Asians and art...
ngon master
so we're talking in a hangout at the moment about why asians are so good at art. and i have a hypothesis i'd like to propose.
Due to the fact that the written language for most asian countries is artistic in basis (it's drawn more than written, as westerners would see it), and that in learning it great attention to detail and precision, and repetition. Asians in general would have a tendency toward creating fantastic works of art.
what i mean by this, is that because they grow up essentially drawing all day every day just to learn their language, and that in doing so they develop a great sense of gesture and linework. this might give them an edge when it comes to developing as an artist... because the "foundation" art skills that we as westerners learn as a secondary function from the age of about 8+, asians have learned as a primary skillset from pre-school.
so yeah... what are your thoughts?
Due to the fact that the written language for most asian countries is artistic in basis (it's drawn more than written, as westerners would see it), and that in learning it great attention to detail and precision, and repetition. Asians in general would have a tendency toward creating fantastic works of art.
what i mean by this, is that because they grow up essentially drawing all day every day just to learn their language, and that in doing so they develop a great sense of gesture and linework. this might give them an edge when it comes to developing as an artist... because the "foundation" art skills that we as westerners learn as a secondary function from the age of about 8+, asians have learned as a primary skillset from pre-school.
so yeah... what are your thoughts?
Replies
I think it's much more a matter of our western world view and the way that we seem to put the majority of the worlds population under some vast merged grouping.
^^This
Are you saying writing is a foundational art skill?
In that case, I know exactly why the Asians who are good at art, are good at it. Because they worked for it.
Coincidentally that sentence works exactly the same for people of all races.
I don't think that he's saying that writing is a foundational art skill, but rather that drawing is, and as a result of many Asia-centric languages having visually strong alphabets and symbols usually learned through drawing they get a stronger and deeper connection to art.
In the western-world, there is much more emphasis on the superficial. Instant gratification, 2-dimensionality and a faked truth. "It's fine if the majority thinks it's fine - and buys it"
In the east, the approach is a lot more solid. Ppl make sure what they do is honestly good, bottom-up, carrying meaning to their lives. Their actions reflect who they r, and failure or half-effort is not acceptable
As Yoroza said, for the most part, good artists are good because they worked for it.
I should probably iterate that I don't think that Asians are better at making art, or that Asians for that matter have a inherent aptitude towards the production of art.. But neither does the Almighty Gir(Or at least not that Asian are inherently better at it).
What Gir said was that due to having a very visual alphabet, Asian children have to develop the skill of drawing at a very young age, and therefore Asian have so many great artist. He didn't for one second say that Asians are inherently better at making art, but rather that Asia has a culture and language that is beneficial for creating great artists.
I would agree if not for the fact that he seemed to make the fallacy of assuming that there are proportionally a greater amount of artists created in Asia in-comparison to any other continent as a result of having a visual alphabet.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/12/164793058/struggle-for-smarts-how-eastern-and-western-cultures-tackle-learning
I have no doubt that anyone achieving any level of skill in art has done it through hard work and struggle.
The problem with this thread is that it's far to broad and inconclusive. Asia is a huge continent in the same way that Africa is a huge continent. The tradition and culture of Cambodia varies greatly from the culture and tradition of Japan, and there seems to be far to many factors and components to what makes a country or a culture produce thriving artists!
I'm also starting to realize that discussing these types of broad assumptions and conceptions are a bit taboo. I am sorry if I've offended anyone and that has not been my intention.
I think the east is a lot harder to generalize than the west. Let's say Japan vs US & A
it was merely a hypothesis based on observation of computer games developed by the east vs the west.
If you represented Asian people on a Venn diagram you would see a large circle labeled "Asians" and inside that would be a much smaller circle labeled "Great Artists". They are a subset of a group, not the group itself and a small subset at that, just like everywhere else. Asians, as a race, are no more inherently skilled at art than anyone else. This thread is entirely pointless.
The real kickass ones however manage to get job offers + US/EU visas. If they would hand out visas and jobs to just anyone you'd probably see more of the bad ones too
The problem with continents is that they don't always share culture, even though it might look like they actually do, and thus falsifying the statement that Eastern culture would be more "true" in terms of solidity. But anyone travelling and living in different Asian countries know that it varies greatly, from culture to culture.
Thailand is a good example in the way that they do not automatically display this "trueness" as a nation, this is probably a result of having had a corrupt regime and authoritative figure, where the notion of what ever gets by could indeed substitute or be equal to the truth. The same could be said for many other countries in Asia, and the total opposite could be said about many other countries in Asia.
people in general will read into a statement and twist it into the worst, and often most racist/sexist meaning you could possibly derive from this.
they will then go on to attempt to make the original poster look like a racist.
that's not the intention here guys. i just wanted to know if other people thought that having a visual, artistic, drawn language, made any difference to the development of artistic ability later in life vs people who have a very unartistic, non-visual language.
nothing more, nothing less.
yeah for sure, asia has shitty artists, just like everywhere else in the world. and definitely their great artists worked hard at it, just like everywhere else in the world... but that's certainly not an answer to the actual question.
There are four times as many Chinese as US-ians. There are twice as many Chinese as US-ians and Europeans. There are almost as many Chinese as there are people in North America, South America and Europe combined. You would never lump N-A, S-A and EU together as readily as you would say "the Chinese". And here in this thread you lump even more countries together.
This:
This is why there are 'so many Asians good at art'. Simply because there are 'so many Asians'.
The East Asian countries (hell, China alone) account for a vastly larger percentage of the world population (and population density) than other countries. So, statistically - assuming an evenly spread percentage of the world population have a talent for art - a lot more of them would belong to those countries compared to others.
That probably also leads to more competition which raises the bar for recognition and what's classed as "good" artwork. Forcing everyone to work harder to reach that level.
edit: Gah, Snader ninja'd in before me. With graphs and everything!
I was surprised when I moved to England 2 months ago at how polite English people are compared to Norwegians.(I don't like it, makes me uncomfortable) :P
So culture changes a lot of things, Asians might be encouraged in other ways than Europeans.
Grass is always greener...
Interesting that you brought this up though as I was reading an interview in Edge a while back with a Japanese developer (can't remember which.) He was saying that Red Dead Redemption was one of the best games he ever played in terms of gameplay and visuals, which I thought was surprising as I never expect Japanese gamers to be blown away by western games... maybe I'm just being close minded :-S
I can't speak for Japan but working jointly with China it was frustrating how everything had to be superficial, soap opera beautiful. So many cool monsters got axed because they were too ugly or scary. At one point Chinese designers wrote a zone that had Fairies & Unicorns as the mobs.
Chinese society is far behind the west when it comes to general acceptance of violence, nudity and anything that's got even the slightest "horror" theme. Zombies, undead, skeletons are big no no for many casual gamers, and also for the party censors.
I kid you not, people in my apartment have little mirrors on their apartment doors to keep "evil spirits" out. There's tons of superstition here, which people do take very serious! Regular people go to fortune readers or they believe in numerology, so they don't want to live on the 4th floor, they pay tons of money for a "lucky" phone number and so on. And mentioning undead or death in general is a big no no.
Symbolism and visual images relating to death or monsters, such as in many games, are generally not acceptable, except of course for a younger middle class generation which grew up on western TV or games.
Then those super annoying Qing Dynasty soaps are BIG here. Everyone is beautiful and perfect. Many Chinese games end up looking like them with this fake Qing Dynasy fantasy theme and every character looking like from a Korean boy group... but hey, if it sells. They probably look at the west and think all we have are FPS where you run around as US GI.
Oh and don't get me started about the lame TV here... soaps, soaps, game shows and soaps. The only violence on TV are soaps where they shoot the Japanese - that's ok as long as there's a soapy back-story with evil Japanese villains and a brave Chinese soldier and a nurse...urgh
That one ended up in Diablo
I also hear they eat cats.
this. I had a teacher from China. My only programming class, too. and MAN was he an amazing artist. Was never good enough to get into an art school in china as a kid, though (this would have been in the 60's i think). He showed us some work from when he was trying to and holy poop was it awesome...but he was competing for 50 slots in a population the size of California in an area the size of LA...so he decided to get into programming. which is how he got into the US.
so the western world is primarily exposed to people from the eastern world who've made themselves valuable enough to be used elsewhere. simple enough.
now i'm staying the crap out of this thread.
The problem with the argument is that should we then, as latin script writers, not be innately better at mechanical or engineering drawings, having a written language whose best practice consists of straight lines, perfect circles and right angles? Or be better at abstracting visually by nature of our non-pictorial script?
The differences you see might just be unfamiliarity to their aesthetics, or similarly being more familiar and more jaded with 'good' western art, or socialised aspects such as an emphasis on work ethic, or just the sheer difference in population size.
Not sure you can ever get much more than speculation out of this...
All the responses are answers to your question.
The question wasn't extremely offensive, it was just absurd. How does one measure "getting an edge"? And if it is measurable, how do you narrow it down to the style of writing and not consider all the other factors?
You can only randomly guess and make massive sweeping generalisations, especially when the factor here is as general as how people write.
You could do a survey on all the artists in the world and discover that all the "best ones" like eating pizza or something, and then ask whether eating pizza has an effect on their artistic ability.
And then you would get a similar reaction from me... because every part of the question just seems silly to me and that's it. How do you even determine who is "the best" in the first place?
But okay, let's hypothesise. Let's say yes, the writing style definitely gives people an edge in artistic ability.
Now, there are great artists in every country of all races, all of which write in different languages, some may not even write at all.
What now? What exactly can we gather from this discussion? Unless we can definitively say that the majority of artists who've learnt to write in what you consider more "artistic" languages are better than the majority of other artists who write in what you consider "less artistic", the discussion isn't gonna go anywhere. And you can't make that claim without making stupid generalisations - or base the entire topic on your own personal preferences - in which case you might as well just make a topic saying "I like this particular style of art better than this other particular style, who's with me?".
i think a lot of them are amazing at what they do is because they work for it, harder than many. Some of my old friends, and best friends are from different asian countries and 4 of them are in the medical field now (or in med school), one of which is a brother and sister. i assume it's because their parents want them to have a highly respectable career (like a doctor) and to make enough money where they don't have to struggle financially later in life and have enough to also be able to take care of them (the parents) later like many of them do.
i hear being an artist is not really as respectable as a doctor (at least not to everyone), it's like coming home from school and telling your parents you want to be an artist and they give you *that* look like "sure sure, but then you have to get serious." my best friend who's a resident now did a lot of drawing and painting in our early teenage years, she was big into anime, and manga, and video games and her parents were okay with that as long as she pursued other means for a career and i think when you say no to your parents and that you *can* make a living from art, you really have to prove it and you really have to get amazing fast so you can be put into a position where you are being paid enough to prove to them that you aren't wasting your time. so a lot of dedication and studying and loving what you're doing.
that's my take on it anyways
this is totaly getting off topic, but noone at the studio i work can read the handwriting of our lead artist. including himself...
It's a population thing.
actually I think it's more of a perception thing. Like Lamont said, someone in Japan is wondering why westerners are so much better at art :P
*Realises his own hand writing skills suck*
*Gives up dream of working for Blizzard*
*Becomes 3D Tutor at Thames Valley University*