Lobster Telephone by Dali made me just say, “whatever”. That’s actualy what I think about a lot of Dali’s work. I think the Persistence of Memory is pretty stupid as well.
Heh, I had a few versions of this post drafted (about the design of Thiepval, the Cenotaph, and various small town monuments), and then I eventually realised what you mean here. Perhaps a simple poppy is the best memorial.
Nava, the Reina Sofia seems to disagree with you. (Not that I’ve been there, but they claim to have the original in their gallery). It says “oil on canvas” unless my Spanish is bad. Where did you get the idea it’s ‘unprinted’?
I agree with you on Picasso in general, though. He’s never done much for me. Some of the only works by a famous artist that I find absolutely terrible (though ‘Guernica’ is one of the few I like).
I like this time-lapse film of Picasso painting a bullfighter getting owned. There’s a slower and more detailed version of this but damned if I can find it.
Holy shit. That really makes me appreciate anew what a frikin’ genius that man was. I’m awed, really.
To the OP - if you like the barn art more power to you. But to trot out an oft-used analogy, comparing the barn art to Sunflowers is like comparing MacDonalds to a gourmet meal prepared by an award winning chef. That is to say, it’s sort of silly.
Personally, I’ve never been much of a fan of Degas - just doesn’t really do it for me.
I’ve never really like Monet’s work. And I’ve seen it in person at the Louvre. Not quite for me. Just the impressionists, in general, have always left me cold. I think it’s because the work is too quiet and muted for my tastes. I’ve always been a sucker for sweeping, romantic compositions with stark color contrasts and abstract shapes. Hence my love for early (pre-Bauhaus) Kandinsky.
Also I really don’t get the hubbub about the Mona Lisa. Saw that in person. Profoundly underwhelmed. In general, with a few spotty exceptions, I have difficulty appreciating most art pre-Cezanne. I see it, I understand its beauty and place in art history, but, for whatever reason, I just don’t respond emotionally to it.
I’m also not a big fan of Salvador Dali. Brilliant technique and execution, but I just don’t like his work. Other surrealists, like Miro, I love.
Ditto on that cite. I’ve never heard Guernica being referred to as anything but a finished work. How do you make a printing plank from “oil on canvas”?
“I took it back to my mobile home, a fourteen foot double wide.
The Spanish lady with the siver comb, now has the King by her side.
Ya might not think my taste is too smart, why don’t ya just take a hike.
I may not know that much about art, but I know what I like.
I like the Velvet Elvis.
I like the Velvet Elvis . . .”
From the song, “Velvet Elvis”, by Arrogance.
Just what I’ve always wanted! A picture of Elvis yawning!
He must need a nap, poor guy!
And just who is it that suggests that the price should be 350 bux???
“…Yup. That should be 'bout right.”
I realize they aren’t “art” exactly, but when I went to Cairo a year and a half ago, I found myself largely untouched by the pyramids at Giza. They are simply too grand and to me were essentially unrecognizable as the work of human hands. I found them emotionally indistinguishable from a natural formation.
The pyramids at Saqqara and Dashur, on the other hand, moved me immensely.
I’ve long suspected that I have a hole in the part of my brain responsible for art appreciation.
For example, the Van Gogh flowers make me think of vomit. What an acrid color of yellow. The barn painting, although bad as well, at least isn’t actively offensive. It’s at least warm. They’re both goofy looking. Maybe Van Gogh used a brillaint and difficult to replicate technique in making such an offensive piece but why should I care about that? All I have is the final product.
If you actually like hamburgers it’s better just to make your own?
Oh.
I visited the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice last year, and found myself mostly unimpressed. Mostly, what I thought was that what I was seeing was way over my head.
But …
There was an exhibition by Lucio Fontana there at the time. And the first piece I saw, as I went in the door, didn’t just take my breath away. It kicked me in the chest like a mule.
It was a plain white canvas (or it might have been painted white), that had five slanting cuts in it – I mean, cuts right through the canvas. I have no idea what it meant. I have absolutely no idea what the artist was trying to say … if anything. But, God, it was powerful. I don’t know why. But I couldn’t stop looking at it.
Later, I went through the rest of the Fontana exhibition and none of it did anything for me at all. To be blunt, it looked like crap to me. Then I went back and checked out that first piece again. And once more: wow.
I’ve never been able to look at abstract art the same way again. What do I know?
I’ve never been able to get into the pastel works by Georgia O’Keeffe. I like the ones with other colors, but the pastel ones always remind me of a bad print in a hotel room circa 1992.
Can some explain Mondrian to me? I first saw his work when I was in high school and decided to make my own lines on canvas. I think he has better technique than I did (I used duct tape and acrylic), but still, why is this stuff considered so remarkable?
Van Gogh’s flowers are cool. Picasso’s flowers look lame. JMO.
Mondrian was one of the first artists to do “non-objective art”-- not re-presenting anything but basically REALLY “art for art’s sake” (aside from his idea that art could improve mankind). He was a bit spiritual (interested in theosophy, etc) and thought that it must be possible to reduce art to some really universal standards-- some standards which would make it instantly understandable to ANYone, equally. So what’s universal? He came up with white, black, primary colors, and horizontal/verticals in the end-- not representing any object in the world but just there for their own sake. Like music-- it’s aesthetic and artistic but in its own right, not necessarily as a signifier of something else in the world. Few (Malevich? And?) had done this before. Not just “abstracted” but totally without recourse to things-in-the-world.
Does that help?
This is exactly the kind of pretentious horseshit I wanted to avoid. OMG, you think Von Gogh is a genius now? Please, let me stroke your internet penis! You are so enlightened! Could it be that the unwashed patrons thought the Sunflowers series was as ugly as I did? I bet they did. Horror!
Huh?
There’s plenty of art I don’t understand, and plenty that I do. Why is it that some people refuse to admit the idea that education may enhance appreciation and understanding for art? I will defer to experts in certain cases–I don’t pretend to know everything about art, and if an artist is universally exalted and critically well received, then usually there is a reason for it. Sometimes, the problem is with the viewer. I don’t “get” modern sculpture. I don’t like Monet or Dali. But I do trust that there is inherent value in their work and objective standards that make their work great. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s worthless or bad.
I, too, am not a huge fan of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, although I am a big fan of his work in general. At any rate, it is order of magnitudes better than the badly composed and sloppy Flour Power.
I would argue that that honour belongs to Rodin, myself, but de gustibus etc, yeah.
I never got the impression that Rodin wanted to hump his models, which I get from David
.
Word.
Case in point - a lot of Eastern art partakes of a symbolic language that I don’t read properly, and what distinguishes Hokusai from a jobbing printer isn’t necessarily something I grok. Sure, I can appreciate 36 Views of Mount Fuji (and I can really appreciate Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife 
) But I lack the symbolic tools to fully appreciate all of it in a way I *don’t *with Dali (whom I love) or what lets me distinguish lighting in a Kincaide cottage (that over-luminous pusbag) from lighting in Hopper’s Nighthawks (that god).
This is not to say that I can’t learn the symbolic language I’m missing, though. Doing Art History or taking an Art Appreciation course actually does open up a world for one - it really is like an immigrant learning a new language and finally getting to speak to their neighbours. Eye-opening.
You know, I actually came back to this thread today and thought to myself, “Hmm, that wasn’t really an appropriate response to this particular question.”, so I’ll apologize for that. And of course there’s lots of stuff that I don’t especially like, or that doesn’t move me. As a matter of fact:
This pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject, except that I go a little further back into impressionism, and I love love LOVE me some El Greco, Velasquez, and Goya, and think that if God ever incarnated on earth, it was more likely Caravaggio than Jesus.
Thing is, while I may NOT love me some Rubens, I can still see the beauty, the technical merit, and his influence on artists that came after him. There IS a difference between “I don’t like that.” and “That’s crap.”, and Van Gogh was, in fact a genius, regardless of your dislike for him. Is there a subject *other * than art that would provoke you to call knowledge “pretentious horseshit” and crow about your ignorance as though it’s a virtue?
The food analogy used by alice_in_wonderland is a good example. If I like the taste of McDonald’s burgers better than burgers prepared by an award-winning master chef, then nutrition aside McDonald’s burgers are better for me, no matter how skillful the master chef is. If I find a book boring, I don’t care how famous or well-regarded it is.
Now, I can appreciate skill. If I understand the difficulties involved in making a particular painting, I can appreciate and be impressed by the skills of the painter, but if I don’t like the painting I’m not going to hang it on my wall anyway. Art is purely subjective; it’s about eliciting an emotional response. Therefore, in reality there are no rules no matter what the experts say. If there were, we’d all like the same art. A painting that breaks all the rules but makes me like it has succeeded, and a painting that follows all the rules but doesn’t make me like it has failed.