Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[IPunchCholla]

Sure, I can understand that.
Nevertheless, what I find random is that Pollock is considered a genius, but plenty of others doing something very similar, perhaps almost indistinguishable, are not geniuses. Granted, if Pollock was one of the firsts, as you point out, then that counts for something. I get that.
Nevertheless, perhaps this is because I've never been very interested in art, and especially not in abstract art, but have more appreciated skill, then this kind of art has long struck me as a bunch of drunk, angry wifebeaters who flung paint on canvas in a fit of rage between taking sips of their fourth whisky bottle that day, and then neurotic art critics who had no friends in school see it and see strokes of real genius and a representation of how alienating life is in modern cities, foreshadowing the downfall of modern civilization ... or whatever.
It all seems very silly to me and essentially like a circle-jerk, to use a very derogatory term.
But that's of course just my perspective .

I'm from Denmark, and a local portrait artist that I find very skilled, Thomas Kluge, did the following paintings, which look very "old-fashioned" (he has also done a few paintings that were quite dreadful).
This first one I've seen in person many times, as it was hanging in my local library:


View attachment 316457




These two are of the Danish queen. The second one is a photograph taken at an angle, so it looks a bit strange:

View attachment 316458


View attachment 316459

Many, many, many people think Pollock had no skill. I was one of them. Some people try and replicate his works, only to find it is very very difficult. The color layering, placement, and proportions are insanely complicated. I say this as someone who doesn’t enjoy his paintings (or him as a long dead person) but as someone who can respect skill of various types, photo realist or abstract. Though I am usually bored by realism.

 

[Anton D]

Pollock is more interesting than one might think...

Jackson Pollock | Fractals | Abstract art explained through mathematics

a mathematician explains the fractal nature of Jackson Pollock's paintings

artsology.com

Jackson Pollock Drip Paintings: Fractals or Folly

Discusses the odd Jackson Pollock drip paintings.

www.jackson-pollock.com

Painting Mathematics

fractalerts.com

You don't gotta like it. The cool part is that there is some figurative composition within the abstraction.

 

[Axo1989]

Sure, I can understand that.
Nevertheless, what I find random is that Pollock is considered a genius, but plenty of others doing something very similar, perhaps almost indistinguishable, are not geniuses. Granted, if Pollock was one of the firsts, as you point out, then that counts for something. I get that.
Nevertheless, perhaps this is because I've never been very interested in art, and especially not in abstract art, but have more appreciated skill, then this kind of art has long struck me as a bunch of drunk, angry wifebeaters who flung paint on canvas in a fit of rage between taking sips of their fourth whisky bottle that day, and then neurotic art critics who had no friends in school see it and see strokes of real genius and a representation of how alienating life is in modern cities, foreshadowing the downfall of modern civilization ... or whatever.
It all seems very silly to me and essentially like a circle-jerk, to use a very derogatory term.
But that's of course just my perspective .

I'm from Denmark, and a local portrait artist that I find very skilled, Thomas Kluge, did the following paintings, which look very "old-fashioned" (he has also done a few paintings that were quite dreadful).
This first one I've seen in person many times, as it was hanging in my local library:


View attachment 316457




These two are of the Danish queen. The second one is a photograph taken at an angle, so it looks a bit strange:

View attachment 316458


View attachment 316459

I wonder who it is you think may be indistinguishable from Pollock?

I can see the "genius" proposition is somewhat vexing, and I agree. But I think surviving usage of the term is in lay and vernacular treatments of art and art history, we don't see it much in critical writing. And the caricature of the drunken wife-beating abstract expressionist painter is reactionary nonsense really. Did Helen Frankenthaler beat her wife? She did provide a counterpoint to overworking the craft of painting:

A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute.

You have certainly chosen an example of someone literally using the techniques of Dutch baroque painting in Kluge. Yes there is technical skill but I wonder if it is not simply anachronistic? Perhaps not just throw them out yet, I guess there is still time to see where he takes it.

 

[Axo1989]

Pollock is more interesting than one might think...

Jackson Pollock | Fractals | Abstract art explained through mathematics

a mathematician explains the fractal nature of Jackson Pollock's paintings

artsology.com

Jackson Pollock Drip Paintings: Fractals or Folly

Discusses the odd Jackson Pollock drip paintings.

www.jackson-pollock.com

Painting Mathematics

fractalerts.com

You don't gotta like it. The cool part is that there is some figurative composition within the abstraction.

Interesting video: traditional "realism" sure takes a hit there (in the sense that this abstraction reflects a less superficial structural reality compared to a painting that resembles a photo) but I've always enjoyed fractals, and nature.

 

[JaMaSt]

The major furphy

Good grief. You really should post a warning before dropping Aussie slang! (Had to Google it) My brain froze.

 

[Axo1989]

Good grief. You really should post a warning before dropping Aussie slang! (Had to Google it) My brain froze.

Oh no, didn't even register I was using it much less how obscure that one might be ...

 

[board]

I wonder who it is you think may be indistinguishable from Pollock?

I admit that Pollock might not have been the best example, especially seeing the various things that have now been brought up about him in this thread. He might have been skilled, and I simply don't understand him, since I'm so horribly uncultured .
So, instead of Pollock I could just as well have used someone else from the list of most expensive paintings as an example, such as Mark Rothko:

Or de Kooning:

Or Jean-Michel Basquiat:

Or Jasper Johns:

I am aware that I'm not exactly making a very strong point here. I'm just saying that I fail to see genius in any of this. I know certain people have also said that Van Gogh wasn't a very good painter either, although the art world has decided that he was a genius.
And my comment about wifebeaters was also just a silly way of turning all this into a joke. Perhaps it didn't go down so well. Maybe a better way of putting it would be to say that to me it looks like much of this is "art" made by crazy/neurotic people who want to express something but are unskilled at painting, but other neurotic people look at it and decide it's the work of a genius, and it's worth a fortune, where the rest of us just see crazy.
And then what I was trying to say was "If we leave out 'he/she was the first' [which I understand has its relevance], then why is it this particular artist's paintings that are worth a fortune and not another unskilled crazy person who threw paint on canvas in a manner similar to a five year old?"
But to be fair, I also don't understand why that Marilyn Monroe artwork by Warhol was sold for a fortune just last year, as it's just a photo with colour added.
So, maybe I could sum it up like this:
Although this doesn't apply to the entire art world nowadays at all, it does seem to me to be a select group of people who decide what crazy unskilled person is a genius and who is just crazy and unskilled, rather than only calling people genius if they can actually paint.

That leads to Thomas Kluge, who surely can paint, but I do understand that he's "boring", because there's no evolution in his works per se (but then was there in Mark Rothko's works?), as he just paints portraits with a black background, so they all look extremely similar, just with a different sitter, and he's also a couple of hundred years too late.

Anyway, as you mentioned originally, it's not a sidetrack that we need to spend a lot of time on, although we have spent a bit of time on it now .


EDIT:
One famous, slightly modern, but not abstract painting, that I do like is this one:

 

[tmtomh]

So what's the over-under on when this thread crosses the 50.1% threshold and becomes majority off-topic/analogy discussion?

 

[MattHooper]

This is a nice video posted recently on youtube, giving short a history of how digital technology became introduced in to making records:

Vinyl is digital. Get over it!​

I didn't know that, as cited in the video, Christopher Cross's famous break out album was an early digital studio recording. By total coincidence, before seeing this video I was spinning that very record today and it sounds incredible! (This is why I don't care if a master is digital, or if there are any digital steps in making a vinyl record. Great sound is great sound).

 

[Anton D]

Loving the art chat.

I think, for almost all of the mentioned works of art, standing in from of them is essential.

That Basquiat is a big mo fo! It's striking. (It's somewhere in the 6 foot by 6 foot range, it'll grip you, one way or the other! Not meant to inflict taste, just chatting about how they catch us in the real world.

Rothko painted in 'a million' very light layers, so when you get to see them in real life, they take on depth that doesn't translate to prints or monitors.

Jasper John's stuff is almost 3-D when you get to see the texture and brush strokes, etc.

de Kooning, two things: 1) The title of the painting is often necessary to appreciate the work. I know that sounds crazy, but once he tells you the name, you can see what he's up to! 2) He continues to paint as he developed Alzheimer's and you can track this artist's 'devolution, so there is some interesting neurology to see from someone whose work is well regarded. I mean, seeing dementia change an abstract expressionist's work is both sad and amazing.

I agree with you about Hopper!

I apologize for being rambly, and not meant to be disagreeable, I just like art stuff.

Heck, we even have a Munch here!

 

[tmtomh]

This is a nice video posted recently on youtube, giving short a history of how digital technology became introduced in to making records:

Vinyl is digital. Get over it!​

I didn't know that, as cited in the video, Christopher Cross's famous break out album was an early digital studio recording. By total coincidence, before seeing this video I was spinning that very record today and it sounds incredible! (This is why I don't care if a master is digital, or if there are any digital steps in making a vinyl record. Great sound is great sound).

This video showed up on my YouTube home/suggested videos page yesterday and I too enjoyed it. I don't think Vwestlife is a member here, but he is a member at the Hoffman forums, and he consistently posts sensible things there when it comes to technical/evidence-based issues. And he's not a digital-only guy or a specs-chaser: to the contrary, he enjoys all manner of analogue and digital media and most of his videos show him playing with rather low-end gear.

I was tempted to share this video in this thread, but I thought it would be better if someone else did so. So thanks!

The one thing I most appreciated about the video was that it really confirmed my own experience and memory from my tween years when I first got into hi-fi: digital was heavily promoted, and widely seen, as the bee's knees for LP production before CDs even came to market. Without CDs in existence during that 1979-81 period, the current-day "digital LP is pointless because it's just a CD on vinyl" view didn't make any sense. Digital steps in vinyl production were simply seen as an improvement because, as Vwestlife notes in the video, every digital step removed one less step of analogue generation loss in the process - which is undeniably true regardless of one's personal preferences or the sound of any particular AAA or ADA LP.

 

[MattHooper]

The one thing I most appreciated about the video was that it really confirmed my own experience and memory from my tween years when I first got into hi-fi: digital was heavily promoted, and widely seen, as the bee's knees for LP production before CDs even came to market. Without CDs in existence during that 1979-81 period, the current-day "digital LP is pointless because it's just a CD on vinyl" view didn't make any sense. Digital steps in vinyl production were simply seen as an improvement because, as Vwestlife notes in the video, every digital step removed one less step of analogue generation loss in the process - which is undeniably true regardless of one's personal preferences or the sound of any particular AAA or ADA LP.

Good point about removing any analog steps.

I remember when digital masters started being promoted too. My dad was something of an audiophile, we had big KEF 105.2 speakers, Carver amps and a nice Technics turntable, so I started appreciating good sound quality at an early age. It was exciting to hear about digital mastering and I have some distinct memories...maybe not reliable but distinct impressions...of hearing some of the first examples. Stevie Wonder's Secret Life Of Plants being one (one of my favourite albums), and a recording of Holst's Planets boasting a digital master, and I seem to remember some "space music themes" album with a digital master. I remember the sound as being...different. Just a bit. Like there was this extra clean, crisp quality, which was fascinating but also struck me as slightly sterile. Something I had to get used to. But once digital mastering had taken over I never thought about that again.

 

[tmtomh]

Good point about removing any analog steps.

I remember when digital masters started being promoted too. My dad was something of an audiophile, we had big KEF 105.2 speakers, Carver amps and a nice Technics turntable, so I started appreciating good sound quality at an early age. It was exciting to hear about digital mastering and I have some distinct memories...maybe not reliable but distinct impressions...of hearing some of the first examples. Stevie Wonder's Secret Life Of Plants being one (one of my favourite albums), and a recording of Holst's Planets boasting a digital master, and I seem to remember some "space music themes" album with a digital master. I remember the sound as being...different. Just a bit. Like there was this extra clean, crisp quality, which was fascinating but also struck me as slightly sterile. Something I had to get used to. But once digital mastering had taken over I never thought about that again.

My father was an audiophile as well, and had a pretty decent Technics turntable at the time, along with a Sony integrated amp and mid-range Teac cassette deck. His speakers were Electrovoice Klipsch clones with ginormous woofers (15" I think). He's definitely where I got my interest in audio from, and I too started relatively early as a result. I too remember hearing some digital-mastered LPs and had the same impression as the first part of your description, but I never experienced the sound as sterile.

My father's system changed and improved over the years, but my most vivid and formative memories are of the gear he had and/or purchased in that 1981-85 period.

 

[board]

Loving the art chat.

I think, for almost all of the mentioned works of art, standing in from of them is essential.

That Basquiat is a big mo fo! It's striking. (It's somewhere in the 6 foot by 6 foot range, it'll grip you, one way or the other! Not meant to inflict taste, just chatting about how they catch us in the real world.

Rothko painted in 'a million' very light layers, so when you get to see them in real life, they take on depth that doesn't translate to prints or monitors.

Jasper John's stuff is almost 3-D when you get to see the texture and brush strokes, etc.

de Kooning, two things: 1) The title of the painting is often necessary to appreciate the work. I know that sounds crazy, but once he tells you the name, you can see what he's up to! 2) He continues to paint as he developed Alzheimer's and you can track this artist's 'devolution, so there is some interesting neurology to see from someone whose work is well regarded. I mean, seeing dementia change an abstract expressionist's work is both sad and amazing.

I agree with you about Hopper!

I apologize for being rambly, and not meant to be disagreeable, I just like art stuff.

Heck, we even have a Munch here!

I understand and can appreciate all of the points you're making about seing the art in person, the layers, etc. - and I don't think you're disagreeable at all. It has actually been rare to have such a calm and well-mannered discussion on an audio forum .
I don't mean to be disagreeable either - I do understand that I'm the one who's picking a fight with the entire established art world.
Nevertheless, I'm thinking that many other artists must have painted big paintings, in a million layers, used different textures, or something else that makes them "different" or "unique" somehow, and yet they're not celebrated. Thomas Kluge that I mentioned also paints big paintings (often lifesize of the sitter), yet his paintings will (most likely) never be sold for millions, even in a hundred years.
There's another Danish artist that I know of, called Jens Jørgen Thorsen, and when I look at his paintings, which are also abstract and often very big, I just see crazy. They sell for some money (€4000-€8000 I think), but nowhere near that of other artists. So I'm still wondering "why them and not him?"
Because the art "mafia" gets to decide who's a genius and not crazy, and who's just crazy or "too normal" and hence boring. At least that's how it seems to me.


But it's okay for me if we round off the art discussion here, as I don't think I have much else to say. So I'll just round off with first the size of the Basquiat panting, with the buyer next to it:

And then another of his extremely expensive paintings that I find just as ugly:

 

[board]

I seem to remember some "space music themes" album with a digital master. I remember the sound as being...different. Just a bit. Like there was this extra clean, crisp quality, which was fascinating but also struck me as slightly sterile. Something I had to get used to. But once digital mastering had taken over I never thought about that again.

I think this "sterility" is exactly what the analogue fan boys complain about, and honestly with 80s albums I completely understand them in many cases. I'm really not a fan of early digital, with some exceptions.
When I started my massive comparisons between vinyl and CD I saw quickly that most albums originally released from around 1992/93 onwards IMO sounded better on CD, and most reissues of albums from the 60s and 70s sounded better on CD, of course with several exceptions.
But CDs from the 80s almost always sounded very cold and sterile, and I preferred the vinyl editions.
So, many audiophiles, given their age, first heard CDs in the 80s and decided, with some merit, that they sounded sterile, shrill, bright, or "unmusical" as some called it.
That person whose name shall no longer be mentioned listened to the very first CD, thought it sounded terrible and then went out and had a bumper sticker made, saying "Compact discs sound terrible!", which of course is just as much as story about his prejudices, after listening to one CD, as it is a story of "sterile" early digital.

 

[Axo1989]

I admit that Pollock might not have been the best example, especially seeing the various things that have now been brought up about him in this thread. He might have been skilled, and I simply don't understand him, since I'm so horribly uncultured .
So, instead of Pollock I could just as well have used someone else from the list of most expensive paintings as an example, such as Mark Rothko:


View attachment 316680


Or de Kooning:

View attachment 316681



Or Jean-Michel Basquiat:


View attachment 316684



Or Jasper Johns:

View attachment 316682



I am aware that I'm not exactly making a very strong point here. I'm just saying that I fail to see genius in any of this. I know certain people have also said that Van Gogh wasn't a very good painter either, although the art world has decided that he was a genius.
And my comment about wifebeaters was also just a silly way of turning all this into a joke. Perhaps it didn't go down so well. Maybe a better way of putting it would be to say that to me it looks like much of this is "art" made by crazy/neurotic people who want to express something but are unskilled at painting, but other neurotic people look at it and decide it's the work of a genius, and it's worth a fortune, where the rest of us just see crazy.
And then what I was trying to say was "If we leave out 'he/she was the first' [which I understand has its relevance], then why is it this particular artist's paintings that are worth a fortune and not another unskilled crazy person who threw paint on canvas in a manner similar to a five year old?"
But to be fair, I also don't understand why that Marilyn Monroe artwork by Warhol was sold for a fortune just last year, as it's just a photo with colour added.
So, maybe I could sum it up like this:
Although this doesn't apply to the entire art world nowadays at all, it does seem to me to be a select group of people who decide what crazy unskilled person is a genius and who is just crazy and unskilled, rather than only calling people genius if they can actually paint.

That leads to Thomas Kluge, who surely can paint, but I do understand that he's "boring", because there's no evolution in his works per se (but then was there in Mark Rothko's works?), as he just paints portraits with a black background, so they all look extremely similar, just with a different sitter, and he's also a couple of hundred years too late.

Anyway, as you mentioned originally, it's not a sidetrack that we need to spend a lot of time on, although we have spent a bit of time on it now .


EDIT:
One famous, slightly modern, but not abstract painting, that I do like is this one:


View attachment 316693

The artists you’ve included so far have all put in supreme time and effort developing techniques to suit their expression. You just like a degree of realism. I’m less enamoured of the semi-figurative stuff like Basquiat and de Kooning personally if that matters (it doesn’t really) compared to Pollock and Rothko. And as I mentioned I think ‘genius’ is a popular misconception wrt the creative process etc. But consideration of these artists and consequent prices of these works owes much to advocacy for post-war US art by wildly influential critic/historian Clement Greenberg. So you have that, for sure.

 

[Anton D]

Apropos of nothing, when I was a kid, I didn't really get the 'tortured artist' thing. Now, I think of the 'torture' as the drive to express something, almost ineffable, that great artists figure out a way to do!

I am a bit of an easy sell on art, I admit. In the TMI category: I can sit and drink and watch Bob Ross and be happy, for a while.

This art chat is worthy of its own thread, you guys are killing it.

 

[antcollinet]

Can I suggest taking the art appreciation to a different thread? It is not really relevant here any more.

 

[beagleman]

I buy both.... more CD's these days as old record prices are getting crazy. It is one thing to take a chance on an old $8.00 LP than to take a $40.00 gamble on an old LP... especially when you can get a $5.00 or less sure thing with an old CD.

I have bought literally for ONE or TWO dollars, many CDs, that were literally in perfect condition.

My one local library has a quarterly Sale, where people donate CDs and books, and there are literally a few thousand CDs for an actual DOLLAR each even for multi CD sets.

Records are super over priced for what you get used.

 

[beagleman]

Good point about removing any analog steps.

I remember when digital masters started being promoted too. My dad was something of an audiophile, we had big KEF 105.2 speakers, Carver amps and a nice Technics turntable, so I started appreciating good sound quality at an early age. It was exciting to hear about digital mastering and I have some distinct memories...maybe not reliable but distinct impressions...of hearing some of the first examples. Stevie Wonder's Secret Life Of Plants being one (one of my favourite albums), and a recording of Holst's Planets boasting a digital master, and I seem to remember some "space music themes" album with a digital master. I remember the sound as being...different. Just a bit. Like there was this extra clean, crisp quality, which was fascinating but also struck me as slightly sterile. Something I had to get used to. But once digital mastering had taken over I never thought about that again.

I remember reading somewhere decades ago, from some prominent audio writer, something to the effect of:

The better Analog playback gets, the more it sounds like digital.

Meaning to me, that analog is flawed to some degree, and only has a "Sound" based on its flaws.
When you remove the distortions, overload, noise, mistracking, and on and on, You have Digital.