The Start of Modern Art

tackling the history of art through the lens of the dark room, and why "modern art" paintings you could've made, are so expensive?

*serious offers only*

PLEASE NOTE:
This is one view of the art world and the camera's impact on it.

As with most things, a simple view of cause(camera)-effect(fracturing of art/loss of trad value) is great for seeing the big picture, but it of course lacks nuance. So, I wanted to say here: the reason that art has changed throughout history cannot be snapped into a single narrative in 5 min, it's contains many different factors, *one of the larger ones* being photography.

And photography's effect on art also cannot be summed as "good" or "bad", it just changed things, some things positively, some negatively.

For example...Photography has actually helped many artists do their realism work more accurately. There are thousands of moments, which you, a modern human, can now freeze with a camera, such as a crashing wave, or a sprinting horse and use for art.

Without photos, it's really tough to recreate moments like that in your mind, but now artists can just look at a photo to find beauty in frozen moments that only last for fractions of time.

No matter how you look at it though, the art world was forever changed by the camera and all the implications that cheap photos would produce.

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Music:
Joey Pecoraro - The Urge

Mecca:83 - Psalm 64

Mecca:83 - Prayer for Love

Shownotes:
Banksy Street Art
Hierarchy of Genres
Difficulty curve of the hierarchy of genres
"Alberti argued that multi-figure history painting was the noblest form of art, as being the most difficult, which required mastery of all the others"
How Photography Changed Painting
Initial impacts of photography
More thoughts on photography and painting
Early Photography

[abadabamcyadadya]

Wow, a video on modern/contemporary art that isn't dogmatically supportive of one side of the argument? Keep up the good work!

[yonatanbeer]

I think that the price of art is less important than people think. I can pay as much as i want for a plank sheet of printer paper, it wouldn't make it any more impressive. Look not at the price of an artwork but at its artistic value.

[MrBlitzpunk]

A white canvas: $10m
Dank meme: $0

Life is unfair

[thinkpiece]

Was interesting to be reminded that photography was a thing that was invented and before that you couldn't capture a moment without the massive expense of a painting. I totally take it for granted now lol. good video!

[lazyperfectionist]

$58.4 million for _Balloon Dog?_ Well now _that_ one I can kind of understand. Look how huge he is. It's safe to assume he's not actually made from a balloon. They made him from something _else, _ then went to _tremendous_ length to make it _look_ like a balloon.

[joshuabyrne]

Coffee Break, your high quality content never ceases to amaze and enlighten me. Keep up the fantastic work man! ❤️

[sikamaru]

Suprarealist art still requires skill, real objects still get painted and perspective is still generally respected; is just that the resulting image is not something that could exist in reality. Just look at some of Dali's painting there is still skill involved and some have visual metaphors that make some sense so they even have meaning in an old school painting kind of way.
So there is at least 1 way of making art that requires skill in the post photography era.

[MentalFrogg]

"modern art or art today does not hold an objective or generally agreed upon value" my dude art never has and never will hold anything but subjective value. The only reason The Mona Lisa has a value of 600 million or whatever, is because we *think* it has value.

[fruiteehcs]

Really great video man, it does definitely shed more light for me - on a philosophical level I mean! Love from France

[juliushaidl]

Coffee Break always making awesome videos. Truly a hidden gem this channel

[mishatrubetskoy]

This video brings up a true point, but IMO it falls too deep into the "robots are replacing us" paranoia trap. Realism isn't about cramming in as many tiny details as you can, although many may think it so; it's about making the viewer feel like he's at the scene. Some of today's artists produce pixel-perfect creations by hand, but you can see that those works fail to evoke any feeling of entering the picture's world.
To make a good realist painting, you need to understand light and how it permeates and contrasts, how textures, color groups, placement of objects matter, and, of course, you need that masterful intuition that brings it all together. You need to understand how the human mind processes vision, not where to put this little red dot or that yellow streak.
When we stand in a sunny field, our five senses mix and match sometimes without us even noticing, and what we think as a change in vision may have actually been caused by sound or feeling the wind. This is what artists have to consider when they make realist art, and it's something that a simple camera, no matter how accurate its photography, cannot do on its own. So, while it's true that cameras revolutionized the art industry, let's not jump to the conclusion that they made realism obsolete. Realism is deeper than that.

[jamesbevan]

You know how you’ll watch a YouTube video and check the time left every tens second or so? Yeah I don’t do that with any of yours. Good stuff.

[holguacamol]

This year has been great, finding so many great youtube channels right now, including this one. <3

[pocketdialmusic]

Wasn’t interested in this video based on title, finally got around to watching it and I’m really glad I did, great video

[maximusregalado]

there is just one thing, the prices are really not from the artist in most cases, especially those who are crazy expensive, thore are the gallery prices and they are making the money value in the art, i guess that i can say, as a training artist, a true artist will find difficult or imposible to label those numbers

[hijack]

Such an underrated channel... production quality was top notch

[moshi]

The fall of romanticism doesn't have just one singular event, in the US is started post civil war and in Europe during the world wars most of the literature and art was staunchly against the current ideals, values etc of their time. I know people don't necessarily understand contemporary art and that's because of the way it was created, as an anti thesis to romantic values, altering the form however they please to suit a (function/idea) whereas romantics had a strict interpretation of form, contextualuzing it is important

[wsknwytscnkfsu]

Thanks for the insight. The modernism and postmodernism part is much talked about, but its connectiom to other areas is very interesting.
I think that's also kind of what happened with digital revolution. We used to think that something is more valuable if it's harder to make or required complicated manufacturing. Vinyl, cassette tapes, CDs. All physical things. Then, when digital music first became widespread, everyone started to download mp3 files for free with almost no guilt. Gradually we have learned to value and pay for digital goods too. But the price is often based on how much value the user sees in it rather than the cost of making it.
Similar with Patreon campaigns. YouTube videos can be worth whatever the viewer is willing to pay, anywhere from zero to hundreds.

[bruhe_moment]

Very interesting. I hadn't considered how photography would affect art but it does explain all the weird art we now have

[peter]

Overall an interesting video, but I would like to add that modern art has become popular for deeper reasons. I learned this in a product design class in university (sco ducks). In short I believe these are stronger reasons for its popularity than by the addition of cameras and, more recently, photo editing in software.
Some things I think are important to note:
• Bauhaus founded modern art (look them up they are a German organization popular in Europe)
•Streamline design sinking in America gave way for modern art to grow (this comes from Raymond Lowey very smart man look that up too)
•And more reasons but those are good places to start digging down through to understand our art history.