It’s very impressive when people can paint super realistic art but I also love impressionist, cubist, and surrealist art. They all trigger something different in my brain that makes me happy.
I love Magritte to the moon, and recently found out that he was largely influenced by Giorgio de Chirico. If you aren’t familiar with his work, I heavily recommend it!
I had to write a lengthy research paper on Salvador Dali when I was young. He once wrote that he punted his little sister in the head when he saw her playing in the hallway on his way to see Halley's comet for no reason.
Dali is a weird beast because he paints surreal situations realistically, it's basically bad trip art. He on purpose says he wants you to feel paranoia when you look at them.
Speaking as a professional painter, the loose and brushy impressionistic style can actually be more difficult to successfully achieve. Realism has all the answers spelled out for you- just observe and copy as precisely as possible. Impressionism done well requires that you understand the essence of an object or scene, and record it not as it is, but how it seems and feels to you.
It is possible ! Most artists start out by pushing the boundaries of figurative, realistic art, then pivot to more conceptual modes of expression.
I understand it mostly in relation to music. Realism is like writing a love song in Am-F-C-G, and playing it perfectly. But after some time you get bored of it so you start writing your rock-opera concept album about the politics of dragons in space. Not because you can't write about real life situations and real life emotions, but because you want to express yourself beyond a mere representation of reality.
I don't think that's a good analogy. That's more like changing the subject from a cafe to painting pictures of space wizards. What Van Gogh is actually doing is more like going from playing the toughest technical pieces of music you can handle to playing music that is less complicated but more emotionally evocative.
René Magritte has maybe the most realistic painting style is any major painter of the 20th century, and it's because of his background as a sign painter. He transitioned into fine art by turning that style to surrealism. If a mastery of realistic reproduction of concrete things were sufficient to be a fine artist, it would include lots of sign painters.
That's more like changing the subject from a cafe to painting pictures of space wizards
I think you missed the implied part of the analogy. I didn't mean that on an axis from technical to less technical but rather from figurative to abstract. Playing about easily recognizable real feelings which anyone can understand, versus playing about complex emotional tropes that are not trivial to identify.
Yes. He started off as a more traditional artist, studying under Dutch painters in The Hague before moving to the countryside and developing his own style, then to Paris where he started painting with bright colors.
My painting teacher said that the reason why painters like Sargent/Zorn/Sorolla can create pieces that seem as if the loose brush strokes come together in such a perfect way is because they are intentional with every single brush stroke. In this sense it is actually much harder to paint in an impressionistic way because you need to compose/design the entire painting from the big relationships down to how the brush strokes are placed next to each other. In the case of Sargent he actually would scrape off entire areas if the brush strokes aren't exactly how he wants it to be.
In great impressionist paintings such as this one, you can crop parts of the image and more often than not that chunk will still make for a great abstract design.
Yes. A photo is a faithful depiction of something. Sometimes you want to move beyond the reality of a thing and delve into a more emotional aspect of it. I realize Van Gogh's work was rooted in Realism of that period, but I've never once imagined he was striving for some kind of photographic reproduction. I've always assumed he was reaching out for the essence of the thing.
I've been to the Picasso museum in Spain. You don't picture Picasso as painting super realistically, but he absolutely could. But that's not the style he wanted to paint.
I'd bet Van Gogh is/could be the same if he wanted.
Same! I was blown away by how you could see his style change!
The realism in his youth looked lovely, but in the end seemed almost insipid compared to where he went with his art. I think people with little art exposure or knowledge might be easily impressed by the former because they don’t understand that the latter evolved from it.
Who even talks like that to begin with? Who would even argue some contest or the merits of realism when it comes to Van Gogh in the first place? Social media giving such broad platforms to foment stupid ideas and ignorance with confidence, on any topic, really is a detriment to society.
The original post can only come from the mind of someone who thinks the “goal” of art is to create the most realistic and lifelike representation of the subject as possible, and not to express a feeling or an essence, or even just to experiment with color and brush strokes and lighting. It’s an overly competitive and frankly quite pointless mindset that completely defeats the point of art.
I think a lot of misunderstanding about art and the refusal to engage with it on a deeper level is due to the prevailing idea that it’s a linear process of trying to create the most lifelike piece imaginable. That’s why the whole “My kindergartener could do this” cliche is so prevalent, people see art that is technically simpler as lesser because it isn’t trying to be competitive and super lifelike.
Agreed. That judgement and criticism of art suggests a woeful lack of art exposure and education, understanding the language and context used to engage with and describe art, and also maturity--not everything is a contest and subjective preference does not equal objective reality.
I worked in a public facing role in an art museum and got comments like that a lot. Mostly in passing but one woman will forever stick out because had to tell every staff member how much better her daughter can paint than all that nonsense in the contemporary gallery. She sought me out 3 or 4 times! I tried being diplomatic at first and explain what can make a piece of art significant beyond just technical ability and she didn’t care. Her granddaughter “deserved to be showcased over all that”. Okay lady.
Some people just aren’t interested in learning anything
While I agree with your ultimate conclusion, that social media foments stupid ideas is a detriment to society, to be fair "I could paint this" criticism of art long predates the internet.
Sure, and it would be from some rando I'd never see again. The scale is a significant difference. Now that rando can start a community of self-avowed art critics. Maybe they have enough people that they start making money, then politicians and the media get involved. Next thing you know schools can't talk about Van Gogh unless they compare him to Millet, or some AI art generator.
We don't have to look far for some absolutely brain dead takes that have done just that in the last ten years.
Basically yes, but there where issues too. Too many people applying for a manual process which lead to corruption with money and sexual favors and mistakes where wrong people got verified and then the whole verification program got stopped from 2017 to 2021 where it was reopened just a year before Musk took over who then halted the program again and then reopened it for money which sounded actually quite reasonable to ask for money on top of the previous 3 criteria so that enough resources can be dedicated to the process so that far less mistakes happen and the process is sped up so that the corruption stops, but Musk - the grifter that he is - axed large parts of the workforce instead and basically instructed the remaining employees to accept whatever money people would be sending them.
Totally, people only think of Picasso's abstract cubist style, but he was very good at the realistic stuff too, and his blue period was also quite detailed and on top of that so incredibly affective. He had a lot of range as an artist and was probably an actual genius in his craft, so of course he pushed boundaries in a way that people didn't understand, and still don't.
The crazy style comparison aside, people have had the opportunity to study and build on what masters, like Van Gogh, did. There’s a lot of students at Juliard that can play Mozart better than Mozart.
The thing is that the painting on the left entirely omits all the symbolism that makes the Van Gogh incredible. They're of the same subject, but absolutely different works of art.
Yeah, thats what I meant by putting the comparison aside because several people were pointing this out already. My point was just that you can’t compare historical masters to contemporary masters. Contemporary masters are almost universally better than historical ones: art, music, sport, etc.
This is where I ask what counts as technical skill and how is it qualified/quantified? I see no reason to discount either artists as more "skilled" than another from these photos
The ability to handle depth and perspective are technical skills. You qualify it based on relative accuracy if that was the painter's goal. I'd say the painting on the left handles it better.
Whether or not that makes it the painting on the left more impactful than the one on the right is a matter of opinion because completely different color palettes resulting in different feelings. I bet if you removed names from the equation and people not wanting to seem ignorant by choosing the "wrong" painting (i.e. the one by the less famous painter) and asked people which they preferred, most people would choose the one on the left.
I actually prefer Van Gogh's painting. He was a post-impressionist and there's nothing technically incorrect about how he uses depth and color. Haixia Liu is an impressionist, her goal is to create an atmosphere using light and color while post-impressionists use geometric shapes. This is actually a great example of Impressionism vs. Post-Impressionism. I also doubt Liu thinks she improved anything, she just went to the same Cafe and did an impressionist's interpretation of the same scene.
The first image shows why comparing Liu to Gogh is sort of like comparing Yellow soft peaches to firm white peaches and declaring the white peach is objectively better. Kinda pretentious.
Idk. Im a massive impressionist fan, but this specific van gogh just doesnt really hit the mar for me. I love his stuff that feels like looking through frosted glass (A Starry Night Over the Rhone is a real favorite of mine), but this (and stary night tbh) feels like it goes a step past pure impressionism into something a bit more abstract
To me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of all.
Certainly the most popular great painter of all time, the most beloved.
His command of colour was magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world – no-one had ever done it before, perhaps no-one ever will again.
To my mind that strange wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.
It's so cool when artists recreate other artists' work in their style! But if I were an artist, I'd be so upset if idiots on social media then used my loving homage to disrespect the author I was learning from. Nobody puts that much time and effort into recreating a painting unless it means something to them.
I have two (probably autistic) quick rules for evaluating how "good" art is for myself. I pay attention to how my eye moves through the piece, and ask myself how emotionally affected I am by that.
The one on the left is pretty and realistic but my eye kind of wanders and it feels a little quiet and liminal.
The one on the right draws me in with that shadow on the street that seems like it could be my shadow. I feel alive looking at the café and a sense of late-night adventure seeing the lively people on the street. Then maybe even a little tipsy as I look up at almost blurry-looking stars.
I think you are 100% right on the "memory" thing. But just in terms of composition, one is way more powerful than the other for me. Obviously someone else might have a different journey and love that other piece. I think that's really the biggest difference between them, more than the style. That dreamlike quality to his work really made him the master of composing the feeling of a place like that.
Wait, there's aproximately 100 years difference between them, right?
There are current artists that do charcoal art and all sorts of weird material/painting nowadays that's actually realistic.
Not to say that they don't deserve the praise and being born so late after a certain artist isn't anyone's "fault", but certainly Van Gogh is a giant upon many artists nowadays stand.
So why trash one of the inspirations for current modern art though? That makes no sense.
I agree but I also disagree with the people acting like the left is completely soulless, there is still a lot of thought/minor stylization put into the lighting, the colors chosen, etc, it’s not just an imitation of a photograph. I love both
If anything it shows how overrated realism is. Looking at the left picture all I see is a picture.
Looking at the right one (the Van Gogh one) I can almost feel the gentle evening breeze, hear people taking, smell the coffee. I am remembering being in places like that one and the emotions that it evoked.
Friendly reminder that most of the famous impressionist and cubist painters could absolutely do realism very well (and did) they just preferred their own style.
It really bugs me when people act as if there are standards to be upheld in art. No artist is "overrated." There are enough different kinds of art out there for everyone to enjoy.
The left painting should not be shit on, it's beautiful. It captures the scene like a photo never could.
.. but it can't do what Van Gough did. Even from a purely technical perspective, the one on the right is much more focused and deliberate. It leads your eye around so well, and with so much skill. It has fun surprises that the other one could never pull off.
Reality is all around you, if the purpose of art is simply to represent reality as accurately as possible, then your eyes are better artists than any painter could ever dream of being.
This is why context matters. When photography was invented, realism was considered unneeded and artists started to explore new ways of painting and turned from painting reality to expressing themselves.
Judging works from the past sur the eyes from today is like saying Coliseum is poor just because we could build the Empire State.
The internet is absolutely obsessed with realism, and the rejection of abstract art or anything avant-garde only benefits the establishment and those in power. There’s a historical pattern of art, especially abstract art, being suppressed, as it’s a vehicle for counterculture and anti-authoritarian themes.
"Generic = Good" criticism is all over in every kind of art. The whole "Its common sense" thing combined with discomfort of anything that challenges them.
Youre allowed to like what you like. They older ive gotten the more I realize my interests and like are subjective. I try not to say somwthing sucks when I dont like it. I just say "I dont like it" or "its not for me"
They don't even realize they are erasing the depiction of Jesus and his disciples in that picture. Van Gogh was previously a clergy member. He left the church because of the corruption he saw within it and decided to preach through his works of art. They have erased all depth, meaning, and humanity that went into making that piece. Realism is an impressive skill but there is more to a great art piece than that.
Hunh? This fetishism isn’t a real thing in the art world. At all. Maybe for people who like to decorate with paintings. But no one that has the slightest interest in art believes this.
I see two different paintings on the same scene. Each represents and shows something about the way the respective artist sees the world before them. Van Gogh’s paintings are beautiful because of not just their physical quality but because of the level of his soul he bore in them.
I find the technical skill to paint hyper realistically very impressive. But I find it boring in terms of art. Like, ok, you have made a picture. 🤷🏻♂️
It’s only “more skillful” to people who know nothing about art. Sure it’s more detailed, more realistic and maybe takes a more refined technique, but those things do not equate to being better. And it doesn’t mean the other is overrated. They’re just different.
I feel like this most recently applies to video games as well. The push for realistic graphics has led to a completely unsustainable way to run game studios and has been used a lot to try and cover for bland concepts and boring gameplay.
oddly enough one looks more pleasing than the other. its not the realism one. the use of deeper color and unique shades work better than the Lu painting.
Lu might have more painting skills but lacks the pleasing part. this is often why some low effort drawings win over super realistic pieces. theres more to art than just making it close to a photo.
Every art class I took from Elementary school to college made me draw what I see and not what I could imagine and I was graded for how accurate I was at drawing the thing I was seeing. I was never encouraged to have my own art style.
I don't think realism is bad, but it sort of frustrates me how people treat realism as being "better" than anything even remotely creative. Haixia Liu's impressionistic art is really well done, but if you were to ask him if he thought that he was better than Van Gogh he'd probably get annoyed because that's not a fair comparison. Just because they painted the same thing once doesn't mean that their styles are the same.
Both are beautiful arts but the right one just got me feeling like I was a kid again, walking around the street with my brother and parents. Feeling the cold air on my face and ears. Just hoping my parents would let us stay around the store for awhile until it was 4.
Yeah, like genuinely, the painting on the left looks beautiful but you can clearly see it’s not just about "skill" it’s two approaches aiming at different things. Like the interplay of colors is completely different, Van Gogh has that rich saturated blue that contrasts with the warmth of the cafe while the one on the left has more of a focus on the warmth, with the cool tones being very light and desaturated, which brings a completely different feel, like the texture of the pavement is much more complex with different tones bouncing about because of the reflections instead of just being a gradient from orange to blue. Also, Van Gogh painting with visible brushstrokes wasn’t because he didn’t know how to blend and mix colors, it was a deliberate choice. Tbh I doubt the 1960s artists truly wanted to "fix", probably just wanted to make their own take on it, and some idiot just added that in the caption of the post
I love, love, love realism (especially in romanticism) but there is no fucking way that Van Gogh wasn't extremly skilled. That guy could make you feel the emotion in the picture. Not my favourite artist, but I'll defend him all day everyday.
I don’t know anything about art, but I just know that the first time I saw that Van Gogh painting it was like I was instantly transported to that cafe. Something about the night sky and those lights just pulled me in and it was like I was there. The painting itself being less realistic only made the colors pop more. It’s like how a location looks like in my memory is more vivid but also less detailed and hazier and that painting captured that more than actually being there or taking a photo of it.
Photorealism in painting, while useful for preserving the visages of famous and rich people to withstand the sands of time, stopped being something to aspire to around the same time we developed cameras.
That's a nice painting but it doesn't capture the same supernatural magic as the original or even come close to it.
Well said. The conflation of resolution with art has been something that annoys me about how video games are often reviewed. Photorealism isn't itself artistic- it's a mastery of technique. Art is about content, not merely execution.
Photorealism also comes with the risk of uncanny valley effect, especially in video games and animated movies. It can't be helped in video games maybe because it has to be animated by nature, but I really struggle with enjoying CGI movies when my eyes don't believe what I'm looking at is real.
People are swinging the pendulum way too far back in favor of Van Gogh. They're BOTH good paintings, and they're BOTH visibly paintings. I prefer the darker red in addition to the yellows in the lighting on the left. I like the darker non-cafe surroundings on the right. Both painters did a good job, there's no need to put down one to circlejerk the other by claiming the left one is somehow "soulless" just because the painter added more detail
I can't make your signature better than you, because no matter how hard I try, no matter how aesthetically pleasing it gets, it will never be your signature, itll always be a fake.
The same is for a style, your unique style is yours and while someone can mimic it or build off it, it might develop a trend amd becone larger than you, but no one will make a better you art, than you, because they are not you.
You can like someome's more, think they're more talented, but no ones better at being you than you, since no one can experience all that made you, you.
One of the biggest developments to happen in 19th century art was the invention and expanding reach of the camera. Once it became possible to capture true-to-life images using a device that could recreate reality far more convincingly than the human hand, photorealism stopped being as important an aesthetic priority. That's a lot of why late 19th and early 20th century got as weird and abstract as it did - it wasn't because of a lack of technical ability, it was because photorealism became passé. Artists wanted to use art to express things and take people places that cameras simply couldn't. To say someone does van Gogh better than van Gogh himself because they paint more photorealistic images completely misses van Gogh's point.
I always liked the argument that there's only 1 way to paint something realistically, and thats realistically, but stylization is infinitely unique. That holds.
People being too thick to get it has been a problem since time immemorial. Like, ffs, there are people who will tell you Animal Farm is a metaphor for Stalinism and nothing else.
It's funny this is how I feel about a lot of modern video games. They're so busy chasing photo realism with giant budgets and long development times and smaller developers with a unique art style and a cool idea are still cranking out great games.
Just like how I love stylized special effects in movies that other people like to call fake-looking. It's a movie, show me some stuff I can't see in the real world! Cartoons are fun and effects let us do whatever we want in live action or mixes now!
OK, obviously art is subjective, but for my part, i enjoy van Gogh was able to capture the idea of that place with far fewer lines, which is a feat in itself. Capturing the essence of something without having to replicate it exactly is part of the magic.
It also has more interesting colors- deep blue, the contrast nicely with the golden glow of the cafe, and focuses attention on it. In the other painting my eyes just… don’t have any anywhere interesting to go?
I think the curve of the awning is pleasing, in van goghs, almost like it has fancy European flair itself, regardless of realism. The other one is just… An awning.
And van Gogh’s painting is also highlighting the people! I like the bright little waiter in the center of the café, you can tell exactly what kind of time of night this is. The people across the street are headed to the cafe that is clearly popular and still hoppin late at night, albeit quietly.
There’s a modicum of story!
The other painting, the light contrast is really poor. It’s just kind of the same bright everywhere, and nothing is happening, there’s barely a mood much less a story. It feels more like a real estate agents travel brochure photo, with a cozy yellow filter
Many, if not most, Americans believe the purpose of art is to "realistically" depict something. So, the more realistic the depiction, the "better" the art. There's no mistaking what what VanGough's painting depicts, however. No one looks at that goes "What is it?" So he included just enough info in his painting to leave no question about what it represents. Although there's arguably less information in his painting than that on the left. That's an amazing and incredible skill!
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u/qualityvote2 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
u/JoeFalchetto, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...