zlacker

[parent] [thread] 6 comments
1. nicbou+(OP)[view] [source] 2023-02-19 08:06:45
I've been to a lot of art museums when travelling. If you judged the world by the thousands of paintings in those museums, you could assume that people of color simply didn't exist back then, and that poor people showed up at some point during the 17th century.

I could understand why people might want art to portray a broader world that includes them in it, especially when introducing their children to that world.

It must be wild to see the world portrayed as if you didn't exist, and I think it's cool to adapt beloved classics with that in mind. Comic books have tried every thinkable variation of a character, from a Soviet Superman to a black Spiderman. It did not diminish the originals, but offered new versions with new perspectives.

This is something I'm okay with, so long as the originals don't get labeled as problematic or something.

replies(5): >>llanow+P6 >>throwa+L8 >>unsign+jb >>zirgs+qb >>joseph+fc1
2. llanow+P6[view] [source] 2023-02-19 09:40:20
>>nicbou+(OP)
Well art galleries, at least at first, never promised things like "representing the world" or even be for mass consumption. The average person could have easily lived and died never seeing the paintings or hearing chamber music or a symphony (depends on what era).

Paintings were a patron-based good that was producing family portraits and things for rich people that the excess of eventually got put into their country houses, that people could come see, forming the first "art galleries".

It is a modern and internationalist view projected backwards in time to have these expectations, and you will find even less worldly representation in the art of non-Europeans from that time, focusing on their own. (Nothing wrong with that).

Contrast what non-European art was doing with the wealthy European Baroque patron who was buying stuff from China and Africa, travelling around the world lot, admixture of various European cultures to produce baroque music (also didnt have copyright so "sharing" common between composers building on each other). This was very diverse and worldly for that time.

3. throwa+L8[view] [source] 2023-02-19 10:03:46
>>nicbou+(OP)
Museums by definition are exhibiting stuff from the past. If you want a more modern experience you go to an art gallery.
4. unsign+jb[view] [source] 2023-02-19 10:26:59
>>nicbou+(OP)
> you could assume that people of color simply didn't exist back then

Places where people of color have been making art for a few thousand years would beg to differ.

5. zirgs+qb[view] [source] 2023-02-19 10:27:39
>>nicbou+(OP)
There weren't that many people of colour in Europe back then. Eastern Europe is still 99% white.
replies(1): >>yreg+9e
◧◩
6. yreg+9e[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-02-19 10:52:34
>>zirgs+qb
Reminds me of the outrage about the game Kingdom Come Deliverance for not having any black characters.

The game is set in 1403 in Bohemia (Czech Republic). Yes, there were some black people in Europe in that time already. But I'd take a bet that if you went to the villages the game is set in today you wouldn't find a single black person either.

7. joseph+fc1[view] [source] 2023-02-19 18:08:24
>>nicbou+(OP)
> It did not diminish the originals, but offered new versions with new perspectives.

> This is something I'm okay with, so long as the originals don't get labeled as problematic or something.

In the case of Roald Dahl's books, aren't sales of the originals going to be permanently ended?

[go to top]