Sorry if that wasn't clear. I didn't mean that artists are less skilled today, but that realism and technical skill are generally considered less important today than in the past. "Top" artists today are usually not considered so because they have amazing technical skills at drawing/painting/etc. The metrics for success are a bunch of other things I won't get into here, but hyperrealistic portraits aren't typically considered to be art worthy of being in Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth (two of the top contemporary art galleries.) Whereas they would have been in the era of say, Dürer.

Video games, movies, etc. typically do care more about skill and realism, but they're a different thing from "fine art", i.e., art in art galleries.

That makes sense, thank you!

Your video game comment made me think: maybe the modern equivalent of the art scenario I mentioned is in commercial art like video games or movies, both of which still have genres and are often directly compared to each other – "Call of Duty is a better FPS than Medal of Honor," and so on.

It makes a lot more sense to consider Hollywood and video games as the proper successors to classical art, and to see contemporary art as only a small strand in the evolution of art.

Somehow someone managed to convince the world that Hollywood is not real art, but some other arbitrary weird stuff is.

(To avoid confusion, I personally love the arbitrary weird stuff.)

Youtube and tiktok also.

The world knows this is art but some bullshit artists, pun intended, in New York pretend like it is not. Then other bullshit artists in other cities follow what the bullshit artists in New York are doing because most aren't creative or free thinkers at all.

I love galleries personally but it is a class of non-creative, closed minded, bullshit artists at this point.

Also because those bullshit artists are aware the big money is in this bullshit world, so they give their best to get in and profit. You certainly don't get rich drawing for Bethesda, while in the art gallery business you maybe maybe maybe could.

Artist here. Artists are indeed less skilled today, but there is an effort to improve the situation (ARC). Google 'twilight of painting'.

Concept artists are highly skilled, but they do something different than the painters of yore. They turn around decent looking stuff in a few hours. It's very impressive, but it (naturally) lacks the depth & thoughtfulness achieved by painters like Caillebotte.

Here ARC refers to Art Renewal Center, I think.

The thing about technical skills in drawing today is that you can learn them. Artists do know how to draw hyper realistically and if you have good fine motor skills, you can systematically learn it. End result is like a photography tho and it all costs a lot of time.

Meaning, whereas in the past, if you was the first one to figure out, say, perspective or some color, you was able to draw what others could not. You did something knew and you are remembered for it. Today, if you can draw super realistic portrait, you are one of many talented artists who learned that from a books and classes.

> As for realism: isn't this still very much the goal of plenty of video game design, TV/movies, and various other forms of art?

No one knows artists behind video games. I do not thing realism is the distinguishing things behind artists who do video games, movies or tv. It is more of scene design, lightning, camera work etc that gets to be judged from the art side.