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Everything has been debated forever. There is nuance but generally we could say that:
Good art is aesthetically pleasing. Elevates the human spirit rather than denigrates it. Promotes fundamental truths over lies. Promotes virtues. Is respectful of the original source material, and of the people from which it derrives.
And for the right, also has historical significance. Plenty of it would focus on themes that had been successful in the past, including especially in art before the 20th century.
Everything has nuances but there are also fundamental truths. Among films, The Lord of the Rings adaptation would qualify in a manner than most other adaptations we have seen in recent years don't.
Actually Lord of the Rings did have a character who was demoralized and ready to surrender in Denethor. https://youtube.com/watch?v=b7MCVm4XISc That attitude was treated by the protagonists with contempt which spoke of an important truth. Even greater truth is found in the scene were the advisor Wormtongue who has corrupted king Theoden is banished. Truly magnificent. Also wonderful to see Theoden from a sad shell of a leader returning to a noble king of men. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iQExgALv9wI
How many artists these days are transgressive about the dominant established values of thought? Musicians especially. Do you see them to decry it? Well there are a few who do with some success.
Conservative art was produced for much of history. And based on the weirdo definitions of conservatism I see here, maybe they still are if conserving the status quo is conservatism (it isn't).
Thomas Kinkade is an incredible painter and artist. You can create an environment mroe conducive to allowing artists who really care for their quality of their to create good art. Like Cormac McCarthy whose wives claimed they lived in abject poverty who wasn't a leftist either. Which I am led to believe is actually impossible by some of the comments here.
And you can make it easier for rightists or leftist artists too by creating an environment that promotes more the one, or the other in praise, status, positions to create art.
Yes, and? You are arguing with a strawman. I argue that rightists should fund art magazines, and artists themselves. In fact it is the sane reaction to a polarized environment.
Also, it wasn't always that bad.
Says who? Tastes can evolve in various directions. And who says there is no taste for continuous traditions? In actuality old artforms have continuing fans even today.
Actually, there was a film released recently about hunters of pedophiles that was rather popular and was denigrated by most of the media.
Plus, in American television rural tv shows were once all the rage but that ended one day when executives decided to cancel them.
As it happens the public can accept even garbage, although with more dissatisfaction than something better. Where do you gain that great confidence, especially as someone who has claimed to be a conservative that the current dominant strains are the epitome of unchanged sophistication? This faith in the unchallenged and hopeless progressive arc of history is really bewildering.
Does Guernica meet these criteria?
Well, it's not aesthetically pleasing. It looks like a jumble of ugly, mishappen, misproportioned figures. It's supposed to look like that.
Right, because it is meant to invoke the suffering of people in a city that had been bombed. So of course it isn’t aesthetically pleasing. So, perhaps good art does not have to be aesthetically pleasing. Nor does it have to elevate the human spirit.
They could've shown a mother mourning at her dead child and bombed house, they could've shown people laughing, crying and having mental breakdowns in an air raid shelter... There are enormous numbers of options available. That would've invoked the suffering of people being bombed without looking the way Picasso does.
Art can be aesthetically pleasing and still confronting. You can get pathos from paintings, that can elevate the human spirit. If you can't tell, I reject the notion that Picasso produced good art, know that I'm in the minority and don't care.
The point is that, however a work of art depicts human suffering, it is not going to be uplifting and aesthetically pleasing. If it is, it probably is not doing a very good job of evoking the emotions associated with such suffering.
I can often look at a piece of art, be it sculpture, painting, what have you, and immediately know whether the artist hates humanity or not. The purpose of art may be to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, or however it goes, but I don't care for art when it is clear to me that whoever made it hates us all and would consign us all to despair. It is possible to show human ugliness without hating all humans, to reveal pain while acknowledging that it is pain--even to show despair without suggesting that despair is the just lot in life for all of us, or even for the despairing soul who is depicted. I never cared, for example, for Joel Peter Witkin's work, though he was celebrated in some circles. The term "uplifting" suggests a certain saccharine aesthetic that I think may not capture the right idea.
Anime, the category you are looking for is anime.
I'm only half-joking, by the way.
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Where is it written that suffering requires grotesque mishappen faces and inhuman bodies? What about clear human faces or expressions?
Take this: https://old.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/69vilr/north_korean_museum_painting_depicting_torture_of/
It's perfectly clear what's going on, you can actually interpret it in justifiable ways. Korean wearing white for purity, the composition of how they're all staring at her with malign intent, the guy with the cigarette casually contemptuous and approving of his colleague's hard work. Tongs being heated up for more torture.
Or take half of Caravaggio's work, lots of suffering there! But it's also clear, you've got light and darkness, you've got colour, you've got proper human faces and emotions. His work is not a giant mess of disconnected, ill-shaped images.
Or this - clear emotion, realistic imagery.
https://media.timeout.com/images/105652224/750/422/image.jpg
It's far better than Guernica, which isn't saying much. Art should be intelligible, better yet readily intelligible. Guernica is not clear or intelligible, you see a bunch of warped, distorted figures and animals bashing eachother or scrabbling around. The interpretation is absolutely not 'perfectly clear'. If you showed it to someone who'd never seen or heard of Guernica, they couldn't tell you it meant 'war is bad'. Maybe it means that chaos is bad, that there needs to be strong leadership and rigid discipline in society. We only know what it means from context and the title.
If you show someone your art and their first instinct is 'what is this mess' then you've failed. Anyone could immediately tell you the meaning of the Nork propaganda or the other image I mentioned. Even more staggering is that the Nork actually bothered to use some artistic skills beyond throwing shapes on the page. Composition. Colour. Shadow. Vaguely realistic faces!
You're the one who's been saying that negative emotions need grotesque and deliberately broken imagery to be fully expressed, which isn't the case. A corpse can be aesthetically pleasing, if there's good composition and care shown in how its placed. Consider Napoléon on the Battlefield of Eylau.
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And that work spawned a genre known as "high fantasy". It's called "fantasy" for a reason. In reality, there's no author ensuring the ultimate victory of the protagonists.
Essentially none. They often claim to be, but usually they're "transgressing" against the right, which hasn't been transgressive in decades. At most they're doing 50-stalins ultraprogressiveness.
Well, the left started from a weaker point and became more dominant because of faith to themselves and their ideology.
So did Christianity. Another word of more negative hue could be fanaticism and there can be a negative side to it. It is still an important truth that conviction matters and can lead to victory. Even in some cases from an underdog position. Especially if you have more conviction than your opponent and want it more.
In reality, faith is no guarantee of success, but without faith you got nothing. The blackpilled path you preach for leads nowhere. Better to strive for what is good both for pragmatic effects, and because it is a more honorable and just way to live.
Also, is it possible you are promoting the easy way out? If things are hopeless then it does justify doing nothing, after all. But this easy way outs eats at one's soul because deep down they know they could have done better.
There are some who align more with conservatism, or are hostile to the establishment even in the current political environment. Those who self censor might be more.
I do think most artists fall in line though in general.
In addition to the left becoming the establishment, doesn't this have something to do with the left's greater zealotry? Its part of what makes the establishment, the establishment and help define the zeltgeist. Essentially its a self fulfilling prophecy to be demoralized, which leads to further loss and more demoralization.
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Psalm 68:1, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and indeed most of the world, to this day and since essentially forever would pretty strongly disagree with this proposition.
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I dislike what the movies did with Denethor (I understand the choices being made and why Jackson made them, but I still dislike them). It changed book Denethor into a caricature; it weakened the character. But there was need for easy villains so Denethor and Wormtongue fit those roles. I also wasn't too happy with how they treated Brad Dourif, who I think is a good enough actor to convey Grima's evil without needing to be made up like "greasy incel creepy guy nobody would ever trust". Part of that character is that he looked and acted the part of the wise, responsible councillor which is how he was able to worm (ha!) his way into Theoden's confidence and why the rest of the court didn't rise up against him.
But that's personal aesthetic and artistic choices.
Yeah, I found that bit very weird too, how was it that all of Rohan wasn't able to see what an utter slimebag this dude looked like and allowed him to rise up the ranks and become the most trusted advisor of the king just like that?
At least the MTG card was better done, which is not something you can say for Theoden or even Galadriel.
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Denethor and Aragorn were in the books similar people. The difference seems to be that Aragorn was rightfully the king and Denethor was not but had the desire (the will to power). Yet both wanted Gondor to succeed.
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Reminds me of the Tolkien vs Martin rap battle. Isn't one of the reasons art should show unrealistic victory to inspire people in real life to make some similarly hopeless attempts that occasionally do result in victory?
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