This is my most consulted physical art book. I study it mainly for comparing materials and mediums, not so much for style and subject matter, though you do get an overall sense of high quality from the specific objects chosen. Instead of saying, They don’t make them like they used to, I go to Instagram and say, There must be a select few geniuses who are operating at this level, and I don’t stop looking until they are found, even if it takes 5-10 years:
https://archive.org/details/TheMetropolitanMuseumofArtGuide1994/
“He deceives himself who thinks it is an easy thing to give. There is great difficulty in it, provided it is given with judgment and not scattered by chance and rashly.”
— Seneca
I’ve been punished too much for smash buys, so I auto-DCA now when I can 😂
They probably would dream of having what we have! And I would say what we have is the potential to be much more connected, to share many more ideas, to discover new things faster, and in general do much more interesting things with the time that we have, if we wish to do so.
From a purely aesthetic viewpoint, I also find these works to be the most beautiful demonstrations of a particular medium of art or art technique. And I think it’s no wonder, because they are constantly looking back to old masters and working extremely hard to go above and beyond.
It’s kind of trendy to say that secular art or “culturally agnostic” art is where all the great work is being done today, but I only agree in part: I think music is where that is happening much more, but the visual arts it’s almost like the more culturally attuned it is, the better. But that’s just what I’ve personally found to be true.
Yeah and this very fixed integration of the art with a particular culture, down to a tribe within that culture, is what I find very beautiful. Despite having these whole framework of rules, there is endless possibility there for creating new masterpieces. To me it’s kind of a shame that more artists around the world aren’t tied to a cultural identity like that. You’re basically competing against these artists who have thousands of years of refined traditions and forms to draw from!
I’ve been involved in a few projects now over there, but have never visited or met the artists 😂 it’s been done online up to this point, which in some ways is very cool that it can be done this way at all!
I was fortunate to be able to see some great examples in person near Boston. I basically stumbled onto an exhibition of Haida art while I was visiting a museum, and had no idea what I was looking at. But it was like a whole new world of art had opened up, and especially with jewelry it opened my mind up to it as an amazing medium of art.
I learned about the artworks of Bill Reid just in the last 4 years. It’s some of the highest quality work I’ve ever seen, and it was done in the last hundred years:
