Comment that became a post. Deal with it.
Topic: People who like naked marble statues better than ineptly painted yard gnomes are apparently racist.
TLDR: If the paint is unknown apart from the painting existing and some basic colors, simply put that in the signage below. “These statues not originally bare, but the quality of paint work has been lost to time. Current appearance is the result of weathering.” Boom problem solved, oh but wait, gotta scold white people with every third breath because our lord thy IDPOL is a jealous God.
The core problem with the main video, (complaining about greek statues and white people which I won’t link because fuck him) which I haven’t seen till now is conflating poor painting with ANY painting. Imagine an actual artist painting these statues, with shading, and shadows and such, actual art skills, as opposed to what looks like a lawn gnome made in china.
Statue as canvas for real art was probably magnificent. The idea that they would employ the world’s best sculptors to fabricate statues for a child’s finger painting class is absurd, and it’s doubly absurd to try and make it a racism thing. Sometimes less is more.
Sorry the paint’s gone but tough shit. The lady’s arms are gone too, would it be a slander on the disabled to consider putting them back for accuracy? Is repainting them with any quality an assault on the blind and color blind? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
And wake me when someone with applicable high level skill tries one of these restoration projects. (Will edit/delete if this is covered later in the video, had to stop and comment because hard to watch. Real tired of perpetually being called a racist for being born the wrong race.)
P.S. Ramses was a fucking ginger. It’s not like this part of the world lacked pale people, and as demonstrated by Ramses, even the desert occasionally put pale people in charge, also, the facial structures look very western European. It’s not just about the paint. If white people are so oppressive and evil, is it really so shocking to imagine them being so in the ancient world too? Did the ancient world not have its pasty bezos analogs?
IMO the real problem here is assuming ancient people were inept just because they were ancient and blaming racism instead. Look how they sculpted. They knew how to do art. Calling objection to our shitty paint by numbers attempts to colorize the statues racism or unscientific is complete bullshit.
Just image search “amazing cosmetic illusions” for some idea of what can be accomplished by a REAL artist on a 3d humanoid surface. The rush to call everything racist is racist too. And pretending museums are bastions of objectivity where you’re not allowed to use shading is horse shit.
The entire point of a museum is a public attraction, not a scholarly convention or paper. Even lighting and choice of exhibit contains artistic interpretation and bias. Seems to me you want people to feel guilty about hating those god awful paint jobs just because you want people to feel guilty for being white (or like race traitors for having taste. In short everyone who doesn’t agree with you must suck.)
(Whining that no one complains about hieroglyphs.) The Egyptians’ paintings weren’t paintings usually, they were (diagrams) 2D language text. You don’t use shading on actual utilitarian signage. Coloring book tier in that context is orders of mag closer to actual values than finger-paint statues, also, we have actual preserved indoor Egyptian work to work From. God this video is disappointing. It’s like some kind of law, given enough time every youtuber becomes an idpol partisan hack.
Also, bronze is brown. That’s the entire reason no one cares in that context. It can’t be spun into the white people should be gassed for fairness narrative. And it also doesn’t work as a diversity virtue signal either because no one can plausibly say they were made brown for racial reasons, like how they can say keeping them white is racist.
Did they paint the top tier bronze ones like kindergartners too? Bronze is a gorgeous metal, especially when polished and maintained. IMO it would take Serious artistic chops to beat it with paint. And I’m not gonna assume the ancients had no taste. So even if they did paint bronze I doubt they would look like a finger painting.
And saying they Should look like finger paintings as opposed to blank, because we don’t know what they looked like, is absurd. Firstly, science starts from being ok with saying “I don’t know yet, let’s leave it blank till we have a better idea.” (Better being the key word.) Maybe in the future some deeper analysis will reveal shading.
Second. No one’s putting stucco on the fucking Sphinx/pyramids. We know it they didn’t originally look like a lumpy sand castle. It’s not somehow racist to leave it that way. Not every piece of history needs the “based on a true story” treatment.
Dipping them a bird bath enamel also obscures sculpture detail. They would look a thousand times better shaded with some kind of (yes earth tones) chalk. But no, I’m a racist for saying that.
