.
Cave paintings. I mean come on, my five-year-old could do that.
wow, those are really cool! Thank you for the article – I shared the pictures with a couple of my friends, and they look a lot cooler colored than they did white. I’m trying to picture a whole city-full of these things.
I don’t claim to have any art-sense at all, and I don’t know what the greeks thought of them, but even from today’s point of view, not everyone is going to think it’s tacky. No accounting for taste, huh? 
Oh, agreed.
Can you image how vibrant the city would have looked with statues like that all over?
(But, with my luck, I would have been the slave whose job it was to wash the bird crap off all the colourful statues.)
No, not at all. They shouldn’t make any unwarranted judgments about what the relative artistic worth of any one work of art is over another; they should work to understand what the standards of artistic merit were within the culture the art was produced in, what it meant to them, and how they would have evaluated the works. Cultural relativism isn’t a system of value judgments, it’s quite the opposite. Cultural relativism is a scientific tool for understanding what cultural significance something has or had within the culture being spoken of. Evaluating the intrinsic artistic worth of a piece of art within the context of one’s own culture is the purview of art historians, not antrhopologists and arcaheologists; cultural relativism is about analysis of cultural significance within the terms of the culture being discussed, nothing more and nothing less.
The author of the article seems to think it’s obvious enough that the reader would call it “gaudy” or “kitsch”. I find it interesting that our language has value/taste judgments built into it: gaud·y/ˈgôdē/ Adjective: Extravagantly bright or showy, typically so as to be tasteless. If something is extravagantly bright or showy, then it is gaudy; if it is gaudy, it is (typically) tasteless.
My point is that this evaluation is based on modern aesthetics, which are in part originate from an idealized misinterpretation of classical art. Extravagantly bright and showy art has historically been the norm.
This thread brings to mind the fellow who spent a fortune on gorgeous wall murals for his house in Pompeii, to show off his artistic taste. Today, 2000 years later he’s mainly remembered for his most photographed and most widely reproduced artistic project, the entrance foyer growling dog mosaic tile floor, with the warning “Beware of Dog”.
(Actually the guide book said some of the other art can be seen at the Naples museum.)
They’ve uncovered thousands of Greek works and tens of thousands of Roman copies, but I bet you only see about 5% commonly - the ones we see as most artistic and the ones they likely did too.
The other problem is that not only were blocks of marble expensive (let alone cost of haulage) but labour, especially trained labour, was also expensive. I’m sure there were plenty of practice pieces, but you didn’t just leave it up to you nephew’s buddy to do the artwork for your house; and the guys that could afford to hire freeloaders hired only the best. Simply enough food to keep someone going, let along art supplies, was not cheap.
Fine, but Justin Bailey never said otherwise.
At any rate, maybe those ancients with more “refined” tastes did find their public art tacky. What passes for public art today includes things such as television, which is largely popular but tasteless.
I wouldn’t want some future anthropologist saying “You can’t judge these ancient ‘2D’ holoreels based on modern aesthetics; they were prized art in the early third millenium.” I’d hope that there are at least some universals in matters of taste :).
Given SoilerVirgin’s post, it seems that we have at least some idea about the subtleties in how the people viewed their art. Just like today, there must have been variation then in what was considered tasteful. Do you know if information like that exists?
This, pretty much:
They just look ridiculous. And the colors don’t seem to follow any rhyme or reason other than BRIGHT COLORS = PRETTY.
Isn’t that why archaeologists go to so much trouble to understand where things are found, instead of just digging them up and hauling them away? Placement says a lot - it seems safe to assume that the stuff in King Tut’s tomb was highly valued.
I’d (slightly) disagree. The development of realistic perspective, at least, was significant progress. But I agree with the larger point that it hasn’t been a steady upward creep, and that a lot of so-called “primitive” art definitely wasn’t.
So what is gaudy or kitschy? A certain amount is context - Elvis or puppies and kittens big eyes on black velvet; partly, it’s amateurishness - with modern schools and inexpensive practice materials, anyone should be able to pick up the experience to do a decent job if they have a modicum of talent.
You look at some of the medieval manuscripts, for example - the style of painting was not that great; stylistically, size conveyed importance by convention - so Jesus was twice as big as the crowd he was preaching to, the angels about halfway betwee those sizes. Perspective was unknown. The artistic monk was given the job of the fancier illuminations so there was some selection, but I have not heard that monks went out recruiting novices based on art talents; so you got what you got. Portraits or statues, other than the king or religious subjects, were rare.
My guess is that the less artistic, less serious works were done on less permanent materials, since as previously mentioned, items like marble were rare and and expensive to transport; and real relatively permanent oil paints were also expensive.
In the case of the Greek statues, people are wrong calling the statues tacky (assuming they’re reasonably accurate portrayals - that linked one is practically photo-realistic)
What people are actually trying to say is that Greek *textile and clothes designers *were tacky.
I’ll just use the standard defence that these are obviously just runway show pieces, and the actual production designs were obviously not as avant-garde…