child prodigy painter

[Rum]

Mistermack shows a stunning level of ignorance in this thread sad to say.

Twaddle? I beg to differ.

[mistermack]

Mistermack shows a stunning level of ignorance in this thread sad to say.
Twaddle? I beg to differ.

Oh right. So suddenly, this twaddle isn't something you either like or dislike, it's ignorant not to value it. ( Sorry, stunningly ignorant ).

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

To me, that picture is a childish mess. I actually prefer this :


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[mistermack]

Why do you assume that my love for art is from some strange conditioning that is supposedly suffusing our culture, when you clearly show by your own example that this conditioning is far from universal?

You can't escape your culture. We reacted in different ways, that's all. I'm a cynic, I admit it. But art isn't unique.
This type of formless intuitive stuff was tried in music, progressive jazz and other similar efforts. But most of the public hear it and switch if off immediatly. The difference with painting is that the stuff CAN sell for a lot of money, and that seems to get it respect. Which helps it sell for a lot of money.
My problems with it stem from the bullshit that comes with it.
This is from wikipedia re the "artist's shit" can.

At the time this piece was created, Manzoni was involved in creating works that explored the relationship between art production and human production. Another example of this would be the piece "Artist's Breath" ("Fiato d'artista") a series of balloons filled with Manzoni's breath.

You don't need to be the world's greatest cynic to recognise bullshit, and it's the bullshit explanations that come with the art that piss ME off.
350 years ago, they didn't need to give a load of bullshit with a painting. It was judged on it's merits. That's the difference.
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[Warren Dew]

Oops.

[hadespussercats]

Why do you assume that my love for art is from some strange conditioning that is supposedly suffusing our culture, when you clearly show by your own example that this conditioning is far from universal?

You can't escape your culture. We reacted in different ways, that's all. I'm a cynic, I admit it. But art isn't unique.
This type of formless intuitive stuff was tried in music, progressive jazz and other similar efforts. But most of the public hear it and switch if off immediatly. The difference with painting is that the stuff CAN sell for a lot of money, and that seems to get it respect. Which helps it sell for a lot of money.
My problems with it stem from the bullshit that comes with it.
This is from wikipedia re the "artist's shit" can.

At the time this piece was created, Manzoni was involved in creating works that explored the relationship between art production and human production. Another example of this would be the piece "Artist's Breath" ("Fiato d'artista") a series of balloons filled with Manzoni's breath.

You don't need to be the world's greatest cynic to recognise bullshit, and it's the bullshit explanations that come with the art that piss ME off.
350 years ago, they didn't need to give a load of bullshit with a painting. It was judged on it's merits. That's the difference.
.

You seem to know a lot about the art world of 350 years ago. Still, I suspect that personal and general politics had as much a role to play in the art world back then as they do now.

I'm also confused by your comment on progressive jazz, given your response to Rum. Are you saying the fact that many people don't respond to it means it's crap? How does that make any more sense than saying that something is good simply because many people DO like it-- i.e. impressionist painting?

[hadespussercats]

Why is it important who created a piece of art? Beyond the obvious aspects of personal viewpoint and technical skill, i mean. I didn't need to be taught to appreciate painting. The first time I saw a Rothko in person, I was moved-- and let me tell you, there is nothing in a Rothko painting that a camera could do better. You seem to enjoy luxuriating in your ignorance, and you apparently have no innate love for what people can create with their minds, hearts, and hands. I'd be embarrassed to echo the Strom Thurmonds of the world-- the people who say "I don't know what art is, but I know what I like." But, as you say, if you're into that, go for it.

The first time I saw a genuine Rothko, I thought - It's a big maroon rectangle, meh. That is all that I have ever thought when seeing a Rothko. However, the first time I saw a Picasso up close, I got him immediately (despite being very dismissive of him beforehand, based solely on seeing prints), the same with Chagall, Kandinsky, Miró, even Pollock - Rothko though, moves me not at all. But I won't slag you off for liking him - art is nothing if not subjective - art is an attempt for an artist to share his or her feelings through whatever medium they choose - something of what Rothko said appealed to you - it just passed me by and continues to do so. Nobody is right or wrong, simply moved or unmoved by a particular piece - that is their right - in fact, more than that, it is something that they cannot control. And if a piece of art can move anybody at all, it has value as art - even if it is just a cow cut in half.

This reminded me of the summer when I was 17, and by a series of lucky coincidences walked into the Toulouse-Lautrec museum in Albi, southern France. I was totally blown away by one of the first rooms - it seemed to be full of light emanating from the impressionist paintings. For some reason my otherwise very well-rounded visual arts teacher (the same through secondary school and gymnasium) had never taken us to see an impressionist collection. During the month that I visited in Albi, I must have been in the museum and in its garden about ten times. Impressionism was for me love at first sight.

The Picasso collection that visited in Helsinki recently was in some ways more impressive, more forceful, and I am glad I saw it. Also the Salvador Dali museum in St Petersburg, Florida, was intriguing and definitely worth seeing. But neither Picasso, nor Dali (or other surrealists) has the same immediate emotional impact on me as impressionists have. Then again, Miro almost drives me wild - the only painter whose works I actually covet. Go figure... But I am happy all these different styles exist. They make life ever so much richer.

Aren't those moments of discovery and wonder something to live for? I had a reaction like the one you describe at Albi, seeing Bernini's sculptures at the Borghese Gallery. I almost cried-- I got breathless. Of course, that's getting a little off-topic, since we're discussing painting, but your comment made me want to share.

[Rum]

Mistermack shows a stunning level of ignorance in this thread sad to say.
Twaddle? I beg to differ.

Oh right. So suddenly, this twaddle isn't something you either like or dislike, it's ignorant not to value it. ( Sorry, stunningly ignorant ).

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

To me, that picture is a childish mess. I actually prefer this :


.

I should probably apologise for the use of the word ‘ignorant’, but I did mean it literally rather than as an insult. My first encounter with higher education was at Art College, so I speak from at least a perspective of theoretical knowledge.

There never was a period where representational art was meant to be purely that. The Greeks where the first people to portray the human figure in a 'realistic' way, but you think that was realistic? No it was ‘idealised’.

In the early Christian era and medieval times, do you think that the paintings they did were meant to be representative of reality? No they represented ideas, grandeur, awe and a human idea of what god was supposed to be about. All of it commissioned by the church.

Later in the Renaissance as people could become rich through things like trade, paintings were for the first time commissioned for non religious purposes. What for? To display the wealth and riches of the patron, often in symbolic form as well as by portraying their luxurious possessions, innate power and so on.

Even the painting style was not ‘realistic’ though often it does look it. The perspectives are forced by the need to look at everything through the ‘window’ of a frame.

These artists, from Titian to El Greco – the ones I assume you think of as ‘realistic’ in some way, all painted differently. Titian, and a thousand others, painted cherubs! Realistic? What united them all, from Greek sculptors to the Pre-Raphaelites was a sense of aesthetics, a search for beauty, balance, composition, symbolism and meaning. They made the best they could from the material they had to work with, to develop a ‘language’ – and aesthetic one that often can make a painting downright look ‘wrong’ if they don’t get it right.

The aesthetic was not superseded by photography when it came along. Photography did not replace these skills and sensibilities. It provided something else, something different and ‘other’. To think otherwise is simply to confuse two different and distinct visual art forms.

‘Modern’ art did not arise because photography replaced representational art then. It actually is a continuation in may ways of the aesthetic tradition which classical artists established. The picture by Turner, so hurriedly dismissed above, was painted well before the French impressionists and was first and foremost ‘classical’ in its intentions.

Not all modern art follows this aesthetic – the search for beauty balance, a sense of rightness in appearance. Modern art is fragmented, fractured, good and bad, as so much of a modern complicated world is. However to dismiss all non representational art, specifically ‘modern’ art as rubbish misses the point. Beauty and artistic sensibility does not depend on an accurate representation of the world.

[hadespussercats]

Mistermack shows a stunning level of ignorance in this thread sad to say.
Twaddle? I beg to differ.

Oh right. So suddenly, this twaddle isn't something you either like or dislike, it's ignorant not to value it. ( Sorry, stunningly ignorant ).

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

To me, that picture is a childish mess. I actually prefer this :


.

I should probably apologise for the use of the word ‘ignorant’, but I did mean it literally rather than as an insult. My first encounter with higher education was at Art College, so I speak from at least a perspective of theoretical knowledge.

There never was a period where representational art was meant to be purely that. The Greeks where the first people to portray the human figure in a 'realistic' way, but you think that was realistic? No it was ‘idealised’.

In the early Christian era and medieval times, do you think that the paintings they did were meant to be representative of reality? No they represented ideas, grandeur, awe and a human idea of what god was supposed to be about. All of it commissioned by the church.

Later in the Renaissance as people could become rich through things like trade, paintings were for the first time commissioned for non religious purposes. What for? To display the wealth and riches of the patron, often in symbolic form as well as by portraying their luxurious possessions, innate power and so on.

Even the painting style was not ‘realistic’ though often it does look it. The perspectives are forced by the need to look at everything through the ‘window’ of a frame.

These artists, from Titian to El Greco – the ones I assume you think of as ‘realistic’ in some way, all painted differently. Titian, and a thousand others, painted cherubs! Realistic? What united them all, from Greek sculptors to the Pre-Raphaelites was a sense of aesthetics, a search for beauty, balance, composition, symbolism and meaning. They made the best they could from the material they had to work with, to develop a ‘language’ – and aesthetic one that often can make a painting downright look ‘wrong’ if they don’t get it right.

The aesthetic was not superseded by photography when it came along. Photography did not replace these skills and sensibilities. It provided something else, something different and ‘other’. To think otherwise is simply to confuse two different and distinct visual art forms.

‘Modern’ art did not arise because photography replaced representational art then. It actually is a continuation in may ways of the aesthetic tradition which classical artists established. The picture by Turner, so hurriedly dismissed above, was painted well before the French impressionists and was first and foremost ‘classical’ in its intentions.

Not all modern art follows this aesthetic – the search for beauty balance, a sense of rightness in appearance. Modern art is fragmented, fractured, good and bad, as so much of a modern complicated world is. However to dismiss all non representational art, specifically ‘modern’ art as rubbish misses the point. Beauty and artistic sensibility does not depend on an accurate representation of the world.

Thank you for taking the time to coherently and cogently explain the history of art through the lens of realism/idealism and capitalism. And I for one loved your Turner. There's another of his, "Slave Ship" I think it's called, at the MFA in Boston or at the Met in New York (I don't remember which), in a similar style, which has captivated me in the past.

[Rum]

Thank you for taking the time to coherently and cogently explain the history of art through the lens of realism/idealism and capitalism. And I for one loved your Turner. There's another of his, "Slave Ship" I think it's called, at the MFA in Boston or at the Met in New York (I don't remember which), in a similar style, which has captivated me in the past.

You are most welcome. It is sometimes worth taking the trouble in this loony bin to stop and be serious.

And incidentally the National Gallery in London has thirty of forty Turner's all in space dedicated to him. I have spent hours there. Wonderful stuff. Go if ever you can!

[mistermack]

I'm also confused by your comment on progressive jazz, given your response to Rum. Are you saying the fact that many people don't respond to it means it's crap? How does that make any more sense than saying that something is good simply because many people DO like it-- i.e. impressionist painting?

Good point, but I think I did give a clue, when I mentioned the respect that visual arts get, because of the huge sums that some of it sells for. If you could somehow bottle an original beatles performance, so that only you posessed the original, touched by their own hands, it would probably sell for many millions. But people can download music for pennies, and there is no way of uniquely preserving the performance part. You can't posess the work of art in the same way. So paintings especially have a huge price advantage. And price gets attention and brings respect.

As well as that, I think that art and fashion are incredibly similar. People go for impressionist art for the same reason they buy designer labels. To impress, and look trendy. And just like fashion, if you're "in vogue" with the critics you can ask much more money. I'm not saying thats all of it, but it is a substantial factor in all art "appreciation".

Aren't those moments of discovery and wonder something to live for? I had a reaction like the one you describe at Albi, seeing Bernini's sculptures at the Borghese Gallery. I almost cried-- I got breathless. Of course, that's getting a little off-topic, since we're discussing painting, but your comment made me want to share.

This is exactly how my mother and Aunts used to speak, when they came home from Lourds. Are you sure you're not getting off on an illusion, just like them? It is perfectly possible to get huge fulfillment from something that doesn't even exist, so I wouldn't count your obvious pleasure as proof of any real quality. Having said that, I suppose art rarely starts wars, so it's not as bad as religion.
.

[mistermack]

I should probably apologise for the use of the word ‘ignorant’, but I did mean it literally rather than as an insult. My first encounter with higher education was at Art College, so I speak from at least a perspective of theoretical knowledge.

No problem. I'm just interested in the attitude of not just you, but the world in general, that art is something you SHOULD think is great, and that you are somehow lacking, if you don't think that. It's so like religion. I'm an art atheist I suppose. I think it's all in the mind, like god. But just like god, it can provide some pretty intense experiences.
The reaction on here to my art atheism is a bit like what I would get from strongly religious people, if I say there is no god.

Even the painting style was not ‘realistic’ though often it does look it. The perspectives are forced by the need to look at everything through the ‘window’ of a frame.

But you know what they are trying to do. They may exaggerate for more effect. But anyone can see the effect they are after. There's no need for bullshit.

The hardest thing in the world to paint is the human face. That's because our brains know EXACTLY what a face is like, to the thousandth of an inch.
When you look at paintings from some eras, like the time of Henry V111, the painting of the robes is astoundingly realistic, you feel you can almost touch it. But the faces are not in the same class at all. That's why artists even today shy away from portraits.

When the camera came along, it was the way it captured faces that shocked and demoralised artists. They suddenly realised just how bad they were at realism. From that moment on, it was a waste of time trying to compete. I firmly believe that if the camera had not come along, you would NEVER have got artists like Mondrian, or Picasso. ( or works like shit-in-a-tin ).
.

[hadespussercats]

Thank you for taking the time to coherently and cogently explain the history of art through the lens of realism/idealism and capitalism. And I for one loved your Turner. There's another of his, "Slave Ship" I think it's called, at the MFA in Boston or at the Met in New York (I don't remember which), in a similar style, which has captivated me in the past.

You are most welcome. It is sometimes worth taking the trouble in this loony bin to stop and be serious.

And incidentally the National Gallery in London has thirty of forty Turner's all in space dedicated to him. I have spent hours there. Wonderful stuff. Go if ever you can!

Ahh. Someday...

[hadespussercats]

I'm also confused by your comment on progressive jazz, given your response to Rum. Are you saying the fact that many people don't respond to it means it's crap? How does that make any more sense than saying that something is good simply because many people DO like it-- i.e. impressionist painting?

Good point, but I think I did give a clue, when I mentioned the respect that visual arts get, because of the huge sums that some of it sells for. If you could somehow bottle an original beatles performance, so that only you posessed the original, touched by their own hands, it would probably sell for many millions. But people can download music for pennies, and there is no way of uniquely preserving the performance part. You can't posess the work of art in the same way. So paintings especially have a huge price advantage. And price gets attention and brings respect.

As well as that, I think that art and fashion are incredibly similar. People go for impressionist art for the same reason they buy designer labels. To impress, and look trendy. And just like fashion, if you're "in vogue" with the critics you can ask much more money. I'm not saying thats all of it, but it is a substantial factor in all art "appreciation".

Aren't those moments of discovery and wonder something to live for? I had a reaction like the one you describe at Albi, seeing Bernini's sculptures at the Borghese Gallery. I almost cried-- I got breathless. Of course, that's getting a little off-topic, since we're discussing painting, but your comment made me want to share.

This is exactly how my mother and Aunts used to speak, when they came home from Lourds. Are you sure you're not getting off on an illusion, just like them? It is perfectly possible to get huge fulfillment from something that doesn't even exist, so I wouldn't count your obvious pleasure as proof of any real quality. Having said that, I suppose art rarely starts wars, so it's not as bad as religion.
.

Impressionist art is over one hundred years old-- hardly a current trend.

As for your Lourdes comment, well, of course part of what I'm getting off on, as you so gracefully put it, is illusory-- art is all about taking the concrete and imbuing it with illusions. Still, the material object exists, and was created by humans (in contrast to your Lourdes example, art has never been claimed to be supernatural.) Bernini's sculptures are objects that were created with rare virtuosic emotional insight and technical skill, and they are hardly illusions-- though Bernini's ability to make marble seem like warm human flesh is an illusion par excellence.

[Ronja]

Thank you for taking the time to coherently and cogently explain the history of art through the lens of realism/idealism and capitalism. And I for one loved your Turner. There's another of his, "Slave Ship" I think it's called, at the MFA in Boston or at the Met in New York (I don't remember which), in a similar style, which has captivated me in the past.

You are most welcome. It is sometimes worth taking the trouble in this loony bin to stop and be serious.

Definitely! And thanks, Rum, for your thoughtful, insightful, and enjoyable posts in this thread (and elsewhere)

And incidentally the National Gallery in London has thirty of forty Turner's all in space dedicated to him. I have spent hours there. Wonderful stuff. Go if ever you can!

Aaahhh - well, one can always dream.

Our 15th anniversary is in July 2012 - if we manage to scrape together enough money, we could show the kids where we went for our honeymoon (Snowdonia), and then maybe squeeze in some more of the British Isles...

[mistermack]

Impressionist art is over one hundred years old-- hardly a current trend.

No but it's still trendy. In the sense that it's very much fashionable to own, and fashionable to like.

I would predict that it will always be so. Because it's slap bang in the middle.
It's not realism, which now doesn't look so stunningly real to our modern eyes, that are accustomed to genuine realism from the digital photograph.
And it's not totally abstract, so we don't have a little voice in our heads saying "what the fuck is that?" or even "is the artist taking the piss?"
So it's in the ideal place. All that stuff in the middle will stay fashionable, especially if it has nice colours.

As for your Lourdes comment, well, of course part of what I'm getting off on, as you so gracefully put it, is illusory-- art is all about taking the concrete and imbuing it with illusions.

Yes, but are part of the illusions already in your head, or do they come totally from the paint on a canvas?
And do you need the speil that goes with the painting, before the illusion is complete?

How many works of art could stand on their own, without any accompanying speil? Sometimes this is given with a work, sometimes indirectly through interviews, or written introductions to an exhibition.

Perhaps we should regard the speil as part of the work of art. In many cases it's the most important bit. The only problem is that the speil belongs to everyone. You can only "own" the paint and canvas. So if I was an artist, I would supply the bullshit along with the canvas, in my own handwriting, and titled "bullshit of the artist".
If people will buy "shit of the artist", they should be well pleased with that.
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