What works or artists would younger people look at and go “meh, I’ve seen it a thousand times, bigger and better,” not realizing that what they’re looking at is the one who started it all?
Not that I’ve seen it, but I’ve often heard Citizen Kane fits the bill.
Also, Hugh Hefner and Playboy.
Philip K. Dick, I suspect.
Any early rock and roll artist besides Elvis.
Buster Keaton.
The Wright brothers. I mean look at that thing, it ain’t got no missiles! Lame!
Yuri Gagarin.
Cubism.
Pong.
I think that every early movie with groundbreaking special effects fits the bill, for instance the original “King Kong”.
Little Boy? Curtis Le May don’t get out of bed for a paltry 15 kilotons.
I had a friend complain to me that Lord of The Rings just seemed like another Terry Brooks wannabe novel.
I certainly hope you meant to type “ex-” in front of friend. Is such ignorance forgivable?
[Quote=Robert McNamara]
LeMay said, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
[/quote]
Dude was scary. Okay, both of them were scary, in that they tried to get us killed or prevented, but LeMay even scared McNamara.
Chuck Berry certainly endures alongside Elvis, but I get your point.
I would suggest MySpace (vs. Facebook), AltaVista and Yahoo!, etc. (vs. Google) but those are companies, not artistic works…
It’s common for artistic pioneers to be looked upon as being passe, especially at first glance. Scott McCloud addresses this in Understanding Comics. The fact is that the pioneer is by nature unpolished – he’s too busy creating to think about fine tuning. Later artists who copy can concentrate on the surface of the work. Since surface is the most noticeable part of a work for a neophyte, they are more impressed by later copies.
Over the years in my music class, I’ve had similar reactions when I play a lot of the early bluesmen and rock and rollers – (Robert Johnson? Pfft, Eric Clapton is a way better guitarist than that guy. Muddy Waters? He’s just copying George Thorogood. So what about Little Richard; he’s just copying that Paul McCartney song. Dancing is another fun one; I like showing my clip of tap-dancer Bill Bailey performing the moonwalk decades before Michael Jackson donned a sparkly glove). I usually emphasize that even though the students have ‘heard it a million times’ someone had to be first. I seem to be successful, because usually the reactions lately run more along the lines of, ‘Wow, someone was singing/dancing/playing like that back in the old days?!’* :eek: Oh my God, gramma knew about sex.
*Old days these days can be anything from 2005 BCE to 2005 CE. I gotta get a copy of music from that guy who sings Elvis in Sumerian, seriously.
The Model T.
Indeed. Patton as well, didn’t he want to start a war with the USSR
Anything involving technology in fact. However, this is Cafe Society, and the OP asked for works. Which disqualifies many of the above posts, including my Little Boy, unless you consider nuclear bombing to be a form of performance art (Le May again?).
I doubt that the first commercial 3D film, The Power of Love, shown in 1922, has aged well. Can’t be sure, as it is now lost.
Chuck Berry’s best songs are still elite level. So are Buddy Holly’s. They could still develop large niche followings if they were recording today. They would be part of the retro/nostalgia movement, but the quality would shine through. (I’m not a big Elvis fan - although he moved damn good for a white guy. He wasn’t a songwriter, a musician, or real bright. Still, in the hands of a modern Col. Tom, he might succeed as a packaged musical commodity.)
The OP mentions Phillip K. Dick. When I re-read some of his stuff five years ago, it held up great. I’m not following the field closely anymore, but Dick’s blend of Kafka, sf, humor, and off-the-wall oddity is still powerful.
George Lucas, by the world he literally created, if I had to say, from what I hear from the fans.
I Love Lucy. I don’t think there is a single situation that can occur in a sitcom that Lucille Ball didn’t do first, and usually better.
Charlie Chaplin and film comedy. His influence is all over the place (most importantly, he changed the pacing from a joke every few minutes to multiple gags every minute), but people don’t watch him because most of his films are silent and in black and white. I think people would be amazed to realize he was joking about things like cocaine and homosexuality in the 20s.
Jack Kirby. His art is nothing like what’s considered good comic book art these days.
That’s probably true of most early comic book artists. People like Will Eisner, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, Dick Sprang, Joe Shuster, Wayne Boring, and Curt Swan would be considered bad art by the casual fan these days (not by those who know the field, of course).
Yes, and I’m also thinking of Milton Berle . . . especially showing up in drag.