Evil posted a simple example of how easy it was to make a rectangle and splotch it up a bit. It’s not rocket science. there is no magic in this painting. I made the claim based on more complex work done by animals.
No it’s like saying anybody can kick a ball, which a child can.
And there we have it. If a child paints it then they couldn’t understand the strokes they made were genius. It takes someone experienced in art appreciation to pronounce the strokes relevant.
But the people who are paying $44M for Onement VI know exactly what they’re getting. There’s certainly no fraud involved.
So what does determine artistic merit?
Lots of people honestly like Onement VI. Not in the sense of “oh, it’s cool to like this” or “oh, it makes me look smart to like this”, but in the sense of “this is the sort of thing I enjoy looking at”.
Why is it so hard to accept that their enjoyment of the piece might be genuine?
And I personally thought the first one looked like crap, but the second one had some interesting bits, but still looked amateurish to me, like something I could do. Do I think I could reproduce that Newman painting in a manner satisfactory to me? I really don’t think so. I’m not saying that for sake of argument, I honestly don’t think I could do that and be happy with the result. I’ve tried doing color field stuff, but it always looks like crap to me when I do it. I would love to decorate my home with my own abstract expressionism. But I can’t do it. It all looks like garbage to me when I make it.
Yes, I’ve already conceded that the price tag was based on this fact. But people would pay large sums of money for one of the artist’s paint brushes. It doesn’t make the paint brush special (as a brush).
In this case, THIS particular painting, it gets a big “meh” from a lot of people in the same way the nude Maud painting gets a “meh” compared to the other works of the same artist. I can’t draw a stick figure without it looking like a Picasso. But I can match up colors that look good and paint splotchy rectangles all day long.
Except the image he created looks nothing like Onement VI, except in a very superficial way. As I said, what he did was equivalent to drawing a stick figure and saying it looks like the Mona Lisa.
You’ve yet to demonstrate that a child could paint it. I know you think it’s obvious that one could, but people who have no experience with a particular field are notoriously bad at estimating what’s easy and what’s hard.
I mean, here you’ve got **pulykamell **saying he (she?) tried to reproduce this sort of effect and failed. So either he/she is lying, or he/she knows more about the technical challenges of painting that you do and knows what sort of work is actually required to produce a piece like this.
From der Wiki:
Among the public collections holding works by Barnett Newman are the Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts), the Allen Memorial Art Museum (Oberlin College, Ohio), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Berlin State Museums, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Harvard University Art Museums, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington D.C.), the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art (Japan), Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Menil Collection (Houston, Texas), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, Texas), the Nassau County Museum of Art (Roslyn Harbor, New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, Nebraska), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Tate Gallery (London), the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, Connecticut), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota), the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (Cologne, Germany), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City).
Saying you can paint a picture like this means nothing. Any competent artist can. Newman did it first. It didn’t spark a trend of rectangles with zips. It made a distinct, unique statement. Find something original to say and then you have the creds to argue against the authorities. “I don’t like it” repeated ad nauseum isn’t a valid argument against the hundreds-to-thousands of people who’ve studied it and found it’s important. At the very best, it’s mere solipsism.
Okay, cool; I’m done here. You acknowledge that Color Field paintings have value in the Art world. You don’t like Color Field paintings, and/or don’t think this particular example is very good at achieving the “Color Field effect” vs. other examples of CF paintings. But if some collector or museum is looking to own a “first example” of a CF painting and willing to pay for it, this is a reasonable example of an historically-significant CF painting, even if it is a sucky one appearance-wise - cool?
As others have pointed out, part of what makes this valuable is the shading, something that a kid would have a lot of trouble accomplishing. Also, as Miller pointed out, any idiot can write Hamlet, now that Shakespeare’s done the heavy lifting for us; that doesn’t make Shakespeare’s work childish.
Even if a kid COULD duplicate this work (which I highly doubt), so what? That’s not the question: the question is, can your kid do the NEXT big thing? Can your kid found the next artistic movement?
And I say all this as someone who doesn’t care at all for this kind of painting. It’s totally legitimate to say “Blech,” as I do. But saying the artist is a fraud is absurd snottiness. It reminds me a bit of people who say that science fiction isn’t art, or–perhaps a closer analogy–people who not only loathe authors like Cormac McCarthy, but also say that people who claim to like him are just hipster sheeple claiming to like him to look cool.
Well I have no drawing skills. None. I’ve taken mechanical drawing and I swear to God my father could paint a more accurate circle than I could draw with a compass. He could sketch out a drawing of something he wanted to build quickly and mine looked like I drew it with my eyes closed and a crayon in my nose.
I’ve also tried abstract work for a school photography class and absolutely HATED what I made. There is something to Pollock’s “random strokes” that is beyond me. It looks doable but it’s not. What I CAN do is basic geometric designs that involve a bit of stressing of color. Enter the discussion of this one painting.
People need to keep in mind that artists don’t sit down and make a single object worthy of hanging in famous museums. that make room fulls of stuff until somebody decides one of them is worth exchanging money for.
I think people just don’t see the same things. For some, any old blue color field with a white stripe looks like any other. For me, when it comes to color fields, there is something about that "shimmer"ing quality, that texture, that I don’t know how to reproduce. Rothko was the undeniable master. There is just a “glow” to his canvasses when you see them in person that I find unreal.
And it’s not like I like all Pollocks. This one, to me, looks like a mess. This one, on the other hand, I think is gorgeous.
It strikes me that the film equivalent of this would be some famous filmmaker doing a 2 minute short of a kid playing in a playground with a digital SLR. People would ooh and aah about it, and yet, ultimately it wouldn’t be significantly different than what I can do with my digital SLR, my own son and our local playground.
One would be a highly regarded short film, and the other would be some schlub in Texas’ home movie.
I’m not claiming that there are people that do not like it or don’t have genuine enjoyment of the piece. However, I am a bit skeptical that their enjoyment is as objective as they claim. If they passed that very same painting at a garage sale painted by some random forgotten nobody, would they be as emotionally moved? If yes, I’m glad it makes you happy and I’ll never begrudge you your right to hanging it on your wall…how much would you pay me to come over with a roller and a couple buckets of paint and give you a mural of equal quality?
From the wiki on Newman’s Broken Obelisk page…
“…In 2003, with the permission of the Barnett Newman Foundation, a fourth Broken Obelisk was cast and temporarily installed in front of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin…”
Altruistic artistic benefactors celebrating culture and enriching society by spreading access to great art? Or investors camping a collection and trickling out posthumous product to maintain artificial scarcity and solidify the value of the rest of their collection? That this is the kind of practice that gets rewarded by inclusion into the next edition of Art History textbooks is befuddling.
Heh. The only reason I think you’re not pulling my leg is because that’d be mean. I pulled up your first picture and thought, “Yep, I agree, that’s a mess.” Then I pulled up the second, and the connection was taking awhile, and I was thinking, “Huh, I wonder if I’ll be biased to like this second one better because pulykamell said it was gorgeous. I hope not.”
Then it loaded, and it was the same goddamn painting! I figured you’d made a mistake, until I checked the corners of the paintings and saw they had different smudges in them and are different, and I was like, are you freaking KIDDING me?
But of course you’re not; you see something relevantly different in these two paintings, whereas to me they’re nearly identical ugly messes. Vive la difference and all!
I think a famous filmmaker might know just a little more about how to compose a shot or how to tell a story with cuts than the average parent shooting a home movie.
I’ve directed videogame cinematics (which are pretty far down on the “film artistry” scale). The amount of work you have to do to just get something that looks halfway decent is pretty significant.
I’m not disagreeing with your point at all except I’ve never claimed the artist was a fraud. The op’s question was not for an explanation of all this artist’s work or the style of work it created. It was about a single painting. I’m giving it a big “meh” and that’s assuming it looks way better in real life. If I was filthy rich and had a large modern house, I’d give maybe $250 for it and hang it in a hallway. I can’t honestly say how much I’d pay for any work of art given unlimited funds but I do know that name recognition means nothing to me.
What? Christ, no. Just no.
Who in this thread has argued that the price tag and artistic merit are linked?
I like how both sides of this debate view Evil Captor’s picture as proof that they’re correct.
How much would you pay me for this copy of the Mona Lisa I just printed off the internet?
Let me take a guess at why you think the second one is more attractive:
we are in agreement.
