For two millennia, great artists set the standard for beauty. Now those standards are gone. Modern art is a competition between the ugly and the twisted; the most shocking wins. What happened? How did the beautiful come to be reviled and bad taste come to be celebrated? Renowned artist Robert Florczak explains the history and the mystery behind this change and how it can be stopped and even reversed.  🚨  PragerU is experiencing severe censorship on Big Tech platforms. Go to https://www.prageru.com/ to watch our videos free from censorship!  SUBSCRIBE 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/  📲 Take PragerU videos with you everywhere you go. Download our free mobile app!  Download for Apple iOS ➡ https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prage... Download for Android ➡ https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...  📳 Join PragerU's text list! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru  SHOP! 🛒 Love PragerU? Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/  Script:  "The Mona Lisa"...  "The Pieta"...  "The Girl with a Pearl Earring."  For a score of centuries, artists enriched Western society with their works of  astonishing beauty.  "The Night Watch"...  "The Thinker"...  "The Rocky Mountains." Master after master, from Leonardo, to Rembrandt, to Bierstadt, produced works that inspired, uplifted, and deepened us. And they did this by demanding of themselves the highest standards of excellence, improving upon the work of each previous generation of masters, and continuing to aspire to the highest quality attainable.  But something happened on the way to the 20th Century. The profound, the inspiring and the beautiful were replaced by the new, the different, and the ugly.  Today the silly, the pointless, and the purely offensive are held up as the best of modern art.   Michelangelo carved his "David" out of a rock.  The Los Angeles County Museum of Art just offers us a rock, -- a rock -- all 340 tons of it.  That's how far standards have fallen.  How did this happen?  How did the thousand-year ascent towards artistic perfection and excellence die out?  It didn't.  It was pushed out.  Beginning in the late 19th century, a group dubbed The Impressionists rebelled against the French Academie des Beaux Arts and its demand for classical standards.  Whatever their intentions, the new modernists sowed the seeds of aesthetic relativism -- the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" mentality.  Today everybody loves the Impressionists.  And, as with most revolutions, the first generation or so produced work of genuine merit.  Monet, Renoir, and Degas still maintained elements of disciplined design and execution, but with each new generation standards declined until there were no standards.  All that was left was personal expression.    The great art historian Jacob Rosenberg wrote that quality in art "is not merely a matter of personal opinion but to a high degree . . . objectively traceable." But the idea of a universal standard of quality in art is now usually met with strong resistance if not open ridicule.  "How can art be objectively measured?" I'm challenged.  In responding, I simply point to the artistic results produced by universal standards compared to what is produced by relativism.  The former gave the world "The Birth of Venus" and "The Dying Gaul," while the latter has given us "The Holy Virgin Mary," fashioned with cow dung and pornographic images, and "Petra," the prize-winning sculpture of a policewoman squatting and urinating -- complete with a puddle of synthetic urine.  Without aesthetic standards we have no way to determine quality or inferiority.  Here's a test I give my graduate students, all talented and well educated.  Please analyze this Jackson Pollock painting and explain why it is good.  It is only after they give very eloquent answers that I inform them that the painting is actually a close up of my studio apron.  I don't blame them; I would probably have done the same since it's nearly impossible to differentiate between the two.   For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/why-modern-art-so-bad

Why is Modern Art so Bad?

My point with the thought above was not to elevate one to the detriment of the other (Art vs. Design). My perspective is that aesthetics and artistic experiences matter, even if we are not discussing art at all.

People tend to like discussing the differences between art and design, and point out that art serves no function while design does. I don’t know about that, but I would rather live in a world surrounded by art than surrounded by apps and ads.

Maybe if we think of design more as adding value and less as solving problems, then artistic experiences also have their place in design.

My hot take is that making software design, that feels like art, is just really hard. So instead we just told each other that it can't be art, so we can all be happy and focus on our MVPs instead.

The stuff andy.works does feels like art to me.

I think the problem is lack of grey area. Great design is usually masterfully mashed with art (at very least artwork).

But art always serves a purpose even if it’s just to express one’s feelings. I tend to think that design serves needs of many while art serves the artist first.

Good subject to discuss. Found these in my notes:

“Design is not art. Design has to function.”
“Art is meant to provoke thought and emotions, but it doesn’t solve problems.”
“Artists primarily work off instinct, whereas designers employ a methodical, data-driven process.”

I think both serve a function, or neither wouldn't exist. Design is just more functional, while art is more expressive. IMO

Also contributes to how each tends to describe their work. 

Artists are pretty gray or non-tangible with their word selection.

Designers are typically black and white with their terminology. Very solution oriented.

Or maybe it's just because, when people think of "art" they think of a piece by Picasso or Salvador Dali and think it can't be that.

On this subject, I like to think that Design mainly serves to solve a problem, even if this problem is simply "aesthetic", to make a more beautiful object. Since art is not intended to solve a problem, it can even say about a problem, but hardly by itself will solve a problem.

Great points from everyone here. 

I’ve always thought of it this way: Artists create with the intention to communicate how THEY want to express themselves while Designers typically communicate what OTHERS want to express.

Apps & ads? Sure, me too. But how about a place to live, street signs, furniture, etc.? Both art and design can be beautiful and functional, but art does not have to be any of those things, whereas with design, function is a requirement.

Also Sagmeister has a saying: beauty as function. I feel like that tells a lot about the place of art in design.

Not always. Certain things in design live at the intersection of both. For example the lemon squeezer from Philippe Starck is not the best lemon squeezer, but it is one that I treasure and makes me happy to use.

I feel like art is subjectively expressing the creator’s emotion, while design is objectively serving others through evaluating problems and proposing solutions. At least I define this way with myself.

Yeah, everyone says they craft delightful experiences but delight tends to get lost in the process.

I believe this really is the best definition + making art is defined as “producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”

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