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Matisse, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Degas, Kandinsky, Rodchenko, Cezanne, Munch, Duchamp.
I would say he is on a similar tier with Seurat, Gauguin, and Mrio."
Fair enough.
I don't know art well enough to rank them, they all seemed pretty amazing to me, having seen paintings by most of them (I think Mrio is the only one I've never even heard of.)
So fair enough...I'd still argue most people would know the name "Van Gogh" over some of those names at least, but that cuts both ways, we can all think of artists who are more famous but less important than others, and vice versa. So, fair enough.
"you were arguing that we can't know who is the greatest artist of our time. This is a point to be taken into consideration, but it's not a particularly good one. Good art reflects and illuminates its time, especially music. Possibly your other point (and below) was that popularity now is not a good predictor of quality."
To put it another way--I'd argue one of the great differences between good and great art is endurance, no matter the field, and that time has a purifying effect on the "canon" of great artists, musicians, authors, etc.
A lot of people mistakenly say "God, *Insert art form* was so much BETTER back in *choose a time period.*"
And of course, in most cases, it really wasn't...it's just that decades or centuries onward, we've shed most of the "bad" art, it's been lost or died away or no one cares about it anymore, so we're left with mostly just the Greatest Hits, or rather, an *impression* of what we, after time, view as the Greatest Hits. To use a sports analogy--you might know who the All-Stars in a league were last year, but you often can't predict who'll wind up in the Hall of Fame...
Some guys start off great and blaze our early or get hurt and retire early...
Some guys start late but have tremendous careers...
Legacies change over time in sports, and the same goes with art.
D.H. Lawrence's reputation has ebbed and flowed over the decades, from talented poet to controversial novelist to a rise in popularity in post-WWII Europe and America to a strong backlash in the 1970s to now a mini-revival today, with his works getting new BBC adaptations and more attention. By contrast, Thomas Wolfe was a BIG name in his day, considered alongside Hemingway and Faulkner...but who's heard of him today?
Say D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, or William Faulkner today, and most who know literature will at least know the name and maybe their works and legend.
Say Thomas Wolfe? Nothing...but he was a far bigger name than Lawrence at the time.
And I'll address this, since this one REALLY annoys me...
"Argue that one artist is better than another, not that we just can't know and oh by the way you have decided (in a way that Santa rightly noticed does seem borderline racist) that Kanye is beneath you or something."
1. Kanye West is not beneath me...I treat him with disdain because sorry, the dude said he hates books, and I find that a damn ignorant statement, not to mention a hypocritical one when, guess what, the guy has books to his name.
2. I did not mention Kanye's race. At all. SANTA DID. To be 100% crystal clear:
Kanye's race has NOTHING to do with my disdain for him...I'm disdainful of anyone who says they hate books (and then go out and make money on books), whether that person be white, black, green or blue.
How is my comment, which did NOT mention Kanye's race, a racist one, when it dealt ONLY with...what I've just said twice above and won't repeat a third time? Since when did a person's race dictate whether or not they hated books? His race has nothing to do with it. At all. Whatsoever. Hence why I did not MENTION his race, because his race in relation to his hatred of books is--gasp--IRRELEVANT.
3. No, we can't know.
"If you can look into the seeds of time And say which grain will grow and which will not," then by all means, tell me...I'd LOVE to place some bets ahead of time on players and teams you know are already Hall of Fame bound, and I'd love to buy the works of authors know if you can tell me with certainty they'll be canonized and those books therefore worth something someday.
You can certainly say Kanye's one of the most popular artists of our era...you can't at all say he's one of the best, because true evaluation of greatness takes time, and takes the purifying power of perspective which, again, only time truly allows. Tomorrow, the next Beatles could burst onto the scene--or, heck, a band even better than the Fab Four, one Putin likes! And Kanye may find himself at odds with the new, incredible style they introduce, and one thing leads to another, and before you know it we're sitting here in 2020 looking back and thinking "Wow, how did anyone NOT see those guys coming...and hey, remember when we all used to listen to that guy...what was his name...he was married to Kim Kardashian, I think...?"
Or Kanye West could go down as the voice of his generation.
YOU DON'T KNOW...not until you have perspective.
"Basically your argument is that we have to see what can stand the test of time."
Yes. That is my argument. Do you think endurance matters in deciding who the Greatest of All-Time are? That's arguably the greatest honor you could give to a fellow human being...do you really want to give that coronation so quickly? At the risk of running into danger again, I'll return to painting and say that's like crowning something a masterpiece when the work is not yet finished and the paint not yet dry.
"Kanye wasn't going against Mozart, he was against Spoon. Literally nothing you said is at all relevant."
I'm just saying...what I said above, that I think people are too quick to rush to judgment over who's truly "great," and who the souls of the age are or will be.
I know I don't like Kanye's music, so I voted against him. That's it, on the Spoon vote...if he'd been up against Mozart, I could've gushed for 20,000 words on how amazing Mozart is and how lasting and adsfkasodkfapsdof and such, or not, because I very much doubt people would pick Kanye over Mozart...
In large part because Mozart has lasted 200 years, hence my point.
As for Kim Kardashian--she isn't relevant at all, you're right, I just mentioned that because, eh. It was an off-the-cuff remark, just as my above mention of her was an off-the-cuff sort of thing. She has as little bearing on his musical acumen as his hatred of books...which in turn, has NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS RACE...AT ALL...
So, yeah. :)
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