Popcorn's been around for thousands of years.
Too bad that these images predate the wide availability of popcorn in the old world and its common usage as a snack eaten during entertainment.
People in some moshpits would beg to differ.
Actually, re-reading your original post, this comes across as so asinine I do have to wonder if I'm replying to an LLM. Because it makes no sense to say that artists don't have emotions today that can compare to checks notes rowdy Venetians beating the shit out of each other.
That said >it makes no sense to say that artists don't have emotions today that can compare to...rowdy Venetians beating the shit out of each other.
The rowdy Venetians beating the shit out of each other came from a society with strict rules about honor and dueling, and they dueled over honor.
So I'm not sure if the artists of today do have emotions that compare to the particular emotions that were very common in a society with duels for honor that had a significantly different economic and educational system than our own.
Sure we're all humans, but we're not all exactly the same despite that.
Are you so certain that there are no longer groups with strict rules that feature individuals who enact violence upon each other over those rules?
Hell, they'll even fight over a lady wearing the wrong color, and fight in attempts to get ladies to wear their colors rather than the rivals'.
The act is perhaps less frequent, but I have no idea to the historical prevalence of such behavior as opposed to the prevalence of its existence in the media of the time. For instance, I am sure that there were not all that many people rescuing fair maidens from towers, but it crops up in the art of the time fairly often.
But, the prevalence of the behavior is not really at issue so much as the particular emotions which I think still exist given the example of gang members killing each other over women just as the Venetians of old did.
sometime around the mid to late 1700s people started getting the idea that Hamlet was all about how he was a vacillating guy who could never come to a decision because the play's stated reasons for doing things were no longer believable, that is to say The Character Hamlet had significantly different emotions and opinions on things that we cannot understand or accept as stated.
This is a tautology, no? There's plenty of great art being made today by people feeling the same emotions as those in the past.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/arts/design/venice-bienna...
Modern art and artists indeed do mirror the feeling of their age.
van Gogh sold one painting in his life, Vermeer died in debt, and that's just off the top of my head.
And it goes all sorts of ways, too. Bach was relatively succesful in life, but then largely forgotten for decades after his death, but never saw anything like the current prevalence of his influence.
We really can't say, today, what our kids or kids kids will be studying in art history, what'll be referenced in popular culture, etc.
Yes, but you claimed there was no great art in the "classical sense." Of course there's not; if it was contemporary then it wouldn't be classical.
Adding to that, your single data point to show the apparent vacuity of contemporary art which we can collectively agree on isn't very convincing at all when a dozen counter examples could trivially be found.
And all that while you admit yourself that what you're saying is completely subjective in any case.
That's what I find so tedious about that particular type of modern art (e.g. Piss Christ). It's incredibly repetitive and not experimental at all.
It's always about transgression (body, gender, etc.), it pivots on a sophomoric "what is art anyway?" question, it drives audience discomfort in order to have a visceral reaction rather than any other kind of emotional response. In the end it elevates the artist's intention (in their mission statement) far over the reality of their art.
It's incredibly overdone and yet keeps coming back around...to an installation space near you.
Luo Li Rong managed to grab the other end of the spectrum: classically/romantically-presented T&A.
No one is stopping you from commissioning paintings such as the ones you revere as the peak of art, by the way. Open your wallet if that's what you want. That's how great art was made back then. But if the depth of your insight on the human condition is whatever you're posting here, I do not know if your commissions would capture the meaning you seem to want.
We can make better than the past for sure, there is no point to rehash the glory of old, but we so far have not. In archeology there is a constant and agreed upon "decadent" style that can indicate when cultures have experienced conditions, for external or internal reasons, that ultimately led to their decline and downfall.
It's amazing that we cannot recognize the same precursors in our own. But perhaps this is interdisciplinary blindness?
> So you admitted that the public purse and what it is willing to pay to commission for public art is useful measure of a pseudoscientific constant
No I did no such thing. I said rich people paid for art they wanted to exist in the past and still do today. It measures nothing.
> I'm not sure that fountains of human excrement convey the grandeur that your attributing to modern art however.
You've quite missed my point if you're looking for grandeur in it. I see an artist pushing the boundaries of art. Your questioning of its value is the value (or, part of it).
> we so far have not.
That can't be stated definitively even if we limit ourselves to large-scale painting. But of course, we have far more media available to us today than 2D paintings and other traditional art forms. Breathable tanks of piss, films, video games - none of these existed in the 17th century. And each of them is capable of evoking great emotions, greater even than looking at a painting of a hundred Venetians beating the shit out of each other. You've never watchec a movie that left you feeling awe? Ah, even the piss? Sure. What if it was a thousand women in a tank of piss? Use your imagination - that's what art is about.
> In archeology there is a constant and agreed upon "decadent" style that can indicate when cultures have experienced conditions, for external or internal reasons, that ultimately led to their decline and downfall
I have never in my life heard of this claimed in an academic setting - only from retro-fetishist cranks, if you'll pardon me saying, making some "hard times create strong men" argument (which can't be entertained, being ahistorical). Nor can I think of any such phenomenon in ancient Greco-Roman history from Mycenae to the Visigoths. Are you able to expand on that?
By its argument, people in wartorn nightmares should be making 'great art': Gaza, eastern Congo, etc. The most violent parts of the wealthy world should be where 'great art' comes from.
> there really isn't anything like the art of the past made today
Little is made like it was in the past, thankfully. It's not like it used to be. The world changes.
> As an artist I was invited to a much vaunted exhibition in Venice itself recently.
I think you'll need to convince people of that claim, especially given the unsophisticated old cliches expressed in this thread which don't seem to reflect much understanding.
> consisted of a woman sitting in urine
For example, that's all you understood.