This is not a jab at modern art- I love the idea of it, and love most of it that I’ve seen. I seek out modern art galleries when I go out of town.
With almost all famous artists of the type, even if I don’t like the piece, I can usually see that it was created by someone with talent. Except Basquiat. His pieces are, to be blunt, figures that a typical first grader could mimic, with words written around them, and splashes of color that don’t really blend. Even his early graffiti is the type that any non-artist could reproduce, not those awesome creations that real artists spray paint on bridges and train cars. Spatiality and dimensionality, qualities any average artist possesses, seem to be beyond him.
Please, modern art afficianados, either echo my assessment, or tell me where I’m wrong. And if he wasn’t talented, why all the hype? Becasue of his ethnicity?
Well I think he was quite talented, but it’s true his career was also marked by art world hype and his own enormous ambition. Plenty of people made a lot of money off of his work. Such things, for some people, take something away from the achievements.
Different strokes and so on, so I won’t go into how his work look nothing like a first grader’s, or that it genuinely doesn’t matter if sometimes colors “don’t really blend”, or that plenty of great art has words in it, or utterly lacks spatiality and dimensionality, or that 99% of graffitti is garbage by vandals.
I love his stuff, it doesn’t look like kid scribbling or graffiti to me.
Madonna said; “One night I was visiting Jean-Michel. His ex-girlfriend, whose heart he had just broken, dragged the paintings he gave her to the street outside his apartment and set them on fire, screaming up at the window. I wanted to run down and rescue them, but he wouldn’t let me. He said it was their fate.”
Their fate, how beautiful is that. I think about that story all the time.
You know 20/20 or Dateline (or one of those news magazine shows) did an experiment.
What they did is they got a bunch of professional art critics to review some art pieces they had. What they didn’t know is that the “art” was drawn by a bunch of 1st graders.
As you might expect some of the art professionals had some great things to say about some of the pieces.
So I’m just going to be bold and say these art critics don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
Yeah? Who were these “art professionals?” How many is “some” of them? How many didn’t have “great things” to say about the art? And exactly what did the the critics who like it say? I see stories like this a lot, and every time, the person telling it either can’t remember where he saw it, or if he can track the source down, it turns out that the art experts were a lot less effusive in their praise than he reported.
These two sentences are pretty much entirely contradictory. If the art critics don’t know what they’re talking about, that strongly implies their opinions are wrong. But if it’s all subjective, then no one’s opinion can be wrong.
Why can’t the work of a first grader have artistic and sublime qualities (even if unintentional). My mom was an elementary art teacher for 30 years. Every now and then she would frame and hang something that one of her students had done, but she wouldn’t tell anytone. Occasionally someone would ask when and where she had gotten that new painting and she would reply that one of her second-graders had done it.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not defending Art Critics or Modern Artists just kids with occasional talent.
I have no great background in art history or appreciation, and lack the technical vocabulary to describe much of what I see, but I do understand that a deep knowledge of technique and form is crucial in appreciating non-representational…ah who am I trying to kid:
I am a fan of all types of visual art, from the hyper-realistic classical pieces to the most jarring abstract ones. My favorites are the surrealists like Ernst, Magritte, and their ilk, who exhibited tremendous skill in their technique and composition while at the same time depicting subjects bizarre beyond comprehension. But I can also appreciate artists with less technical facility, as long as they produce works that are interesting to look at.
Obviously this is all subjective, but like any artist, I think some of Basquiat’s pieces are better than others. Some of them look like pointless scribbling to me, but I don’t think this, for instance, falls into the realm of “second-grade” art. I see real emotion in that - and I think the contrast of colors also works really well. This, on the other hand, is junk to me, real “the emperor has no clothes” stuff. I believe artists should not be deified and should be judged on the basis of their individual works. Some of Basquiat’s works are amazing to me, and others I find to be half-assed doodles. I feel like I can tell when an artist is trying hard, as in the first image I linked to, and when he is not trying hard, as in the second. I’m all for the subversion of artistic conventions, but Basquiat is no Dadaist. I have a feeling, just a gut feeling, that he was thinking “they’ll eat up whatever I put out” when he did a few of his pieces.
I’m not sure if you’re trying to imply that I’m lying or what. All I know is that I saw it on one of the major networks. You can believe me or not. Your choice.
:dubious:
Because art is so subjective, it’s stupid to think one person’s opinion will be the same as every one else’s. It’s even more stupid to think you’re an "expert’ on the subject.
Of course there are always that (large) group of people who don’t know if they should like a certain piece until a critic tells them they should. :rolleyes:
My point about Basquiat is- Could I, a guy with no art ability at all, recreate the Mona Lisa? Hell No. But could I replicate any Basquiat painting? 100% absolutely yes.
