anyway the image depicts farmers according to its blurb "the crops and farmers work together behind a solar-walled city.”, it is a flawed depiction yes but that is why they are all in the same uniform and have backpack sized baskets to gather the fruit they are walking toward in the art
Again, we see farmland that’s completely devoid of people here. I find it incredible how people latched onto aesthetic from a diary commercial in favor of actual labour aesthetic. Let’s compare this with some art that actually celebrates farming and labour:
my bad, i forgot it is required to open the image in a separate tab to get a better look at the HD image
i agree that art made specifically to celebrate labourers has them central stage unlike these enviromental landscape shots, but that is different than what you said “labour is entirely invisible in pretty much all the solar-punk aesthetic” when many pieces of solar-punk art show the laborers within the art
Again making my point for me here. The workers are distant and hidden in the picture, where you have to play where’s waldo to find them. They’re just part of the background scenery if they’re present at all. Tastefully hidden away in the painting.
Here’s my question to you. What is the value that solar-punk brings to the table over socialist realism. Why based the aesthetic on a diary commercial, when there’s a huge wealth of socialist art available to draw on. Surely we can draw inspiration from actual socialist art when imagining the future instead of corporate aesthetics?
Here’s a North Korean painting of a field, with the workers being distant:
Here’s another North Korean painting without a focus on people:
Here’s a Chinese painting, one which is also clearly taking inspiration from traditional East Asian painting traditions:
What is the value that solar-punk brings to the table over socialist realism
Okay, this I find somewhat more agreeable, I love me some socialist realism and wish we had more of it in the modern day… but like, let people draw their cute little fields and houses. I wish a lot of the art field was different from what it was, but that’s a purely subjective, selfish value judgement of me wanting more of the art I enjoy and less of the art I don’t enjoy, not a functional political program.
When you’re in power you can put this in the state censorship guidelines and have those dang solarpunk fascists all shot or whatever. Doesn’t seem like a particularly productive approach to building socialism, but you know, you do you.
Surely we can draw inspiration from actual socialist art when imagining the future instead of corporate aesthetics
Okay, but the whole 70 gajilion comment argument you’ve gotten in is with people, like me, who believe Soviet art has a greater diversity than just “workers workers workers, all day, just working”, and we have worked to give you numerous examples of such art.
Here’s a modern Chinese artist who I would consider to be working in something we might call Contemporary Socialist Realism - Fan Wennan. They’re not your typical solarpunk fare, as they tend to feature some rather massive constructions rather than quaint little farms in the middle of nowhere, but they also often don’t feature any focus on workers.
There are a handful more in the tradition of workers being framed centrally that you want, but the majority are more like the above examples.
This is clearly inspired by actual Soviet art - and yet, it still would not fit your expectation, because you’ve selectively latched onto one sub-genre of Soviet art and declared that to be the one and only true form of it, to the ignorance of all else that Soviet (and Chinese, and Korean, and Vietnamese, etc.) artists did.
Landscape painting is its own genre, with its own conventions, and generally does not feature a focus on the people in-frame - and when it does, usually the person is portrayed in contemplation or awe of the landscape, as in the famous Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Should we outlaw this entire genre? Actual socialist countries did not, so you have a more hardline stance any socialist government!
I would agree that there should be more solarpunk depicting a focus on workers - but this thread started with the maximalist assumption of “most solarpunk does not feature people” (trivially disproven by multiple paintings posted by others, at which point you pivoted to yeah, but those people aren’t workers, and then once another poster disproved that, you pivoted to um, they’re portrayed wrong - this is clearly bourgeois leisure berry-picking and not agricultural fruit harvesting, because, uh… and ad-hominem arguments about people having never “set a foot on a farm”), and “paintings of landscapes that aren’t focused on people are fascistic”, which is a rather extreme statement, given that, again, landscape painting is a genre that exists, and has been partaken in by many socialist artists.
Maybe if you’d opened up with something less inflammatory, this thread would have gone differently, and led to some more productive discussions (well, it was pretty productive to me, I’ve added like 30 cute little paintings to my image collection).
how do you have a worker front and center in a landscape painting where the POV is a thousand feet in the air? of course everyone looks small from thousands of feet in the air, not all soviet art had someone in the middle of the frame either
the two art styles are not competing, they are good for different things, socialist realism is good for celebrating the worker, solar-punk is good for dreaming of a hopeful and more ecologically sustainable future in the same way old soviet sci-fi was, reimagined for a new time that is more ecologically conscious. just because a corporation co-opts an aesthetic does not mean it owns it, just that the aesthetic was powerful enough to co-opt
that is not a question?
anyway the image depicts farmers according to its blurb "the crops and farmers work together behind a solar-walled city.”, it is a flawed depiction yes but that is why they are all in the same uniform and have backpack sized baskets to gather the fruit they are walking toward in the art
well at least you’re able to acknowledge that it’s a pretty poor depiction of farming
so you acknowledge it is a depiction of farming?
No, but I’ll give you that it’s an attempt at a depiction of farming by somebody who’s never seen a farm. Take your win.
so your problem is just that the particular picture is bad at depicting labour, and not the solar-punk aesthetic?
what about this art of solar-punk farm labour?
Again, we see farmland that’s completely devoid of people here. I find it incredible how people latched onto aesthetic from a diary commercial in favor of actual labour aesthetic. Let’s compare this with some art that actually celebrates farming and labour:
my bad, i forgot it is required to open the image in a separate tab to get a better look at the HD image
i agree that art made specifically to celebrate labourers has them central stage unlike these enviromental landscape shots, but that is different than what you said “labour is entirely invisible in pretty much all the solar-punk aesthetic” when many pieces of solar-punk art show the laborers within the art
Again making my point for me here. The workers are distant and hidden in the picture, where you have to play where’s waldo to find them. They’re just part of the background scenery if they’re present at all. Tastefully hidden away in the painting.
Here’s my question to you. What is the value that solar-punk brings to the table over socialist realism. Why based the aesthetic on a diary commercial, when there’s a huge wealth of socialist art available to draw on. Surely we can draw inspiration from actual socialist art when imagining the future instead of corporate aesthetics?
Here’s a North Korean painting of a field, with the workers being distant:
Here’s another North Korean painting without a focus on people:
Here’s a Chinese painting, one which is also clearly taking inspiration from traditional East Asian painting traditions:
Okay, this I find somewhat more agreeable, I love me some socialist realism and wish we had more of it in the modern day… but like, let people draw their cute little fields and houses. I wish a lot of the art field was different from what it was, but that’s a purely subjective, selfish value judgement of me wanting more of the art I enjoy and less of the art I don’t enjoy, not a functional political program.
When you’re in power you can put this in the state censorship guidelines and have those dang solarpunk fascists all shot or whatever. Doesn’t seem like a particularly productive approach to building socialism, but you know, you do you.
Okay, but the whole 70 gajilion comment argument you’ve gotten in is with people, like me, who believe Soviet art has a greater diversity than just “workers workers workers, all day, just working”, and we have worked to give you numerous examples of such art.
Here’s a modern Chinese artist who I would consider to be working in something we might call Contemporary Socialist Realism - Fan Wennan. They’re not your typical solarpunk fare, as they tend to feature some rather massive constructions rather than quaint little farms in the middle of nowhere, but they also often don’t feature any focus on workers.
There are a handful more in the tradition of workers being framed centrally that you want, but the majority are more like the above examples.
This is clearly inspired by actual Soviet art - and yet, it still would not fit your expectation, because you’ve selectively latched onto one sub-genre of Soviet art and declared that to be the one and only true form of it, to the ignorance of all else that Soviet (and Chinese, and Korean, and Vietnamese, etc.) artists did.
Landscape painting is its own genre, with its own conventions, and generally does not feature a focus on the people in-frame - and when it does, usually the person is portrayed in contemplation or awe of the landscape, as in the famous Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Should we outlaw this entire genre? Actual socialist countries did not, so you have a more hardline stance any socialist government!
I would agree that there should be more solarpunk depicting a focus on workers - but this thread started with the maximalist assumption of “most solarpunk does not feature people” (trivially disproven by multiple paintings posted by others, at which point you pivoted to yeah, but those people aren’t workers, and then once another poster disproved that, you pivoted to um, they’re portrayed wrong - this is clearly bourgeois leisure berry-picking and not agricultural fruit harvesting, because, uh… and ad-hominem arguments about people having never “set a foot on a farm”), and “paintings of landscapes that aren’t focused on people are fascistic”, which is a rather extreme statement, given that, again, landscape painting is a genre that exists, and has been partaken in by many socialist artists.
Maybe if you’d opened up with something less inflammatory, this thread would have gone differently, and led to some more productive discussions (well, it was pretty productive to me, I’ve added like 30 cute little paintings to my image collection).
how do you have a worker front and center in a landscape painting where the POV is a thousand feet in the air? of course everyone looks small from thousands of feet in the air, not all soviet art had someone in the middle of the frame either
the two art styles are not competing, they are good for different things, socialist realism is good for celebrating the worker, solar-punk is good for dreaming of a hopeful and more ecologically sustainable future in the same way old soviet sci-fi was, reimagined for a new time that is more ecologically conscious. just because a corporation co-opts an aesthetic does not mean it owns it, just that the aesthetic was powerful enough to co-opt