Really?

We can't be any further away from each other on this opinion.

The cartoons from when I was young were cookie-cutter, poorly-rendered crap. Even the ones I enjoyed watching were badly drawn. The toons I mention in this thread, however, are for the most part, very well-done. Whether you like them or not, at least they have a style all their own.

Maybe you're thinking of the Saturday AM cartoons these days, which are worse than anything Filmation ever did.

By 'Fourth Wall', i mean references to things in real life. South Park is set too much in the real world for my taste.

Maybe I'm using the term in the wrong way, but that's what annoys me about it.  <shrug>

Good, glad to hear there's still freedom of thought

Seriously tho, I understand south park, I just don't LIKE south park.

Oh, and that style is to cartoons as impressionism is to painting?? Dude, that "style" is informed by bad flash-imation and is as much it's own art style as drop shadows are.

to each his own, as long as it's my way.

Sure, Jim. Welcome to a long line of people who said the same about a new approach to art, a new way to do things, and a new language. Let's see...

Andy Warhol: "Puting different horrid inks in a sucession of Monroe's pictures not only it is not art, as it is a dubious complement to the actress Marilyn Monroe". Victus Burns

Piet Cornelis Mondrian: "As an artist, this man should be very well cared. In a mental institution".
I really don't like Mondrian. But he is in the history of art and the french gentleman that made this generous "critique" not only is it not, as we don't even know or care to know his name.

I could go on and on, but I lack the will. Enough said that its perfectly fine to not like a thing. But to confuse "not liking" with "lack of art qualities" is a long step.

Let them, Dugan, one day you may have a surprise.

The inflated prices of art are more a social imperative than a quatification of quality. The problem is "uniqueness" and that is a social problem of giving value to things that only one person can have. I'm all for the copy machines.

However there is also uniqueness in the art of some people.  And the way light and dimension began to be seen after Van Gogh, and after prejudice could be riped apart, permitted to g through a road that ended for example in the comix and cartoons. You may not like it, but it is unfair and dangerous to take out the importance of new ways to see things.

One day an American journalist said to Picasso that everybody could do what he was doing. Picasso laughed and draw a perfect circle just with a pencil. And then he asked if the journalist could do that.

Salvador Dali has maybe the most profound paintings in modern history. Few people could, then and after, reimagine reality as he could. Do you like fantasy? Everybody drank from him. The insconscient, the fantasy, the realization that our fears, desires and shame is as true as a lanscape.

The impressionists were able, not only create a new approach to art, as to redefine the way we see the world.

Dogs Playing Poker, by C. M. Coolidge, probably wouldn't be possible if before there wasn't impressionism.

Starting?
  :mrgreen:

I'm not a big South Park fan either, but I'll disagree a little bit here.
The animation for SP *is* art.
It's very simplistic, and I think a deliberate intent of the creators.
But it's still art.
Heck, a six year old's drawing of a dog is art.
It's just not very good art, unless you're the parent of the six year old who drew it.

It's the same with any creative medium.
There are going to be those who like something that's created, and those who don't, but that certainly doesn't invalidate that something. 
Sermon over.
Kevin

Naah, just turned a corner...

Degeneration implies things are going wrong. The forum is darned healthy, given the caliber and breadth of the responses.

I agree with Kevin about whether or not it's "ART" - but I agree it's not worth a lot.

I prefer my comics to have comedy that's not hot off the news page. While it might be funny to some, all too often it's depressing to me. Hence my preference for the more simplistic world view in Anime and Comics.

There's an expression; "I used to be disgusted, now I'm just amused"....

Okay. This is a very old complex discussion. I'll just say this more two cents of opinion and leave it at it.

The concept of art is subjective. The first greeks who made the pots we now consider amazing works of art, didn't had the concept. For them it was work. Pretty to sell.
Art doesn't have to be difficult or crafty. Some of it is, and we admire that, but it is not necessary to be true art. Mozart didn't have any difficulty in composing. Yet...
Not liking a piece of art doesn't make it lesser of a peace of art. And I don't feel that I have to like it because everybody says its a work of art.
I wouldn't waste a million in a painting, because if i had a million I would have better things to do with it.
But I sitted for two hours admiring "La Liberté guidant le peuple" from Delacroix.
Doing a piece of art with simple mechanics requires sometimes more knowledge of the universe than doing it the hard way. Can I put here the good phrase: "Simple but not simplistic?"
Pop art uses the multiplication of themes and the technological capacity of our society to express itself, but the multiplication of themes and the technological capacity is not in itself art.

I teach young children, so please, name me one that can make south park and I point her as a genius.

The dark side, yes. All good comedies, since the greek theatre, passing through Shakespeare and ending in the "Comedie Noir" were about the dark side of people and societies. Why do you think comedy was invented? To laugh about the powerful without the powerful put the critic in the jail or... worse. Vulgar? Some, yes. But some look like being cruel and vulgar and are just trying to maintain our eyes open. About being clever and witty? Well, you can see Duffy Duck and Bugs fighting innocently each other and pretend that the world isn't changing. That old models are dead, that we have to deal with new perspectives, new problems, new ways of scaryig us, or you can deal with it laughing. I prefer the last one.

Its your offer, It's legit, I won't try to convince you out of it. But if someone try to sell you a true Van Gogh, say, for about, ahhh... 3000$, okay 5000$, please hold it for me because I would buy it... I know it is a loosing business, but I'd do it... No problemo.

Well...I for one was doing drawings that looked like southpark (simple geometric shapes together) when I was 3-4 years old. Then again, I've been drawing since I was 2...and my mom used to do fashion plate drawings in High School.  So I guess I can show ya myself on that part.  I was doing southpark in construction paper at 6.  And submitted design modifications to the Saturn V rocket for payload deliver and warship (missile) use to NASA in 6th grade.  *shrug*  Then again, I'm anything but average.

As I've tried to tell my sons...Humor that is cruel, demeaning, and at the expense of someone else's dignity and self-worth is not humor. It's just meaness and wrong.  *shrug* Again, I'm something of an anomaly in my perceptions of things too. I don't see gray. Half-right is still half-assed.

Here's some of my stuff from 20 and 10 years ago as example.   

http://www.angelfire.com/or/FireHorse/gallery.html

"And now, it's time for the penguin on top of your television set to explode"