Good point. Here are a couple of historical pieces & thoughts on types of things historical art can do.
[Disclaimer: written quickly, links are half-assed.]
Picasso’s Guernica (see Wikipedia—it’s a very famous anti-war/anti-Fascist painting from 1937). I think it probably deserves its fame as a powerful way to communicate the horror of the war.
There are many more extremely moving pieces of art from other terrible historical events. Notebooks from GULAG camps by Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya survive. (Some images here—note that they’re quite graphic.) There’s Goya’s Disasters of War. There’s a ton of cool (and sad) plague art of various kinds (some of “plague” art is leprosy art, actually)
There are paintings and depictions of awesome (or interesting) historical figures. E.g. you can search for cool paintings of Frederick Douglass (there are many).
I could make the argument that some forms of art are EA-related because they can give viewers today a sense of connection with the relatively far past, and then we can extrapolate into the far future. Fayum mummy portraits often make me feel this way; these are paintings of people who lived 2000 years ago, some of whom look like people I know. I also sometimes feel this way about reconstructions of ancient people. On the flip side, really ancient art that’s minimalistic & modern-looking also sometimes gives me this feeling.
Some Fayum mummy portraits:
I think some art illustrates thinking-of-the-time in interesting ways. Take this painting that depicts proverbs (iirc, it was made for a collector—it should definitely not be thought of as “folk art”). There’s a bunch of “scientific art” that’s interesting (or interesting to study).
Some really old art (e.g. 1, 2) just impresses me so much (by surviving, still being beautiful) that I too want to make things that will last.
While we’re sort of on the topic of art history: I remember going to an exhibition that explains how much different objects of art would have been worth to Northern Europeans in the ~16th century (in terms of how many cows things would cost), and reading the associated blog post, and found it really interesting. (This was a while back, so I don’t remember how relevant it was, but it might be.)
I think Da Vinci’s Studies of the Fetus in the Womb are also quite beautiful and apparently (one of) the first drawings of a fetus’ positioned accurately.
Good point. Also, Bosch’s stuff (e.g. the Garden of Earthly Delights, which you linked) has a bunch of moralizing/satirizing that’s arguably relevant. For instance, his famous “Ship of Fools” painting is an illustration of Plato’s allegory representing “the problems of governance prevailing in a political system not based on expert knowledge” (or generally coordination issues, rhetoric-vs-demonstrated-skill, etc.).
I thought you might also highlight classic, historical, and even ancient works that convey important ideas?
Good point. Here are a couple of historical pieces & thoughts on types of things historical art can do.
[Disclaimer: written quickly, links are half-assed.]
Picasso’s Guernica (see Wikipedia—it’s a very famous anti-war/anti-Fascist painting from 1937). I think it probably deserves its fame as a powerful way to communicate the horror of the war.
There are many more extremely moving pieces of art from other terrible historical events. Notebooks from GULAG camps by Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya survive. (Some images here—note that they’re quite graphic.) There’s Goya’s Disasters of War. There’s a ton of cool (and sad) plague art of various kinds (some of “plague” art is leprosy art, actually)
There are paintings and depictions of awesome (or interesting) historical figures. E.g. you can search for cool paintings of Frederick Douglass (there are many).
I could make the argument that some forms of art are EA-related because they can give viewers today a sense of connection with the relatively far past, and then we can extrapolate into the far future. Fayum mummy portraits often make me feel this way; these are paintings of people who lived 2000 years ago, some of whom look like people I know. I also sometimes feel this way about reconstructions of ancient people. On the flip side, really ancient art that’s minimalistic & modern-looking also sometimes gives me this feeling.
Some Fayum mummy portraits:
I think some art illustrates thinking-of-the-time in interesting ways. Take this painting that depicts proverbs (iirc, it was made for a collector—it should definitely not be thought of as “folk art”). There’s a bunch of “scientific art” that’s interesting (or interesting to study).
Some really old art (e.g. 1, 2) just impresses me so much (by surviving, still being beautiful) that I too want to make things that will last.
Some art is tied to fascinating historical events. For instance, Galileo’s drawings of the moon (or Robert Hooke’s fly eyes).
While we’re sort of on the topic of art history: I remember going to an exhibition that explains how much different objects of art would have been worth to Northern Europeans in the ~16th century (in terms of how many cows things would cost), and reading the associated blog post, and found it really interesting. (This was a while back, so I don’t remember how relevant it was, but it might be.)
I think Da Vinci’s Studies of the Fetus in the Womb are also quite beautiful and apparently (one of) the first drawings of a fetus’ positioned accurately.
There’s lots of great paintings of utopias or apocalypses too, like the Garden of Earthly Delights (though not clear if it’s utopic or apocalpytic!)
Good point. Also, Bosch’s stuff (e.g. the Garden of Earthly Delights, which you linked) has a bunch of moralizing/satirizing that’s arguably relevant. For instance, his famous “Ship of Fools” painting is an illustration of Plato’s allegory representing “the problems of governance prevailing in a political system not based on expert knowledge” (or generally coordination issues, rhetoric-vs-demonstrated-skill, etc.).