And I think Wolfe was so full of shit his eyes were brown. If you want to believe a con artist calling something else a con, be my guest.
By that logic, the best art is a photograph.
That’s cool - I like and respect photography, too. But it isn’t the only art, and it isn’t necessarily the ‘best’ art.
The Orson Welles biography F is for Fake is also a good bio on the guy.
The thing is though is that’s he’s a lousy painter. Most forgers are. They prey upon exactly what you see on this thread, people who simply want a name as a status/investment piece but who otherwise believe creating an aesthetically pleasing painting or sculpture can be done by anyone. Take a look at one of the Vermeers he did:
and then look at real Vermeers:
Absolutely no comparison. Ditto for his Modiglianis and the rest of his output.
Might I suggest to all those who think it’s so easy to “con” people into buying crap that they give it a go themselves and then report back with the results? After all, Warhol made a pretty decent living while he was alive and it certainly sounds like it might be a lot more fun than a 9 to 5 widget making job.
And you can objectively judge a roller coaster by how tall it is. But that doesn’t tell you if its a good ride or not.
Looks pretty close to a lot of “serious” modern representational painting to me, actually.
As I more succinctly put it at the thread’s beginning, it’s difficult to acquire and use the political and personal skills to make bad art a success. That said, Warhol isn’t all downside because he influenced New Wave music, which took Warhol’s attitude and actually did something good with it. But there are plenty of examples of the influenced surpassing their influencors in art.
I don’t know of any modern painters whose schtick is to paint bad copies of Dutch Baroque art. Any examples?
That’s your opinion and the onus is on you to prove the emperor has no clothes. Again, put on a white fright wig and show everybody just how easy it is.
One, there should be a rule that in CS, every post should be assumed to end with “IMO”. Of course my opinion is that most modern art is bad. It’s your opinion it is good. Unless you’re of the opinion that success is the only determining factor of artistic merit, then that means we simply have two different views of what’s good. I think we can assume that we’re both mature enough that we are not proclaming artistic merit from on high simply because we get tired of scare-quoting our opinions all the time.
Two, I was saying that it is the exact opposite of easy to attain success as a modern artist. But you knew that already.
Which means that The Last Supper is objectively a bad painting, because it makes Jesus look like a white guy.
I have trouble reconciling this with your earlier statement:
The earlier statement seems to indicate that you don’t think the popularity of what you consider to be bad art is due to a difference in subjective value criteria, but rather, that fans of bad art have been duped by a wily huckster. Which is pretty close to “proclaiming artistic merit from on high.”
I’m reminded of a trip I took during my honeymoon layover in Boston on my way to the Azores… my wife and I were taking a boat ride in the harbor and the Capn of the boat was going on about the New Modern Art Museum of Boston, that was itself a work of Art… as we floated past it, asked him “If it’s modern art, how do they know when they’re finished building it?”
That doesn’t really make any sense. Just for starters, at least according to your story, the captain didn’t say it was modern art, just that it was art. Secondly, it would be the design that was the “art,” not the building. They know when they’re done building it because it matches the blueprints created by the designer. Thirdly, a great deal of modern art is meticulously planned. The gallery where Guernica hangs is full of sketches and paintings Picasso did in preparation for the large canvas. Lastly, the comment could be just as applicable to classical art as it would be to modern art. How did Rembrandt know he was done painting The Night Watch? Because it looked the way he wanted it to look. How did Mondrian know he was done painting Composition 10? Same answer.
Teri Hortonis a retired truckdriver who many years ago bought what she thought was a horribly ugly painting in a thrift store for a few dollars; the only reason she bought it was because it’s huge and she wanted it as a gag housewarming gift for a friend who’d just moved into a tiny travel trailer. When she’d had her fun she put it storage for several years.
Later it was seen by others including someone who had some art knowledge and since then it’s been examined by experts. Some believe it’s an unsigned Jackson Pollock and some believe it isn’t, just an unknown who painted in Pollock’s style. If it is a Pollock then it’s worth, conceivably, tens of millions of dollars; if it’s not then it would make a nice gag gift for a friend moving into a travel trailer.
Horton actually (stupidly stupidly stupidly, in my opinion) turned down $2 million for the painting by somebody who was willing to take the risk and spend the money to have it authenticated or not. (Horton’s argument was that if real he’d sell it for $50 million but she’d only have $2 million; my argument is "you paid $5 for it and if it’s not a Pollock you’ll be doing well to get a few thousand for it.)
Anyway, it’s interesting how the artwork’s value is completely tied into who painted it and not in the least tied to its aesthetic appeal.
Sure, it’s my opinion that fans of bad art have been duped by a wily huckster. It’s their opinion they’re not. I don’t have to respect someone who makes what I consider bad art, even if they’re successful at convincing other people that it’s good art.
I’ll even give that some modern art is difficult to create, although a lot of it is not. I can take any household object and proclaim it to be a piece of modern art, which is the simplest art creation process imaginable. Convincing everyone that it’s worthwhile is difficult, but doesn’t magically increase the merit of the art.
I don’t know if it’s a genuine Pollock or not; I personally would guess not, looking at bigger versions of the painting on the web. It just seems haphazard and unbalanced compared with the work of his I love. If it is a Pollock, it’s not a particularly good one, but, yes, it’s value isn’t based completely on aesthetic value.
I agree. Here’s an image that puts it side by side with a real Pollack. Even at this tiny resolution, the difference is like night and day. For example, look at the two big swoops of white on the painting on the left that intersect like two back-to-back C’s. That’s just really, really awkward. Regardless of whatever else is going on in the painting at a finer detail, the interplay between those two lines really destroys the composition. The painting on the left feels haphazard and visually flat, lacking the depth and complexity of the real Pollack on the right.
I’d hang the painting on the right on my wall. I wouldn’t hang the painting on the left. There’s something there besides just the cachet of the artist’s name that distinguishes the two.
Every decade the Minneapolis Institute of Arts does a Foot In The Door show. We went last time because my mother in law had a piece in the show. MIA - Foot in the Door 4
The pieces are displayed without comment, the artists are not (usually) famous. Submit a piece that meets the requirements (fits in a 12x12x12 space), while they still have gallery space and you are in.
Many of the works were incredible. Some took a lot of effort. Some didn’t, but still spoke. Someone submitted a digital alarm clock. Which lead my kids into a discussion on “what is art.” And while we didn’t decide it wasn’t art, we also thought hanging an alarm clock on a wall and calling it art fell - at this point - into the “been there done that” school of modern art.
Okay*, but how is that different from “proclaiming artistic merit from on high?” You’re taking the position that this art is objectively bad - that it’s not possible for anyone else to find actual merit in the work, and that those who claim that they do are, in fact, simply too stupid to recognize crap when they see it. That’s not simply a matter of two different ideas of what’s good, that’s saying that there’s only one standard for quality, and that anyone who strays from it is a fool and a dupe.
[sub]*Actually, that’s not okay. In fact, it’s terribly insulting, but let’s set that aside for right now.[/sub]
Meh. You’re backtracking now. You think that anyone who appreciates modern art is a sucker. If people are, as you say, that easily fooled, it should be easy enough to prove. So rather than hiding behind a computer screen, go out there and show everyone how it’s done otherwise you’ve got nothing.
Who said anyone’s squirming? If you’d like to make arguments about specific contemporary works, or explain why you think Wolfe’s arguments from 1975 apply to contemporary art (hint: not Mondrian, Malevich, Guston, Rothko, etc.), feel free to do so. What you’ve done here is pretty much the equivalent of saying “go read the Bible” and tossing out a few verses from Genesis in a discussion of why evil exists in the world.
Tangentially, I think it’s interesting that people making dramatic sweeping statements, like “modern art is a con,” never have anything to cite beyond a couple of paintings they’ve glimpsed, or a handful or popular critiques - certainly never anything academic or of a nuanced critical nature. Are all academics and serious art critics duped by the artists, or is it possible that they understand more than the truculently ignorant by dint of having extensively studied art? Just a question.
To the “‘modern’ art is nothing but a con”/“anyone could do that”/“it’s a cult of personality”/“it’s a rich-man’s circle jerk” brigade:
If you’re asking what make’s Duchamp’s bicycle “valuable” or important to warrant gallery space/custodianship; you might as well ask why anyone would pay sixty-two-thousand US dollars for a Telecaster, when anyone can walk down to the store and buy a Fender for a few hundred bucks (I can guarantee the tone wouldn’t be too different). Or why someone would pay over one-hundred-thousand Australian dollars for a sheet of paper, when anyone can buy a ream of A4 for a few bucks.
Surely you can understand that something might have cultural or historic significance beyond the mere utilitarian or aesthetic. Right? Right? I’m scratching my head as to why this is hard to understand.