A Lemmy community for historic art pieces overhauled into modern memes.
Sometimes I wonder if humans just "evolved" better painting skills. I mean people back then surely must have realised that their painting looks nothing like an actual cat. So either they were told specifically to paint a cat with a human face or they were really bad at their job.
Same goes for older works. Egyptian paintings lacked depth and had that weird legs-torso rotation. Like maybe our brains just got better at conceptualising perspective and stuff.
We now have access to a staggering amount of art.
In, say, the Middle Ages, few people owned illustrated books, even fewer owned art like paintings. Many never left their own small town, so if you weren't in Rome et al you were on your own artistically. Things can get weird (like these cats).
I’ve always had a pet theory that knowledge itself is an evolutionary force and some things like this follow that path.
I’m folding your idea in.
Well yeah, Descartes didn't appear in a vacuum and neither did Michelangelo...
On second thought, maybe Descartes, wasn't the best example to use. But he didn't truly arise in a vacuum, he just used one as the starting point for his thought-experiment...
There were amazing sculpters and artists, but I think anyone with talent had a rare chance of being born rich and honing that skill set. So maybe these were just the palace's beat artist on hand? The human faces are just weird though. There must have been a reason
I want to say that's it's moreso just a case of technique ever-improving. Also a case of a certain art style being en vogue and normalised, suggesting that a more physically accurate-looking cat might have been less welcome or expected than the style of the day.
You can add "expression" to that second point, also.
#2: Artist: Hmmm, do cats have ears? I can't remember, but probably not.
Asked to draw cat, but all you can think of is your ex Catherine.
Funny how plenty of modern artists are just about as wonky when drawing animals.
I guess it goes to show that learning various animal visual anatomy can be just as significant as learning our naked ape visual anatomy.
First isn't too bad. Fourth is fucking terrifying.