Unfortunately my European brothers and sisters prefer to live in open air museums. However slowly but surely skyscrapers have been creeping up into the Netherlands- you just can't beat the efficiency.

Like what? A shadowy cabal of liberal elites pulling the strings from the shadows? Stripe (who own Works In Progress) founder Patrick Collision donated to the Trump campaign in 2024. Tiresomely obvious what this "piece" is trying to do. Find a new gimmick imho.

as an aside, for the longest time i have thought modernity was fully understood by the 60s (ellul, debord, macluhan, ...). but maybe there the focus was too narrowly political, sociological. it has been revealing to see this ethos (and it is an ethos, make no mistake) recently linked to autism. high modernists are uniform, monomaniacal people. like machines. and the world they fashion, is therefore one that is uniform, principled. how the unsociable autist colleague cannot distinguish between is and ought, so will modern architecture barrel down deductively to its unpleasant conclusion.

modernisn is the commodification of all spheres of existence, it is an unprecedented evolution, how to break out of this, how to get of this train with only a single endpoint.

I'm not a hater on modernism -- I like stripped down literature and architecture (though I wish concrete buildings were cleaned more regularly). But there does seem to be some truth in this idea that "the elite critics" have dominated these fields, resulting in the production of art (and buildings) that are broadly unpopular. I think the overriding goal of these critics is avoiding kitsch, which they see in classical forms.

It's kind of similar to the general "two-sides" thing where, if you talk to, say, a climatologist who talks about a community consensus on global warming, there will be someone who has never studied the climate, exposes a completely different opinion, sometimes in opposition to observed facts.

In this case, in architecture, the thing to measure is not the opinion of people, but how they use the architectural object - how their relationship with the environment changes in that space and why. I brought to this discussion three examples of architectural landmarks that turned a somewhat degraded space into vibrant community spaces.

Architects don't design buildings - they design the interaction of the building users with their environment.

When politics exclude a group, or a group feels excluded, it's easy to lure the group into supporting anti-politics, which is a nice way to say "fascism".

This is kind of where we are now, with the far-right preying on the most vulnerable people that feel ignored by politicians.

The National Civic Art Society is designing the White House State Ballroom [1] and Create Streets is a conservative influence group that likes speaking at Reform UK events [2]. As many others here have pointed out, visual preference, especially in such a binary choice between obviously cheap and ugly vs expensive and generous, is of course highly biased - pseudo greek style doesn't fly in Asia, even in Australia minimalist styles are much more en vogue.

The most important claims like "exclusively teaches broadly modernist styles" are completely unsupported - especially when a few lines down they literally use their own review of an architect's design, but then call it "in a style drawing on Victorian commercial architecture and Art Deco", again unsubstantiated - it has pretty "modern" clear lines, probably due to sustainability [3], and brick facades themselves have been around for long. In the report they praise the 2010 (!) London city building design guide recommending exactly this brick design. "hardly a single public commission" and "we commissioning styles"?

Where is the line between justifying dictator-style grandiose architecture and the actual empathy needed for simply good design?

I'm just asking questions.

1) https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/29/justin-shubow-trump-archit... 2) https://www.building.co.uk/focus/reform-uk-conference-fundin... 3) https://www.archpaper.com/2025/10/biennale-architettura-carl...

And then there is the issue of construction. Many older designs use materials and methods that are either out of date or expensive to replicate with currently popular building materials. Simply going back to older designs is not a practical option for most buildings. There has to be some balance of old ideas with newer methods.

But most people will prioritise cost (both capex and opex) and comfort over aesthetics.

Then again, I wonder whether the modern innovation of using steel under tension could enable us to make the "wings" (buttresses) smaller.

They are comparing "same buildings" with AI but I would imagine they are not controlling cost.

Imagine gargoyles and metal dragons on drainpipes and all the ornamentation now and how much that would cost.

People prefer ancient dry stone walls over fences but they cost orders of magnitude differently.

I wonder if with robots and what not if we will see a resurgence in detail and ornamentation and other kinds of expensive but nice constructions.

The examples where arch students gave higher scores, like with that god awful-looking house, I don't have an answer to. Maybe they had terrible taste. Just because you are a student of architecture it does not mean you have good taste or how to build beautiful things that evoke a specific emotion.

Maybe the average modernist building really is that bad and the issue is that "traditional" buildings are more forgiving for an average architect.

I feel similar positive about new buildings in my native Netherlands, which seem to be getting less flat and with smaller, more reasonably sized windows (if you know, you know!)

I might be missing something but isn't this all a bit of a no-brainer?

In the old days, buildings were made to impress, to project wealth, to show the generosity of wealthy benefactors to their town or city. Take a look around somewhere like historic Bruges, which benefited from the wealth of local merchants. Incredibly impressive. Not remotely cost effective.

Today, buildings are typically functional, or at least financial considerations are top of mind. And cheaper tends to be uglier. Why would someone invest in an elaborate and expensive design when they could simply throw up a slab of brutalist concrete and punch some windows into it? It's all the same to the workers inside.

And of course for older folks, older buildings are closer to what they grew up with. Even if only a bit. Seems a natural effect for older people to enjoy older architecture.

Modernist builds aren't really cheaper.

Now, as a contrast, another masterpiece from the city where I grew up: https://www.scribd.com/document/955270807/g10-Cultural-Cente...

https://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01...

Personally I'd prefer to spend my time in and around a building like this than any of those:

https://labs.utdallas.edu/mems/files/2021/08/nserloutside.jp...

To me a building like this looks a lot more interesting. Lots of mixtures in materials, textures, and colors. And as mentioned before, this building lets in a lot of natural lighting. It lets you see outside instead of just constantly feeling like you're trapped in a jail cell.

Its not even like I really hate old architecture, I just think a lot of these examples given suck. I like this, for example (although it is getting close to overstylized for my taste):

https://www.adventuresofacarryon.com/wordpress/wp-content/up...

Buildings like this as well, although definitely not as much natural light. Notice its actually nice, clean, and maintained compared to the other examples given. Still kind of old and boring though in the end.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Dallas_C...

If the architecture they're studying is divorced from the preferences and needs of the uneducated masses then who cares? They may as well be studying their own butts.

It can but originality is not the end of aesthetics. What's more the modernist architecture is globalised so the "unique" building's style gets recreated and seen in every single corner of the world where they all try to be avant garde in the exact same ways. There's no vernacular architecture elements anymore which give a sense of place. Not even much of ones that make sense due to origin in environmental factors such as rain/snow in the nordics or heat in gulfstates.

>You can't honestly say the modern building I linked above lacks originality. How many other buildings have anodized scales on the outside which change colors based on the lighting?

I'll plainly say it. It lacks originality. I'd rather it have a painting on it than a trying to be the equivalent of a shiny TCG card the novelty of which will wear of very quick.

Fashion. Taste. Informed by functional and economical requirements, materials, surroundings, urban planning, yes, but in the end, there's also an element of taste and subjective preference that can clump together in periods or zeitgeist forms or whatever you like to call it.

As taste and preference go, you are free to delegate yours to others without question, as you seem to be doing here so passionately. I don't find empty appeals to authority very convincing. But maybe I misunderstand what you're saying.

I'm willing to hold two concepts in my head: my own impression of the appearance of different examples of a certain architectural style (which, like all others, has better and worse ones); and the question why some people who know a lot more than me might see it differently than me. Their reasons and my reasons might both be valid, but mine would be far less interesting. Hence, my question.

Finally: You seem to think that I asked you to trust my opinion, or even to change yours. You might want to look into why you think that, because that's not at all what I did. I asked something entirely different.

Often we go out exploring the solution space for new things that were never done before and nobody ever asked for them because nobody had imagined them until they saw the first one. Remember how blown away everyone was with the Jeff Han's multitouch demo? It became immediately obvious it was the future of direct manipulation interfaces.

If you go back further, do you remember how sci-fi pictured the computers we would be using "in the future"? In 2001 there were no alphanumeric keyboards. Neither on the Enterprise. We are finally catching up with the vision of Tron, of the computer as an environment for intelligent agents (it took decades for most people to even formulate this understanding of the movie). We get a lot of things wrong, but our job is to try the things nobody is asking for, because they don't know they can be.

Taste is extremely subjective. I am an engineer and I've spent a whole career training my tastes (for system design, hardware architecture) to be less subjective and help guide my work towards what's good. Some of that seems to have leaked to building and city planning, because my taste seems to align well with the experts in those fields.

This again, is partially true. A lot of ornamental decorative elements in public facades were, essentially, mass produced using molds --- very few were hand-made in the way they are done now.

They would degrade over time, however they could also be repaired or replaced relatively easily.

Your point about survivorship bias is also somewhat more nuanced. The buildings that have survived were often, as you said, made with more expensive materials, and they lasted longer; but there was also a change in tastes over time, in particular against ornament and decorative elements, and a change in the idea that certain buildings should be maintained. In the past, people were just way more accepting of tearing down or replacing buildings. Conservation as a general approach was not as common, nor were people as inclined to see certain buildings in particular as uniquely worthy of conservation. It is those buildings which were deemed "appropriate" for conservation and "historically significant" which have largely shaped our understanding of "traditional" architecture, a somewhat snapshot idea of architecture on the cusp of modernism,

They also do this with cars, clothes, wives, phones, and their own faces.

Justice delayed is justice denied, and housing that takes years to build because of stupid NIMBY bullsh*t is just an indirect way for the haves to tell the rest of us to kys.

A specific example. The very same building developer completed these two buildings and offered the flats for sale more or less simultaneously, in the second half of last year IIRC.

Building 1. Renovated early 20th century building (originally built in 1923). Google Maps coordinates (the renovation is not yet visible in Google Maps): https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3621801,-8.4070271,11a,75y,2... Photos of the renovated building: https://ammapromocion.com/plaza-de-vigo/ Flats have 117 useful sqm and the middle flats were being offered at between 1.1M-1.2M €, and sold fast (you can still buy the 1st floor flat for 950K. But it's a 1st floor with a bar directly below, which reduces its value rather sharply. This is Spain, bars are noisy and open until late).

Building 2. Newly built. Google Maps coordinates (again, finished building not visible yet in Google Maps): https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3599669,-8.4061383,23a,75y,2... Photos of the finished building: https://ammapromocion.com/promocion-juan-florez/ Flats are different sizes, but some are only slightly smaller than in the other building - around 110 useful sqm. They were being offered for around 700K. They also sold fast.

The distance between both buildings according to Google Maps is 290 m, a 4-minute walk, so they are basically in the same neighborhood. You can argue that the new one is in a worse location because it has more traffic and the street is uglier, and it's true (although the other is in an area with many bars, so I think not everyone would prefer its location). Anyway, that kind of difference could be worth at most 50K in this market, being generous - and most likely more than fully offset by fact that the newly built flats include garage while the renovated ones don't have it! Anyhow, it definitely doesn't explain a 400K+ price difference.

It's just one concrete example, but I've seen many (I was recently looking for flats... finally I settled from one from the 1940s, building not renovated :)). Of course I don't know the trends outside my city, but at least here, fully renovated old buildings are the apex of the housing market.

It’s easy to sell grey, white, and black cars. So it’s what you buy.

This assumes no purchase is longterm. Which is its own indictment.

I should add: I love that you broke this idea. Can you (safely for the internet) share any photos?

Standing out doesn't really help if it isn't more desirable than the boring normal.

What I personally dislike is the recent trend of all black siding and trim. I have no idea why people are doing this on new construction near me, other than perhaps cooling is cheaper than heating in our climate. It's certainly (IMHO) hideous though.

If there is money left over, then you decorate. But you’ve probably bought into a new housing development with an HOA that doesn’t allow exterior modifications without approval.

I mean look at the ecology of our world. What do you see out there when you look outside? Solely some lumbering generalist beast doing not good and not too bad taking up all the energy that comes off our sun?

Absolutely not. The opposite happens. The generalist tends to die out, outcompeted by the litany of specialists who better occupy the specific niches the generalist attempts to fill.

Left to its own devices, the market ought to look like this: hyperspecialized at all scales and levels such that every demand is maximally occupied by the most efficient manner to serve that demand. One might ask instead what artificial constraints are allowing a generalist to emerge and not be swallowed up by the sum weight of the countless specialists who are more optimal at every possible thing?

The article reads like the author picked a conclusion and made things fit his opinion.

There's a trend in some Eastern European countries to paint older brutalist concrete buildings as a cost-effective measure to reduce concrete spalling and do thermo-modernization. It's actually pretty amazing how much nicer some of these buildings look even with just a uniform white paint job (others involve more color).

Architects seem to be largely opposed, seeing it as an erasure of the material honesty that brutalism was supposed to represent, but IMHO it suggests that a lot of the core issue with these designs wasn't the shape or creativity of the buildings themselves but just the way the concrete look quickly aged.

The is hopefully the high watermark of Apple fans thinking Apple invented something they didn't.

Agreed, though your comment does much more than wince and shrug:

> too ridiculous to be seriously defended

Humans are very social animals and we follow social norms, like a herd moving together. Look how similar everyone's clothing is: Nobody is on 5th Avenue in a loin cloth or Elizabethan outfits (unless intentionally violating norms). Why do we all chose to wear the same things? We follow norms.

How do we signal and punish things outside norms, or shape norms to exclude something? Ridicule. Sophisticated public communicators consciously use it - you can see it in the way some conservative publications depict trans people. Their intent, through ridicule, is to push them outside norms - a foundation of facism, normalizing persecution and even brutality and murder. Facists also did/do that to art - it's the same thinking (though not everyone who ridicules art is a fascist - the fascists take advantage of that bit of human nature.)

In your comment you aren't just wincing and shrugging, but literally ridiculing (to be clear, I'm not calling you a fascist in any sense)

> It's just common sense.

Which means, common norms. There's nothing special about them; it's just a social phenomenon. Every innovator, including in tech, faces the usual response:

  - First they laugh at you (ridicule you)
  - Then they say it's not in the orthodoxy (if ridicule fails,
    you go from being ridiculous to being a threat to norms)
  - Then they say they knew it all along (you're now within norms)

> societies also have collective preferences

They don't. People try to make preferences look more universal to justify their own beliefs or simplify thinking, but it's always far more diverse. Look at how the Democratic party attempts to lump simple demographic groups (e.g., black men) into one stereotype of political thinking - and ~25% voted for Trump in 2024.

Societies do have norms, which are very changeable. Look how the far right has changed norms around the world in just a short time. It's not by accident - I've seen guides on how to normalize antisemitism, for example. The leading fascists in history, the Nazi party, had very consciously designed propaganda to do the same.

If someone wants to be an innovator (and have a truly free mind, IMHO), they need to step back and see norms, their dynamics, and what's beyond them, and learn to see what's outside without the filters, to treasure it as potential future innovation. To look at things on their merits, not at whether they are inside or outside.

At the debut of the first play by Harold Pinter, The Homecoming, much of the audience booed and left at intermission. Pinter, the great innovator, booed the audience. (Or so the story goes.)

In my experience, the biggest issue is natural light - it's hard to beat glass walls when you need a structural skin with some windows where possible.

It very much does, unfortunately. In the US, the places with the highest housing shortages are mired with endless red tape, discretionary reviews, parking requirements etc. that substantially increase costs. This leaves little room for anything else, including aesthetics.

Developers have gotten very good at navigating this, but it has also led to them sticking to basic "good enough" designs like the five-over-ones we see when new apartments are built.

I think the cause may be that most real estate developers are not students of architecture and also are looking to minimize costs and time. Even if the developer wants to build something beautiful, cash flow (burn rate) is a big problem: You borrow millions or more, and have no revenue for the entire time it takes to build the building. Getting credit is hard enough. Do you go more in debt, and possibly for longer, for the nice trim? Does the banker also care about architecture and see that as a good investment?

Also, the trim then and trim now probably were designed with the same thing in mind: Whatever is least expensive with current technology. For example, an architect once explained to me that interior trim, for example where the wall meets the ceiling, has a purpose - it covers flaws in the join. Modern techniques and materials allowed us to eliminate it.

Most importantly, speaking of innovation and technology generally, IMHE what you say is an almost universal experience: Often it's not the new thing that is the problem, it's that the old seems carelessly discarded. All its benefits and nuance; all the skill and expertise; all the deep understanding and appreciation that comes from generations and lifetimes spent developing and using it, that enriched our lives; all lost. Think of poetry, which used to be far more popular - now people barely read it much less have any deep understanding of it. People who would have been poets are now doing something else; who could even mentor you if you wanted to be a poet?

Most of this comment, after saying I'm "not informed" just repeated everything I said in my comment with less details.

This seems to be a comment where someone started with a prompt of "no ur wrong" and had AI elaborate it out into something less juvenile.

My other question that I've never found a good answer to, is with mechanization, how is it that "cheap" modern buildings are so expensive. Or were old, traditional buildings super expensive? What is the cost of a unit of beauty per year, then and now...?

We have not made any progress, and perhaps we don’t need to, when it comes to architecture since World War I. There have been a few projects like La Sagrada Família, but those are exceptionally rare.

Suburban homes. What a disaster and embarrassment to the human race.

Taste is subjective, but is there really a more beautiful building in the world than the Heydar Aliyev Center?

1. I think the onus is on you to prove that it's not a minority, in the face of people overwhelmingly favouring older, more ornamented designs.

2. Beauty does not have to feel 'fake' and ugliness can be very authentic indeed, especially when it comes to concrete. I'd take a faux-neogothic revival over another period of brutalism without even blinking.

I used to live near-ish to this eyesore - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyndham_Court#/media/File:East...

It's a hideous blot on the landscape, the wind blows through mercilessly and constantly, it feels desolate and dystopian to be around. It smells of piss and depression. It's notorious for drug dealing. But someone managed to get it listed and protected anyway so now the town's stuck with it permanently.

> I do not understand this movement to rob concrete, steel and plywood of it's natural voice and force it to conform to design styles made for different substances and tech.

Perhaps we don't have to force it to be 'traditional' but it's clear that the 'natural voice' afforded by these materials and the current set of design languages in architecture result in ugly buildings that the large majority of people just do not like.

We don't have to look at the overwhelming preference for traditional buildings and take away from that "We must go back to exactly that", but we should at least take away "People don't like what's being made now, we can do better"

And if there is no way for concrete, steel and plywood to express more beauty then perhaps we could think about using other things that might. Either way, ploughing on with creating spaces and edifices that the majority think are ugly and worse than what came before, either because of a professional disdain for what humans actually like to be around, or some high-minded ideas about material expression seems ... well, pretty pig-headed.

I’m not sure if it’s a particular framework or whatever, I’m just a computer user.

The sites where I’ve seen it have predominantly been for business whose primary activities are not-online.

It’s refreshing.

I'm not sure my comment was meant to be that deep, I was suggesting that beauty or at least pleasantness be added to the list of things which come under the category of "function" when buildings are being designed.

Maximising utility without considering that people will be conducting their lives there, or the effects design choices can have on the feel of a place beyond pure utilitarianism, seems inadequate.

Both paintings you cited are very much on the traditional and representative end of the spectrum. None of them seem to be on the more abstract 20th century styles.

It becomes change and following avant garde for the sake of it and a group of people trying to be different in all the same boring ways.

No one will care if you build 1000th replica of a nice building. It's just not interesting to anyone and actually becomes boring very fast. People may live in it but no one will come from afar to visit it because of its beauty. It will become another one in a row of the same.

If you build a striking, exceptional building, it can become a big success (like Gehry's in Bilbao which is a success story for the whole city), so people who commission buildings sometimes select for that.

And also there is a sizable group of people who actually enjoy interesting buildings, like people who enjoy haute couture or haute cuisine etc., so it's not like there is no market for that.

I find crttain kinds of fakeness disgusting. I am entitled ot my opinion as are you to yours if you prefer fakeness.

I think McMansions are honest. Stick framing and plywood is a functional, affordable and most people seem to find it looks okay.

If people disagree with steel and concrete, nothing is stopping them from pooling money to build a brick building. I don't think zoning should be an issue, if a place allows skyscrapers it probably will allow your brick multistorey building. If its liked so much why aren't people funding it?

Either this design is too expensive or its not liked enough.

And I disagree, I find neoclassical buildings cold and inhuman, I think its actually its itnended design too, to overwhelm with sheer scale and induce despair. But I see it as just a design choice not a religion ir existential theory. Gothic is even more deliberately hostile looking.

The barrier to entry for interior is even lower, who is stopping you from buying tools or commisining a cabinet shop to build your vision?

Brutalism is perfectly human friendly, its a building, its meant to house people and take them in and out of their office or apartment. If anything I'd say brutalist structures are probably more walkabale than other multi storey structures. What you make of the interior is up to you. Paint your home as you want, put any furniture you like, as with any other building.

What specific way do you think brutalism or any other building style you would prefer as example is not human friendly?

But to your point about the effect that some building has on people, we have things we can measure about that effect. You can look at number of visitors, or perhaps price on the market.

> You were the one who put Bansky among "weird and ridiculous" art movements which is frankly absurd as Bansky does very traditional and representative art.

Well it's ridiculous (worthy of ridicule) in part because of the poor quality and craftsmanship. It's poor art because it fails to express meaning in a way that, for example, you can clearly see if you are to compare it to Woman with a Towel. There is much more depth. Individual brushstrokes, intent.

Popular and modern art today lacks the ability to evoke meaning and depth in the same way. This is measurable. There's a reason that IKEA sells Andy Warhol prints and not Women with a Towel prints - yet many more visit and covet visiting the great masters. Modern art requires an industry to convince you that it is art and worthy of praise while the others draw people in without needing marketing. One is a faucet of the degradation of modern culture post-World War I/II (which we can rebound from of course) and is easily made and easily reproduced. The other, isn't.

> If you think one is and the other isn't then you have a really absurd and incorrect view.

No, your view is incorrect and absurd.

Cool, then we’ll blame it on the choice of how and where to use those materials? So when there’s an architectural style that for example is very heavy on chunky raw concrete, is pretty universally despised and has negative social consequences, it’s fair to say “we should probably stop doing that, it seems like a bad idea” rather than some abstract verbiage about doing justice to the raw materials?

Because to be clear - I don’t care about the materials, I care about the outcomes. If someone can use concrete/steel/ply to make something attractive that isn’t going to degrade is a short handful of years, go for it.

> I think if the situation in your locality is so bad that any public space will be taken over by druggies is not the buildings fault.

Nope, repeated pattern across the whole country, for reasons given and now explained multiple times.

Do you believe architecture can have any effect on a place? How people feel in that place, how that then translates into how they act in those spaces, positive or negative?

If yes, then perhaps it’s time to admit that some styles can be on the negative side.

If no, then why are we even bothering?

I understand what you are trying to get at, its just that I simply am unable to understand the mood of despair as associated with brutalism. Maybe others feel otherwise.

Still waiting for the coordinate by coordinate breakdown of brushstrokes.

You still didn't tell me who those buildings glorify by the way. Why didn't you answer that question?

You seem to have mental issues then.

> You were the one who brought up the question of who a building glorifies, not me.

It wasn't a question though, I was just stating a fact. And "who" doesn't have to be a specific person, though it can be. Who can refer to a people, or a culture, or a civilization. "Who did that? The Egyptians did that", for example. There you go, it's justified and still important.

> Did you have any difficulty knowing what the painting was depicting? Its more detailed than a lot of impressionism that you seem to enjoy. Its clearly not remotely abstract at all.

I disagree completely and that is my opinion. You can't argue with my opinion without inviting objective criteria about artwork.

> What is the attention to detail you find missing?

Well partially graffiti-style art is limited by the medium, and as societies degrade we use cheaper and cheaper materials/products and do so with less knowledge until they die out. Look at suburban homes versus surviving residences in the high-end markets in places like London or Paris (there's lots of other cities just those are two obvious ones).

But from just looking at the artwork I think it's lower quality and less thought and attention was put in to it versus other artwork, including your reference point of Woman in a Towel. Girl with a Balloon seems to try to invoke a message about something but that message seems kind of silly and cliche. And then there are just these two colors. Black and red. Boring.

> It is very absurd of you to say because Banksy's style has nothing post 20th century about it at all.

I'm not trying to litigate whether some folks got together and decided that some art should be grouped in some way. That's just their opinion on the grouping, mine is different. I lump the majority of art post-World War II into a single category with the defining feature being a psychotic relationship to humanity driven by post-war psychosis. It's like brutalism. It's built off of bunker designs and fear of humanity.

Who or what does (a) the CN Tower, (b) the Space Needle, (c) the Empire State Building, (d) your house glorify?

>You can't get the depth of brushstrokes or color for example.

In what way do you think they can't? Do you know what priming or not was applied to the concrete in his graffitis? And likewise to the wood panels of the artists you admire?

> Why would I do that? What would be the point?

Why shouldn't we compare average houses of like economic classes if you claim one style is so much better?

>There's no detail or specifics to provide that you would entertain or accept. So there's no point. It doesn't matter anyway because not only are the technical details subpar, the point of the artwork itself is, in my opinion, stupid.

Because you can't. You never yet presented a single example, detail or argument in favor of anything you stated other than "Because I feel so!!!".

I didn't claim that photographic representation was the point. Colorful for the sake of colorful wasn't the point either, but impressionists artists (since that's what we're talking about) utilized color to a far more expert extent and then you can see that in the artwork. This is in part due to the poor medium, and in part due to the inability for the artist to do anything technically worthwhile with light and color.

There's nothing realistic about Balloon Girl for example when compared to Renoir's painting of Two Sisters. It's kind of like a silhouette or something. There really isn't anything there that would separate it from everyday graffiti or something like that.

Take a look: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/14655/two-sisters-on-the-terr...

Here you can see the masterful use of color and very precise paint strokes to illustrate different forms of lightning and how the colors interplay with each other.

The Banksy piece is kind of like, idk how to describe it in comparison without being too offensive. Even the girl's face in the Banksy work looks a little like a girl ogre or like he is a try hard trying to make some political point or something. It's really jarring and weird to look at. When folks are like "omg this is art, it speaks to me" I'm like, did you have an aneurysm?

> I would need you to explain in what sense you think it is euro centric as I have no idea how that is applicable here.

Happy to, the outline of the girl is western. It's not an asian girl, for example. You can clearly see that. The use of a heart balloon is arguably a European interpretation. Not that I think that's necessarily a bad thing I guess, I do think European art prior to the wars was the best that has been created but others may think differently.

> Again how do you feel concrete admits of less detail than plywood or wood or cloth, which is what most older painters used?

It absorbs paint differently. Can you identify an example where concrete is used paint something such as the Mona Lisa or perhaps something that Renoir created as I mentioned above?

> I am glad we could get down to tacks and admit neither of us are artists or art scholars and both our opinions are equally irrelevant on this topic.

I'm still confused as to why you are asking me to justify my thoughts here. It's just my opinion and if you believe art is subjective you simply have to accept my opinion and that it's just as valid as yours might be. There isn't any possible substance to debate unless you want to also argue there is objective criteria in which we can evaluate art. Is that your position?