See, that’s fine; I, at least, have no complaint about that. Those who say (and they have appeared in this thread) that there is nothing to learn are the ones who I and other aficionadoes are dismissing with an eyeroll.
Hey, here’s an example from my own life: I don’t care much for the output from the second half of Prince’s musical career. I know he’s extremely talented. I know the music critics think he’s a genius. I know a fair amount about music and I know Prince occupies a very important position in the singer/songwriter pantheon.
And yet I listen to his music, and it does nothing for me.
Sounds like Picasso has a similar (non) impact on you.
I love Van Goch, alot of Pre Raphaelite,some Dali,Pisarro.
I suppose that I’m a traditionalist in that I enjoy Rembrandt,Van Dyke and similar.I enjoy Canaletto.There are others I enjoy but I wont drag the list out.
I try to live life very much to the full actually.
I didn’t slag off Picasso because I dont like his work but because he is a phony and a pretty contemptible one at that…
I am not a great fan of impressionism for example ,or the Italian schools pre 19th c . or Constable but I dont condemn them as non art because they are genuine art expressions but they dont happen to accord to my individual taste.
A fault in my character perhaps but not a fault in their particular genius.
But I have seen all too much moral cowardice within the artworld and for that matter the world generally when it comes to fashionable frauds to conveniently keep my mouth shut and I will not do so in the future no matter even if cultural trendyism has deified some particulary persuasive conman .
Actually I agree with you ,Dali for a lot of the time thought that he was conning the public (and for some of the time he was )but he had a natural genius that meant that he could "off the cuff"produce works of genuine artistic merit which he didn’t believe in himself because he found the process so very easy,very like Mozart and music in fact.
To answer another poster about Picassos competence as a "craftsman " in producing visual images ,I do not dispute that ,I’m not saying that he went into nonrepresational art because he couldn’t paint recognisable images ,I’m saying that he went into the unusual construction of visual art (cubism etc.)because he was creatively bankrupt .
What can I do this week to try and get some sort of artistic credibility/notoriety with my entourage of sycophants ?
By the way Hirst is a phony as well but atleast he doesn’t take himself so seriously.
So the less deceitful, more honorable thing to do is keep cranking out the same recognizable images, over and over again? To not change or evolve from age 12 to 32?
And looking at things in a new way, a way that no one had ever considered before, is the mark of a lack of creativity?
Look up Picasso on Wiki sometime - he really did do the garret thing. Cubism evolved over many years, it wasn’t a “flavor of the week” in the least.
Not entering the argument above because I don’t know enough…
The 2-DVD thing I rented from Netflix - Picasso: Magic Sex and Death - shows in the Death section that Picasso would look at great Masters’ paintings, then recreate them in his own style. The Narrator called the process “cannibalizing,” and even though a good friend and admirer of PP, I think he didn’t approve.
I don’t have an opinion.
But I did like the Picasso anecdote that Simon Schama told in his DVD series, The Power of Art. I hope I tell it right.
When Paris was occupied by the Nazis, Picasso still had his studio there. A German Officer came in and saw there were a few postcards on which Guernica was printed.
Nazi (Looking at the artwork, and then to Pablo): Did you do this?
Picasso: No, you did.
They both laughed.
On that second disc (I think), we also see an exhibit of Picasso’s ceramic creations. Although the man was obsessed with tits and pudenda, some were pretty clever. And as you’d expect, some were fairly gross.
That’s kind of funny. I don’t quite understand - I didn’t think Picasso was the first one to rebel against the “Academy” where they just flat-out copied masterpieces straight, without any interpretation. Maybe he was? I thought the Impressionists were the ones who did battle with the Academy approach, with their plein air paintings and Manet’s flutist.
Artists have always been influenced by the past, reacting to trends and fashion, reviving old beliefs. Nowadays practically anything an artist does to reinterpret or make an “ironic statement” about the past will be revered, so it surprises me that an historian speaking now would have problem with Picasso doing that. It seems like historians usually go to great lengths to point out ways that artists’ choices have influenced later artists.
Maybe your narrator was objecting to Picasso’s appropriation of non-art objects into his work? Apparently he and Braque were the first ones to do this (news to me). But again, that seems more like an innovation to be celebrated - talk about influencing others!
And you know, there are plenty of “classical subjects” that have been done over & over again. Like “Odalisque” (I always liked Ingre’s ), or “Pieta”. You can’t swing a dead cat in a museum without whacking a pieta. Pretty much the whole story of Christianity has been done over & over, in works that are fairly similar in composition, each person taking their shot at familiar images.
I don’t think Wiki did any airbrushing. Here’s another online version. You wouldn’t be able to see labia or pubic hair from that angle anyway. Not that anybody actually painted pubic hair.
I had fun researching this, though, read some stuff that I hadn’t looked at since college. The thing about “idealism” and their over-polished images reminded me of current airbrushing techniques, the way they make models look “perfect”. Apparently there’s nothing new to the trend.
For what it’s worth, I think your attitude is great. You didn’t like modern art on first account, you educated yourself on it, and you still don’t like non-representational art. There’s nothing wrong with that. You gave it a shot, you’re not dismissive of people who do like it and that’s that. It’s not going to appeal to everyone, just like representational art doesn’t appeal to everyone, either.
I personally do think that most, if not all, great art --representational or non-representational–can be enjoyed on a purely aesthetic level without need for intellectualization. It’s just that not everyone will respond to it on a purely aesthetic level. Some people need the context or the artist statement or some other sort of reference point. While I do like the ideas in modern art, at the end of the day I have to say I like it because it’s pretty to me.
Picasso is a strange fellow for me. I’m not the biggest fan, but he does have some unquestionably great work and a wide variety of styles in his body of work. However, he also has a lot (and I mean a lot, given his prolificness) of crap. I went to basically what was a “Picasso outtakes” exhibit in Vienna in either '99 or '00, and I was astounded at the mediocrity of his non-canonical work. He’s certainly an artist that needs a tight edit, especially in the later years of his career. At the same time, there is no doubt in my mind that he’s a genius.
Picasso is and was garbage. I would burn his garbage works and all copies and facsimiles and descriptions of them so people no longer have to worship these steaming piles of garbage. People, especially the art fart sniffing types, are losers and hold modern artists to the standards of idiots and con artists from the past. Brâncuși is another trash peddler. I would burn the MOMA down as well.
Well, that sure is some burning rage to delurk and revive a 9 year old thread just to say that. Well vented. Mind if I ask you to support your thesis? Also, who is an artist you admire? Thomas Kincade perhaps?
