Sort-of memes that are cracking you up at the moment

If an abstract painting already captures everything you want to see about a subject, is photo realism an irritating distraction?

There's two main types of painting: bad paintings and good paintings. "what's the point of painting realistically, now we have photographs?" is definitely a TL;DR question. Bad photo realist paintings are definitely irritating. By bad I don't mean technically deficient, but vacant, glib, slick, facile etc. Someone like Chuck Close plays skillfully with the photographic image, he makes it into something else, his pictures embody a process of pulling something apart and trying to understand it.

I love good abstract paintings for the same reasons I love good figurative paintings; they provoke an emotional response: communication with another human being via a physical object.

Appreciation of a work of art can't really be quantified in terms of technical success. Rather, I think we decide if we like a thing for emotional, illogical reasons, then justify that reaction retrospectively by picking out physical characteristics and pretending to explain them.

So, I love a vinyl record because it's physical presence means something, the ritual of cleaning, storing, playing it means something, you could trick me by piping a digital recording into the room and I probably wouldn't notice the difference. Maybe we all all brains in vats etc

PARKLIFE