What is art?

[Archae]

I look at art as the difference between art and a stunt.

Thomas Kinkade made art, art I like, and is enjoyable to look at.

Some guy hangs orange drapes all over Central Park and it's called "art."

[mahina]

1. You have every opportunity to enjoy Kinkade's products as much as you like.

Art is a big umbrella. Someone can use a paintbrush, paint, and canvas to create horror, kitsch, advertising, beauty beyond the capacity of language to convey, growth, life and death, challenge social norms and expectations, and see life anew.

I don't find Mr. Kinkade's work satisfying personally- doesn't mean I object to you loving it.

Here's a painter I love: http://www.dianalehr.com/aqua.html

[lunatica]

36. The art you like truly does depict light

And I love it. Thanks for including the link! I've tried to paint and draw water and it's a true challenge. But artists have been doing exactly that forever. Light. Its source, its quality, its elusiveness, and its constant changeability and effect is everything in art and photography as well as architecture. Even in movies light is mood.

[aquart]

2. No, pretty sure that doesn't meet any known definition.

And I wasn't too adoring of the orange drapes, either.

[cherokeeprogressive]

3. A true artist, that Christo...

The umbrella project that the artist Christo once called "a symphony in two parts" has become a tragedy in two acts. On Oct. 26, a sudden wind uprooted a 485-pound umbrella in the Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles and struck Lori Keevil-Matthews, 33 years old, of Camarillo, Calif., crushing her to death against a boulder.

Christo ordered the entire project of 1,340 yellow umbrellas in California and 1,760 blue umbrellas in Japanto be taken down "out of respect to her memory." But during the dismantling in Japan, a 51-year-old worker, Masaaki Nakamura, died when the arm of the crane he was operating touched a 65,000-volt power line.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/12/news/umbrellas-closing-leaves-christo-with-empty-palette.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

[Hissyspit]

11. Yes, he was.

Accidents happen. What's your point?

[Rowdyboy]

4. A totally subjective idea that varies with the individual....

What you find pleasing in art, as in music and literature (hell even in food/diet etc) is your choice and yours alone. People trying to belittle you for you personal taste in any of it are merely exposing their own insecurities. But it makes them feel good so there....

[cordelia]

9. Wish I'd said this as well as you.

Expresses my sentiments quite nicely.

[Hissyspit]

12. No, it's not totally subjective.

That's a naive fallacy. It is partially subjective.

[redqueen]

45. This. nt

[Texasgal]

5. Jaysus.

Can we stop with the damn Kincade threads?

It doesn't matter.

[handmade34]

6. cheap ART Manifesto

[Marr]

7. Art is anything that doesn't contribute directly to your survival.

That goes for everything from painting to standup comedy to designing cutlery. It's all "art". Whether it's good art or not is completely subjective.

[baldguy]

8. I think the only requirement is that art should elicit an honest emotional response.

Something Thomas Kinkade couldn't do.

[pipoman]

22. So you are denying the emotional responses of those who love his work?

[HiPointDem]

47. those are low-class emotional responses. not art. only high-class emotional responses count.

[quinnox]

10. as was said, its basically a social luxury

because most people don't have money or the time to try and create art and instead have to work for a living. But there are exceptions like the starving artist who seem destined to make art regardless of the personal cost to their own life. Then we are realy talking about art in terms of the natural born geniuses.

[handmade34]

18. see #6

it is not time nor money... it is lack of passion, critical thinking and insecurity ... which is admittedly a result of a unhealthy and dysfunctional society

[HiPointDem]

48. Lots of working people do arts and crafts in their spare time. Almost everyone I know does

something or other.

But it's not called "art," because it's done by working class people. Unless they're long dead, in which case it can suddenly become "art" suitable for collectors to spend lots of money on.

[Odin2005]

13. I think Kinkade's kitsch was more art that some of the abstract "art" out there,

[Hissyspit]

14. You can't accept that many people recognize Kinkade's work was con artist third-rate

fantasy kitsch designed to separate people from their dollars, so you have to trash Christo and Jeanne-Claude?

They completely funded their own projects, by the way.

[pipoman]

15. It is a sense..

some people are color blind, some are deaf, some have numbness, some can't smell, some can't taste, some have no taste..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=529720

[Marr]

19. "Taste" is the very definition of subjective.

Wait twenty years and some of the things that are currently considered in 'bad taste' will be the height of sophistication. Go to another place today and you'll find that your tasteful sense of color is completely out of step with what everyone around you considers pleasing to the eye. Your tastes are the distillation of a million little opinions you've heard or formed. Completely subjective.

I did some design work in Southeast Asia once and couldn't get the hang of it. They have their own ideas about composition and color. To me it looks horrible, but they like it. They aren't wrong, and they don't have bad taste.

[pipoman]

21. I don't disagree

if you go to the thread I linked and look at my other posts on the subject, the context of this post is probably more clear...I've been saying essentially the same thing and am tired of the self appointed art aficionados trying to proclaim what is or isn't art..

[Marr]

23. Ah, I gotcha.

I misunderstood your point, it seems.

[Taitertots]

16. It is everything I want it to be and none of the things I don't n/t

[aspieextrodinare]

17. To quote Justice Stewart

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.

P.S. I think 99% of modern art really doesn't qualify.

[Monk06]

31. You're quoting a judge's opinion about art? "I don't know shit about art but I know what I like"

Really that shit is getting old. It's like a mechanic saying, "I'm not a qualified mechanic but I'm going to charge you $5,000 to fix your engine." Why not study art? It's not hard. Just go on Google and it's all there.

But please, "I know what I like.", is just a substitute for I do and buy what I am told to by the people who control the market, In Kinkaide's case the kitsch late night cable market where KinKaide made his millions.

He's the Ronald Popeil, of TV art hustlers.

He's one step above the Sham Wow guy.

http://t1.gstatic.com

[HiPointDem]

76. "I do and buy what I am told to by the people who control the market"

Yes, because no one controls the market in high-priced collector art.

That market is totally free, made up of people who sincerely appreciate art because they spent ten years studying its deep history and intricacies.

LOL.

Really, it's funny.

Because actually, the market for art like Kinkade's is a lot freer than the market for "offical" art like Pollock's.

[Monk06]

79. Kincade did not produce art and his "market" is not free. His art is produced by wage slaves

imported from art schools in eastern Europe mostly. It is of no more value than Elvis Plates
painted by Chinese wage slaves in the Philippines.

[HiPointDem]

81. The story I heard is that he painted originals, which were turned into prints, which were given

highlights by "wage slaves".

If you're saying that wage slaves painted the originals, which were then then turned into prints and highlighted, that's different from the story i heard.

In which case -- link?

[Monk06]

85. There is a pick of his factory with two people "adding highlights" to mass produced

lithographs of original paintings by Kinkade. The pic is in a slide show on one of his
sites and shows a woman from one of the former Warsaw Pact countries adding
hand painted highlights to a lithograph of one of Kinkade's paintings. The image is
embedded in the slide show and can't be linked

The point is, these are reproductions tarted up to look like originals and he was under investigation by the FBI for selling these reproductions as originals and then undercutting the gallery owners by selling into the second market at art fairs for much less.

It's an old story. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/aug/29/business/fi-kinkade29

Even without the fraud charges and charges of mass produced inferior copies of
originals; the originals themselves are sentimental schlock. If the schlock was ironic
it might still be interesting but he was serious or at least he claimed to be.

[HiPointDem]

87. In other words, Kinkade painted the originals, as I said. The fraud and the highlights on prints

have nothing to do with whether Kinkade was an "artist". One can be an artist and a criminal fraudster simultaneously.

You claimed he wasn't an artist because his pictures were made by wage slaves. No, Kinkade painted the originals. His *prints* were made by wage slaves.

[Monk06]

97. And as I said Kinkade's originals are bizarre and kitsch nonsense and not competently painted.

Here is Thomas Cole



Here is Kinkade



See the difference?

[HiPointDem]

99. lol. i think we're done here, bambi.

[Monk06]

101. There are less exaggerated examples but all his work is of the same quality.

You are known by what you put your name to.

Kinkade was a hack.

[HiPointDem]

104. plenty of artists did ads and commercial work. by choosing a disney painting as representative

of kinkade's work, you pretty much lose the point. Besides being a hack and being an artist aren't mutually exclusive. You said he wasn't an artist and his work wasn't art.

[Monk06]

106. Andy Warhol did Micky Mouse and also did not do his own screen printing but he did do the

do the drawings and supervised the printing. Is Andy a hack?

A lot of people thought so, including De Kooning and several other "Action" painters. Andy was part of the gay art scene in New York and De Kooning, Rothko and Pollock before he died were virulent homophobes. They saw him as an upstart commercial illustrator who did drawings of women's shoes.

An art reporter interviewing Warhol accused him of being too commercial. Warhol's answer, "Of course I'm a commercial artist. I live in a commercial world. I have a lot of mouths to feed".

What makes Kinkade a hack is he wrapped his work in a Pseudo Christian form of divine inspiration, which the work clearly cannot support or render. Hallmark Card art, which is what this is just too facile to be taken seriously as art.

So Kinkade vs Andy Warhol? I take Andy.

[HiPointDem]

107. you said kincade wasn't an *artist*, but was a hack. as i said, he can be both. like warhol.

Last edited Fri Apr 13, 2012, 07:10 AM - Edit history (1)

these are also kincade's. he obviously made the choice to go with what sold. as did warhol. doesn't mean he wasn't an artist.



From the years 1984 through 1989, Kinkade explored a “French Impressionistic” style of painting under the brush name Robert Girrard. He created 71 different pieces of artwork under that name while still creating original Kinkade pieces at the same time.




http://thefw.com/thomas-kinkade-dies/

as for the sentimental christian hallmark card thing...that's a culturally bound opinion type thing. if you're outside that belief system, it's "sentimental". if you're inside, it's powerful emotionality. arguing about that stuff is stupid. just taste, personal background, personal beliefs.

not to mention that the facile "hallmark" judgment is one that doesn't require the 10 years of art study you claim makes your opinion superior. it's just the kind of dismissive, facile remark people make when they're vaunting minority taste over majority taste to score status points, and vice versa. all such phenomena having to do with food preference, art, music, activities, hobbies, religion, clothing, furniture, etc. can be read as status games where the content itself is ultimately empty, the positioning is all.

and very representative of consumer society, where one's identity "is" one's possessions, cultural consumption and decorations.

kincade obviously had painting skills, so he's an artist in my book. i saw the thread with people posting their idea of "art," it was a complete mishmash. some of it i found boring, sentimental, unskillful, whatever, i didn't much like half of it. but they did, so what? who cares?

[Fool Count]

20. Art is something that requires some kind of talent to produce.

Something we could appreciate for its relative (or extreme) difficulty and therefore rarity.
Try painting a landscape and see if anything remotely resembling Kinkade's painting comes out.
Record yourself singing "Thriller" and listen if it sounds anything like Michael Jackson.
Challenge Kobe Bryant to a basketball game and see what happens. You may not like Kinkade
or pop-music or basketball, but many people do and appreciate the product of exceptional
practitioners of those and numerous other pursuits.

[Archae]

26. Exactly.

Any idiot can pee into a plastic box, dunk a plastic crucifix into it and call it "art."

It takes skill and talent to take a photo of a flower beautifully, in black and white no less.

[NYC Liberal]

30. I think you could add creativity there.

I disagree that "art" necessary needs to be difficult to produce. Rather, it's about the creativity required to imagine it and actually do it. It's easy to say after the fact that "Anyone can do that!" Well, in many cases...they don't.

[HiPointDem]

50. rather broad definition

[pa28]

24. Well I guess we're on the opposite side here.

Christo is a favorite of mine and I look forward to his work. Wrapping the Reichstag, for instance, put history and lurking demons from the past in a neat little package and gave it some perspective. Clever.

Although Kinkade is not my cup of tea it bothers me to see people attacking him just because they despise his work. As I get older I've noticed snobbery bothers me much more than it used to.

[Egalitarian Thug]

37. Is it snobbery, or simply an understanding that his work is the product of other's work?

The question of individual taste is certainly a valid issue for debate, but art tries to say something, to innovate, to inspire, to attract or repel, to advocate or protest, etc. To steal other's work is not art.

If I print a picture of, say a can of Vienna Sausages repeatedly, in a spectrum of color, on a canvas, is that art, or am I just ripping off Timothy Leary's work?

[HiPointDem]

68. I didn't know Timothy Leary painted.

Andy Warhol's helpers produced most of his art once he got famous too. And he paid them shite.

[Egalitarian Thug]

88. Yeah. I actually woke up thinking about that. I saw Warhol in my mind, but my fingers typed Leary.

At least it wasn't Dennis.

[HiPointDem]

91. they actually do kind of look alike.

[Archae]

25. I have two paintings in my apartment.

One is above my desk, it's by R. Wood, a brook in the woods.

The other is hanging in my bedroom, it's a painting of Niagra Falls.

I like both paintings.

I would not hang a Jackson Pollock in my place, I don't like those.

[Monk06]

32. You couldn't hang a Pollock in your apartment. Unless it was a cheap poster you bought in a bookshop

I don't think Pollock's reputation will suffer from the fact that you, "wouldn't hang him in your place"

[Archae]

44. Even if I could afford a Jackson Polluck, I wouldn't want one.

I just don't like them, they look like the back of my computer.

[HiPointDem]

55. Pollock's reputation was subsidized by the CIA. And you can get them cheap sometimes.

Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? is a documentary following a woman named Teri Horton, a 73-year-old former long-haul truck driver from California, who purchased a painting from a thrift shop for $5, only later to find out that it may be a Jackson Pollock painting; she had no clue at the time who Jackson Pollock was, hence the name of the film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_the_*$%26%25_Is_Jackson_Pollock%3F

[Monk06]

73. Your referring to Clement Greenburg's support of Pollock and the membership of both

in the ACCF. The US government had a huge stake in making the US the modern art capital of the post war world at the expense of France. See "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art" by Serge Guilbaut.

I studied with Serge too so I'm not pulling that out of my ass.

[HiPointDem]

75. No, I refer to the CIA, US government, Rockefellers and Whitneys' support of Pollock and similar

artists. Which included the co-option of the media, such as the spook-run LIFE magazine.

[Monk06]

82. Serge Guilbaut takes up all those topics in his book. You should read it. It's very informative

an written in a very breezy and humorous style.

[HiPointDem]

84. So what? You're evading the point.

[Monk06]

86. I am not evading the point. The points you mentioned are examined in Serge's book. Read it.

[HiPointDem]

89. I've already read a great deal on the subject, enough to convince me that there is nothing

substantial holding up the category of "art".

"Craft," yes. "Art," no.

You are evading the point because you don't want to deal with the manifold ways that the coronation of "art" and "artist" is manipulated and exists as a reflection of power. You just want to tell me to read a book without actually responding to what I'm saying, so that you can remain in the category of "expert," and one-up.

I am happy to accept you as "expert," by virtue of your study, on matters of art craft & technique, history, etc. But not on the category of "art" itself. On that, my lifetime of study is every bit as valid as your ten years study of art.

[Monk06]

93. I know all about how art is a reflection, as you put it, of the power of elites. Most of my studies

revolved around Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and neo Hegelian critiques of literature principally in Georg Lucas', Theory of the Novel. I am quite familiar with what you are saying. Read, "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art". You'll thank me.

[HiPointDem]

94. Then why is it that your posts don't reflect that awareness? Which doesn't particularly have

anything to do with the Frankfurt school or lucas or neo-hegelians.

"The ruling ideas of every epoch are the ideas of the ruling class." or some such. and he wasn't the first to notice either.

[Monk06]

96. You lost me. There are too criques at play here if I think I understand you. Art as the expression

of the power of the ruling class and the critique of art in terms of its quality and relevance to
other forms of art. I see those two positions requiring separate debates. A least in the context of a forum discussion. It would require a book length analysis. Which I am offering you.

[LadyHawkAZ]

27. Art is the expression of human imagination

The idea of good/bad art is subjective.

alternately: Art is the guy that works at the grocery store up the road.

You choose.

[Tom Ripley]

28. Short for "artifice"

Seriously, that has always been my working definition.

[Monk06]

29. Don't even bother to compare Kinkade with Christo Javacheff and his partner Jeanne-Claude

It's like comparing Ferdinand Porsche with the local mechanic at Jiffy Lube.

You're betraying your ignorance, which means you are one of the 30 million
Americans who buy Kinkade's posters and figurines.

I would say you embarrass yourself but that would be pointless. You don't know
anything about art, so your opinion is worthless. Here are some names you should look
up before expressing an opinion about art.

Olinski, Ad Reinhardt. Warhol, Pollock, Rothko. And that's just the giants of post war American
painting. Then there is Robert Smithson which is where Cristo and Jeanne- Claude come from.

Art requires a certain amount of education. What you like is of no consequence to the history of
art. You are a consumer of commonplace images and opinions. My advice to you is go on Ebay and bid on Pendelfins. You know nothing about art so stop slandering actual artists.

[sudopod]

33. "...the local mechanic at Jiffy Lube"

"Art requires a certain amount of education. What you like is of no consequence to the history of
art. "

It annoys me that most of the people I agree with on this thread sound like a self-congratulatory lot of pretentious assholes.

Please strive in the future to be both:

1) Right

and

2) Not a pretentious asshole.

Please think of the kittens.

[Monk06]

49. I don't feel any requirement to be nice to people who know nothing about a subject yet

yet demand that their uninformed opinions be taken seriously. Such
such persons accuse anyone who makes an informed objection to their
superficial tastes and opinions.

The typical non sequitur used by those who have no experience with
modern art is; "I don't understand art but I know what I like."

Only a fool would say something so ridiculous.

[sudopod]

51. M-m-m-multipost! nt

[Monk06]

58. As long as the Jiffy Lube mechanic has experience with and has educated himself

about art I can take his opinion seriously. Otherwise I am under no
obligation to do so. That goes for his store manager, the regional
sales manager or the CEO of Jiffy Lube. Your opinion means nothing
if it is not and informed opinion.

[sudopod]

51. What about the Jiffy Lube mechanic?

What did he do wrong? Not a fan of the Dale Earnhardt poster in the waiting area?

[Monk06]

63. A Dale Earnhardt poster is not a piece of art and no one would claim it was,

not even the deceased Dale Earnhardt.

[sudopod]

66. Clearly you are not in the South. :3 nt

[Monk06]

69. Finally someone with a sense of humour.

[HiPointDem]

59. "Art" is a category defined by the ruling class. Always has been, always will be. And the "artist"

as a category emerged as capitalism did.

Which is one reason it's funny to hear someone to say they're justified in being rude to
people with uniformed opinions about "art".

Mystification abounds.

[Monk06]

62. I am well aware of that. Socialist Realism is just as mediocre as Kincade and for the same reason

they appeal to the emotions and the ignorance of the lumpen proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie.

Those are time warn arguments but don't hold your breath for a revolution or a revolutionary art movement any time soon if ever again.

[HiPointDem]

64. "time-worn". though you need not pay attention, as the correction comes from a lumpen.

or perhaps i should decide i can safely ignore anything you write, as you have not been properly educated.

be that as it may, you've missed my point altogether, i fear, with your talk of revolutionary art movements and your apparent belief that socialist realism was a revolutionary art movement.

my point was that your 'educated' opinions about art are the breath of the rulers in your mouth.

But, in terms of museums themselves, they are becoming more corporate. They appear to be more democratic, more populist, but the fact is that they are run by art collectors who become trustees. Art collectors – let’s face it – they are art investors. People who are interested in making art they purchase and invest in appreciate in value – and then the museums, of course, help that. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize it’s a pretty corrupt system. It would not be tolerated in any other form of commerce. The idea that art collectors (mostly white males) are deciding what museums collect, and what becomes part of our art history, is not populist at all. It’s really letting power determine what our history is.

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/797387/guerrilla-girl-talk-the-masked-art-radicals-on-their-new-research-the-art-market-and-occupy-wall-street

[Monk06]

67. You missed my point. Socialist Realism was a reactionary art form used for propaganda purposes

by pre and post war Stalinist states who were vehemently opposed to
"modern" art, from Expressionism all the way up to the New York school.

Typically revolutionary art movements emerge from the ranks of the Lumpen
Proletariat; criminals, mad men and the disenfranchised.

But not in the present period. Money has once again conquered ever human
sentiment for the next hundred years.

[HiPointDem]

74. So was abstract expressionism. Totally reactionary, funded by the state and big capital for

propaganda purposes. The mirror image of Stalin-era social realism.

Revolutionary art movements emerge from the ranks of the lumpen? When was it that that happened?

[Monk06]

100. How about the Constuctivists until Stalin purged them?

[HiPointDem]

108. how about them? what's your point? stalin purged the constructivists, the cia purged the realists.

same ruling class power to dictate high culture, different weapons.

only in modern times, ruling class power also dictates low culture through the back door.

[Mimosa]

34. And you speak for whom?

Monk06, your pompous statements are balderdash which alienate some people from art. If you're an artist of any type you ought to be ashamed at conveying a threadbare stereotype of 'the snooty snob'.

"You know nothing about art so stop slandering real artists, " says Monk06.

Hmm, I haven't been around D.U. in a while. I'd been ill and took a break. So I cannot remember anything about your politics. But the tone is anything but liberal, tolerant and democratic.

Well, I know a lot about art. And don't have to prove it on a message board by insulting other people's taste. If figurines and Kinkade's giclees or prints make a person happy, that's fine and dandy. Why should you be concerned?

[Monk06]

46. I speak as someone who studied art for ten years.

I did my MFA with Jeff Wall and worked as his camera assistant for three years. Internationally known artists that I can count as personal aquaintances and in several cases personal friends include; Rodney Graham, Ian Wallace and Ken Lum. I have also had lunch meetings with Dan Graham, Jorge Johnen and Rüdiger Schöttle. The latter bought four pieces of my work in 1990 and put me in a show with Tomas Ruff.

If having an art education and knowing what you are talking about makes you an elitist then I'm guilty.

You question my politics yet you talk like a Teabagger, slandering anyone who knows more than you.

Enjoy your Kincade prints and your avocado coloured refrigerator.

[sudopod]

57. Well, as long as you're someone important.

Carry on.

[Monk06]

61. I never claimed to be important and I never made anything of my art education but

But the people I studied with were well know and important for a reason and
not because you could buy prints of their work in malls and pull in $100 Million
in gross revenue a year.

Let's put it this way Jeff Wall is a household name in Germany. Kincade is a
household name in the US. But Americans have contempt for their greatest
post war artists, if they even know who they are. Names like Pollock, Ad Reinhardt.
De Kooning, Smithson, Rauschenberg. The list goes on.

I am shocked that so many on this board would defend Kincade, who was not an artist
in any meaningful sense at all. He was a merchandiser who defrauded his own investors.

[sudopod]

65. Oh, you're totally right, there.

"I am shocked that so many on this board would defend Kincade, who was not an artist
in any meaningful sense at all. He was a merchandiser who defrauded his own investors."

[HiPointDem]

70. For those who still regard art as being above politics consider the following. The CIA

financed, organized, and assured the success of the American abstract expressionist movement, using artists like Jackson Pollock, Sam Francis, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko, as weapons in the struggle against the Soviet Union. Frances Stonor Saunders has presented this matter of public record in her well documented book, The Cultural Cold War - The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters.

Saunders informs us that during the height of the Cold War in the 1950’s, the CIA secretly promoted abstract expressionism as a means of discrediting the socialist realism of the Soviet Union. The Agency’s scheme was really two fold, to shift the center of the art world away from Europe to the United States, and to create a national art that would extol unfettered liberty (without challenging the political status quo in the US of course.) The CIA noted a group of little known upstart American artists and thought them perfect to help execute the strategy...

The spy agency created and staffed an international institution they named the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF,) and from 1950 to 1967 (when the front group was at last exposed as a CIA operation), the spook endowment had secretly bankrolled the abstract expressionist movement with untold millions of dollars. The CCF organized international gallery and museum exhibits and CCF operatives worked to persuade collectors, curators, and critics that Pollock, Rothko, Motherwell, et al, were the peerless artists of the age. The CIA orchestrated the publication of a major article on Jackson Pollock in LIFE Magazine declaring him “the shining new phenomenon of American art,” and the “greatest living artist.”

The CCF brought action painting to the attention of Nelson Rockefeller, whose family ran the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA.) Rockefeller was so enamored with what he saw that he actually referred to abstract expressionism as “free enterprise painting.” Not surprisingly Rockefeller began his own action painting collection, furthering the largesse and esteem of the abstract expressionist movement. It is hard to imagine that the artists did not know where their money and support was coming from, but as Saunders put it in her book, “if they didn’t they were… cultivatedly and culpably, ignorant.”


http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/2005/12/abstract-art-cultural-cold-war.html

[Mimosa]

72. I am so pissed that book isn't available on Kindle

The story is known to me. But it is not known to the general public.

HiPoint, I came across references to the book months ago. I was distressed it's not available on Kindle. *sob*

[Mimosa]

71. Clowntastic

It is not true that Americans have contempt for post-war artists. If it were true you wouldn't be flouting the most well known artists of the 1950s. *DUH*


I grew up in a an [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism] autodidacticist family. Meaning Christie's catalogues came to us...

Nobody needed PhDs. But that was before your time.

Some of my best friends -including Mardi Gras Indians and some folk artists- weren't what your type would call artists. Yet I worked for Christie's to authenticate all sorts of art. I authenticated some works i can't name. If i gave the names of the works i would reveal my identity. That's what i wouldn't want to do when I am not sure i can trust people.

I like Thomas Hart Benton's hand made lithographs. Early 30s work.

I know schlock when I see it. But Kinkade's earliest work's were OK. If people like them they will stand the test of time. I really don't care.

[Monk06]

77. I have nothing against autodidacts. Rodney Graham and Dan Graham were both autodidacts.

but that doesn't mean an art education is worthless or irrelevant.

Plus before my time??? I'm sixty years old. Before my time is 1952.

But my education goes back to the Baroque and ends with my work
with Jeff Wall. After that I despaired and lost interest in being an artist.

I have no grudge against pictorialism, the Hudson School produced some
very good paintings with pastoral themes. Competent and quite lovely
but already obsolete and behind the times. For example this by Thomas
Cole.



This is the quality of painting that Kincade mocks with his factory produced
schlock.

[HiPointDem]

78. No one said an art education is worthless or irrelevant. What people are reacting to is

the claim that someone with an art education need not even be polite to lesser-educated mortals.

And your claim that reputations in art -- like Pollock's -- exist on some pure plane of merit, where pedestrian concerns like politics, profit, money, power, who's sleeping with who, who's on whose shitlist, old boy's clubs and all the rest of the corruption of ordinary life -- don't enter into the coronation of what is "art".

As for Kinkade's pictures, he did paint the originals. It was just the printed copies that were "factory".

That's a nice picture there. The lights in the windows look just like Kinkade's to me.

[Monk06]

80. When someone calls you an elitist because they do not have the education to know what you are

saying then you are under no obligation to be polite. It doesn't matter whether
you are self taught of have a Phd.

The term elitist is used by teabaggers to express their fear and contempt for
people who are educated or have succeeded in life.

It's a term that gets my hair up.

[HiPointDem]

83. where is it that someone called you an elitist? and was it before or after you called someone

"ignorant"?

[Monk06]

90. See post #34. This was in reply to my saying the OP was ignorant for calling Christo's works.

Orange drapes. That IS stupid AND ignorant. Poster #34 calls me pompous for having an informed opinion of Chrsto's work and taking the OP to task for it. The predominant theme of the replies to me on this thread is that popular taste trumps informed opinion and that I am arrogant and pompous for pointing out that the OP does not know what he is talking about regarding the work of Christo Javacheff.

Really sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between this site and FR.

[HiPointDem]

92. Heal thyself, physician. Your post #29 preceded #34 and is fairly insufferable.

You're betraying your ignorance, which means you are one of the 30 million
Americans who buy Kinkade's posters and figurines.

I would say you embarrass yourself but that would be pointless. You don't know
anything about art, so your opinion is worthless. Here are some names you should look
up before expressing an opinion about art.

Olinski, Ad Reinhardt. Warhol, Pollock, Rothko. And that's just the giants of post war American painting. Then there is Robert Smithson which is where Cristo and Jeanne- Claude come from.


Once you write something like that, you're fair game to get what you gave, in my book, and no grounds to complain about it.

And post #34 was a direct response to your post #29. If you'd stuck to criticizing kinkade or supporting christo without calling other posters names, you wouldn't have gotten any names back.

[Monk06]

95. Calling Christos, Gates in Central Park in New York, "Orange Drapes" is ignorant. That is just

a plane fact. It is a description used by opponents of the installation when it came out.
The OP merely refers to the Gates contemptuously as somehow inferior to Kinkade.

If I say someone is ignorant, when they are, I don't mind if I am called pompous.

But education trumps ignorance and taste involves I keener form of judgment than.
I like it and it makes me feel good.

[HiPointDem]

98. not a "plane" fact at all. it's possible to refute the point or share your opinion without

resorting to namecalling.

She didn't call it 'orange drapes' because she didn't know the name, but because she didn't like the piece. that's not 'ignorant,' that's an opinion. just like yours.

The correct spelling of a word is a *fact*.
The merit of a piece of art is an *opinion,* no matter how many capitalist-subsidized art "experts" you can bring to bear on the subject.

[Monk06]

102. You imply I'm a pedant by criticising someone's taste then you correct my spelling.

Calling Christo's Gates, orange drapes is ignorant and uninformed.

All opinions are not of equal value. An uninformed opinion based on
preconception or lack of knowledge is not worth much at all.

[Warren DeMontague]

103. The arch villains known as "lowest common denominator" and "unwashed plebeians" threaten Gotham!

Fortunately, our hero, PRETENTIOUSMAN





Arrives just in time, to save the day!

[Monk06]

105. Another bit of much needed comic relief.

but that image has a watermark. Gotta watch that.

[Warren DeMontague]

110. Meh

They'll have my hotlinking ability when they pry it from my cold, dead, bandwidth stealing fingers.

[HiPointDem]

109. all opinions are of equal value when they concern matters of opinion. all opinions aren't of equal

value concerning matters of fact.

picasso was a spanish artist = fact.
picasso was the greatest artist of the modern period = opinion.
critic x thinks picasso was the greatest artist of the modern period = fact.
picasso is a more technically skillful painter than grandma moses = fact.
picasso was an artist, grandma moses wasn't = opinion.
grandma moses was a sentimental hack = opinion.
heresy, i know, but there it is.

[Egalitarian Thug]

35. It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool... n/t

[lunatica]

38. .

[surrealAmerican]

39. You don't have to like something for it to be art ...

... and liking it doesn't make it art.


Then again, I'm a firm believer that not all art is good.

[IDemo]

41. I enjoyed drawing and painting from the age of five

It was always assumed by everyone around me that I would become an artist. After my first year in college (mid 70's) it became evident that I had nothing whatsoever in common with the utter bizarreness being extolled as art by the instructors, nor would I ever.

As much as some want to argue that anything evoking an emotional response constitutes art, I call bullshit. Anyone calling themselves an artist who possesses zero technical skills is a scam artist at best. And yes, I very much point to the illustrious Crucifix in Urine creator as a prime example.

[Cobalt Violet]

42. Art museams, galleries are good place to view art.

Also artist hold open studios and you could see a variety of what is been done in studios.

Threads like this are a product of art funding cuts, art eduction funding cuts, media cutting arts reporting and replacing it with sports reporting.

[LanternWaste]

43. A friend and I asked ourselves that question some years ago

A friend and I asked ourselves that question some years ago over a few drinks. The answer we came up with was: "Art is the conscious attempt to either create or recreate an emotion via the conduit of one or more of our senses." (looking at the actual definition though, I realize our own conclusion was pretty far off the mark.)

I don't particularly like Kincade's work, but I don't dislike it, either; but looking at the definition of the word 'art', I'm forced to admit that his work falls well within that window of meaning, regardless of what we may believe, or how we ourselves define art on an individual level.

I do enjoy this slow-moving tide of post-cynicism that's begun to appear in many mediums (Kincade's art being among one of them), yet am puzzled by the reactions. (No... not puzzled, 'bemused' I suppose would be the appropriate word.)

[janx]

51. . . .

http://www.google.com/url?source=imglanding&ct=img&q=&sa=X&ei=48CHT_LWMurWiAKv59z4Cg&ved=0CA0Q8wc4MA&usg=AFQjCNHKNzBMQcr_YSuHwqG3yZcWUIdtwQ

[janx]

56. This is art. n/t

[Tikki]

60. I guess what I say it is...

to me.



Tikki