AuthorTopic: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.  (Read 4654 times)

Offline Stwelin

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Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

on: March 07, 2007, 01:26:15 am
So I've been studying some various art movements in my arts and design class for the past few weeks and I got to thinking, "these are all very distinct, how could so many people in one place follow one general movement? What movement are we a part of? What ARE the movements of today?"

There are quite a handful of styles that are recognized in very specific regions and times, such as cubism, fauvism, impressionism, pop-art, expressionism, realism, etc. But what about today? Why are there so many diverse and unique 'movements' in our society? There are people who stick with more traditional styles, like abstract, realism, less in areas like surrealism, cubism, impressionism. pop-art still has a following. But what about our generation's unique style? will pixel art be remembered as a movement? What is the cause of the sudden lack of common style and limitations? More opportunities? more technological influence? more freedom?

I was originally intending on posting this in the off-topic thread, but i want a more in depth discussion. What are your 2 cents?

Offline AlexHW

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Re: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

Reply #1 on: March 07, 2007, 03:38:51 am
pixel art is in a sense a type of minimalism I would think (digital minimalism?), and it would be somehow tied in with digital art as a facet of the digital age.
I think pixel-art is more like a medium rather than a specific art, seeing as you can make pixel-art look like any type of art, but it does have characteristics such as the square nature of the core components which construct the images and the limitations the artist place upon it which goes back to the minimalistic nature of it.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

Reply #2 on: March 07, 2007, 02:17:48 pm
pixel art is imho much more a media than it is a movement, though it certainly is more condusive to minimalist styles and pop-art as well as Game-art and Anime + Kawaii (or similar movements in korean and taiwanese art) and other low-art movements.

movements have become more varied because there are more people who now have access to farther-away artists
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Offline khorin

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Re: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

Reply #3 on: March 07, 2007, 03:19:10 pm
Most art movements are called art movements because they were different at that time and so people reacted positively or negatively. For example, impressionism was not well accepted by art critics because they did not resemble history or "realistic" (I guess I coud use that word) paintings that the Academy accpeted. Those paintings were only "impressions" of reality.

Also, in the past (middle ages and so forth), only the middle class to the rich could really study art. Whereas today, almost everybody can go to school and learn art. It's not hard to do, people just have to want to do it. And also, artists today allued (sp?) to those techniques of previous movements that's why I think it's hard to give what artists do today a name.

I'd like to suggest a book to anybody who is interested: In the Making by Linda Weintraub. It features different artists and how they go about in creating their pieces. It's a very interesting read should anyone need to get inspired. :-) All the works are very different from each other and they stem from different issues and point of views.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

Reply #4 on: March 08, 2007, 02:26:10 am
movements i think really need to change the art world, too, in order to be significant.  impressionism was not accepted by the broader groups during its time, so they created their own group within modernist criticism, a group which is now accepted into the artistic canon.  Likewise, every other significant movement has been at odds with what was prevalent at the time, first priding themselves on being a counter-culture (often flaunting the criticisms of the establishment, as was very much the case with impressionists and fauvists and the like), and then later on becoming a dominant force due to the human desire to establish a legacy and to give something to the world.  This of course is a rule with many exceptions, but it holds true in most examples.

What's difficult now is that it is diffcult to determine what is the culture and what is the counter-culture, and as both are ever-chaning it is hard to pull out "significant" movements. 

Low art is infinitely more prolific than high art, as it always has been, and is appraised largely on the grounds of aestheticism and psychoanalytical criticism as it pertains to marketing, so one could generalize and say that the establishment is dicated by early-nineteenth century thought processes while the counter-culture consists of all that is neither: "ugly" art etc.

High art is characterized now by a rejection for (and therefor acceptance of) everything under the sun.  This unfortunately makes for a rather confused art world that feels stagnant and confused.  Even people who are considered "cutting edge" are going back to old ideas while adding little.  Matthew Barney has demonstrated that if you eat a high-school level essay on Freudian psychology, shit it out, and put boring music behind it, you will be recognized, despite the fact that freud, shit, and boring music have all existed for generations.  He is successful because he capitalizes on the widespread idea among postmodern critics that anything repulsive to the majority of people must be revolutionary (despite the century-old foundations for everytihng he does) and if something is revolutionary then it must be good and if you can't appreciate it then it's your own failing.

I personally believe in a form of collective modernism based largely on my spiritual views.  Everyone contributes to a vast pool of human experience, with each stimulus (work of art in this case) yielding an unending number of equally valid interpretations of meaning or lack thereof (as opposed to the idea that a single interpretation - that of the artist - is the only correct interpreation).  People who contribute empty, pretentious, even "false" art do so to drive others into a fury in which they produce "real" art in the same way that terrible things happent to people so that they might better appreciate the good things.  Without bad art, how could we find anything we think is good?  The world as it exists now, with everything uimagineable being both blasted and praised, is an environment which cannot help but yield the best and the worst that the world has seen thusfar, and these will only become more polarized as exposure to culture becomes more and more easy and extensive.
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Offline Rydin

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Re: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

Reply #5 on: March 09, 2007, 07:54:32 am
I would say that an art movement is cross-medium, and and pixels are just another medium, so pixel art as a whole really isn't a movement. :-\

I think part of the reason for such lack of common style, though, is due to the idolization of trend-setters; in other words, it's almost like a lot of people think "if I can start the next 'big' movement, I will be famous".  And they only have to point out Cobain and Warhol for proof.
I have to say, though, you are overlooking a truckload of artists if you boil them all down to movement-makers; Bob Ross is a fine example of a perfectly "normal" artist. ;)

...perhaps if we wanted to start a movement though, we could attack mass this individualism and diversity with conformity and sameness :hehe:
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Offline setz

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Re: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

Reply #6 on: March 09, 2007, 09:13:43 am
pixel art is in a sense a type of minimalism I would think (digital minimalism?), and it would be somehow tied in with digital art as a facet of the digital age.
I think pixel-art is more like a medium rather than a specific art, seeing as you can make pixel-art look like any type of art, but it does have characteristics such as the square nature of the core components which construct the images and the limitations the artist place upon it which goes back to the minimalistic nature of it.

I think that more or less sums up all of my thoughts on the matter, I would say there have been movements within pixel art, anime, realism, thick black lines, whatever.

I've been told that watching me make pixel art was kind of like pointillism, but the guy was a crackhead loser who couldn't teach java worth a damn, so I don't think it should be taken to heart.

Offline Ai

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Re: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

Reply #7 on: March 09, 2007, 12:07:25 pm
what about our generation's unique style? will pixel art be remembered as a movement? What is the cause of the sudden lack of common style and limitations? More opportunities? more technological influence? more freedom?

I debate whether pixel art is actually a movement.
As a strongly distinct style, I think much of the more lauded pieces shown here or on pixeljoint galleries do not match that style. Your avatar, for instance, is already too many pixels to be distinctly pixel art. I regard these many pieces as 'stylized along the lines of pixel art' .. that is, there are certain habits of stylization that are common in pixel art (more precisely, in demoscene artwork) - extensive and careful dithering (ie 'airbrushing'), precisely aligned antialiasing or the complete absence of it, unusually exacting precision in general, certain trends in coloration and curve design..

I believe that the 'pixel art' pieces shall be fingered as the actual evidence of a pixel art movement, and 'pixel-styled' pieces shall be viewed as something between pixel art and oekaki rather than directly related to either. (pixel-styled pieces are also related -- more directly -- to demoscene art, which is sort of like extremely exacting oekaki+pixelart cross anyway.. but I'm pretty sure the demoscene is not going to be great history due to it's abundance of copies and dearth of good original pieces, and thus will not serve as a point of reference)

Adarias says "pixel art is imho much more a media than it is a movement"
What I call pixel styled pieces are where it is a media -- the exact idea could be expressed as well in another medium. My distinction is that when it cannot be expressed in another medium, that is pixel art.

Also consider that pixel art -- and digital art, differs markedly from most historic artistic movements in that it usually doesn't involve a physical record. (I'm pulling this figure out of my ass, but you get the idea --) 95% of pixel art sits on hard drives, console cartridges, CDs, DVDs, USB keys. It might even be fair to say that with the explosion of information caused by widespread computer and internet usage, our entire sense of what history is and how it should be recorded may become a completely different creature. The abundance of information (and its digitization, so records can be altered such that no ready examination will reveal that they had ever been changed) will at the least influence research standards. Currently there seems to be a trend of less reliable researching, which I expect shall reverse after some disastrously terrible and obvious error is made.

Adarias seems to have a pretty firm grasp on the way culture works in this context.

Finally, I agree with khorin in that the currency of movement significance is detractors. The more detractors a movement has (along with sufficiently fierce proponents), the more significant it has been, historically.
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Offline Helm

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Re: Art Movements, Present, Past, Future.

Reply #8 on: March 09, 2007, 12:07:48 pm
an artistic movement isn't just 'thick lines'. It has a sociological manifesto, purpose to exist and generally is contradictory to something in the past. In that way, nothing we're doing in pixel art has the signifiers of an artistic movement attached to it. It's a medium. If anything, if in the future things go that way, it would be considered the more strict part ofa movement-esque digital art.