zhao

there are no accidents
Yeah, 'cos the Islamic world's a paradigm of peace, prosperity and groovytastic human rights. :rolleyes:

Yeah, 'cos the Christian world's a paradigm of peace, prosperity and groovytastic human rights. :rolleyes:

Yeah, 'cos the (insert name of any religion or nation or people here) world's a paradigm of peace, prosperity and groovytastic human rights. :rolleyes:
.
but we are talking about art here. to mention fucking islamic terrorism like a good state trained puppy is out of place, stupid and has nilch do with with jack shit.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
your smart mask is beginning to slip again Tea

Who said anything about Christianity? You were talking about Persian (Islamic) art and how amazing it is, and how trashy and trite Greek art is and how the latter somehow relates to "the destructive course we find ourselves on today".
 

zhao

there are no accidents
I've got to say, I think a lot of Greek tragedies to be rather rocking. I don't think I've been indoctrinated into this. Visual art maybe not so much, but stuff like Oedipus Tyrannus, The Orestia, The Lysistrata etc etc floats my stoat.

I would also like to give Antient props to Petronius's Satyricon and Catullus's saucy rhymes, even though these are Roman. Edit: and not tragedies.

ya i'm down with a lot of that too
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Persian tour

Gotcha Zhao

Last Jan. while in Japan, TokyoBroadcastingS ran a great docu on old Persia:
Yzad, Zorasters
The ancient ruins of a walled city with a lake in the middle, possibly Harappa ...

Petra comes to mind as well !

Old roots for sure
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Harappa was a city of the Indus Valley civilisation, which existed before the Indo-Aryan people (related to the Persians/Iranians) arrived in the region. But yeah, it goes right back to the stone age, properly ancient.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
yeah and shakespeare is overwritten bombast, and sunsets are gaudy and overrated
and titian was a hack, and rembrandts paintings are too brown and beer is just gassy water that makes you feel ill....

In other news, people in the east are so much more spiritual.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Looks like a great place to set up a tent and hang out, take the air, imagine ...

You don't say...

Mohenjodaro_Sindh.jpeg


In a way, I think places like this which were built by civilisations whose writing we can't understand, or which didn't have writing, have an even stronger allure than those like ancient Egypt or Babylon whose history is relatively well understood.

And buildings recognisable as temples or tombs are one thing, but then there are places that just have a sheer namelessness about them...

easter_island_04.jpg


men-an-tol-stone-500.jpg


GreatSerpentMound.jpg


(somewhat off topic, but it's an excuse for some great pictures)
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
Or Celtic-Revival Glasto-mystical poppycock, at any rate. ;)

now the ancient Celts were deeply connected, right? meaning, of course, that they always got a table at the best resturants. no, bad jokes aside, can someone weigh in on the lineage?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
now the ancient Celts were deeply connected, right? meaning, of course, that they always got a table at the best resturants. no, bad jokes aside, can someone weigh in on the lineage?

Well the Celtic languages are Indo-European, meaning they're related somewhat to Latin (and hence Italian, French etc.) and, more distantly, to English, German, Greek, Hindi, Farsi, Russian etc. etc. etc.
However, I think the consensus among modern linguists is that just because two groups share a similar language, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are descended from a single ancestor group or have closely related cultures. There used to be a common view that the various Celtic groups had formed this big pan-European confederation that dominated the continent before the rise of Rome, but nowadays this is put down to romantic imaginations and it's generally thought there was no unified 'Celtic' culture, just a bunch of disparate tribes speaking a family of related languages or dialects and probably having some elements of belief and material culture in common. There was certainly never any such nation as 'the Celts' the way there were 'the Romans' or 'the Greeks', anyway.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Zhao, I've just noticed that you've rather dishonestly changed what you said in a post I'd already quoted:

but we are talking about art here. to mention fucking islamic terrorism like a good state trained puppy is out of place, stupid and has nilch do with with jack shit.

Well hang on mate, you can't have it both ways. You were trashing Greek art and, by extension, the entire culture and its world-view, blaming it for "the destructive course we find ourselves on today" - apparently Plato invented global warming and the credit crunch - while praising art from the Middle East, both from the Islamic era and earlier, for supposedly representing the antithesis of this. Now your thesis might hold some water if modern-day Greece and other countries that are in some way culturally descendant from Greek thought were benighted, backwards-looking dictatorships while those of the Middle East, with all their humility and cosmic transcendence, were much more progressive and peaceful. Now I'm not saying any western culture is a paradigm of excellence, by any means, but when I'm out somewhere with my girlfriend she isn't wrapped from head to foot in black cloth and walking a respectful dozen paces behind me, you know what I'm saying? If you're going to be as culturally partisan as you are, it would do you credit not to blow your top when other people have biases based on different priorities and criteria from yours. Calling a culture that produced Homer, Aristotle and Archimedes "simple-minded" merely betrays exactly the sort of ignorance and prejudice you're so quick to damn in others.

And YOU mentioned terrorism, I didn't say anything of the sort.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
Zhao, I've just noticed that you've rather dishonestly changed what you said in a post I'd already quoted:

no what i erased was this:

your smart mask is beginning to slip again Tea

cuz i didn't wanna be an unnecessary dick.

and more on the other stuff later... already late for dinner
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
ancient Egypt or Babylon whose history is relatively well understood.

I agree, but one of the most impressive/interesting things I ever saw in a museum was that big Babylonian wall in that museum in Berlin that has all the building facades in it.

The point is, aesthetics are just that, you most certainly can separate art from culture on a formal level and appreciate it that way without subscribing to every negative cultural production that came from the civilization where the art was made.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
haha i'm sure what i said about Greek Art feels like blasphemy to your indoctrinated brain, with your aesthetic receptors all but mangled by years of "THIS IS GREAT ART. THIS IS THE FOUNDATION OF CIVILIZATION".

well fuck all that BULL shit I'm calling a spade a spade.

compared to the Persian understanding of abstraction, through out which pervades a sense of cosmic transcendence, the Greek obsession with materialist representation and illusionism would only be boring except for its abhorrent heroism.

compared to the supreme elegance and humility of Islamic art (and art from other older traditions) which places the human subject within sublime nature, within the infinite glory of divinity, within the universal scheme of things, Greek loud and obnoxious self aggrandizement was testament of nothing but their own simple mindedness and lack of understanding. (pointing the way to the destructive course we find ourselves on today)

oh how the elders would shake their heads at these chest pounding stupid new kids on the block with high opinions of themselves as only those truly ignorant could...

Not everyone who likes Greek art is "indocrinated"...come on now. That's just silly.

You have every right to dislike it yourself, but think about what you're saying for a minute.

One could easily argue that there IS NO "human subject" in Islamic art, as it's completely NOT-REPRESENTATIONAL. No human figures. In this sense, you could see its abstractions as part of a general tendency in the Islamic world to empty out the power of the subjective experience of "divinity" in favor of a highly abstract and absolute divine law where the subject is only important insofar as it carries out the divine will.

Do we even need to go into why this can lead to things like "honor killings"? (And yes, I know, we have all sorts of domestic violence-related murders in the West, but our problems spring from a different source culturally...)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The point is, aesthetics are just that, you most certainly can separate art from culture on a formal level and appreciate it that way without subscribing to every negative cultural production that came from the civilization where the art was made.

This is very true. I can appreciate St. Pancras station, for example...

ftstpancras114.jpg


...without having to believe Britain had the right to take over half the world.
 
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nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
This is very true. I can appreciate St. Pancras station, for example...

ftstpancras114.jpg


...without having to believe Britain had the right to take over half the world.

Very nice. There's something big and imperial about British art and architecture that has same sort of grandeur that French or Italian art has without all the pesky Catholicism. So it's a little more abstract and ornamental without the gaudy symbolism. (a little like Islamic art I suppose)

I'm super interested in Central and South American arts and artifacts right now, especially because their symbols and sacred fetish objects are so similar to Egypt's.

gbird.gif


aztec4.jpg
 
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