WendyDarling wrote:We investigated the role that urbanization and plague may have played in changes in life expectancy amongst artists in the Low Countries who were born between 1450 and 1909. Artists can be considered to be representative of a middle-class population living mostly in urban areas. The dataset was constructed using biographical information collected by the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague, the Netherlands. As early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, life expectancy at age 20 amongst the artists had reached 40 years. After a substantial decline in the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, when plague hit the region, life expectancy at age 20 began to rise again, and this upward trend accelerated after 1850. The life expectancy of female artists commonly exceeded that of males, and sculptors had better survival prospects than painters. In comparison with elite groups in the Low Countries and elsewhere in Europe, life expectancy amongst the artists was rather high.~
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00324728.2013.765955?src=recsys&journalCode=rpst20
Like I said, 40 years old life expectancy average for the urban, middle class, the artists, who did not have dangerous jobs.
Life expectancy does not mean that nobody lived past 40. Depicting someone in an older age is not unhistorical.
WendyDarling wrote:You don't seem to answer questions while simultaneously choosing to live in fantasy yourself.
Which questions did I not answer?
WendyDarling wrote:I made very clear in the paragraph above why these Dutch paintings are not truly representative of reality.
You making assertions about history does not make it so. You said that the people were happy and their expression was not, so that was false, not to mention do you have any primary source that proves that people in the 17th century would be consistently unhappy all of the time?
You neither did you say which unsanitary conditions should have been present in that picture.
WendyDarling wrote: The next image you introduce is of a tavern, by the painter Adriaen van Ostade (the people depicted by Ostade are short and ill-favoured, marked with adversity's stamp in feature and dress.), also early to mid 1600's. Peasants couldn't afford to hang out in taverns for they hadn't the money to indulge. This tavern you gave as an example does appear somewhat more representative of reality, but filled with older peoples...not so believable there.
Peasants would have money from trading their produces in that era and the wares sold in taverns would be proportionally cheap. Also, as I said, the presence of older people does not make it historically inaccurate. If there were no older people, how did people of that era even know what they looked like in order to depict?
WendyDarling wrote: You speak of assumptions and project the mysterious ideal whereas I advocate to speak of facts and incorporate the mysterious ideal into the real without destroying either.
Which assumptions are you referring to specifically? The mysterious that I am talking about is how humans came to exist is mysterious to us. Mysteriousness is not an aspect of what is present and revealed because in being revealed it ceases to be a mystery.
WendyDarling wrote: If you are happy with fictitious art then enjoy, but I am not. Artists lie to make their art noteworthy, unique, procuring coin, but honest art would be what is unique in any era.
None of the things you have claimed prove that. If you wish to link to primary historical documents which defend sweeping statements about the past societies you may.
WendyDarling wrote:Adriaen van Ostade did try to depict reality more closely than other Dutch Golden Age artists of his time. The last painting you showed as an example is by a landscape artist, Esaias van de Velde, who worked for the nobility. His works are drab, uninspired, which is not exactly representative of fantasy and/or reality. He had to be a more interesting person in real life to sell those dull landscapes.
Is this Dutch art your understanding of realism and/or the mysterious ideal?
[Sorry if I seem harsh, art is sacred stuff to me and I don't like to see it used for historical facts when it does not depict reality.]
Calling that painting uninspired is not an argument or proof that it is unrealistic or historically inaccurate, nor does making claims about the painter needing to be an interesting person to sell his work.
The Dutch artwork are examples of realism. In my original post I said that some Romantic artwork reflects the mysteriousness of existence.
WendyDarling wrote:The next, The Alchemist by Bega, who was a student of Ostade.
Can you explain how the title of that work makes it unrealistic? Alchemy was practiced in the 17th century. The painting does not depict alchemical creations which disagree with reality.
WendyDarling wrote:The last painting you depicted was crafted around the turn of the 19th century which would have a slew of different realities than those from two centuries before.
And again, your argument was that art does not depict historical reality. What does it being painted in the 19th century have to do with it being an unrealistic depiction of reality?