# Western art/music rules
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [January 13, 2009, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062 "2009-01-13T08:40:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 6
### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/101 "2009-01-16T08:45:33Z")
> [@jovan](#):
>
> Medieval portraits aren’t photorealistic because they’re not meant to be. People of the time just didn’t care what, say, Francis of Assisi looked like. They’re not representing his lowly, material, mortal form but trying to teach something about his immortal sainthood. Note that medieval artists _knew of_ Greek and Roman art, yet they did not seek to emulate its naturalism. Why do you think that is? It’s only with the rise of humanism in the Renaissance that once again artists thought of the material appearance of the world as a worthy subject.
That could be one reason. Could it also be that there were no great artists and/or no great art schools in that era?
It is not the case that all eras must have the same number of Michelangelos or Da Vincis in them. Some people are extremely rare talents and are not born every day.
In addition, the right schools teaching the right techniques may not be around.
Just because I see some great Greek or Roman art does not mean I can emulate it very well if I don’t have the talent and/or the proper training.
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### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/102 "2009-01-16T08:49:06Z")
> [@mecaenas](#):
>
> I agree with the OP from the perspective of ability or talent in technique, in the example of Mozart versus ‘some guy banging on drums’ I’d say that Mozart by far and away is far more sophisticated and so much further beyond in abilities as to be considered ‘superior’. Now in terms of emotional connection, I would expect that Africans (god I hate lumping a massive and diverse group of people in 1 pile) connect more emotionally with ‘some guy banging on drums’ than with Mozart. But I think it’s foolish to pretend that the drums is equal to Mozart in complexity and in the talent required to produce it.
>
> Same applies to Michaelangelo, and having seen his pieces first hand I am blown away by the genius and talent that must have been required to produce his magnificent pieces. If someone was to compare his works to carved wooden faces on the basis of skill, then that would appear to me to be so absurd that it would be pointless to discuss. However on an emotional level, well, it’s a personal thing and I think it’s a mistake to attempt that sort of comparison when it’s purely a ‘feeling’.
Agreed on all counts.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/103 "2009-01-16T09:05:31Z")
One last time - **Polerius** , _please_ answer my question in post #6.
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/104 "2009-01-16T09:06:25Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Did you actually listen to that first link? It’s pretty bad. I’ve heard percussion pieces from around the world, and some of them were pretty amazing. This one was very mediocre.
Then I’m sorry, but you’re not paying close enough attention. It’s _polyrhythic_ music. Meaning that there are several different rhythms going on at the same time. It might sound semi-random from a casual listen, but I can assure you that it’s not. Just as [this music](http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=bhM6Vrd8CP4&feature=related) isn’t either.
Since I do reckon that pure Yoruba music is a bit hard to get for western ears, [here’s some Cuban Yoruba](http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=ogcKJHWnH0o&feature=related) music. Compare with this [famous dance piece](http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ie9tbUDZZU&feature=related), and I hope you will find the first much more rhythmically complex. The second is cute, but largely formulaic and pretty simple.
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/105 "2009-01-16T09:09:04Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Just because I see some great Greek or Roman art does not mean I can emulate it very well if I don’t have the talent and/or the proper training.
Medieval artists, for a long time, didn’t even _try_, though.
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### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/106 "2009-01-16T09:15:33Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> One last time - **Polerius** , _please_ answer my question in post #6.
Are you referring to this question: “What commonality is there in, say, a classical Greek sculpture and a La Tène brooch that would let you group them together, and oppose them with a Chinese Tang horse sculpture and an Aztec pectoral?”
I would say that there is little in common between a classical Greek sculpture and a La Tène brooch, but there is an overall body of Western art that, as a whole, can be compared with the body of art from other cultures/geographical areas.
For example, there may be little in common between a short Italian-American raised in NYC and a tall blond of Northern European ancestry raised in Alabama (in both physical appearance and character), but we can still compare “Americans” to, say, “Germans”.
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### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/107 "2009-01-16T09:18:26Z")
> [@jovan](#):
>
> Medieval artists, for a long time, didn’t even _try_, though.
How do we know that?
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### Author:  [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/108 "2009-01-16T09:26:27Z")
> [@ZebraShaSha](#):
>
> With all of this said, I do have to say that Western art is superior, but in one way only: [Modern Art.](http://potatoland.com/glart/images/duchamp_nude_stairs.jpg) Modern art is such a tremendous achievement, which took into account most of the Western tradition, but also the African and Japanese traditions as well, not to mention all sorts of different countries along the way (Gauguin most notably). Abstract art, cubism, surrealism, and I’d even say photography is such an astounding development that it goes unmatched in other traditions, as far as I can tell.
And that, to me, is enough reason to say that “Western” art is superior; how many different cultural art traditions did the Japanese emulate and adopt and adapt into their work? How many did the Islanders? It’s not their fault; it’s not like it’s a judgment of their worth as a society or as human beings, but one of the things that makes Western _anything_ potentially great or horrendously bad is the unprecedented mixture and absorption of other traditions. I don’t think you can find anything in Eastern art history (excepting the most recent past, when Western culture has had more influence) that can produce such variance in art as Duchamp, Sargent, Picasso, Velasquez, Hopper, Bierstadt, Schiele, Mondrian, Monet, van Gogh, Erte, Tarkay, _ad infinitum_. And that’s just visual art. Arguing against it is kind of like saying, “Yeah, the smorgasbord is great, lots of variety and the quality is usually pretty good, but if you go to a real sushi bar the sushi is better.” Yeah, the sushi is probably better, but all you get is sushi.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/109 "2009-01-16T09:27:41Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Are you referring to this question: “What commonality is there in, say, a classical Greek sculpture and a La Tène brooch that would let you group them together, and oppose them with a Chinese Tang horse sculpture and an Aztec pectoral?”
>
> I would say that there is little in common between a classical Greek sculpture and a La Tène brooch, but there is an overall body of Western art that, as a whole, can be compared with the body of art from other cultures/geographical areas.
I would disagree, and say that the Tang sculpture and the Greek one have more in common , as do the brooch and pectoral. That you do both European and other art a disservice by establishing a false continuity to Western art.
For instance, what is you opinion of the terracotta soldiers? Clearly proof that the Chinese of the time had the skills to do incredibly detailed, lifelike sculptures _if they chose_, yet in general, chose not to pursue that aesthetic in favour of the stripped-down, slightly stylized one more common to the rest of their art. For cultural reasons.
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### Author:  [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/110 "2009-01-16T09:36:46Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> I would disagree, and say that the Tang sculpture and the Greek one have more in common , as do the brooch and pectoral. That you do both European and other art a disservice by establishing a false continuity to Western art.
>
> For instance, what is you opinion of the terracotta soldiers? Clearly proof that the Chinese of the time had the skills to do incredibly detailed, lifelike sculptures _if they chose_, yet in general, chose not to pursue that aesthetic in favour of the stripped-down, slightly stylized one more common to the rest of their art. For cultural reasons.
I know you weren’t addressing me, but I’m going to interject my opinion anyway. I think that the Terra Cotta army sculptures are approximately equal to Greek sculpture in terms of naturalistic depictions of humans. The depictions of the horses tend to be more generic, but then again so do the horse depictions in the West at the time. You bring up an interesting point though; who’s to say that there couldn’t have been an Eastern version of Bernini who simply didn’t have a receptive audience? Could there have been, among the cave painters of prehistory, someone who insisted on using accurate anatomy and perspective, and was ostracized for it?
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### Author:  [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/111 "2009-01-16T10:19:47Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#):
>
> What’s your background in western art? Have you taken a class, read a book or watched educational TV? Phrases like “amazing heights of achievement” make me think not.
Could you BE any more patronising?
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### Author:  [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/112 "2009-01-16T13:04:20Z")
> [@SanVito](#):
>
> Could you BE any more patronising?
Why, yes. Did you miss the post in which I answered the OP’s request for examples of good non-Western art with \*extremely \*simple instructions on how to use Google? I also supplied some direct links–but he didn’t bother to follow them.
This thread was started in Great Debates; the OP was quite sure that everybody would agree with him that Western Art was Great & everything else was shit. Now we’re in Cafe Society–where people argue about whether _Buffy, Vampire Slayer_ should have ended after the Mayor turned into a Giant Snake Demon at Graduation.\* Or whether cilantro tastes like soap.\*\* Great fun–but no cites are needed.
He could have found some support for his opinion if he’d ever watched PBS. I remember Lord Kenneth Clark intoning WASPishly about the inferiority of an Early Medieval Irish sculpture because it wasn’t Greek enough. (On _Civilisation_–much classier than our American “civilization.”) There are still some old fart scholars who preach the superiority of (some) Western Art; they tend to ignore stuff off the beaten track & most of that “modern” stuff.
On the other hand, Sister Wendy has a good eye for Western & “other” art–& she likes to share [her vision.](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sisterwendy/works/index.html) Anybody remember [The Shock of the New](http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/shock-new-eps.shtml)? (Damn, that was 20 years ago!) Or Simon Schama’s more recent [show](http://www.pbs.org/previews/simonschama-powerofart/)–he didn’t care for David’s propaganda, either.
Just last night, Rick Steves took me to [Iran](http://www.ricksteves.com/iran/iran_menu.htm). Where he compared some incredible buildings, quite favorably, to the great cathedrals of Europe. (And he’s seen some cathedrals.)
Not everybody has access to gems like the [Menil](http://www.menil.org/), where repeated visits taught me to “see” African & Pacific art. (And to love those wacky Surrealists–often ignored by “serious” critics.) But I learned all that stuff in previous paragraphs while sitting on my couch, tuned into the idiot tube.
“Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death.” (They cleaned the quotation up for the movie. And most Dopers appear to be quite well nourished.)
* * *
- No, I don’t think so. Joss Whedon is God.
\*\* No, not to me.
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### Author:  [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/113 "2009-01-16T14:46:23Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#):
>
> I remember Lord Kenneth Clark intoning WASPishly about the inferiority of an Early Medieval Irish sculpture because it wasn’t Greek enough. (On _Civilisation_–much classier than our American “civilization.”) There are still some old fart scholars who preach the superiority of (some) Western Art; they tend to ignore stuff off the beaten track & most of that “modern” stuff.
This was presumably a completely different Lord Clark to the one who, in the famous opening sequence to the first episode of _Civilisation_, compared the prow of a Viking longship, the Apollo Belevedre and an African mask to make the point that not only ‘civilised’ societies produce great art. Yes, it all does now sound horribily dated and his point was already a cliché at the time. But Clark was nothing if not a member of that generation of interwar art historians who had no problem at all in admiring ‘primitive’ art.
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### Author:  [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/114 "2009-01-16T17:26:21Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> How do we know that?
So you seriously believe that for 900 years European painters were oh-so-desperately spending their entire careers ATTEMPTING to do nice, optically realistic works-- to figure out linear perspective anew every generation, not understanding why their gold backgrounds looked so flat, wondering how they could make their gracefully attenuated angels and saints look more anatomically correct and proportional (and failing to emulate the copious precedents sitting around here and there-- easy models for the picking), and just FAIL for 900 years, until Giotto, the Kwisatz-Haderach-Messiah of painting is born and suddenly achieves what everyone has been trying to do for 900 years in one fell swoop-- he was the one with the talent and the ability and the only person for 900 years who was able to accomplish what they were all trying to do (and suddenly every painter for the next 400 years IS able to accomplish the same things–evolution, yay!)? Not that, oh, tastes shifted that way or whatever, but because all of a sudden one person was simply capable of it at all? Does that make sense in your head?
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### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/115 "2009-01-16T18:27:18Z")
> [@capybara](#):
>
> So you seriously believe that for 900 years European painters were oh-so-desperately spending their entire careers ATTEMPTING to do nice, optically realistic works-- to figure out linear perspective anew every generation, not understanding why their gold backgrounds looked so flat, wondering how they could make their gracefully attenuated angels and saints look more anatomically correct and proportional (and failing to emulate the copious precedents sitting around here and there-- easy models for the picking), and just FAIL for 900 years, until Giotto, the Kwisatz-Haderach-Messiah of painting is born and suddenly achieves what everyone has been trying to do for 900 years in one fell swoop-- he was the one with the talent and the ability and the only person for 900 years who was able to accomplish what they were all trying to do (and suddenly every painter for the next 400 years IS able to accomplish the same things–evolution, yay!)? Not that, oh, tastes shifted that way or whatever, but because all of a sudden one person was simply capable of it at all?
I’m not claiming that this all happened via one person, but, as a side note, are you arguing that one person never changed the course of history?
In any case, most likely it was not about one person “seeing the light”.
Look at martial arts. People in the East came up with a vast array of martial arts, had a cultural tradition of people going to martial arts schools, and becoming masters at it. They were so deep into it, that they came up with great moves, grips, pressure points, etc, that one cannot by themselves come up with all of these simply by reading stories of great martial artists.
The West never came up with something equivalent (AFAIK). Maybe they heard about the great martial artists from the East, but some French dude in 1880 cannot simply decide to become an expert martial artist, all by himself, and based simply on stories, or even depictions, of martial arts.
Fast forward to today. There are many martial arts schools in the West (almost all based on Eastern martial arts, AFAIK). Someone in France or Kansas can go and learn the techniques and become a martial arts master.
How did we get here? Was it one person in the West who suddenly became a martial arts master and then people in the West suddenly became capable of martial arts mastery? No. It was a gradual process, with a lot of technical information about martial arts slowly filtering from East to West.
A similar thing is possible in the case of medieval art. In this case, replace the movement of skill from “East to West” (for martial arts) to “Past to Present” (for art).
Some points
- Yes, religious art does have a specific “look”, and I am not including that when I say that a lot of art from medieval times was not up to par.
- I don’t think the painter of [this](http://www.barry.warmkessel.com/barry/fig8a.jpg) was capable of painting better and he was simply just trying to get a specific look or trying to be “ironic” or something like that. It seems to me that he simply lacked artistic ability. This is in contrast with some of the modern pieces of art that do look unrealistic (e.g. some of Picasso’s), but you can see that there is artistic ability behind them.
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### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2009, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/116 "2009-01-16T18:28:34Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#):
>
> This thread was started in Great Debates
??? Where did you get this from?
Maybe you’re posting from some parallel universe, where this thread did start in Great Debates and where all the other claims you are making are true.
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### Author:  [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2009, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/117 "2009-01-17T00:07:40Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> I think the difference between the image I linked to and Guernica is that the former was made by someone who wanted to, but could not, draw more realistically…
You know this how?
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2009, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/118 "2009-01-17T02:35:46Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> I’m not claiming that this all happened via one person, but, as a side note, are you arguing that one person never changed the course of history?
>
> In any case, most likely it was not about one person “seeing the light”.
The more I think about art history, the more I come to think that the contribution of the great masters isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. We would still have romantic music without Beethoven or linear perspective without Giotto. I can’t think of even one artist who single-handedly changed the _course_ of art history. Many made great contributions, but ultimately their influence is mostly found in the details of how the changes were played out rather than in the cause of these changes.
If early medieval artists had indeed been interested in what we would call now photorealism you would see _attempts_ at perspective. However, these are conspicuously absent until the work of Giotto. Even after him, when artists knew of the rudiments of linear perspective, you find that many of still opted not to use it. It doesn’t take much skill to make lines recede towards a point, so I can only conclude that it was a matter of taste rather than aptitude. (Do you think that the people who were able to build and design [this](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sainte_chapelle_-_Upper_level.jpg) or [that](http://www.hermes-press.com/Perennial_Tradition/chartres3.jpg) would have been unable to figure out that parallel lines recede towards a common point?)
In an related note, artist [Andrew Wyeth](http://www.artchive.com/artchive/w/wyeth/wyeth_winter1946.jpg) just died. He was one of the most famous naturalistic painters of recent years. He, and other painters like [Antonio Lopez](http://www.artdaily.com/imagenes/2008/04/04/Lopez2.jpg), were the object of very harsh criticism for their aesthetic choices. It is very clear that there was a group of influential people who were critical of photorealistic art. From their cultural, philosophical and aesthetic perspective, naturalism just wasn’t deemed as worthy a pursuit as abstraction. In the same way, the leading cultural trends of the middle ages led people to value highly stylized and symbolic art over the more naturalistic Greek and Roman models.
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### Author:  [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2009, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/119 "2009-01-17T03:44:46Z")
You’re discussing the return of realistic art at the end of middle-ages, but there’s also the evolution away from realistic depiction in the late Roman empire, often exemplified by the sculpture of [the tetrarchs](http://www.euratlas.com/mons_porphyrites/s_tetrarchs.html)
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### Author:  [@mecaenas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mecaenas)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2009, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/western-art-music-rules/481062/120 "2009-01-17T08:00:17Z")
> [@jovan](#):
>
> See, just the use of the expression “some guy banging on drums” shows that you’re not making a fair comparison, unless you’re willing to replace “Mozart” with “some guy banging on a fortepiano”.
>
> You will find that traditional [Yoruba Bata](http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=PVDK8iqp38o) from Nigeria or Indian tabla ([Zakir Hussain](http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=xbDofgD04dc)) is far, far more _rhythically_ complex and sophisticated than anything Mozart, or any European before the 20th century, ever wrote. However, culturally, many westerners are led to think that pitch (melody and harmony) are more important than rhythm. There is no reason for that to be.
I listened to both of those artists, and I am impressed by the complexity of the rhythm. If we’re going to compare them to Mozart and criticise Mozart for lack of percussion then that’s fine, and I would agree because the Yoruba’s drumming rhythm is far superior. But that is not what I’m talking about, I’m not talking about Western values and perceptions - I’m talking purely about skill and talent. My point wasn’t that pitch is more important than rhythm, my point was that Mozart’s music is vastly more complex, involving a greater variety of instruments, skills and knowledge in order to produce the resulting music. I don’t understand how you can listen to Yoruba and then say, The Marriage of Figaro, and think that Yoruba’s music took equal or more talent, skill, and ability than it did for Mozart. Even thinking about something arbitrary as the number of instruments, clearly it requires a substantial amount of knowledge to understand an orchestra, let alone write for one, than it does to understand drums.
I’m not saying that those examples are less artistic or less important to their respective cultures, I’m just saying that Mozart as a person clearly had more talent and technical aptitude. I know there isn’t a universally-acknowledged way to measure skill in terms of something as clear cut as the metric system, but there is a way to say that ‘person X has a great capacity than person Y’. This doesn’t mean that person Y is worthless, or what they produce has no merit, it merely acknowledges that person X has great ability.
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