Was bouncing around amazon.com looking at various things and ran across reproductions of famous art. Not prints or posters, but actualpaintings. Thought “That would be kinda cool. Actual texture and brush strokes and not just a glossy print.”
Of course, having run into my share of snobby artiste’ assholes in the past, I immediately heard one of them in my head being as hypercritical of such things as he was of life in general.
So my question is; If you ran into one of these in someone’s house, properly framed and all that, would you think it was cool, or that they were just middle class art posers?
Now using the art in any other medium is just fine. A “Starry Night” windshield screen is cool. So is a Monet umbrella. But as framed art for a wall - no.
These have become possible with all those Chinese and Indian cheap and talented painters.
Personally, I dont see the advantage. Maybe with paintings where the thick blobs of paint are part of the appeal, like Karel Appel or so. But otherwise…i probably would wonder: why? But I’d be interested in seeing why it could be a plus. .
I can’t imagine why I would care. I suppose if they went on and on about their Picasso, I might get annoyed, but if someone likes a particular painting or painter and can’t afford a real one but doesn’t want the dorm-y look of a poster, then more power to them.
The funny thing is this attitude seems pretty scarce among actual artists; I don’t think I’ve met an artist that didn’t have a print or reproduction on hand.
Note that the linked Amazon items are not actual paintings. They’re basically high-end inkjet prints (the term is usually “glicée”) printed on canvas and wrapped around a frame. So really, these are just fancy posters.
I grew up in a 1960’s middlebrow home that had (not) Rembrandt’s Man In The Golden Helmet, and various Utrillo reproductions on the walls. Basically the same level of taste that enjoyed “exotic” Italian restaurants of the era with heavy carved woodwork and two-foot tall pepper grinders.
But the Baby Boomers had a strong anti-phony ethos, so in the 1970’s, the kind of people who thought Woody Allen movies were about them would put reproductions on their walls re-contextualized as posters showing which museum was having a show that included it.
My parents never set foot in a museum, and they never claimed to have done so. But the 70’s sophisticates were proclaiming “I get around to significant cultural events” even if they only bought the posters at the mall frame shop.
I have a Monet reproduction in my house. I love it. All of my friends think it’s nice. If I had a spare $15,000,000 laying around I’d get the real deal, alas, won’t happen.
I don’t think having a copy or even a poster is any worse than, say, owning furniture in a particular style that’s been around since Louis Quinz or owning a half-timbered house that’s six months old.
I’ve been tempted once or twice to go for a painting or two here (ad atop the page). But I haven’t, in case the painting, in faux half-timbered-house terms, turns out to be vinyl siding.
What’s wrong with posters? Given the choice between some an original work from some unknown contemporary artist - which is the most I can imagine affording - and the Hopper poster I bought in a mall, I’d go with the Hopper. Why? Because it looks better, and I want something pretty over my desk.
There is nothing wrong with prints, to include prints on canvas. Some of the “on canvas” prints are pretty good, as I found out when I rmoved the frame from a piece I have had for years and discovered that the image ended on a razor straight line just under the frame inside edge. What you have to look out for is buying what may look like original art (or even represented as original art by some floating starving artists operation).
If you want original stuff at a reasonable price you might think about investing a day of two going to a studio tour – many area artists groups run these. You can see a wide selection of work by a variety of artists and buy something in your price range with out subsidizing a middle man. If there is a university or college with a strong visual arts department they often put on student shows with high quality work that is for sale.
Another advantage of dealing directly with the artist is that you can haggle and bargain.
Ah, now I see, Chimera indeed linked to fairly large prints on canvas. Those, I have no problem with, although I don’t see the advantage over framed prints on paper. Prints are prints.
I thought Chimera was referring to hand made oil reproductions made in China by artists. Like here. This copy of Monets waterlilies is hand painted and cheaper (30 to 130 dollars depending on size) then the canvas prints linked by Chimera. And it is all handwork, carefully copied.
Lots of Western “artists” these days make a design on their computers and then outsource the actual painting in oil paint to a Chinese artist. Then they sell the completed painting with their name on it in a New York art gallery.
I vote for “bourgeois posing”, for several reasons:
Purchasing a high-end copy of a famous painting implies that your taste is heavily influenced by what authorities have officially certified as art. Everyone knows Monet is Good Art – he hangs in famous museums, ofter all! This sort of deference to official museum culture is one bourgeois marker.
It also suggests a certain lack of receptive nuance. Whoo, it has brush strokes! But are the brush strokes interesting? Are you actually engaging with the physicality of the piece, or only the abstracted image?
There’s a LOT of real art out there being made by real working artists. Go to galleries, look on line – for the price of one of these high-end copies you could have an original piece or a print that’s just as pretty.
