
The School of Athens: A detail hidden in a masterpiece - animalcule
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200910-the-school-of-athens-a-detail-hidden-in-a-masterpiece
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toyg
_> a simple ink pot teeters precariously on the corner of a large marble
block, an elbow-twitch away from falling, shattering, and opening a black hole
at the heart of Raphael’s work. That unassuming object, and it alone,
transforms Raphael’s fresco from being a two-dimensional tribute to rational
thought into a far deeper and more mercurial meditation on the mysteries of
existence._

Er, no...? It doesn't look in a dangerous position to me.

What it really does, combined with the human figure, is hiding the desk
border, dispensing the artist from dealing with a few awkward issues of
perspective. The composition is a late addition, after all, and its front
perspective is already suspect.

This seems the sort of critique that gives the art world a bad name.

~~~
MisterTea
This colorful language is also used by artists to describe their own works.
e.g. the artists description of the Tilted Arc
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilted_Arc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilted_Arc)):

"The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As
he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture
result from the viewer's movement. Step by step, the perception not only of
the sculpture but of the entire environment changes."

The only thing the "viewers" were aware of was the fact that a large rusty
slab of scrap metal had blocked free movement and become an eye sore. Art is a
strange thing. Not every vision or idea will be apparent to the observer.

Though I do agree that this kind of language comes off as condescending, as if
the author has some form of superior artistic analysis and introspect. It's
almost as if they are on the same level as conspiracy theorists, proud of the
fact that they "understand" some arcane idea or fact that doesn't exist or
isn't true.

~~~
ponker
You have to realize the metagame being played here. The game that art
collectors are playing is tax evasion. They want to buy something for $100
from a depressed cigarette smoker in tight jeans, then 20 years later say that
it's worth $100 million and donate it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a
mega tax writeoff. If they buy a 1 inch cube of 18/10 stainless steel, they
can never claim that it's worth $100 million because the IRS would just say
"you can buy that off McMaster Carr for $100." But with the above paragraphs
attached, they get to claim that it's unique and not replaceable and therefore
worth whatever they say it is.

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earthboundkid
> Remove the ink pot from the epicentre of Raphael’s fresco, and the work
> dissolves into a fiasco of confused and confusing forms. Heraclitus’s
> profound, if overlooked, ink pot is the very well-spring from which the
> elastic energy of Raphael’s masterpiece endlessly emanates.

:-/ I don't really buy putting this much on the ink pot. If the ink pot were
missing, no one would notice. As is, most reproductions of SoA just show Plato
and Aristotle and cut everyone else out. I think a better statement would be
"the pen in Heraclitus's hand adds unity to the picture by showing that the
anachronistic crew are united in their literary ambition."

~~~
anigbrowl
_If the ink pot were missing, no one would notice._

Mystery in the Masterpiece: Raphael and the case of the missing inkpot

[...]

Far from being a careless omission, the missing inkpot is a metaphor for the
mystery of the creative process, whereby the artist extracts the image, stroke
by masterful stroke, from beyond the veil of imagination. When the viewer has
become so absorbed in the reality of the painting that the missing inkpot
stands out, it is as if Raphael silently announces his own creative divinity.

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pier25
I've seen photographies of this fresco dozens of times, even studied it
(superficially) in some art history class, but for the first time I've
realized that ancient Greeks did not have paper, much less books.

I imagine Raphael and his contemporaries didn't know as much about ancient
Greece as we do today. OTOH the printing press was still fairly recent so
Raphael must have been conscious that books were not commonly available
centuries before him.

My point is that this depiction of ancient Greece might have been deliberately
fantastic which is something I had never thought before about Renaissance art.

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InfiniteRand
I actually enjoyed the artistic summary (although it does go a bit long) but I
wish the writer would have stated the factual point earlier: the figure with
the ink pot is Heraclitus

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Igelau
Kind of clickbaity. I was waiting for some huge delivery about (spoiler
alert!) there being an inkpot, but it never really materialized.

Like they said, the figure didn't appear in previous drafts. Some student
probably made the observation "hey, where's Pen Man getting his ink from?" and
it wound up squeaked in on the edge of the desk.

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anigbrowl
If you want to find things hidden in masterpieces get Charles Bouleau's _The
Painter 's Secret Geometry_ and learn about the scaffolding which gives
imagery its underlying structure and guides the eye around it.

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programd
For some reason the entire article reminds me of the artwork descriptions in
Rimworld. For example:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/byYi9](https://imgur.com/gallery/byYi9)

