Topic: Should we move the date of ancient art?

Posted under Tag/Wiki Projects and Questions

DonkDewd

Member

I think it's charming that this site has pre-fandom / non-fandom art, so I like the tag. I'd be OK with making the official line 1976. It just shifts the window four years, so not a big impact, considering the tag currently covers everything from human pre-history to Ralph Bakshi.

"Ancient Art" is probably not the best label for the tag - I associate the word with antiquity, not stuff from the 1970s - but I can't think of anything better.

whatismyname1234

Member

donkdewd said:
"Ancient Art" is probably not the best label for the tag - I associate the word with antiquity, not stuff from the 1970s - but I can't think of anything better.

I agree maybe we should have a new tag for transitional period somewhere in the 1970s-80s that anyone could understand, but I don't think it'll be worth it.

For now, let's just hope that we had a consensus on the topic. BTW, if 1976 isn't good enough how about some other years as well:

Though personally I think 1976 is fine because it makes 1975 the last year to be considered "ancient", which is also the year with major notable events tied to it like the end of the vietnam war

regsmutt

Member

I think pre-fandom (before the 80s/70s) and early_fandom (up until the early/mid 2000s?) might be good tags.

regsmutt

Member

alphamule said:
70's 80's 90's... Those tags exist?

This is true, but it's a) multiple tags and b) doesn't cover things that don't have a recorded year, but a time range is known.

Ruppari

Privileged

I think it would be useful to have ancient art reserved for what people usually tend to think of as ancient art, and have another old art tag that is based on starting point of the furry fandom, and covers more recent art in addition to the ancient art.

whatismyname1234

Member

Seems like a lot of you want a separate name for ancient art that's not very ancient at all. Here's my proposal:

  • ancient art: before year 500
  • medieval art: 500 - 1500
  • early modern? art: 1500 - 1970s? (may need further discussion)

While the rest being simply left without implying to any period. I may even suggest a BUR if everyone think it's good enough

whatismyname1234

Member

regsmutt said:
I think pre-fandom (before the 80s/70s) and early_fandom (up until the early/mid 2000s?) might be good tags.

pre/early fandom sounds good but I'm afraid people will confused it with other fandom, not just furry because it's pretty broad

Watsit

Privileged

I'm honestly not sure I see a point in separating art between "pre-fandom" and "post-fandom" dates, since it doesn't really say anything about the art itself. Anthropomorphized animals have been a thing all throughout human history, I'm sure there's been "pre-fandom" art that was made because the person liked anthro animals and wanted to show some like-minded friends (like fandom art is today), and there's plenty of "post-fandom" art that isn't made for the fandom but is as relevant as anything can be (like non-fandom art back in the day). "Pre-fandom" and "post-fandom" feels like a distinction without a difference.

If anything, maybe the early-to-mid 1900s might be a better cutoff point, signifying the time when mass-producing artwork became more accessible with wider dissemination and commercialization among the populace.

regsmutt

Member

watsit said:
I'm honestly not sure I see a point in separating art between "pre-fandom" and "post-fandom" dates, since it doesn't really say anything about the art itself. Anthropomorphized animals have been a thing all throughout human history, I'm sure there's been "pre-fandom" art that was made because the person liked anthro animals and wanted to show some like-minded friends (like fandom art is today), and there's plenty of "post-fandom" art that isn't made for the fandom but is as relevant as anything can be (like non-fandom art back in the day). "Pre-fandom" and "post-fandom" feels like a distinction without a difference.

If anything, maybe the early-to-mid 1900s might be a better cutoff point, signifying the time when mass-producing artwork became more accessible with wider dissemination and commercialization among the populace.

I disagree. Post-fandom there are certain conventions and styles that got reinforced and codified in ways that weren't happening before. This is also where you start seeing back-and-forth interaction between mainstream and fandom media. The more recent you get, the harder it is to avoid furry influence in anthropomorphic art.

DonkDewd

Member

whatismyname1234 said:
Seems like a lot of you want a separate name for ancient art that's not very ancient at all. Here's my proposal:

  • ancient art: before year 500
  • medieval art: 500 - 1500
  • early modern? art: 1500 - 1970s? (may need further discussion)

While the rest being simply left without implying to any period. I may even suggest a BUR if everyone think it's good enough

I've been thinking a little about this topic, and I think an alternative to this could be changing the label "Ancient Art" to "Vintage Art".

I don't think there is that much original content from actual antiquity here, since that would most likely be photographs of murals and statues. Most of the art under ancient_art seems to be paintings, old comics, illuminated manuscripts, and art from the early days of mass-media (magazines, newspapers, children's books) such as the work of Louis Wain. "Vintage" is more general than "Ancient" and it doesn't sound somewhat insulting when it is applied to art that is much closer to our own age. Another advantage to that approach is that the renaming of the tag would be a simple alias that does not require a lot of manual review and relabeling of everything currently in the "Ancient Art" tag.

ruppari said:
I think it would be useful to have ancient art reserved for what people usually tend to think of as ancient art, and have another old art tag that is based on starting point of the furry fandom, and covers more recent art in addition to the ancient art.

regsmutt said:
Post-fandom there are certain conventions and styles that got reinforced and codified in ways that weren't happening before. This is also where you start seeing back-and-forth interaction between mainstream and fandom media. The more recent you get, the harder it is to avoid furry influence in anthropomorphic art.

I agree with this sentiment. Since most of this art is post 1976, I'd suggest...

Anything from the dawn of time to 1976 = "Vintage Art"

1976 to 2005 - create a new tag called "Early-Fandom Art" or something like that. I picked 2005 since that's the date FurAffinity launched, which seems like a milestone to me.

Anyway, this is an interesting conversation. Hope more people join in.

Watsit

Privileged

regsmutt said:
I disagree. Post-fandom there are certain conventions and styles that got reinforced and codified in ways that weren't happening before.

I don't think that's really true. Art tends to reflect the times, so anything being reinforced or "codified" is just a reflection of the day. As it changed from the past to today, it will continue to change from today into the future. All we'd be capturing is "modern style" of art, and I don't think there's anything special about the fandom's "founding" in 1976 that makes it worthy as a delineation.

Interestingly, I've noted in the past how much "anime" influence there seems to be in modern furry art, even among artists that don't really have an eye toward Japanese art styles. The 70s and 80s were pretty influential in Japanese animation coming to the west, so it makes sense to see those influences turning up in the fandom in those founding decades. But there surely were and still are artists in the fandom that were more rooted in western art styles, more reminiscent of Disney cartoons. Still, this is all just a continuous cultural shift with time, not really fandom specific.

regsmutt said:
This is also where you start seeing back-and-forth interaction between mainstream and fandom media.

This I feel is captured by the "mass-producing artwork became more accessible with wider dissemination and commercialization among the populace" part comes into play. When more of a market opened up for this kind of niche, and consumers could have more sway in what was being proliferated. Even if the fandom didn't exist back in the early/mid 1900s, the kinds of people that could be in the fandom did, and would start having more influence on the market as market size and market reach got bigger.

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whatismyname1234

Member

donkdewd said:
I've been thinking a little about this topic, and I think an alternative to this could be changing the label "Ancient Art" to "Vintage Art".

Sounds like a good idea at first but when I go deeper, it turns out that "vintage" means anything that's 20-100 years old so it can't be "the dawn of time to 1976" (unless we're gonna stretch the definition). Besides there's a vintage tag that basically means "pre 2007 or retro" according to the wiki, which isn't very helpful so we may need to change/invalidate it as well (maybe "antique art" would fit since it covers 100+ years, but that's probably gonna ruin the point of changing the ancient art tag in the first place)

watsit said:
All we'd be capturing is "modern style" of art, and I don't think there's anything special about the fandom's "founding" in 1976 that makes it worthy as a delineation.
[...]
Even if the fandom didn't exist back in the early/mid 1900s, the kinds of people that could be in the fandom did, and would start having more influence on the market as market size and market reach got bigger.

That's true, art changes in a gradual way but we need a date to start somewhere since any "furry" back then were probably considered funny/talking animals enthusiast or simply using them as allegory or metaphor for something (like how bulldogs represent British people in general). Those people may have been labeled a furry during/after the pivotal years of the 70s in their lifetime or retrospectively.

(Though you should probably fact-check this as I'm not a furry historian :p)

edit: a little more words

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DonkDewd

Member

whatismyname1234 said:
Sounds like a good idea at first but when I go deeper, it turns out that "vintage" means anything that's 20-100 years old so it can't be "the dawn of time to 1976" (unless we're gonna stretch the definition). Besides there's a vintage tag that basically means "pre 2007 or retro" according to the wiki, which isn't very helpful so we may need to change/invalidate it as well (maybe "antique art" would fit since it covers 100+ years, but that's probably gonna ruin the point of changing the ancient art tag in the first place)

I don't think I agree with that definition of the word "vintage" but I definitely concede that it's an awkward fit for art that is more than 100 years old. I think it's better than applying the word "ancient" to everything from the disco era to Egyptian hieroglyphics, but that's really all I can say for it. Open to suggestions, if someone has a better word. If not, and no one else likes "vintage", we can keep rolling as is, and I'm still OK with updating the Wiki to 1976 and creating a new tag for early-fandom art, if others agree.

I would also be fine with a more precise division of time periods, as you originally suggested (ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern[?]) if there was some commitment to doing the work of reviewing what's already been uploaded and creating more tags and Wikis. Not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze, considering very little before the age of mass-media is really eligible for e621 under the current guidelines for uploading, as far as I can tell.

whatismyname1234

Member

donkdewd said:
I would also be fine with a more precise division of time periods, as you originally suggested (ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern[?]) if there was some commitment to doing the work of reviewing what's already been uploaded and creating more tags and Wikis. Not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze, considering very little before the age of mass-media is really eligible for e621 under the current guidelines for uploading, as far as I can tell.

I can see that a tag with relatively little post (less than 3000) doesn’t look worthy of change. But it’s nice to see a distant category rather than lump them all as “ancient” when that’s not how people view them. BTW, looking back at my original proposal as well as yours, i’ve made some modification:

  • ancient art: before year 501
  • medieval art: 501 - 1500
  • early modern art: 1501 - 1859 (includes the renaissance, baroque, romanticism, etc)
  • modern art: 1860 - 1975 (which fits perfectly with historian’s consensus)
  • early fandom art: 1976 - 1989 (i chose 1989 because that’s when the first actual furcon begins)

The reason for the year 501 and 1501 instead of a round number is so that when requesting a BUR, we simply need to imply the 6th century and 16th century respectively rather than implying individual years for the start of the period. This also means anything made in the 90s and beyond is “present-day art” because… well the internet

Watsit

Privileged

whatismyname1234 said:

  • ancient art: before year 501
  • medieval art: 501 - 1500
  • early modern art: 1501 - 1859 (includes the renaissance, baroque, romanticism, etc)
  • modern art: 1860 - 1975 (which fits perfectly with historian’s consensus)
  • early fandom art: 1976 - 1989 (i chose 1989 because that’s when the first actual furcon begins)

I'd be wary of collecting the whole of the 500 - 1500 time period as "medieval art". The medieval period is characterized by feudal or aristocratic social structures of the European Middle Ages. Not all places during that time, especially outside of Europe and Japan, would be "medieval", so not all art made during that time is "medieval art".

Similarly, "early fandom art" doesn't really fit all art between 1976 and 1989. post #4728215 for example is from 1983, but was for a science fiction publication, not by or for the early furry fandom. Or post #6124612 from 1984/1985 (which I'm now noticing has been deleted for quality standards??? wow...) was not by or for furries or the fandom.

DonkDewd

Member

watsit said:
Similarly, "early fandom art" doesn't really fit all art between 1976 and 1989. post #4728215 for example is from 1983, but was for a science fiction publication, not by or for the early furry fandom. Or post #6124612 from 1984/1985 (which I'm now noticing has been deleted for quality standards??? wow...) was not by or for furries or the fandom.

If pathbreaking artist Phil Tippett can't get past the "quality" filter, what hope do the rest of us have? (...but it should have been deleted for being under copyright anyway, so no harm done.)

To the other point, if we create an Early Fandom Art tag, the tag wiki should make it clear that not everything produced during the date range applies. It should be used for art produced by the community.

whatismyname1234

Member

watsit said:
I'd be wary of collecting the whole of the 500 - 1500 time period as "medieval art". The medieval period is characterized by feudal or aristocratic social structures of the European Middle Ages.

I'm aware of that, but the alternative global name would be "post-classical art" which is somewhat too technical or "middle age art" which sounds clunky and not how anyone calls it? (unless we agree that one of them is good enough, open up to other suggestion)

Similarly, "early fandom art" doesn't really fit all art between 1976 and 1989. post #4728215 for example is from 1983, but was for a science fiction publication, not by or for the early furry fandom. Or post #6124612 from 1984/1985 (which I'm now noticing has been deleted for quality standards??? wow...) was not by or for furries or the fandom.

donkdewd said:
To the other point, if we create an Early Fandom Art tag, the tag wiki should make it clear that not everything produced during the date range applies. It should be used for art produced by the community.

To be fair, it's a gradual time frame. And I get that art can be made by people outside of the community, but how should we apply that on a large scale? Like take post #4929126 as an example, it could've been made by a furry who draw beautiful looking animals for the fandom, but they could also been made by non furry who draw beautiful looking animals as well for a different audience. Maybe we should put a caveat on the tag

edit: grammar fix

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Watsit

Privileged

donkdewd said:
If pathbreaking artist Phil Tippett can't get past the "quality" filter, what hope do the rest of us have? (...but it should have been deleted for being under copyright anyway, so no harm done.)

It was a personal project he made 40 years ago to show off his talent to prospective employers, uploaded to his own Youtube channel 16 years ago which doesn't have the check mark that indicates the video can be monetized. It seems to be as good as anything someone would post to a public non-commercialized personal gallery, as far as copyright goes, and is definitely worth archiving here. The only potential technicality I could see it getting caught on is "Irrelevant photographs", since stop motion animation is technically (many, many) photographs of real-life statues/sculptures. I don't think I'd really agree, as it would basically mean stop_motion in general is disallowed regardless of quality or relevance unless it's simulated with 3d_animation, but it would be more firm standing than "quality standards" or "commercial material".

whatismyname1234 said:
I'm aware of that, but the alternative global name would be "post-classical art" which is somewhat too technical or "middle age art" which sounds clunky and not how anyone calls it? (unless we agree that one of them is good enough, open up to other suggestion)

I'm not sure, to be honest. "Post-classical" doesn't sound too terrible to me, though it may not be that clear and could be confused for more modern time periods. I don't know what would be a good term that doesn't relate to a particular area for a "middle history" time frame (not ancient, not modern).

whatismyname1234 said:
To be fair, it's a gradual time frame. And I get that art can be made by people outside of the community, but how should we apply that on a large scale? Like take post #4929126 as an example, it could've been made by a furry who draw beautiful looking animals for the fandom, but they could also been made by non furry who draw beautiful looking animals as well for a different audience. Maybe we should put a caveat on the tag

That's kind of my point. "Early Fandom Art" gives the impression its art by/for the early fandom, when its not, making it a misnomer. Which then fits with my previous point that creating a distinction between art made before/after the fandom's "founding" is arbitrary as it doesn't really delineate anything particular to the art. So if that year doesn't really say anything about the type of artwork that could end up here, either its general quality or intent, it doesn't seem worth making a tag to differentiate it.

I think the mass-production of commercialized artwork is a better separation point, the late 1800s/early 1900s, where "proto-furries" in the general populace would start having more influence on the work being produced and more widely proliferated. Even if stuff still wasn't made specifically for them, and they weren't yet a self-organized group, it would mark a shift in the produced artwork that isn't fandom-specific but is relevant to what the fandom would become.

whatismyname1234

Member

watsit said:
I don't know what would be a good term that doesn't relate to a particular area for a "middle history" time frame (not ancient, not modern).
[...]
That's kind of my point. "Early Fandom Art" gives the impression its art by/for the early fandom, when its not, making it a misnomer.

How about this, we stop using pre/early fandom and just categorize it into 4 commonly known time period:

  • ancient art: <501
  • "middle" art: 501 - 1500
  • early modern art: 1501 - 1859
  • modern art: 1860 - 1975/1965*

Since alternative name for the middle age is not very good/global (archaic age, dark age, etc) I'd turned "middle" into an adjective, besides it would be neat since all of them will simply be "period_art" instead of "period_(age)_art"

I think the mass-production of commercialized artwork is a better separation point, the late 1800s/early 1900s

*Looking back, I can see what you mean. In fact I think the mid 60s (not exactly early 1900s I know) would be that separation point because that's when mass-media like colored tv became mainstream, coupled with the with the creation/rise in popularity of works like kimba_the_white_lion, the_amazing_3 (seriously japan is really that influential?). Also, it neatly shows how early works that branches of from the sci-fi community at the time would've become

edit: less wordy

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