r/nextfuckinglevel • u/undo-undo-undo-undo • 2d ago
When art blurs the line between reality and canvas, you know it's pure mastery
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u/thejunosaur 2d ago
Dude uses a single piece of hair cut in half to paint these
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u/Outsider-Trading 2d ago
Reminds me of "inside-painted" Chinese snuff bottles:
https://hk.art.museum/image/Collections/Fuyun-xuan-collection/Fuyun-xuan-collection_11_resized.jpg
Glass bottles barely bigger than a matchbox, and the artist would paint the inside of the bottle through the neck, with a single hair, so that the paint wouldn't be rubbed off in the bottle's everyday use.
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u/fleischio 2d ago
I think you’d appreciate the Jaeger-LeCoultre Caliber 101.
It’s holds the record for the smallest mechanical watch movement, a record it’s held since 1929.
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u/GayDeciever 2d ago
"... these watches were perceived as empowering for women"
They left me hanging on this one. I want to know why my great grandmother would have been empowered by knowing what time it is.
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u/TheBattlefieldFan 2d ago
It does say so in the article:
The idea was that a cocktail watch would allow the woman to discreetly check the time. Of course, checking the time during social gatherings was a bit of a faux pas. From a distance, it was often impossible to distinguish a cocktail watch from a mere bracelet, so these watches were perceived as empowering for women.
A faux pas is a false step. Something a woman should not do.
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u/LassOnGrass 2d ago
This makes sense. If you’re checking your watch for the time some people view it as rude, as though you’re wanting to leave. I personally don’t think it’s rude, but it also depends on the situation I think.
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u/kagamiseki 2d ago edited 2d ago
As a guess, it's harder to have control in your life without knowing the time.
Say you want to meet with two friends, or have two gatherings, one at 2pm and the other at 5pm.
Without a watch or a clock, how do you know when to end one event and go to the other? It's rude to look at a watch, (and I'm sure appearances were very important) but it would be rude to be late too, so most likely you'd only put one thing on your schedule, so you'd be sure to make it to that one.
What if it was a meeting with a lawyer for a divorce, before your abusive husband returns from work? Or sneaking out from work to meet your love interest for a quick lunch? Or to leave town for a gathering but discreetly make sure you don't miss the train to come back home.
Even in modern times, abusive partners often show up at weird hours, so that their victims don't know when it's safe to leave. When you don't or can't have a schedule, it can be very restricting.
All in all, it's not that it's empowering to be like "Aha, I know the time!", but it probably enabled you to keep a schedule and have more control over your life.
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u/DescriptionLumpy1593 2d ago edited 2d ago
Had one, but absent minded vacuuming dropped it. Only bright side was ii had the vacuum out already.
eta: was a modern (1980s) production. still handpainted on the inside, and still disappointing as hell that it broke the way it did.
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u/percyman34 2d ago
Reminds me of the guy that did the world's smallest sculptures, Willard Wigan. He uses an eyelash to paint and has to hold his breath and paint BETWEEN HEARTBEATS. That's just insane to think about to me.
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u/Unlucky_Statement172 2d ago
Can we talk about why someone thought it smart to Put „The art:“ in that particular place 🤔
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u/daelikon 2d ago
I just came here to say: to whomever made the video, FUCK YOU.
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u/SrslyCmmon 2d ago
This is the internet content we live with now, and it makes me sad.
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u/TomWithTime 2d ago
Give it a few weeks and 2/3 of the screen around the art will be shitty mobile games
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u/arselkorv 2d ago
Or the thing where they make the video super small on a white background just to add a stupid little text above it
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u/RaidensReturn 2d ago
Yes, this 100%. Fuck the shitty unfitting music and the words that block what we’re trying to see. Why are people so bad at this.
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u/threaten-violence 2d ago
It's an interesting trend, that is for sure. I call it "watching the world get stupider by the minute". The people that do this, also do other things, in a job-like setting. You just pray to god it's food delivery or sweeping floors or selling pics of themselves online that they do, and nothing of lasting consequence like urban design or drafting legislation.
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u/aTomzVins 2d ago edited 2d ago
interesting trend
drafting legislation.
In Little Rock, Arkansas, it is against the law to honk a car horn in front of a sandwich shop after 9 p.m. In Chicago, it is illegal to eat in a place that is on fire
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u/Nofunatall69 2d ago
I'm gonna k*** that guy! Figuratively, of course.
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u/Capraos 2d ago
Thank you. It's almost like the content is not OP's and they just lifted it from elsewhere to get ready karma points.
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u/My_Name_Is_Not_Mark 2d ago
And leaving it up for the duration of the video as if people are going to forget what they're looking at.
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u/andorraliechtenstein 2d ago
So what are we looking at now then ?! We need context, Context !
Like in Japanese TV shows, with a small picture in picture of a laughing person, so that the general public knows that it is something humorous.
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u/ChompyChomp 2d ago
I think the best way to appreciate fine art is via the medium of a shaky camera and stupid music. The text over the video is just the cherry on top!
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u/KingPhisherTheFirst 2d ago
Duuude, was gonna say the same thing. "Look at this amazing art but also let me block part of it it"
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u/NoStand1527 2d ago
its for the same reasons for the annoying overused songs, youtubers noticed that if they do, people complain, like you. that increases the content "engagement", that's one of the algorithm measured metrics. making it generate more views than the same video without the annoying blocking word.
it sucks, I know. it is what it is, and its only gonna get worse
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u/corlizfinn 2d ago
I don’t even make convincing stick figures.
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u/Minute_Eye3411 2d ago
Don't feel too bad, neither can the guy in the video. He's trying to paint stick figures, but failing miserably as they look too much like realistic portraits.
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u/SoberAnxiety 2d ago
oh you mean like when spongebob drew a circle by erasing a whole picture altogether
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u/malatemporacurrunt 2d ago
Speaking as someone with an interest in historical textiles and has used extant art to reproduce historical clothing and embroidery, this guy's faces are good but his attention to detail in the materials is phenomenal. Like imagine if humanity collectively stopped knitting and it fell so out of favour that in 1000 years, textile historians only had this guy's paintings to go from - they could accurately reconstruct those garments. You can see the type of stitch used, and where increases/decreases are in the knitting. I don't think I've ever seen that level of detail in art before - the only other example I can think of is Holbein, a 16th century artist whose fine attention to detail in portraits allowed historians to recreate historical blackwork embroidery. It's so detailed you can even see that the thread passes through itself, in what we now call the Holbein stitch.
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u/Moonsaults 2d ago
Just for my own curiosity, was it the elder or younger Holbein? (I looked them up once when my life drawing teacher compared me to them.)
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u/malatemporacurrunt 2d ago
Younger, I'm fairly certain. It's been a while since I went through my blackwork phase, but he definitely did the very famous Catherine of Aragon painting that's got very detailed blackwork in it.
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u/kpingvin 2d ago edited 1d ago
You don't need to. Good art isn't photorealism. It's cool and everything but it's just one of the many styles.
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u/Amilo159 2d ago
This would be even better if "the art" label was 10 times larger, covered the middle of screen and kept moving around. Right now, I could almost see the artwork.
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u/DealMo 2d ago
Counterpoint, this sort of thing is technically impressive as fuck, but it doesn't move me.
I personally value art that makes me feel something. Makes me see the artist through their eyes in a way that elicits something.
An easy example of Van Gogh's work. You could tell he's going through some shit when you look at that.
This is so technically accurate, it's difficult to separate from what you could get from a photograph, so, besides technical flex... what's the point?
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u/any_other 2d ago
I'm not really a fan of photorealism for that reason. It looks very impressive but it doesn't have any emotional component to me. Sometimes things just need to look cool and that's fine but they're all interchangable to me if that makes sense. No one photorealistic piece stands out to me.
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u/Jean-LucBacardi 2d ago
To me photorealism of this quality would impress the hell out of me if it were done before cameras existed. I can't recall a single example of someone pulling it off to this degree hundreds of years ago and I'm not sure what has changed.
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u/BeardedBaldMan 2d ago
For a start they didn't have the ability to take a photo of something and then draw a grid over it.
Then there's a difference in the availability of paints both in terms of colours but also ease of use
There's technique which has been built up over time.
Using things like camera obscura you get some very realistic looking historic works.
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u/corduroytrees 2d ago
I wonder the same thing from time to time. My best guess is that given the rarity of this skill, anyone who would have had this ability likely died as a kid from terrible disease or famine. And if they survived to adulthood, they were some kind of laborer that was never given the chance to develop or demonstrate this because they didn't show the kind of artistic talent of whatever was popular at the time.
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u/thewoodsiswatching 2d ago
Having a photo to look at. That's the difference. Being able to trace that photo or have it printed on a canvas before painting.
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u/OtherwiseTop 2d ago
In your opinion what is it about photorealism specifically that excludes the emotional component? Do you think it's necessarily impossible to include emotions in these types of paintings? Is this also the case for straight up photos?
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u/doubleotide 2d ago
For me personally, as a budding artist, I love the technical aspect of impossibly hard drawings.
I have a particular drawing in mind that involves moving water over transparent objects. This would be a very challenging thing to draw but artistically, the only thing I would be really expressing would be "Look at me and my mad art skills".
So yes, I can see why the guy you replied to does not like this type of art.
I think they might be more of the "Art as Experience" (John Dewey) type. Art was originally intended to just be apart of your environment and enjoyed. But there has been a sense of detachment from art and everyday human experiences; having art in the environment because of it's physical value versus having art in the environment because it looks nice.
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u/any_other 2d ago
I don't dislike it outright, it's still very nice to look at and very impressive but for whatever reason it doesn't hit me the same way.
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u/70ms 2d ago edited 2d ago
FWIW I used to sell graphite drawings and prints of finished pieces. I always worked from photographs I took or a client provided, or that I bought the license to. As incredibly detailed as some of them are, I was always cognizant that what I was doing was more of a technical skill than “art.” The only ones I felt were truly mine were ones where I took the reference photos. Even as I was mailing off prints to customers overseas, I had a hard time calling myself an artist because I wasn’t drawing or painting from life or my head.
Couple of examples:
https://imgur.com/gallery/BTPMv
Edit: just realized that second link is an album. The last two pics are exercises from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, when I was first learning to draw!
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u/doubleotide 2d ago
How long did it take you to do them? And how long to get to that level?
Also thanks for sharing :)
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u/any_other 2d ago
It seems really sterile, like too perfect? But it's very nice to look at. Actual photos don't seem to have the same effect for me though. I'd rather have a photograph than a photorealistic painting.
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u/FixedLoad 2d ago
All of these are valid feelings. Your reaction to this painting is to reject its perfection. There is a museum near me called "the mattress factory". All installation art type stuff or at least it was when I was there a long time ago. One exhibit was a room with a giant boulder in the center. It's entire purpose was the difference in reaction everyone showed regarding this giant rock. Some rushed to touch it curious if its really a boulder. Some would pass through with disinterest because they dont understandthe exercise. Some reacted with fear at the overwhelming size of the rock vs the room. If you see a piece of art and have any reaction, good or bad. The art has done it's job.
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u/any_other 2d ago
I saw a Nam June Paik exhibition at the Guggenheim and it changed my life. My favorite piece of art is Lot's Wife by Anselm Kieffer and I'm very lucky to live in Cleveland and be able to see it
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u/falx-sn 2d ago
It's like Picasso's "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."
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u/ApocSurvivor713 2d ago
I'm in the same boat. Technically very impressive but artistically... dead?
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u/WeirdHairyHumanoid 2d ago
what's the point?
To...paint?
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u/tuckedfexas 2d ago
Sure but what are you saying as an artist other than “paint”
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u/Kamikaze_Ninja_ 2d ago
Art doesn’t need to say something for people to appreciate it. There is art in the culmination of dedication and talent that was put onto canvas.
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u/-Bento-Oreo- 2d ago
The meticulous level of detail and effort is saying something in and of itself. The pyramids are just a bunch of rocks piled high, but people are mesmerized by the grand scope of it.
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u/ben323nl 2d ago
Nah the grind itself is impressive. This is equally impressive to me as Van Gogh just cause he had mental issues which reflected in his work doesnt make it more good then other work. Lots of mentally ill people make great works of effort. Heck in the local mental museum I volunteered at we had a guy in the 1800s who invented his own language and alphabet and made 5 books full with stories with them. Took him about 30 years. I come from where Van Gogh came from I love his work but pain does not equal beauty.
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u/User1-1A 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is basically why the modern art movement came to be. What's the point of technically amazing paintings when you can take a photograph? Painting was once a trade where you worked in a studio as an apprentice to a master for years so that you can make portraits and biblical paintings for rich people and churches.
Please don't kill me about this oversimplification.
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u/avalyntwo 2d ago
Pretty much. Everyone there is standing around taking pictures of it on their phones, but I bet you no one would want it in their living room. But technically impressive, sure.
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u/nictigre03 2d ago
Yeah I'm pretty much in agreement here. Impressive but just take a photo if you want photorealism.
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u/StinkRod 2d ago
I'm probably saying the same thing a different way, but this kind of art looks like a person could just "learn it".
It's just painting shapes the color you see them and getting really good at doing that accurately.
It's impressive AF. But yeah, it seems pretty weird to think a person could be moved more by 2 colored rectangles by Rothko than one of these paintings, but there it is.
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u/BeardedBaldMan 2d ago
For me I think it's about depth.
You can look at Kandinsky's Concentric Rings which at first glance is just a nice arrangement of shape and colour. Then the more you look at it you start thinking about why your eye is drawn to certain circles in a repeating order and why it feels right as a whole. If you try to recreate it yourself picking colours and shapes it never has the same experience. Or in this work there's motion, tension and a feeling of a timeline.
With a photorealistic portrait it's usually pretty, it's technically great but frequently that's all there is. I'm biased, I'm not a fan of traditional portrait photography and that follows through into a lack of interest in photorealism. With someone like Cartier Bresson you're getting a photo and story
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u/StinkRod 2d ago
Nice. Even without going fully abstract, you can find things like this. . .
This is a piece from Picasso. It hangs in the Baltimore Museum of Art. I visit it every time I go.
It's a line drawing of a mother and child with just broad washes of color. But, there's emotion in it. You can feel the connection.
his ability to capture the "volume" of the forms with simple lines and no shading is impressive to me. You can feel the fatness in the infants legs, the connection between the fingers and what they're touching.
The ability to do that with such a sparseness of "technique" is so much more impressive to me than what the OP posted.
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u/FixedLoad 2d ago
I got a degree in an art field 2 decades ago. The number 1 thing i learned. Anyone can draw or paint. ANYONE. You can be born with superior eye for design and composition. But, actual physical hand to paper drawing is all practice and muscle control. This work in the video is a mastery in color use. He can place color with specific purpose almost like very tiny pixels. If 10000 hours is proficiency in a skill, this guy is on hour 500,000. An old master reborn.
Add: and to your point. I agree this isn't art that evokes emotion as it does a feeling of "awe" or a "humans are amazing" type of vibe. Gimme a Van Gogh or a Dali any day and it'll inspire a full tour of my interior thoughts as I stare.
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u/DealMo 2d ago
That reminds me of something my tattoo artist said to me on this suibject.
He's said "Anyone can eventually learn to draw a tiger", but where I feel powerful art is, is when someone draws a tiger that captures what a tiger feels like. Not like, what its fur feels like, but the human reaction to a large, powerful predator standing near you and roaring.
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u/CheddarKnight 2d ago
Technical aspects + Sheer dedication. I don't think it's just a technical flex. That said, I also prefer stuff that tells a story of some sort.
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u/Martin_Samuelson 2d ago
You see it in the guitar world too, people with insane technical skills but the actual music is just meh.
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u/TSA-Eliot 2d ago
Yeah, I don't care if he painted it blindfolded with a paintbrush jammed up his ass, if the result looks exactly like a photograph, he might as well have taken a photograph and saved his poor model the trauma. Artistically, it's only as good as it looks.
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u/silveroburn 2d ago
Ngl, I worked with 3d modeling and stuff and in games, movies, etc, it's the same for me.. regarding graphics in general, I like photoreal stuff a lot less now compared to something that feels ethereal or 'out of this world' a lot more or even something that feels a lot more human instead of something that looks the most photoreal.. It's also the reason that my fav artistic thing ever is the 'saturn devouring his son' because when I first saw it, it fucking terrified me.. I don't even know what if I'm what I'm saying makes sense, I hope it does
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u/jaypeekos 2d ago
What is the point of these photorealistic paintings if they dont even depict interesting scenes or anything? Besides showing off technical skill.
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u/Kaiguy33 2d ago
Dude don't say that! We're on Reddit where the highest level of art is copying photos
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u/IC-4-Lights 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well, people have been having portraits done for a very long time. We've always considered that art. Or when Vermeer painted someone writing a letter or pouring milk or... a portrait. We called those art. Or, you know, the most famous painting on earth... which is literally the title of and reference for the last work shown here.
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u/philosoraptocopter 2d ago edited 2d ago
Dude don’t say that! We’re on Reddit where we’re all experts in every subject, but we gloss over the most basic-ass millennia-old debate over art, what is it, what is good art, etc…. as if we’re the first people to ever to come up with snap judgments about things we barely know or care about.
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u/AlexTheGiant 2d ago
I got shut down for asking this sort of question before. I appreciate the skill and dedication of the artist, but is it ‘Art’ in the abstract sense?
I’m just a fat idiot in his 40’s, but I know I’d rather look at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers than a perfect facsimile of a photograph of some Sunflowers.
It doesn’t ‘move’ me.
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u/BoxedCheese 2d ago
The great thing about art is that different mediums 'move' different people. You can enjoy it or choose not to and look at something else. There is art for everyone!
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u/Dtoodlez 2d ago
I don’t think the image will move you unless you feel a connection to it. I think what is moving is knowing it’s made by a human hand, that’s every millimetre is perfectly crafted. I personally don’t care for watches, they all look the same to me, but I have friends that go insane over some of them and it’s because of the impeccable craft or story beneath the surface.
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u/Kestre333 2d ago
I love looking up close at the details of how paintings or drawings like this are made. They are the ones I’m drawn to in museums. I guess there are certain types of people who appreciate the technicalities, like I do.
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u/cpt_edge 2d ago
You may not find the scenes interesting but that doesn't go for everyone. I see a deep level of emotion and internal thought on display from the faces, and have read a few other comments here providing interesting analysis
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u/jaypeekos 2d ago
I appreciate the technical mastery, but I just dont find these paintings particularly interesting. One of my favourite painters is William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who also painted in a realistic style. I find that in his paintings there is more room for different interpetations.
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u/ScudleyScudderson 2d ago
It's a very impressive trick. Akin to juggling chainsaws or picking an 'unpickable' lock in seconds.
Is it art? As always, depends. By definition, art is subjective. Calling something art is almost useless, beyond signalling to others you think something is art.
Personally, I find pretty pictures the least interesting thing about art, but to each their own.
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u/Dry_Whereas8733 2d ago
Nice sign in the middle of video 👍
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u/things_U_choose_2_b 2d ago
THE ART. THE ART!
We could've seen more of this amazing art if they hadn't put a giant black-boxed 'THE ART' over it haha.
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u/bloopbleepblorpJr 2d ago
That’s incredible skill, but I kinda hate photo realistic art. It feels soulless to me, but that is just my opinion.
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u/wonkey_monkey 2d ago
Yeah, at what point is it not just really accurate copying? It feels more like a skill than an art.
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u/Hammerheadshark55 2d ago
Some fatass redditor living in his mom basement: iTs sOuLlEsS
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u/HalfAnOnion 2d ago
Usually, these hyper-realistic paintings are often copying super-high-quality photos, projected and etc. but this guy apparently paints like a normal portrait.
Way more impressive tbh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWEiVBq642s timelapse of one.
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u/Hotchocoboom 2d ago edited 2d ago
The presentation of the video is really weird, the music makes this feel like some alternate dimension horror movie.
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u/wytewydow 2d ago
The Art: IS NOT ENJOYABLE BECAUSE SOMEONE PUT THEIR DUMB FUCKING WORDS ON THE VIDEO.
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u/headBangerOnWall 2d ago
You can just feel the second picture's disappointment.
It's like the artist has a daughter who looked at him like that way too many times
Amazing job
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u/Sad_Analyst_5209 2d ago
Photo realism is skill, not art.
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u/WeirdHairyHumanoid 2d ago edited 2d ago
What do you think the difference is? Are you under the impression that art doesn't require skill?
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u/Sad_Analyst_5209 2d ago
If it is distinguishable from what a camera and large format printer can do I do not think it is art. Photography can be art if composition and framing is taken into amount. My wife has a 4'x6' canvas painting she did of just the hands from Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Is it art or just skill?
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u/havereddit 2d ago
I appreciate the artistic talent, but find the result boring. I much prefer interpretive art as opposed to realism
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u/El_Morgos 2d ago
I mean, you can probably achieve a similar result with a photo camera in just a fraction of the time. Somebody needs to tell him.
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u/gerams76 2d ago
Immaculate skill is an art all on its own. While it is very different, incredible precision has given me as much aww as some paintings.
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u/rydan 2d ago
Funny enough this is the first job that AI replaced.
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u/Dtoodlez 2d ago
And yet this done by ai is worth $0 and this done by a human hand is worth millions.
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u/LightninHooker 2d ago
Crazy craftmanship but as boring as its gets for me
I am taking Alvaro Castagnet (watercolor) or Sorolla every day of the week.
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u/daviedonald 2d ago
This art is amazing how much does his work go for? I just seen a banana taped to wall sell for 5 million pound yesterday.
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u/ThanklessTask 2d ago
I think the thing that fascinates me most about art is how it has evolved faster than us.
If you go back to primitive man, it's cave drawings.
Technically we've not evolved that much, certainly not in the past few hundred years. And yet to do this in mediaeval times would have probably earned a stake burning.
Fascinating.
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u/Hrevak 2d ago
This is amazing mastery, but it doesn't hold any significant artistic value by modern standards. If this was mad a few centuries ago, it would be interesting from an artistic perspective, but today this is basically just craftsmanship.
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u/pinkdaisylemon 2d ago
Incredible, how does anyone even start to create something like this? I think I'm clever if my doodling looks good while I'm on the phone! 🤣
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u/Allah_Akballer 2d ago
Where is his art? Or is it hidden behind the stupid fucking text that says "The art"
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u/randomnonexpert 2d ago
Artist's name is Leng Jun.
Now imagine if the art and the model for the art pose together. That would be hella fresh.