Great art is rooted in the hardest of human emotion. Is why we look back to ancient culture with reverance and sometimes nostalgia. We wouldn't want to be there in the midst of the brawl, most of us moderns would rather jump from the bridge. But our human spirit and memory recognizes the suffering and sacrifices of the ancestors. It's why there really isn't any "great art" anymore, at least in the classical sense, as those with the means to produce it don't have any great emotions. We will probably get there again, but like an LLM, sometimes humans need to reconstitute the entire corpus to make a rather small change

• AlecSchueler

  today at 4:50 PM

  > It's why there really isn't any "great art" anymore, at least in the classical sense

  This is a tautology, no? There's plenty of great art being made today by people feeling the same emotions as those in the past.

  • jubilee33

    today at 4:57 PM

    Well "great" is rather subjective. But in terms of collective agreement we can conclusive say there really isn't anything like the art of the past made today. As an artist I was invited to a much vaunted exhibition in Venice itself recently. It consisted of a woman sitting in urine ...but with a kind message asking bystanders to please not poop in her tank.. The link if you fail to believe it.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/arts/design/venice-bienna...

    Modern art and artists indeed do mirror the feeling of their age.

    • soiltype

      today at 5:37 PM

      I do not think this pseudo-intellectual desire to ape art styles of the past is really very compatible with the soul of an artist. Artists make two things: what moves them, and what they are paid to make. Ideally, these are the same thing.

      No one is stopping you from commissioning paintings such as the ones you revere as the peak of art, by the way. Open your wallet if that's what you want. That's how great art was made back then. But if the depth of your insight on the human condition is whatever you're posting here, I do not know if your commissions would capture the meaning you seem to want.

      • jubilee33

        today at 5:51 PM

        Your absolutely correct. The Venice exhibition was made with 600 thousand euros of public money. The great art of the last age was also commissioned by rich nobility, basically the same as there was no public funds at that stage of developmemt. So you admitted that the public purse and what it is willing to pay to commission for public art is useful measure of a pseudoscientific constant, namely that of the public consideration of the "great art" of that age. I'm not sure that fountains of human excrement convey the grandeur that your attributing to modern art however.

        We can make better than the past for sure, there is no point to rehash the glory of old, but we so far have not. In archeology there is a constant and agreed upon "decadent" style that can indicate when cultures have experienced conditions, for external or internal reasons, that ultimately led to their decline and downfall.

        It's amazing that we cannot recognize the same precursors in our own. But perhaps this is interdisciplinary blindness?

• soiltype

  today at 5:41 PM

  > those with the means to produce it don't have any great emotions.

  Actually, re-reading your original post, this comes across as so asinine I do have to wonder if I'm replying to an LLM. Because it makes no sense to say that artists don't have emotions today that can compare to checks notes rowdy Venetians beating the shit out of each other.

• today at 5:07 PM

On Ponte dei Pugni (Bridge of Fists), which was the most famous venue for these spectacles, there are marble feet markings which were the starting positions for fighters.

Gotta love how some of the spectators on the larger Joseph Heintz the Younger painting enjoy the entertainment. Too bad that these images predate the invention of popcorn!

If anyone's played Assassin's Creed II (or any of the Ezio games) (these older games were produced with help from historians) Ezio's scar comes from a street fight on Ponte Vecchio in Venice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKTXd7L01pI2

• ziofill

  today at 5:03 PM

  Ponte Vecchio is in Florence

  • coffeecantcode

    today at 5:53 PM

    Interested in whether these bridge brawls were isolated to just Venice, maybe tanners and butchers had it out on all checks notes 3 of Florence’s main bridges

I love reading the little vignettes of history. Thanks for posting!