While I think Van Gogh had talent with his many other paintings, I hate hate hate his sunflower series. Ugliest shit I’ve ever seen. The fact that one of these sold for 39 million dollars at auction made me say to myself, “Fuck, that thing is so ugly I wouldn’t pay 2 bucks for it if I saw it at a thrift store.”
Then I happened upon Barn Art. It’s a website devoted to paintings found at thift stores that were purchased for under two dollars. Take a look at Flour Power. I think it’s better.
I took a look at it. Any of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings is orders of magnitude better on a number of levels. To me, they are more sophisticated, there is better use of color, superior technique, the images have greater depth and impact, etc., etc.
Now, like you allude to, it’s really just a matter of taste and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your preference of painting, but I’d gladly go with Van Gogh any day.
(Also, have you seen any Van Goghs in person? I haven’t, but they are supposed to have an extraordinary impact IRL. I began but never finished a copy of one of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings using the same (or as close as I could get anyway) colors and impasto techniques, and even though the painting is only 1/3 finished, people who see it love it and, strangely enough, always seem to want to touch it. I suspect that if you were to see one of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings IRL, you’d find yourself quite struck by its beauty and substance).
I found Picasso’s Guernica a bit crap when I saw it - sometimes I get the feeling that paintings are made huge just to make up for other shortcomings. Strikes me as an inflated cartoon.
But then I didn’t bother to look into the meaning behind it, nor do I know much about the Spanish Civil War, so I partly have myself to blame.
Oh fun, the old “there’s no way to objectively determine the quality of a piece of art” argument.
It’s simply not true. There ARE in fact standards to be applied. Tastes may differ, but education informs taste. An uneducated opinion on art is worth about as much as an uneducated opinion on anything else, which is to say… not much.
There’s nothing wrong with not caring enough about art to educate yourself about it, but that doesn’t mean that Flour Power is actually comparable to the Sunflowers series. You know, I’d MUCH rather watch Mark Mulder than Randy Johnson, since I find him way more aesthetically pleasing. But that doesn’t make him a better pitcher.
Check out “Cherub With Yellow Hair” over at Barn Art, and compare it to the completely crappy “Two Cherubs” detail from Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Man, that Raphael was such a hack. He shoulda just stayed in the sewer with the other Ninja Turtles and left the painting to the pros.
I don’t like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I don’t bad-mouth it at every opportunity; in fact I keep my mouth shut. But, since you asked, I’ll say here that it’s not a coincidence that someone barely out of her adolescence would design a piece that fed an entire nation’s desire for self-pity.
I was coming to indicate a general allergy to Picasso and Miró, but that particular post touches on one of my specific problems with the Guernica.
It’s not a painting. It’s a printing plank. The fact that people insist in treating it as a painting means that it’s actually unfinished, since nobody has ever done an actual printing run for fear of damaging it. That’s like marrying a porn star and never having sex.
Being a printing plank, it’s a negative. I’ve heard critics say that “one of the sources of its strength is that it has movement from right to left instead of the usual occidental convention, from left to right.” No, dumbass, and when you say things like that you’re a dumbass no matter how much you get paid for saying them: you’re looking at it the wrong way! If anybody ever actually finished it, the figures would move from left to right.
And of course, once printed the light and dark areas would look totally different.
I saw a Van Gogh Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London some years ago, and was spectacularly underwhelmed- it looked like a fairly average painting of some sunflowers to me. I never understood what all the fuss was about.
I’ve never really understood why everyone thinks Michaelangelo’s David is such a masterpiece, either- it strikes me as an uninspiring but competent sculpture of a young chap who must have been posing on a very cold day.
I know in my previous post I was complaining about outsize art, but up close in real life that David is pretty striking I’d say. I saw it after having also seen numerous old statues in Rome, and David does ‘kick ass’ in comparison to many. Or slingshot their asses. I didn’t even realise it was supposed to the Goliath story David until I walked behind it and noticed he’s holding the sling and pebbles in his hands ( :smack: ).
The Mona Lisa is a small piece of over-rated crap. OTOH, I love the works of Jackson Pollock. On the Gripping Hand, Andy Warhol is meaningless garbage to me.
I agree that art must be seen ‘in person’ to be appreciated. My art epiphany came in Paris. I had see umpty-hundred pictures of Le Moulin de la Galette and thought ‘meh’. Then I saw the actual painting. I kept looking over my shoulder for the source of the sunlight on the picture - but the wall behind was solid and windowless. It was magical. Then I saw many original Monets. I never made it to the Louvre because I had to spend more time with the Impressionists. I’m hooked on Impressionism, now. More than one Monet has brought tears to my eyes. However, I’ve learned to love lots of art as well.
I don’t think I’ll be impressed by the Mona Lisa when I see it - that bull about the ‘mysterious smile’ is a load of hooey IMHO. Lady is smirking - so what.
All that said, I dutifully go look at the Great Masters and find them interesting, but very few have had much effect on me. The Night Watch was ok - certainly it’s big - but it didn’t transfix me the way Renoir and Monet did.
It’s hard to articulate. Abstract Expressionism is so varied. Some artists leave me cold, while Pollock’s works seem to click with my psyche. I like Impressionism, and it seems to me that Pollock just took that a mile or two further. I’d love to have a copy of Lavender Mist for the living room, but it just wouldn’t go with the rest of the decor (which is Early-American White Trash).
