Art Reproductions: Bourgeois Posing or Cool

[Boyo_Jim]

@amarinth

I don’t think those are actual paintings, they look like prints on canvas (as opposed to prints on paper).

I wouldn’t think twice about someone having that in their house.

@FlyingDragonFan

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.

Edit: Ahh, sorry amarinth, I missed your post.

They are listed as “oil paintings”, the material listing says “oil” and “canvas”. If these are not paintings, they are seriously misrepresenting the products.

I don’t see any problem with imitations. Having worked at the Smithsonian and the National Gallery, I know the institutions are very accommodating to copyists, allowing them to come in with materials and easels and sit within a few feet of originals and copy them.

But I wouldn’t buy one from an online source, because it’s very unlikely the photos online would be of sufficient resolution to make a judgment about the quality of the work, For instance, it might be that the links in the OP are mislabeled prints, because you really can’t see enough details to judge brushwork or texture in the photos. So – are they prints, or paintings so rushed and untextured that they are more like imitations of posters than they are copies of paintings, or are they good imitation paintings with low-res pictures?

[Slithy_Tove]

@Maastricht

This is cool! You can email them a picture and they make it into a stylized portrait, for instance a Klee.

(Klimt, of course, but anyone might make that typo) Anyway, Dammit, why didn’t I think of that?! I could still cage in on faux Egon Schiele (too nasty to link) You’ll look like you were painted in garbage drippings, but you’ll be as thin as you always wished!

[Kenm]

@The_Hamster_King

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?

And I’ll drink wine only from the north end of the vinyard.

[aruvqan]

@Nightfall1

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.

Hell, my parents had a real one and I wouldn’t want it … of course it had the damned eyes that follow you around the room, and as a 4 year old it terrified the freaking hell out of me :eek:

I much prefer Van Gogh anyway make that a good minor one and I would happily take it [I love sunflowers. My final project one year for Studio in Art was effectively a forged copy of Sunflowers 1888 using my own sunflowers and vase. The requirement was to do a piece in the style of some famous artist. A friend of mine did a melting bicycle like the clock in The Persistence of memory by Dali.]

[silenus]

@Kenm

And I’ll drink wine only from the north end of the vinyard.

Dilettante.

True conny-sewers favor the north-west corner, from vines that grow parallel to the ley lines.

[Maastricht]

@aruvqan

HMy final project one year for Studio in Art was effectively a forged copy of Sunflowers 1888 using my own sunflowers and vase. The requirement was to do a piece in the style of some famous artist. A friend of mine did a melting bicycle like the clock in The Persistence of memory by Dali.]

You painted the picture in the link? That is pretty damn neat. Must be the colors van Gogh originally intended; a hundred years later, most of his sunflower paintings have sadly become brown.

@Slithy_Tove

(Klimt, of course, but anyone might make that typo) Anyway, Dammit, why didn’t I think of that?! I could still cage in on faux Egon Schiele (too nasty to link) You’ll look like you were painted in garbage drippings, but you’ll be as thin as you always wished!

:smack: Klimt, of course. Yes, it would be interesting to see how a new Schiele would look.

[Chimera]

@Maastricht

Ah, now I see, Chimera indeed linked to fairly large prints on canvas.

On doing further research, that appears to be true. And I found them significantly cheaper elsewhere, including from the Van Gogh Museum.

@Boyo Jim

They are listed as “oil paintings”, the material listing says “oil” and “canvas”. If these are not paintings, they are seriously misrepresenting the products.

I would definitely agree, especially in the case of Amazon and their [del]$999.99[/del] You save… crap. NO ONE is selling these things for even remotely close to a grand. Amazon is at the high end of what they’re going for.

@The_Hamster_King

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.

@Kenm

And I’ll drink wine only from the north end of the vinyard.

Pretty much. I linked the Almond Blossoms because I like it. And my experience is that it is the elitist snobs who care more about ‘name’ than the general public. So reason 1 there isn’t exactly “bourgeois”.

[Deeg]

@The_Hamster_King

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.

This attitude, to me, comes perilously close to posing. I really like van Gogh in part because of his brush work. I’ve never considered buying a poster for that reason but I’d consider a reproduction if it was good quality (i.e. a faithful copy). I like very few modernist painters (Monet can go jump in his lily-covered lake); does this mean I like van Gogh because he is museum certified? Why is it posing for me to have a VG reproduction if I like it?

[Slithy_Tove]

BTW, it cheers my old heart to hear “bourgeois” used as an insult.