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Art that people rave about that's actually shit.

Fez909 said:
Large canvas with moody, unsettling colours = now you're Rothko?
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Sinister goings on in a small town, grotesque characters, moody lighting = now you're David Lynch
Fez909 said:
I'm semi-joking with that last sentence, but his technique, for all the praise, doesn't seem difficult to reproduce. It's just seems laborious.
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Why does it have to be difficult?
 
Miss Caphat said:
:D

well, the experience of being there can obviously never be surpassed, However, the pleasure derived from diving into nostalgia for a certain time period even if you were never there can be pretty gratifying too. It's a different way of experiencing something, and the advantage is of being able to see it more clearly than those who were actually there.
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It can work both ways, but yeah, it can definitely be enhanced by having hindsight.
 
Orang Utan said:
Sinister goings on in a small town, grotesque characters, moody lighting = now you're David Lynch

Why does it have to be difficult?
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It doesn't have to be difficult, but surely part of the justification of an artist's work being appreciated is that they were a cut above everyone else? If it's easy, then anyone can do it.

As to the sinister goings on in a small town thing, that's too simplistic. If David Lynch's works were so minimal as to not actually represent any forms or structure then yes, you'd have a point. But his work is based in more traditional storytelling while employing those themes.
 
Fez909 said:
It doesn't have to be difficult, but surely part of the justification of an artist's work being appreciated is that they were a cut above everyone else? If it's easy, then anyone can do it.
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No. As evidenced above by bubbles' woeful attempt
 
Fez909 said:
This is the first thing in this thread that has made re-think Rothko and maybe understand how people can have such a reaction to them in the flesh when they do nowt for me otherwise. It feels like The Emperor's New Clothes when I hear people banging on about the brush strokes, though!! and whatever else, and it seemed like they were grasping for a reason to like him because he's trendy, rather than anything else.

A drone track could be seen as pure texture, though, and that can stir up emotion in me. And even those who don't appreciate that sort of music can feel unsettled by pure noise or tone, like the feeling of dread you get from a David Lynch film's soundtrack. And if you heard that same soundtrack through a phone on the back of a bus it would sound shit, but in a gig or even a cinema, with the volume cranked up and the bass nice and deep, you would have a vastly different experience.

Is this what people get from Rothko? The size, presence, whatever, is what makes the difference? I've really tried to understand it, and aside from this explanation here, I can't see anything beyond that. And if it is that, then would any painting of that size be enough to evoke the same emotions? Large canvas with moody, unsettling colours = now you're Rothko? I'm semi-joking with that last sentence, but his technique, for all the praise, doesn't seem difficult to reproduce. It's just seems laborious.
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Rothko is about emotional experience. Which is why he vetted buyers by watching their emotional reactions to his work. I'd have to say, as someone who has painted in oils and fast drying oils, the feathering must have taken him ages. The sheer scale of his field paintings and the overall uniformity of the feathering has to have been work intensive. I think he developed a layering technique that was unique.
How's your painting going? I'd be interested to see how you got on with the edges and blending. :)
 
Using Rothko as an example again:

It strikes me that an understanding of context and influences are important, but also what an artist has to say about their work, how they make sense of/represent it and how much that is understood by others. Sure, you do not need to know anything about a painter and their inner/outer world to appreciate a piece of work but at the same time, to understand why they are revered and by whom, is helped (well it helps me at least) if you gain an insight, from them, into their influences and beliefs.

As I mentioned in class, in 1940 Rothko stopped painting entirely and devoted himself to reading and beginning to write a book which he called the The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art. Although he never considered the book finished, he never discarded it. It greatly illuminates his goals as a painter and his personal understanding of the work of art.

In his book, Rothko compares the painter to a philosopher which leads him to say that art is therefore like philosophy. As philosophy, the work of art is the creation of a particular notion of reality but in terms of what he calls “plastic speech” - through the use of colors and forms. He goes on to say that plastic languages change, that there are particular plastic languages which serve particular purposes, but that they only serve art when they generalize beyond the particular. And like the philosopher, who reduces all phenomena in order to shed light on human behavior or ethics, the artist reduces phenomena in order to inform or shed light on human sensuality. Sensuality, he goes on to say, is neither objective experience nor subjective experience but something which exists outside of both and therefore contains both.

Later, he tries to explain what the plastic language of art is and how the language is obtained. Plasticity, he says, is the way an artist creates the effects of movement in space, a sensation or experience of reality as something which moves through time and space. He then notes that not all artists do this in the same way, that there are many ways to do this, and that the key to the differences between artists and their styles is the way they choose to create or produce this sensation of movement. This sensation of movement, or the notion of plasticity, can be produced through tactile means, through illusory or visual means, through representational or through abstract.
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Christopher Rothko says his father believed that “viewing a work of art was an experience, something to interact with. If you are communicating with the painting, you are potentially having a life-changing, mind-changing, spirit-changing kind of experience. It’s not just something beautiful to look at, but something that touches a place deep inside you.”

Rothko’s work “hits you on a pre-conscious, pre-verbal kind of level. That was quite intentional: He was looking for a pictorial language that was as universal as possible, that he could communicate to almost every viewer. He did not want to be tied to stories or any kind of narrative that would pigeonhole him in a time or a place. He was looking for something that could reach everywhere.”
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bubblesmcgrath said:
Rothko is about emotional experience. Which is why he vetted buyers by watching their emotional reactions to his work. I'd have to say, as someone who has painted in oils and fast drying oils, the feathering must have taken him ages. The sheer scale of his field paintings and the overall uniformity of the feathering has to have been work intensive. I think he developed a layering technique that was unique.
How's your painting going? I'd be interested to see how you got on with the edges and blending. :)
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I bought the wrong paints and when I went back they'd sold out. I'm still going to do it, though. Will be sure to update you once done (here or on the other thread). :)

His technique for layering apparently was to use extremely thinned down down oils and put coat after coat after coat on. Each layer was almost transparent, which is why you get the colours from below showing through.
Orang Utan said:
No. As evidenced above by bubbles' woeful attempt
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She didn't use the same technique as him. Had she tried, you might have liked it more.
 
Fez909 said:
I bought the wrong paints and when I went back they'd sold out. I'm still going to do it, though. Will be sure to update you once done (here or on the other thread). :)

His technique for layering apparently was to use extremely thinned down down oils and put coat after coat after coat on. Each layer was almost transparent, which is why you get the colours from below showing through.

She didn't use the same technique as him. Had she tried, you might have liked it more.
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Tbh I'm not bothered that OU didn't like them. :)

And at some stage I intend painting an 8 x 6 foot version of my red sky at night homage.
I'm going to practice the layering in alkyds and work on feathering. I'd often use feathering when painting clouds and skies. ..but not to the extent Rothko did. Painting or attempting to paint in his style was very enjoyable once I moved away from dark colours.
:)
 
so....you both have reasons why you do or don't like the original work, which is fine. but I totally fail to see how trying to reproduce something means anything. I mean, I can copy a prize-winning poem, very easily, or a famous recipe or piano piece maybe marginally well. I still don't get how that means anything as far as the merit of the original.

And Fez909 I really think you need to at least attempt your "Rothko" before continuing with these kinds of judgements. :)
 
Miss Caphat said:
so....you both have reasons why you do or don't like the original work, which is fine. but I totally fail to see how trying to reproduce something means anything. I mean, I can copy a prize-winning poem, very easily, or a famous recipe or piano piece maybe marginally well. I still don't get how that means anything as far as the merit of the original.

And Fez909 I really think you need to at least attempt your "Rothko" before continuing with these kinds of judgements. :)
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Seems a tad contradictory :hmm:
 
bubblesmcgrath said:
Rothko is about emotional experience. Which is why he vetted buyers by watching their emotional reactions to his work. I'd have to say, as someone who has painted in oils and fast drying oils, the feathering must have taken him ages. The sheer scale of his field paintings and the overall uniformity of the feathering has to have been work intensive. I think he developed a layering technique that was unique.
How's your painting going? I'd be interested to see how you got on with the edges and blending. :)
Click to expand...
i was under the impression he vetted his buyers at least in part because he believed his paintings were sacred objects.
 
Dr_Herbz said:
Seems a tad contradictory :hmm:
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hmm, not really. It would be like me saying "I can re-create the Mona Lisa" which I could, I'm sure. Many people have, at least something that looks a lot like the original.
But it would be worse if I said that without even bothering to back it up, wouldn't it?
 
This thread keeps making me think about a poem I really liked when I was younger and trying to figure these things out. It's a little clunky, I think, and perhaps the whole hasn't held up that well, but some of the lines here seem to convey a lot of the duality between what is true beauty vs. what is art that sells, but still leaves the question open -ended, as it should, being a poem...

It's by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I have not lain with beauty all my life
telling over to myself
its most rife charms

I have not lain with beauty all my life
and lied with it as well
telling over to myself
how beauty never dies
but lies apart
among the aborigines
of art
and far above the battlefields
of love

It is above all that
oh yes
It sits upon the choicest of
Church seats
up there where art directors meet
to choose the things for immortality
And they have lain with beauty
all their lives
And they have fed on honeydew
and drunk the wines of Paradise
so that they know exactly how
a thing of beauty is a joy
forever and forever
and how it never never
quite can fade
into a money-losing nothingness

Oh no I have not lain
on Beauty Rests like this
afraid to rise at night
for fear that I might somehow miss
some movement beauty might have made

Yet I have slept with beauty
in my own weird way
and I have made a hungry scene or two
with beauty in my bed
and so spilled out another poem or two
and so spilled out another poem or two
upon the Bosch-like world
 
Pickman's model said:
so you think your pictures are worth as much as a dessert.

you've some way to go before you reach a three-course meal let alone the heady heights of tracey emin.
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Well as said earlier in the thread...my neighbour wanted to buy the first one. But I declined payment and asked for one of her pavlovas instead. Incidentally it was delicious :)
The second painting sold for €250 which I was happy with...:)
 
Pickman's model said:
i was under the impression he vetted his buyers at least in part because he believed his paintings were sacred objects.
Click to expand...

He was interested and motivated by the emotional experience of his own interaction with his paintings and the experiencing of those who saw his paintings. He spoke about the spiritual experience a viewer may have on looking at his art and related this to the emotional quality of their response.
 
Miss Caphat said:
and what would you say if someone now accused you being a money-grubbing fraud/ art conman? :hmm:
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I'd say the idiot saying that might need a lawyer :)
As you well know there is no law against painting in the style of any other artist :)
The paintings are signed by me.....and titled "homage to Rothko".
Nothing fraudulent there.
€250 is hardly "money grubbing"
And as I'm a woman I'd hardly be called a "conman".
Also the buyer is a lecturer in the city's third level art college so they know what they bought and they like it .. :)
 
bubblesmcgrath said:
I'd say the idiot saying that might need a lawyer :)
As you well know there is no law against painting in the style of any other artist :)
The paintings are signed by me.....and titled "homage to Rothko".
Nothing fraudulent there.
€250 is hardly "money grubbing"
And as I'm a woman I'd hardly be called a "conman".
Also the buyer is a lecturer in the city's third level art college so they know what they bought and they like it .. :)
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that's all well and good if it weren't for the fact that you've referred to other artists as frauds and con artists out to make a quick buck by doing artwork* just because they thought it would sell. seems to me like you could easily be accused of the same thing, or worse.


*in other words, not real, genuine, from the core of their being- artwork
 
Miss Caphat said:
that's all well and good if it weren't for the fact that you've referred to other artists as frauds and con artists out to make a quick buck by doing artwork* just because they thought it would sell. seems to me like you could easily be accused of the same thing, or worse.


*in other words, not real, genuine, from the core of their being- artwork
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worse! :eek:
 
Miss Caphat said:
that's all well and good if it weren't for the fact that you've referred to other artists as frauds and con artists out to make a quick buck by doing artwork* just because they thought it would sell. seems to me like you could easily be accused of the same thing, or worse.


*in other words, not real, genuine, from the core of their being- artwork
Click to expand...


People make art for a living you know. Artists have painted to make a living for a very long time.
The "core of their being" bit is a relatively modern assignation...as in the last 100 or so years..
You quoted a poem a while ago...that debates the meaning of beauty..from the highest echelons of "great beauty" (let's label that "high art " )....right down to the "common man" and his experience of "beauty"...(lett's call that "everyday art".)
My issue with SOME current art is that it is being presented as "high art" and I'm not convinced that it is that...some art does not seem to have a level of brilliance (skill..technique.) deserving of such a status.

I sell landscapes. They are not "high art" .. they are everyday and for whatever reason people tend to like and enjoy them. They dont pretend to be "high art". but they have a place in the art world whether you appreciate that placement or not.
But I honestly fail to understand the high aesthetic "high art" value assigned to a woman pushing eggs full of paint out of her vagina. I might just understand if the subsequent canvases were interesting but they're the by product. The performance ..the naked woman pushing the eggs out...is the art...
 
bubblesmcgrath said:
People make art for a living you know. Artists have painted to make a living for a very long time.
The "core of their being" bit is a relatively modern assignation...as in the last 100 or so years..
You quoted a poem a while ago...that debates the meaning of beauty..from the highest echelons of "great beauty" (let's label that "high art " )....right down to the "common man" and his experience of "beauty"...(lett's call that "everyday art".)
My issue with SOME current art is that it is being presented as "high art" and I'm not convinced that it is that...some art does not seem to have a level of brilliance (skill..technique.) deserving of such a status.

I sell landscapes. They are not "high art" .. they are everyday and for whatever reason people tend to like and enjoy them. They dont pretend to be "high art". but they have a place in the art world whether you appreciate that placement or not.
But I honestly fail to understand the high aesthetic "high art" value assigned to a woman pushing eggs full of paint out of her vagina. I might just understand if the subsequent canvases were interesting but they're the by product. The performance ..the naked woman pushing the eggs out...is the art...
Click to expand...

well, isn't it performance art, by definition? and I think what would separate that into the category of high art vs. a forgettable landscape someone hangs in an office, is that it challenges the viewer to think, and might make a long-lasting impression and even change how the viewer sees the world.
 
Miss Caphat said:
that's all well and good if it weren't for the fact that you've referred to other artists as frauds and con artists out to make a quick buck by doing artwork* just because they thought it would sell. seems to me like you could easily be accused of the same thing, or worse.


*in other words, not real, genuine, from the core of their being- artwork
Click to expand...

If I rubbed dog shit on a canvas and sold it as art I'd feel like a fraud.
Quite honestly...I would feel like I was getting money under false pretences selling shit as a piece of art. My brain might attempt to persuade me to come up with a narrative or context for the shit on a canvas but my conscience would prevent me from selling it no matter how good the narrative.
So I'll keep paintimg my landscapes and a few field paintings a la Rothko. And if I'm happy with them I'll hang them and be happy that in all conscience I've done my best to ensure that they are worthy of a place in someone's home.
 
Miss Caphat said:
well, isn't it performance art, by definition? and I think what would separate that into the category of high art vs. a forgettable landscape someone hangs in an office, is that it challenges the viewer to think, and might make a long-lasting impression and even change how the viewer sees the world.
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Seriously?
High art?
She sells her videos "uncensored" (her description) online for €4.99 a download.
:facepalm:

Look.
You and I are never going to agree on this...particularly if your so called "positivity" about art in general then moves you to denegrate landscapes as an entire genre :facepalm:
 
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