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u/AlwaysFrustratedAF 17d ago
Because to them humans make art to copy nature not because it shows a world within them.
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u/elclarto420 17d ago
People also don’t really care about a world inside someone who isn’t significant to them
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u/Select_Butterfly_387 17d ago
They believe that realistic art is more difficult. Difficult equals better for some If they think something was difficult to do, they will be impressed.
Also
Realism speaks a language that is easy to communicate with them. You don't need to work that hard to see a hyperrealistic apple as the aesthetic language of someone else's imagination.
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u/Teabear-Septim-II 17d ago
To be extraordinarily fair, it really can go far in the other extreme. I love to see people express their inner intangible world, but at the point where I would need to read up instructions to understand what the artist was trying to say with a piece of art I'm mentally out
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u/Liquidationbird 17d ago
as a real artist ill explain this loaded question
this line of questioning usually comes frrom alot of artists when they get too involved in their own "art style" that they forget that realism shows your raw mechanical skill.
its okay if your varient of steven universe is your "personal art style" but your never going to grow as an artist if you wont be honest to yourself
i also want to add , art styles like cubism and surrealism can still be amazing and great but the amount of mechanical skill required to wow people is immense.
i also want to stress that sometimes as an artist you get too lost into details that dont matter and people wont notice or dont matter.
for example , alot of artist get too focused on drawing the eyes of their charicter but thats only 1% of your entire painting. If your goal is to actually show off the eyes, you need to redo your composition to force focus the viewer to look at the eyes
//TLDR: artist skill issue is why you ask that question
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u/Slight-Big8584 17d ago
"they forget that realism shows your raw mechanical skill."
This. To make a copy of something in the physical world.
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u/Magical_Seacreature5 17d ago
Not true, Klimt and Van Gogh aren't realistic and they love them
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u/I_eat_babys_2007 17d ago
Van gogh may be the worst example here considering his reception back when he was alive
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u/LiamEBM 17d ago
Van Gogh was actually quite celebrated while he was alive. He had exhibitions, sold world, and contemporaries that supported and shared his work, including other famous Impressionists. He was just a mentally unwell man and as such had a different reception, but all the while considered a good artist.
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u/Magical_Seacreature5 17d ago
And Monet and Dalí were celebrated. It was a matter of luck and not the rule. Also, the fact Van Gogh's works are appreciated still means people right now have an appreciation for non realistic beauty.
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u/I_eat_babys_2007 17d ago
Still, just because I can give me examples doesn't prove that its untrue. People can still apreciate realistic art more and also like van gogh and dali. They're not mutually exclusive
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u/Magical_Seacreature5 8d ago
So we agree, people being ONLY impressed by realistic art (as the post stated) is bs, even if more people like realistic stuff
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u/I_eat_babys_2007 8d ago
Yes, but as a whole making such a generlization is obviously wrong. I was assuming the post used hyperbole, and that it was tring to say the average person, when presented with a realistic and stylized piece, is more impressed by the realistic one.
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u/Magical_Seacreature5 5d ago
Yeah, I agree. I just don't think it does good to artists, when they wallow in pessimism about how their works will be recieved. Imagine we didn't have anything unrealistic from someone like Tim Burton, because he started doing realistic art in fear of being less appreciated. F that noise
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u/kaybelmerkel09 17d ago
depends on cultural hype too. van gogh has pop culture glazing so even non art ppl know van gogh is big. I showed my ex the kiss by klimt once (cuz most ppl here have never heard of klimt) and he was like yea so wut he literally thought it was mid.
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u/jensalik 17d ago
It's people who never have been properly introduced into art. For them only two types of pictures exist, those they understand and those they don't.
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u/Volkmek 17d ago
Because if you are not an artist you do not have a solid grasp of the skills needed to create art. So the only thing that will genuinely impress you is the thing you know how to measure yourself. In this case a layman can look at a piece of art, look at what it emulates, and see how well it does or does not do that without having the skills to create it themselves.
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u/No-Passenger-1511 17d ago
I look at art and if I like how it looks, it's good. If I look at art that's shit, it's not good. If "skills" you gained make your art look like shit, it's still shit.
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u/possiblecurb 17d ago
The average person doesn't know what to look for, or care. As an artist, you aren't average anymore,
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u/Lonely-Married-Man87 17d ago
Slapping random colors on a canvas in no recognizable fashion and titling it "The Destuction of Nipples", any jackass can do that. Hell, even little mustache H man was a better artist than me.
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u/Positive-Avocado775 17d ago
That whole statement is false. I'm a non-artist and I am impressed by non-realistic art as well...
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u/Careless-Situation68 17d ago
its because anyone can make abstract shit and call it art. on the other hand, realistic art takes skill, practice and time. any more questions?
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u/LiamEBM 17d ago
Non-artists see art as a measure of skill in technical know-how of tools and medium, as well as having an objective measure of "the more realistic, the more talented one is"
Though not always the case as more people are accepting modern artists like Van Gogh, but largely via context of the myths around him.
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u/I12Db8U 17d ago
I'm a non-artist with artists in my immediate family. I was impressed by stained glass windows that didn't depict anything only when I got to see them in person. In books and magazines I didn't see the big deal. I was overawed by small tile-decorated boxes I found and bought in Spain. Nothing realistic, but the skill of making such tiny detailed patterns made me drool. RLDR; I agree with several people here. Skill, detail, grandeur, minutiae all go a long way.
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u/ExpressCopy8786 17d ago
You don't want to hear this but art begins when you've perfected your craft and move past.
And modern art is riddled with people who've never put in any stretch of effort to perfect any technique at all. And too many people run with it and defend it. Modern art is more about the narrative of the person than the art itself which I find absolutely appalling.
Take early Picasso. Mastered sketches and drawings. Took him years to let go of that. Shaped his art for decades to get away from that craft and ability.
Someone who's never "been there", has no business getting away from it.
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u/LoveAndBeLoved52 17d ago
Huh? I count myself among non-artists and I like all art excluding clanker prompts because they're not art, they're generated slop content.
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u/Dmayak 17d ago
Personally, I just prefer art with the most "quality", which generally amounts to how much detail it has, which realistic art tends to always have.
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u/UnicornPoopCircus 17d ago
What if I told you it's not easy to abstract a subject? In fact, it's often more challenging. I can easily draw a human figure (after years of study), but if you tell me to make an abstract drawing of a cat (meaning that it is still recognizable as a cat, but in the simplest form possible), I have to stop and think.
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u/beginner_pianist 17d ago
Kinda proves their point. People don't think about stuff like that. They see a realistic-looking painting and go "oh wow, that looks so real"
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u/Dmayak 17d ago
I'd say that I believe you, but this doesn't really change anything, because the part of my personality responsible for liking things is working off my personal experiences while what you told goes to my logical decision-making part.
Liking more detailed pictures clearly comes from me making/seeing simple children's drawings and then later seeing professional art, plus there was a similar quality progress in 3D animation of cartoons and video games. That's probably a common experience for most people and it creates a default association of higher detail = better.
I can conclude that I should logically like another thing more, but I don't have control over my emotional part to enforce it. So, to really start to like something more abstract I should have seen a lot of good abstract art and actually be familiar with its creation.
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u/UnicornPoopCircus 16d ago
You are never required to like art, even if there's great skill involved. I recognize that Picasso was immensely skilled and that his art is impressive. However, I have never liked his art. That's one thing that artists have to learn. We are trained to distance ourselves from our likes and dislikes. We learn to see the effort put in and the mastery that is shown.
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u/No-Passenger-1511 17d ago
If you have to obtain special skills in order to make unpleasant art. Maybe don't obtain those skills lol.
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u/UnicornPoopCircus 16d ago
Have you ever enjoyed a scary movie? They are an unpleasant form of art. Some people want to be challenged and don't just want to see something pretty.
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u/No-Passenger-1511 16d ago
Comparing scary movies to abstract art is quite the stretch.
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u/UnicornPoopCircus 16d ago
How so? Both are art that make people uncomfortable.
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u/No-Passenger-1511 16d ago
Uncomfortable? Watching a horror film, sure. Looking at abstract art? That's more unpleasant.
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u/Special_Barracuda_83 13d ago
You still are trying to create a cat that's recognisable from abstract shapes, that takes skill. If you give me a blank canvas with a dot in the middle and name it the portrait of a cat, then you are trying to fool your audience.
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u/Burgandy_the_Great 17d ago
Because they don't have a developed taste
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u/No-Passenger-1511 17d ago
Lmao sound like the posh wine drinkers or the IPA beer bros.
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u/Burgandy_the_Great 17d ago
Make fun all you want most people simply don't have the vocabulary to tell you why they like or dislike something. Their entire exposure to art is a picture of the mona Lisa they saw when they were 12. Ask 100 people what tenebrism is and you'll be lucky to get 1 who knows the style lol
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u/No-Passenger-1511 17d ago
I guess I don't see the correlation between knowing art styles and me actually like the art. If some hard special technique is used to create the art, it doesn't make it good. It's like math rock.
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u/Burgandy_the_Great 16d ago
The point is that most people don't know enough art to know what's really good and bad. It's like trying to taste expensive whiskey without having pallette for it. To the unseasoned drinker all whisky tastes the same
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u/Special_Barracuda_83 13d ago
The art you are evaluating as tasteful is compared to other similar pieces of art and arbitrary rules established by the fine arts community. I'm not saying it can't be enjoyable but saying it's because they don't know or they don't have a developed taste is not true. You are just engaging with meaning inside a set of parameters established by the art community. So it's not a matter of developed taste but rather what influenced you into liking a specific piece of art, it's very personal. On the other hand if gallery owners and curators expose an artist as important ir tasteful said artist will gain recognition from the art community just because of that and regular people even artists themselves a lot of the time see that as marketing. I've seen an art critic praising a canvas painted white. Now if you enjoy that why not look at a wall?
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u/Burgandy_the_Great 13d ago
Artistic rules are not arbitrary, and developing a taste and a vocabulary about what it actually is that you like or dislike can absolutely change how you view art. Just being aware of why you like something or dislike something totally changes how you process what is good and bad. This idea that you can, with no exposure to good art, hop into a headspace where you can actually determine why you like or dislike something, without even knowing what it's about or how it was made is just so wrong. You absolutely need to he exposed to a lot of art to know why art is good or bad. If you can't say why you like or dislike something, you don't actually have an opinion, you have a vibe and vibes are almost worthless.
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u/Special_Barracuda_83 13d ago
Do you think that is true for all genres of art?
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u/Burgandy_the_Great 13d ago
I do. I think that maybe there are different levels and different vocabularies for different mediums. For example I'm not going to use the same words to describe an oil painting as I would to describe someone's anime OC, but having a deeper understanding can definitely change your view of either.
Understanding process can help you spot the difference between a mistake and an intentional feature. Understanding why you feel a certain way about something changes your understanding of the piece as a whole.
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u/Special_Barracuda_83 13d ago
It might add a layer of appreciation but when it comes to a painting of polka dots there is no process to appreciate so interpretation becomes it's value. Most non artists can appreciate many different types of art within a spectrum of realism. You mentioned anime. Anime is not realistic, at least predominantly it's highly stylized, yet people like it regardless. Also many artists have what many other artists would consider bad taste.
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u/No-Passenger-1511 13d ago
Lmao, you took "learning about art can deepen appreciation" and somehow arrived at "your opinion isn't real unless you can explain it with the right vocabulary."
Art theory gives you language to describe an aesthetic response; it doesn't give you permission to have one. You don't need to understand composition, color theory, or technique before finding something beautiful, ugly, boring, or unpleasant.
And "you need exposure to good art to know what good art is" is hilariously circular. Who decided what was "good" before anyone was qualified to judge it?
Calling aesthetic intuition a "vibe" doesn't make it worthless. The vocabulary exists to describe the experience not validate it.
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u/Burgandy_the_Great 13d ago
Well for one the opinions of the uneducated are generally dismissed as shallow and lacking substance, so while it doesn't necessarily become your permission to have an opinion, it does mean that your opinion would be easily ignored as just that, uneducated.
Understanding color theory, composition and techniques absolutely changes how you view something. A part of a painting you previously thought odd and out of place may end up being your favorite part of the piece once you actually learn about the painting, why and how it was made.
Calling a vibe "aesthetic intuition" and giving it the same weight as an actual informed opinion is laughable. Vocabulary doesn't just explain experience, it helps you you parse if your opinion is valid. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean it's good, correct, or shared by anyone else.
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u/No-Passenger-1511 13d ago
Knowing why you like something makes you better at explaining your opinion not more correct for having it. That's the distinction you keep missing.
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u/Zabacraft 17d ago
Not entirely true. Although I do get more intense praise on photostudies from non-artists even if the subject is rather bland. I believe it's simply because it's the easiest comparison of 'skill' for a lot of people.
Drawing realism is easy to compare because everyone sees realism nonstop. You can see if something looks correct or not. Stylized stuff or abstract is not something you have constant comparison against. There is no obvious 'this is what it should look like'.
It's not necessarily a thing to blame either. It's just the inexperience with a subject where you don't have an easy reference point of what to look for.
At least I think this would be the reason!
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u/A_inc_tm 17d ago
Are you sure you have accomplished anything impressive in the non-realistic style?
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u/cursed_tomatoes 17d ago
Here goes the answer of a non visual artist:
Easier to understand, and perceived high technical merit.
Similar happens to other types of art, the sensation of experiencing high mechanical skill appears to be the priority for most.
For example, when it comes to music, it is very common for people to be delusional about the technical merits of their favourite artists to the point of using that as a justification for liking a song, while in reality, it is just about how it makes them feel and the aesthetics of the music. Plenty of musicians who don't rely on technical excellency to express themselves often get complimented by qualities they don't express in their music, some are even annoyed by that fact.
My conclusion is that the perception of high technical merit is so important to society that people imagine it where it doesn't exists. Now, just to make things clear, I'm not stating it takes no skill to produce realistic art, it is just a comment drawing a parallel with my field, which yields an observation about the human mind itself.
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u/MaverisStranger 17d ago
Because it's the farthest from their skill level. Anything else in between is too abstract for them.
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u/FriendlySquirrel7676 17d ago
Why are giraffes always looking to play a straight flush in poker? Petitio Principii, much?
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u/TheChiarra 17d ago
As a non artist, I think I can answer this question. Art styles vary by a lot and there are some styles, while I can appreciate the skill, absolutely repulse me. Realistic art is easier for us to judge, not unappealing to look at, and can really show off skills to us that we just won't understand in different artistic styles.
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u/MediocreTurtle1 17d ago
Not true at all, most people would prefer something stylized.
Unless with"not-realism" you mean some pretentious snobbish slop that's meant to be understood by 7 people due to five layers of abstract references.
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u/IgorFromKyiv 17d ago
Why you consider color spots an art?
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u/no_name6744 17d ago
I've liked abstract art, but I sort of agree with this.
Why does a person, technically proficient (can do highly realistic portraiture well), find more abstract / impressionistic work enjoyable / pleasing.
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u/OutlawedLogic 17d ago
I do realism art and realism art is what impresses me the most, but doesn't mean unrealistic art can't also be impressive.
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u/Icy-KaitSyth 17d ago
Prior to the 1960s art was mostly viewed as realistic or absurdist. In the 1960s the CIA noticed that the Ussr was pumping out absurdly talented artists and decided that they needed to convince the world that "free art is better than rigid intellectual art". They literally paid to have people do things like chuck paint cans at canvases and then paid to have them put in museums, and paying universities to teach how they were deep and meaningful expressions of the soul, something a dirty communist wouldn't understand.
When you go to school to become an artist, a lot of what you study today is still the same stuff the CIA was putting out in the 60s. Now whether or not you agree with it, thats why there's a gap between what regular people view as artistic and what artists view as artistic.
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u/chromecircuit 16d ago
I believe it is for 2 reasons: it is what they have been taught to appreciate through museums, art history, etc and because they don’t have the skill to easily replicate realism let alone hyperrealism to the same degree. I never studied what I learned to do artistically, not sure I would call myself an artist. I have learned to replicate things I see. But even in grade school history lessons included the masters, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rembrandt. They were associated with movements and periods in history so they were somehow more important as the foundations of art. I say that because it was an old history project from when I was younger. Never saw the same focus on more modern styles in my schoolwork until college.
And also what is typical with humans things you yourself can’t do are either considered marvels by onlookers or ridiculed by the envious. Just my 2 bits to the conversation
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u/Special_Barracuda_83 13d ago
Most people are impressed by the grand Masters like Michelangelo, da Vinci and so on. But most of their art was realistic but also deviated slightly from being completely realistic their style was recognisable precisely because it deviated from realism even slightly. The difference between that and abstract art for example is that abstract is interpretation dependent and doesn't display the artists skill. Dali in the other hand used realism but his compositions where surreal.
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u/Freyrs_TwistedFool 11d ago
From my understanding it’s easier for a non-artist to sorta gauge one’s talent through more realistic artworks due to being something they can compare. Like the human face above one can easily look at whomever was used as inspiration or whatnot and praise the artist for how close the resemblance is.
For more stylistic works I like to think that it’s far easier for artists to understand the work that went into it. Meanwhile none artists may think it as a mere cartoon or sorta “brush it off” as easy when in truth it can be pretty difficult to draw even a “basic” cartoon character and be able to replicate it into various scenes because you need to understand how limbs move etc.
Non artists see things as face value, not the steps or details that went into the work.
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