Classical Statues Were Not Painted Horribly

"Now ascertained"? Ancient sources specifically say they were painted.

I also know that most of the old paintings that we have today have been though multiple rounds of "refreshment" in order to counter both the fading and dirt/soot that they were exposed to over the years (remember: most of these were displayed by torchlight/lamplight/candlelight for centuries). Nowadays there is a real emphasis on trying to produce an original ascetic, but that has not always been the case.

So I would want a better discussion of how accurate those "standard candles" are.

I'm starting to think we might be heading towards a similar period. Among the hoi polloi, there's a growing pride in rejecting scholarship, effort, careful analysis, rational thought in favor of preconceptions, vibes and loyalty. Among the elite, corporate culture has pillaged universities, and cancelled their end of the social contract to promote a culture of learning and excellence. With LLMs able to replicate works of the old masters, the maturing generations have even less motivation to learn how to use pencil, brush and chisel.

Humans?

What's for breakfast, Mum? Populism.

What's for lunch? It's Populism.

Is dinner ready? Five minutes. We're having Populism with a scoop of Occupy Wall Street on the side.

I couldn't sleep; anything I can snack on? Sure, honey, we have Populism, some leftover Occupy Wall Street, some Chomsky Flakes, a bag of Info Wars, Glenn Greenwald Beans, a Steve Bannon bar, and a 2 litre bottle of Zionist-free Ana Kasparian Cola.

The end result would surely look better, but how would we be assured it resembled historical reality?

Do we know for a fact in these reconstructions there is no input whatsoever from artists? I know, for example, that paleo-artists are responsible for the reconstruction of what dinosaurs are currently thought to have looked like, and they are mostly artists that work in collaboration with scientists directing their work. Why do we think this is not the case for the reconstruction of colors of Roman statues?

In architectural design I think it’s rather pronounced. We already know how to design great buildings for the human environment. There ain’t anything new to learn here, so in order to stand out in the field you have to invent some bullshit.

Well, you do that, you create Brutalism or something similarly nonsensical, and in order to defend your creation you have to convince a lot of other academics that no, in fact, buildings that look like bunkers or “clean lines” with “modern materials” are the pinnacle of architecture and design.

And as time has gone on we still go and visit Monet’s Gardens while the rest of the design and art world continues circle jerking to ever more abstract and psychotic designs that measurably make people unhappy.

Not all “experts” in various fields are weighted the same. And in some cases being an expert can show you don’t really know too much.

And for that matter, people who admire Sparta and like, eventually end up doing nazi salutes.

https://classics.rutgers.edu/the-hair-archaeologist-janet-st...

There are folks that will insist that we don't know at all what Roman garum really tasted like or everything involved in its preparation, and they're not exactly wrong since Colatura di Alici can only be traced back to the middle ages, but it's also oddly obtuse. I think it was probably like modern fish sauces but Roman garum could have been as different from Colatura and Asian fish sauce as those are from Worcestershire.

The large plain panes of boldly coloured stained glass probably looked particularly magnificent when coloured glass was rare and expensive and achieving consistency very difficult. They look somewhat less sophisticated in an era in which the multiple bright coloured translucent pane aesthetic is more often seen in cheap children's toys.

If it was a restoration job, many people who love the sombre wall colours and intricate decoration of Mughal architecture would be sure to insist they'd got it horribly wrong...

(Other aspects of the article's argument also apply here. Very different culture but theres a lot of aspects of the Hawa Mahal that look fantastic to modern Western tastes, they clearly valued detail in their carvings and painting of other items, they surely had the technical ability to produce stained glass in a way modern Europeans familiar with different approaches to stained glass windows in their own cathedrals consider to be tasteful and skilful. But there's no missing layer of subtle decoration that's been lost to the years: they just thought bold primary coloured glass looked fabulous)