Famous artists are overrated

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I don't see the appeal of Clude Monet or Pablo Picasso, but I can easily see the appeal of the artist that, rather than follow a movement completely, takes traits from various styles and emrges them into one unique framework for ideas. The only famous artist known for his paintings I like is Alex Grey.

The art movements have their place, but I don't think we should use the leaders as the basis for all following artwork. It should be absed on the passion behind the artwork and whether or not basic design fundamentals/techniques are used and whether or not they have a strong effect.

In music there are some famous artists I enjoy, but some good bands/solo acts actually get attention. Most don't. I hate when bad pop artists get attention while progressive music and alternative metal are just ignored...there's no room for subtle genres, and I think many would agree with me that mainstream music overall is pretty disappointing.

What do you consider the basis for good artwork? I want strong effect, good use of techniques, a cool subject matter/pattern and strong shading/colors.

Often the story/context/movement is more interesting than the art itself.

I'm not really interested in fads either, but I think it's interesting they are there. It's like watching various shoals of fish thriving and then diminishing according to environmental conditions.

It doesn't bother me that things I like aren't appreciated by the mainstream. It used to. But I've long accepted that my own interests are fairly esoteric. The internet helps. I don't even have to be exposed to pop music or pop culture anymore.

Maybe it's something to do with feeling lonely.

I consider good art something that moves me, interests me, or educates me. I've always considered films that move me to tears better than ones that don't.

The only "famous" bands I like are Fear Factory and Sepultura, all the rest is <10000 listeners s**t per track on youtube. That's how mainstream I am.

Dunno, I like a bit of art history myself, as long as no one tells me how to interpret a work of art, or indeed - how to draw.

Most art experts do that though, Bun. They break art down into universal concepts. I always treat artwork at face value and for attractiveness unless someone mentions symbolism that they used in it. If it goes unspoken, why try to find it?

Yeah, I studied art, and the part where you're completely shot down for daring to speak was what I didn't like about it. Especially if you're being patronised for 'misunderstanding' art (I actually did find support for such a claim I'd made on Wikipedia, years later).

They say true genius is never understood in its time, but I think that just means they were kinda lame and didn't really have what it took to make their art interesting to others. I imagine the best artists got attention but were panned by art critics and as such were never remembered, with art critics supporting all the crappy leaders of the art movements.

You're certainly entitled to your opinions, but I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree. Maybe I'm biased because I'm a formally trained visual artist, and I've had years of indoctrination from art history and art theory courses. I've got a hard time viewing art through the lens of an average layperson. The way I understand things, though, the artists we deem as the most influential at any given moment in our cultural development are usually the ones who pushed boundaries of acceptibility-- aesthetically and conceptually. Art is supposed to push buttons; otherwise, it gets boring and stale. The thing is, society generally has an element of natural aversion to challenges to the status quo, hence why many artists may only be fully appreciated posthumously. Vincent Van Gogh died penniless and defeated, thinking he was a complete failure as an artist. Jackson Pollock was often subjected to claims that his paintings could be replicated by any 5-year-old. For much of his early career, the modernist art critics were merciless in their treatment of Andy Warhol. In each of these cases, the viewing public at large completely missed the point of the artists' works. The sad fact of the matter is, the public tends to like what they're told to like, and for the reasons for which they're told to like it. So-called "validity" is quite often restricted to the safe and the old and the toothless. Critical thinking appears not to be a mass activity.

One of the beauties of art is, it is often open to much interpretation. So far as art appreciation is concerned, the public hasn't really got any obligation to know anything about the context in which a piece of artwork was created while in the process of viewing and interpreting it. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But if one is to go beyond art appreciation into reasoned critique, then I think one should be familiar with the actual intent of the artist. Negatively critiquing a Pollock because it looks like a kindergartner could do it is an exercise in futility-- it's putting words in the artist's mouth which he obviously never actually said, and then condemning him for saying them.

So far as finding universals in artwork-- I can't truly speak for anybody's artwork but my own. However, should my work be treated as such, and picked apart, and analyzed, and made the subject of essays and lectures-- well, I'd be just fine with that. I mean, obviously, I want people to enjoy my work, and get an emotional sensation out of viewing it. But my work is also strongly conceptual, and I do see encouraging discussion as part of my purpose in life. I want my work to be a catalyst for critical topical discourse. It's the ultimate compliment for me-- even if it means encountering resistence from some opposing cultural position. Anything that will make people think and talk more is wonderful. And I really don't think I'm alone in wanting that for my work.

Picasso has been laughed at, although it may be that he was laughing the most. When he was settled in a relationship his work was classical. His Rose period is typical. It was very beautiful work. His draughtsman ship was superb. Yet he wanted something which went a lot deeper. The Dancers seemed to mark his entry into a personal hell with the break up of his relationship. The Minotaur was possibly a self portrait, expressing the aspects of lover and brute within himself. It is not necessary for an artist to be self aware if this expression.

And I will have to respectfully disagree. Andy Warhol forgot the most important principal in creative design: it's not the original subject matter people remember, but the take you notice on the original image/idea. As for a 5 year old being able to replicate jackson Pollock, let him finger paint for 3 hours and you have your proof. Jackson Pollock was completely talentless and just slung paint at an easel, hardly takes talent. I am probably biased because I hate abstract artwork though. I will also say Pablo Picasso was a whacked weirdo that was lucky to make it big like salvador dali. Both used the most bizarre symbolism I know.

Now if you were to say Claude monet or someone that actually made things that you can tell what they are, I might have agreed with you. Basic knowledge of art priciples is important, but not at the expense of original style and making something actually recognizable.

If you remember Andy Warhol for making the same images over and over, or for obsessing over specific celebrities and brand names, you're glossing over the primary message of his work. Warhol was a mirror of the culture around him, where products were being mass-produced and cheapened, and celebrities were being put on pedestals. His work is about desensitization, the way modern America has become a shallow consumer culture disconnected from the things that used to be appreciated and meaningful. He even did a series of prints based on photos of gruesome deaths gathered from newspaper clippings, commenting on the way in which our mass media has numbed us to real tragedy all around us.

Moreover, he was also prescient, in a way that aggravated a lot of other artists and art critics-- he predicted that, with the way the culture was progressing, soon enough everyone would be capable of showing off artwork and claiming to be "artistic". Keep in mind, there was no internet when he made that prediction. The romanticized cultural myth that dominates the general connotations of the word "art", where an artist is revered for being a visionary and a dreamer and technically proficient-- a lot of artists had their egos tied up in that, and art critics and agents had their livelihoods invested in that. To say that art could be a populist pastime was considered a serious threat. Now, of course, the technology exists to make Warhol's prophecy come true-- sites like deviantArt give everyone a worldwide forum, eBay and Etsy allow anyone to sell original artwork, and Photoshop gives novices and professionals alike a greater ability to manipulate their end results.



First of all, you've stated a minor inaccuracy. Pollock did not "sling paint at an easel". When he was producing his drip paintings, he prefered to work with his large canvases lying flat upon the ground. At his house on Long Island, he had a small shed out back which he used as his studio, so he was able to take up quite a bit of space while working. In some of his paintings, you can even see small artifacts of this horizontal work process-- footprints tracking across the paint, small bits of glass and debris, traces of cigarette butts, etc.

When one describes Pollock as untalented, usually it betrays a failure to understand Pollock's artistic philosophy. Pollock's works, at least in his post-drip period, were not about making discernible pictures-- at least, none that anyone else but he could decipher. Pollock was an Abstract Expressionist. The process, and the emotional catharsis, and the feeling of painting, concerned him far more than the finished product. For him, painting was a verb, not a noun. It's quite obvious that Pollock was a very proficient painter; his earlier works, though still abstract, demonstrate his technical understanding of how to paint in a more traditional way. But even in his drip paintings, to say that he was a hack is oversimplifying. He always denied that his works were purely "accidental" or the results of "random chance". It wasn't like the paint was splattering over the canvas all by itself; there was an intellect controlling its vectors. The reality is, he produced the images he wanted to produce, and did so in a way that took discipline and tremendous bodily coordination. He was painting using an ethos that, to many Westerners is still very foreign. We of Judeochristian European descent are so used to rigid, recognizable representative images, because we like things to have order and make sense. But his works come from a much more fluid and chaotic place. What, exactly, is so "untalented" about painting chaos?

I know it sounds like a cop out, but it's really hard to explain in words. That's the point. You sort of have to do it yourself-- lay out a wall-sized canvas on the ground, go to town on it, lose yourself in it for awhile, and experience the adrenaline rush of the catharsis.



There's a big distinction between Picasso and Dali, though. Picasso was a cubist-- he sought to recreate on a two-dimensional canvas the three-dimensionality and physicality of the world around him. Traditional shading wasn't the point, because ultimately that is still only a two-dimensional illusion to fool the eye. He was actually attempting to translate spacial objects onto a planar surface. Dali, however, was a surrealist-- his subject matter was culled from dreams and the subconscious, in accordance with the theoretical work of psychologists of his time.



Again, you're judging things from a very rigid Western viewpoint. The art principles you laud as being so important-- they're rooted in the classical works of the Ancient Greeks, the studies produced during the Renaissance, and centuries of an imposition of a heavily order-based orthodoxy by the Church. This isn't to say that these things aren't valid-- but who's to say other cultures, with other paradigms and other visual aesthetics, aren't equally valid?

You make some pretty good points, Chevand.

And I will make an ammendum: it's not really fair to compare salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. Both were somewhat surreal but that is where the comparison ends.

By that logic then I should also respect Aldruous Huxley because he was a paranoid conspiracy theorist that happened to have made some parallels to what the future would be like. They both took negative spins on a mostly positive thing.

What's wrong with more artist's getting recognition and being able to sell their own works online and use them for marketting? One could argue oversaturation, but most people don't do any form of art past the teenage years, so that doesn't really work. It will lead to more artists able to support themselves. Hell, we're supposedly close to a second renaiscance.

In regards to jackson Pollock, you're defending a guy famous for just dumping paint and putting them in odd figures. As a fellow aspergian I figured you too would find that just random chaos. However, I am curious what you are referring to with his works before he started his paint drizzling.

Painting chaos is just unnerving for me. I want something I can recognize with interesting patterns/effects.

And I am not an overly rigid Western artist, I enjoy the scroll art of China.

Personally, I can't see how paint-splattering is not an interesting effect. I can definitely see patterns in it too, but the pattern-making is more intuitive.

If you're referring to Warhol's theme of desensitization-- yes, I suppose there's some amount of debate on the merits of modernity and progress too. I won't say it's necessarily all bad. I mean, I'm not some neo-Luddite survivalist who lives off the grid in the forest and subsists on hunted venison. I enjoy having a car, I enjoy having grocery stores and restaurants, I enjoy having washing machines and dryers, and it's scary how in love I am with my iPhone. But of course, there's a flip side to everything. There's the cliche about what happens to us, if solar flares or aliens or whatever sci-fi trope you like comes along and fries the whole grid. Who's going to have a harder time adjusting-- me, or the venison-eating survivalist? There's the cliche about what happens to us, if our technology grows beyond our capacity to understand and respect it-- robot invasions, or nuclear holocaust. Industrialization already has a long history of creating uncontrollable ecological problems.

Really, it all depends on the perspective from which you approach it.



I don't think there's anything wrong with it-- for us, at least. As a society we've gotten much more accustomed to the idea, and if you're of my age group-- Generation Y, born around the time that the first wave of personal computers were being offered to consumers-- you haven't really lost anything of import to this advancement in technology. Back in the 60s, though, a lot of people in the art world were horrified by the idea that just anyone, regardless of training, could do what they did. They held monopolies on creativity, and were fiercely protective of that.

Trust me, I'm the first to sing the praises of technology. My entire practice is based on technology-- my processes, my concepts, my display and distribution. I do recognize, though, that it's capable of being abused just like any other tool we've ever developed. You can use a hammer to build a house for the homeless, or you can use it to bludgeon someone to death.



Hey, I can respect that. I am an Aspie, after all. There are various aspects of my existence where I am pretty rigid about keeping things in order. Chaos can be scary and overwhelming. But I also think occasionally it can be immensely beautiful, if you appreciate it for what it is. Look at images of nebulae taken by telescopes, or the ripples out on the surface of a lake, or the auroras across the arctic skies. Often there's no discernible pattern or structure that we can see. Sometimes, instinctively, the gestalt of our minds takes over, and we notice things that aren't really there. There's not really a giant hunter in the sky named Orion. But it can be nice to let the mind meander a bit, and not concern oneself too much with order all the time.



It's true, other cultures have representational aspects to their aesthetic. There are many, many different systems of cultural internal logic, with standard rules to govern them. Where I live, in Vancouver, Coast Salish artwork is very popular. Most of it is restricted to a very rigid colour pallette-- black, white, red, frequently blue or turquoise, and sometimes yellow. Most of it relies on the traditional ovoids and sharp curves that make the style so distinctive. Much of it depicts local animals-- bears, orcas, wolves, ravens. That said-- of course, there aren't any actual ravens around here (that I have seen, at least) flying around with bright red and turquoise markings in ovoid patches of feathers. Theirs is an aesthetic that is less concerned with the way things appear on the surface, because it has other priorities. Whereas, with European art (and I'm including descendents of Europe in former colonies as well), art has often been much more focused on building a believable illusion and replicating the way the eye interprets information. Perspective using vanishing points-- that's an illusion of reality. Shading-- that's an illusion of reality. Anatomical studies-- all of it is to trick the audience into forgetting that the object in front of them is a piece of cloth covered in paint rather than a human being.

Chinese scroll art, as you mention, follows its own cultural conventions too. It commonly uses a different form of perspective, one which doesn't use vanishing points or lines or foreshortening.

I wasn't trying to insinuate that you personally are inflexible. My point is, being raised in the Western world and immersed in a culture that so heavily values "reality" in artwork, there's sort of an insidious and condescending tendency to see other aesthetics that aren't as explicitly "real" as if it's a failing of those aesthetics. We don't even realize we're doing it, most of the time. Even within our own culture, less realism often translates to less respect. People assume cartoons are just for children, or that being a professional cartoonist is somehow less demanding than being a photorealistic painter. That could explain why, in a culture like Japan, for example, which has a long history of stylized artwork, manga is taken seriously and seen as universally appealing regardless of age or social status. Even middle-aged Japanese businessmen pick up mangas along with newspapers to read on their commute to work via mass transit.

I bet you didn't read my post on this thread. Picasso did indeed become a whacked weirdo at times, but had times when he produced beautiful, more classical work. The work he did depended on his state of mind. Have you seen a good range of the work he produced during his lifetime? If he was lucky to make it big then so are all other artists. We know for sure there are many good artists who never get known. Is there enough room for all of them? There aren't enough buyers with the big money.

Damien Hirst has it well sussed. It said there is the Art World and the World of Art. One is for making money and the other about true art. That may be regretable, but there's no point in moaning about it.

I have not seen any of said classical works. I just know his weird symbolic cubist art that is a lot of weird objects seemingly randomly thrown together.

Chevand, you clearly are very knowledgable on art history. I applaud that, since I lack the patience to look into it.

We just need to balance our industrialization with what we enjoyed during hunter and gatherer times to make the ecological issues better. Humans are pretty grossly overpopulated though...I remember reading once we could all live as kings if the population stayed at 1 billion. Guns Germs and Steel says otherwise though.

I like complexity in my music rather than pictures of nebulae, but I have done space drawings, so I can see why you say that.

As far as not seeing the other cultures' standard for good art I can see what you mean. I am rather confined in what I enjoy in art but I enjoy a great deal within it. Suppose that's another form of open-mindedness.