Crap, I spelled it wrong three times. :smack: But I did say I don’t know jack about art.
“Fuck me,” obviously.
Bollacks!
No way, jose! Picasso was a huge attention whore. One key reason Gertrude kept pulling them in over at Rue de Fleurus was that she sat artists facing their own art, on her walls.
I agree that there’s a bit of obsession to art-making, that it’s an inner drive, but the idea of art as a “pure” human endeavor is more romantic notion (and clever marketing) than anything else.
The truth is that only about 5% of art school graduates are still making art 10 years later (that’s the popularly quoted figure, I can’t find the original source). Once they lose the support of their community, of the professors who care and peers with whom they compete, they simply stop.
People really don’t want to create work just for their own walls. They’re doing it to share.
Just like bloggers, who’ll self-publish for free just for the sake of being read.
Indeed he was an egomaniac; it was his vision or none–but I maintain that it was his vision no matter what anyone else thought–he was certain he was right.
I was thinking about “The Unknown Masterpiece” by Balzac. Picasso is said to have strongly identified with the character Frenhofer, an artist who hoarded and obsessed over his masterpiece until death.
http://cybersybils.com/Balzac1.html
I’ll agree with that. Art can’t be done “for approval” (by my own personal definition anyway). Twyla Tharp has a nice quote about that, she says art is about finding things out, rather than achieving a prescribed effect (hence her commissioned work isn’t truly “art” in her opinion).
Re: the OP, I’m not cognicenti (I’m rarely even coherent 
) but I do respect and often enjoy work from Picasso’s cubist phases. I love his portraits even more, though, particularly one I saw at a small museum somewhere. Little pastel portrait of a girl, hung shoulder-height, right around a corner in a hallway. Nothing special to denote it. But it was breathing, that drawing was.
This thread title offends me. It’s cognoscenti.
Thank you, Capybara, for the couture metaphor and the entire post, and thank you, Miller, for the Velvet Underground reference. I found both helpful.
Long ago, I visited an Expressionist art museum in Berlin with an artist friend. We separated to view at our individual whims. I disliked the art at first – found it unpleasant. Since I had another hour to go before meeting up with my friend, and because I understand words better than visuals, I sat down in front of the painting I disliked the most, and began to write about it. As I looked at it and wrote, insight after insight kept unfolding within me, and I suddenly got it. Maybe not what the artist consciously intended in painting that work, but a flash of insight, a revelation about loneliness, alienation, isolation. And, by gosh, I suddenly began to love that painting. I can still see it in my mind’s eye, though I’ve forgotten the artist and title.
The point of the story? I had to interact with the painting in order to appreciate it and see it’s beauty.
I agree that it’s important to be in the presence of the artwork itself. Reproductions of Van Gogh’s Starry Night always seemed simply pretty to me. When I was in the presence of the painting itself, I felt emotion and turbulence roiling off it, and I even had to leave that room of the museum, it was so powerful.
I hear nothing but crickets in response to “the painted word.”
I understand completely.
I kind of shot my wad last night on this one and have been just reading the responses (miss elizabeth’s cracked me right up), but I definitely read the post with interest, and I appreciate the time you took to write it. 
Oh, that’s because it’s crap. The fact that some painters are influenced by critics does not mean that those artists didn’t see genuine value in the ideas they were translating to canvas. That they were able to turn a profit from it does by itself invalidate the ideas they were expressing. Just another tired iteration of the old, “If I don’t personally like it, it must be a fraud,” meme. Frankly, I expected better from Tom Wolfe.
Caveat: I have not read Wolfe’s book. I only know it by reputation, like how I know about Dan Brown.
I think Tom Wolfe wrote a book that a bunch of anti-modern art people can embrace and think someone clever and well-known has justified their preconceptions and he can make a shitload of money being snarky about something he doesn’t know much about and feed semi-truths to an eager audience that doesn’t want to know any better. A book that affirms a lot of people’s insecure assumptions about something don’t know much about but are irritated about because they think they’re missing something and being mocked. I’m sure there’s a good number of people in this thread who, like you, would prefer Tom Wolfe’s read on it. It’s an easy thing to do because it agrees with what they already believe, without having to note that formalism developed before Greenberg started writing about it, that the Minimalists responded to Greenberg in a way that he detested, or that the AE guys were painting in the manner they were before Rosenberg started writing about action painting in 1952, etc. Wolfe may have been correct in the case of some artists, but writing off not only modern nonobjective art but all ‘abstracting’ art (including such things as Impressionism) was a cheap lazy way for him to make a bundle rephrasing many members of the public’s preexisting prejudices more eloquently than they themselves could.
But I don’t think that’s the response you were looking for so I omitted it.
ETA: And I should probably retire from this thread because it’s getting me too riled up. These threads always wind up with my chosen profession being cast in a light usually reserved for used car salesmen and corporate lawyers and it’s disconcerting to realize that you’re considered either a chump or a con-artist.
Dang, Miller, you keep beating me to the punch.
What he said.
Just because someone can type doesn’t mean that what they say has any value. (Irony unintended, but unavoidable.)
For what it’s worth, I for one appreciated and read the rebuttals with as much interest as the original post. I’m sorry you’re getting riled up about this.
I doubt that much of the more modern art discussed in this thread will ever mean anything to me personally, but I can appreciate (certainly more so after this discussion) that others can and do like cubism/AE/minimalism, etc. I don’t understand WHY Miller appreciates Guernica, but I totally believe that he does and isn’t just saying so to be pretentious.
Are there people in the art business who are laughing up their sleeves at some of the stuff that gets sold? Probably.
Is it all a giant con? I personally don’t think so…anymore than I think mass-market romance novels are a con foisted upon the world by the publishing industry. Sure, some people write them to bring in the dough while secretly hating the books…but many write them because they enjoy writing them and are good at it, and because there are readers who buy and enjoy the books.
Ha! Fooled another one! William Wegman owes me twenty bucks!
Huh - I found Wolfe’s book both liberating and reassuring. Not that there’s a giant “con” going on (which I didn’t see as his primary observation), but that the point of The Big-Money Art World isn’t necessarily the discovery and celebration of competent art. Ergo, not being a hit with that particular audience doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
Hi fessie! How are the twins?
Twyla was a bit of a wacko, in my personal opinion, but she had her moments.
Really, there are a zillion ways you can come to be struck by art. It might mean something to you personally (I love “Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel, because it reminds me of my adopted daughters SO much), or you might just be struck by it (as fessie was by the portrait), or you might spend some time with it (as Tapiotar with the “unpleasant” painting). If you aren’t interested, it’ll never grab you, and why should you care? There is a TON of great art (painting, music, writing, dance, etc.) in the world. Enjoy what you do, and let others enjoy the rest!
The Fallen Madonna With the Big Boobies by Van Klomp?
So, you’re saying you don’t know jack,son?
As a thought experiment, I hypothesized that the linky no workee. 
This was confirmed when I clicked on it.
Could you give another, please?