Do you think the rise of casual photography had anything to do with the change? Correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, but it would make sense and the time frame seems to more or less match.

Fascinating. Obvious follow-up question, what about non-european art? a random image search of ukiyoe shows plenty of closed-mouth smiles but few toothy ones.

@SB-tj5sp

5 ай бұрын

yes, a follow-up video focusing on the "Others" would be beyond intriguing.

I'm wondering if the change happened because of the development of photography -- the sudden appearance of smiles in art seems to correlate pretty closely with the development of snapshots (that is, photography that doesn't take several seconds to expose), which allows for capturing a moment rather than only a posed setting. Like, as soon as it's possible to capture people's expressions as they occur rather than a carefully selected expression, smiles suddenly become fine and have no moral implications. Or to put that another way, when it suddenly becomes possible to get pictures of aristocrats smiling whether they meant to or not, almost overnight, smiles suddenly aren't a sign of low morals and poor breeding.

@jochentram9301

3 ай бұрын

Photgraphy predates this phenomenon by about 40 years. There are photographs of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, and an official photo of President Lincoln (several, in fact). And frankly, judging by how long actresses and actors and some sports performers keep smiles plastered on their faces today, doing it for long enough that a painter can at least do a sketch of the smiling person ought to be trivial. Also, as the video notes, pre-1900 art *does* have smiling people. The smiles just aren't coded as something positive.

I think one huge factor in this shift is the introduction of the Kodak Brownie Camera to consumers in 1900. Sure, photography existed for decades before this, and saw some huge changes with the development of dry collodion processes (among other things), which made photography portable, making it popular as an attraction at resorts and carnivals (which were themselves exploding in popularity in the late 19th century). But the Kodak was the first really accessible user-friendly camera- you buy the plates and send them to the company to develop. Suddenly there's a ton more people dabbling in photography outside of a formal portrait setting, and experimenting with silly poses (think college kids posing in a pile, or dressing up the family pets). This is also the first time you can really have candids and other spur-of-the-moment pictures. Photo portraiture was fairly common before this point, but it'd be a special occasion thing, to mark a new birth or a graduation or an engagement. In fact, an engagement photo might do in place of a ring for poorer couples. This all has inspired me to go through very early films to see who's smiling and when-- I'll bet actualities (proto-documentaries) will have at least a few people mugging at the camera. I wonder too if some of the art shift might be from early expression work in silent films. In a pre-trailer era, early stars would be marketed by a collection of still photos of their dramatic expressions, including joy and humor-- Florence Lawrence and Ruth Roland, some of the first movie stars, were putting these out in the early 1910s. Lawrence, Roland and Max Linder were all shown smiling in their marketing. Speaking of which, Laura Bayley, who may have the very earliest claim to stardom depending on how we define a star, starred in and may have directed "facials", which were comic short films emphasizing goofy expressions. Her 1903 film "Mary Jane's Mishap" is a key example of "grinning= working class idiot" at work.

I’m glad that laughter and smiles have become socially acceptable, because I definitely did both watching this video! Very well written, edited, and illustrated.

I like to think that some young person showed their parents one of their favorite paintings and the parents were creeped out by the fact that they were smiling. Like, its a normal painting to /us/ but would look weird to someone who grew up with different art

I love when i have no interest in the subject but the videos is so good that i found myself excited to learn more! Great video!

I can't help but notice the similarities in your video making style and Red's 🙂 ...and yes I'll lick my brushes you can't stop ME-

Holy crap this is friggin wild!!! Hell yeah, pushing social conventions! Hehehehehehe!🎉🥳💖💓!!! Is it the advent of photography? I'm guessing photography!! Edit: hahahahah i was way off! Lol, your informed take on it is so much cooler!

Something I did not know. Yay learning and citing your sources! We’ll done! …have someone else lick the brushes?!? Great idea!

this is really well written and edited thank you!

Here to here OSP Red’s mama’s voice!

@tno1990

9 ай бұрын

That is kinda weird?

i really enjoyed that a lot, subscribed!

That was fascinating! I wonder how things were outside of Europe?

My favorite smile painting is "The Swing," by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The woman has a dopey grin on her face, and the man looking up her dress is positively leering. But then, these are not respectable people, are they?

Commenting the feed the algorithm and share a tiny useless fact: Time Immemorial, for the purposes of British law and basically nothing else, means "before 1187", the time a of a big reformation of the legal system under Henry II. Basically "anything that was true before we started writing it all down".

@bruce-le-smith

9 ай бұрын

that is really interesting, some citations would be nice to feel like it may be true, but even if it's not true i love the concept

@killfalcon

9 ай бұрын

@@bruce-le-smith Wikipedia cites Black's Law Dictionary, which I think is not available online. With reading the article mind, it also talks about how the phrase is used in other contexts. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial

Did other cultures depict smiling. I know the Egyptians and Chinese rarely did.

my key takeaway is that big dental is controlling the art world so that they can make more profit

I have an alternative theory that is not explored here or suggested in the comments. I think it had more to do with dentistry than anything else. I find there's a lot of "modesty" customs through history that I suspect are placed in order to protect the pride of people in places of power that would otherwise be out-looked by common folk with a little bit of genetic luck. Like how monasteries and samurai both shaved their heads to look like balding men even if they weren't. Probably because some high-ranking dude WAS balding and everyone had to look just as bad. Similarly I find it probable that many nobles and respectable people back then had terrible teeth. It would have been shameful to show a bad set of teeth, and it would be disrespectful to show off a GOOD set of teeth too. So nobody polite would show their teeth; good or bad.

@jochentram9301

3 ай бұрын

Tooth decay isn't a very major problem prior to cheap(ish) cane sugar, and as late as the mid-17th century, Cromwell's demand that his official picture as Lord Protector show him "warts and all" was considered *very* unusual. It would have been trivial for a painter to show King Such-and-So with pearly whites, even if he had only blackened stumps in reality, is the point. Plenty such pictures didn't show, e. g., smallpox scarring, even if we know from textual descriptions that the person in question had them. Republican Rome is very into true-to-life statuary, but starting with Augustus, the depictions of rulers become idealised, and stay that way until ~1900 CE. Even photos of Wilhelm II of Germany are always pretty carefully staged not to show the man's crippled arm. Plus, I must point out that plenty of art shows full nudity, male and/or female, including frontal view, *but no smiles*. So, these times considered the depiction of *naked genitals* more socially acceptable than the depiction of a smile. (Though the casual acceptance of nudity doesn't surprise me much; the people depicted in those artworks were likely quite used to being naked around people. Their own bodyservants, for a certainty)

@Rodrigo_Vega

3 ай бұрын

@@jochentram9301 Sure, the _painting_ could depict King Such-and-So with perfect teeth but why _woud_ they do it if toothy grins are already considered a class-less display from in-person experience? Even if you personally have a "good" set of wathever; hair, breasts, teeth. Would be incosidered "inmodest" to flaunt or depict it if the next rich/royal might not have it. The point about sugar, if anything I believe works in my favor. While sugary treats were expensive, only the higher classes had access to them and it's even possible that the lower social classes would have had _better_ teeth than the rich and noble. Only after sugar was widely accesible to the poor, and they all started having terrible teeth while the higher classes started benefiting from more balanced meals and early developments of dentistry did it suddenly become ok to show and compare teeth.

@jochentram9301

3 ай бұрын

@@Rodrigo_Vega Archaeology does rather support the notion that bad teeth, like gout, was a rich person's disease. I'd dispute that rich people had a "more balanced diet" starting ~1900; that's still a period when consumption of sweets and (especially) a lot of meat is a wealth marker. That whole "lots of sugar and lots of meat is bad for you" realisation doesn't come along till the 1970s, at the earliest. Arguably, it still hasn't fully penetrated society even now.

@Rodrigo_Vega

3 ай бұрын

@@jochentram9301Interesting. I'd imagine though, eating the same grain day in and day out wasn't the most fantastic source of nutrients either. After all, all those paintings of plentiful and diverse fruits also suggest to me that the wealthy had access to a wide variety of healthy side-dishes and snacks too. Like a powertful signifier of how diverse, ressourceful and far reaching your lands and trade routes are. So maybe they had that going for them.

@jochentram9301

3 ай бұрын

@@Rodrigo_Vega It's not like poor people ate only grains. Vegetables were extremely common, from cabbages (every Euro country has some form of sauerkraut), to various pulses (pead, lentils, etc.), and depending on time and area, meats, most commonly pork, and fish. And, of course, such fruits as are native to Europe, like apples. All of this is pretty well documented, actually.