It may seem strange to read that an artist thinks art sucks, but there you are.It isn’t because there isn’t anything interesting to be done in art, it’s just that nobody cares if it is interesting.
Instead of interesting, it seems that people want something a bit more pedestrian, and that will be declared by the art gods to be genius-level work.
I finally settled on this point by looking at a big shot art site, seeing who is being proclaimed the latest genius of art. The work I saw there was jarring to me. It was plain, flat and cartoon-like. It was very much like the stuff I was doing when I was ten years old. Close enough that if I sent one of those paintings to the hot professional art web site and said it was done by this guy, I’m quite sure they’d put it on their site as another example of the great man’s genius.
But I’m decades beyond that now, and here this guy is the new genius of art?!? Maybe I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. When I was ten it was “not bad for a kid” and probably if I still painted like when I was ten nobody would care.
So I realized that people are just randomly declared to be some sort of genius. Like another artist who paints red squares. That’s it – that’s the big work of genius. Oh yeah, she calls them things like A Dozen Roses – never mind that they look like the same red squares she called Carnations, it’s GENIUS! I should be grateful for even getting to see her work.
Yeah. Now do you see why I have said that art sucks? That and the fact that art is mostly useless. 99% of art is either bullshit like this or mindless wall candy: Pretty waterfalls and barns with lots of yellow light – bright and shiny and signifying nothing.
That said, I have finally distilled the essence of success in art: Being good or doing something nobody has ever done before will get you exactly nowhere. To be a genius in the art world, you just need to have the brass balls to put a dot on a canvas and call it God Speaks To Abraham or whatever. So now we know the whole secret of modern art is to be an artist with unmitigated gall and completely full of shit. Nothing else. Although a complete lack of ability to produce anything recognizable also helps.. as long as you make sure to give your work some pompous name, that is.
I’ve done the cartoony work of the great genius trumpeted by the art mags, and left it behind long ago. I’ve done impressionism, abstractism and photorealism. I’ve semi-settled on abstract impressionism because it represents the greatest challenge next to doing something original in abstract expressionism and it takes a lot of skill and talent.
If you missed my many discussions on this point, abstract impressionism uses abstract shapes, simplified shapes and color fields, to create images that rather clearly are representational. It is unreal realism, and that is what I love about it.
I use abstract impressionism to play with the minds of viewers at the neural level, and to present my personal agenda to reform the direction of civilization. I trust that is not too much to ask. And I still love abstract expressionism for its free flow from the animal, subconscious mind to the canvas. Canvas is canvas, paint is paint, the don’t need to pretend to be otherwise, except perhaps to impress the dull witted.
Either way, the art world isn’t going to care.
YOU ARE SO RIGHT
I’m thrilled to have finally read these sentiments from a legitimate artist. I’ve stated it similar before, but my words/opinion does not carry any weight whatsoever: “I can’t possibly know what I’m talking about -I have not had any formal training.” (I’m just a dumb construction worker)
The joke of asking my girlfriend what the artist must have been thinking about while pointing at the restroom sign at galleries continues to irritate her. 🙂 Any argument (including yours) that supports the fact that some of the works out there are just plain BS gets rebuffed as “ultra simplistic views made by people who can’t grasp the process”
Made sense when you spoke of Brass balls, unmitigated gall, and completely full of shit. I bought some canvas and paint today: I have nothing to loose, and who is going to care anyhow?
Mike
I love you. You are *so* right.
i think the above seems a little sophomoric. i’m dissatisfied with contemporary art, but not just that. the self-proclaimed art of now has in common what art has so much been about: so little. it’s narcissicistic and pretends it’s too important in itself to tackle the big themes: it relies on style: that is the way i do it is new and better etc. and old concepts of avante garde: found object etc, which are inherently about and reaction to previous styles. personally i think your real job is to do something that trascends ANY art style or form. (especially those of the entire modern era) the only relevancy something like action painting or abstract expressionism had was that it was an attempt at this. you can’t just combine attributes of previous styles, you’re just being the ecclectic modernist, how can you trascend modernism in this manner? why not build your own foundation and forget about seeing yourself through the eyes of the past or present.
yes, i agree………..but i’ve known that for a while.
here’s my take on IT…….you go to the beach, pick up a seashell, it looks good.you walk a bit further….another seashell, ah-ah, that’s better than the first. you throw the first away…..you have a beautiful shell. you walk further, another shell takes your fancy, same fate for your “beautiful shell’ , ditched for a new old shapes or colourful specimen. Now it’s time to go home……..walking backyou spot your original shell…….you pick it up…..mmm, it looks ok, it has a life of it’s own…….i’ll take both. What comes around, goes around.
It’s the same with art……..you may discard that painting/style today, but pick it up in 12 months, you will have second thought (insert NEW)
someone once said ” the mind expanded, never returns to the same size”
we may think that artists suck…because “the public” are swayed one way or the other by ‘flavour of the month’…….but i’m sure if picasso or kandinsky were ever worried…….we wouldn’t now have beautiful art to look at !
As for being qualified…..formally trained, who cares !! if you paint and enjoy it,
isn’t that enough. i’ve been to exhibitions that i don’t know the difference.
oh, by the way….i’m not formally trained….but i’ve sold my works of art.
Art is to the beholder…….toucha !
You are all full of shit and dont have the faintest idea what you are critizing…..fuck you all….i am an absract artist….try it morons….its alot harder than you think…..dipshits
Just because you don’t have the talent to paint realistically doesn’t mean you should trash those who do. I’m sure you can find a crowd of gullible morons who will buy into your excuse of “style” to sell your splatter paintings. Good luck.
I’m an art student at university.
I have such strong passionate hate for “modern art” because they seem empty. There is an “ooh ahh” aesthetic impact thing going on, but behind that is nothing and that really really sucks.
You are right.
Most modern art is unstable.
We have allowed the expansion of ignorance violate the medium of art.
We are great at making money from total garbage, thats the corporate dragon. I expect that art will try to convince an unwary public which way is Times Square. If I was looking for such an address, I would probably enjoy the probabilities of inferior representations of talent.
We have lost the considerations of intelligent art for the fabrication of bubble gum, child-like beginings.
Perhaps Picasso is guilty.
Lets be mature and face the abstractions of the future.
We are not less cabled by our creative self, than our last endeavor.
Ricardo Garcia, Artist: http://www.livingwaterpaintings.com
I agreed with much of your chest-beating about modern art.I am an abstract-expressionist myself.I never wanted to be one,never loved Cubism or Picasso or Pollock but,through 30 years of Art Schools,Art Scene in N.Y.C,I’ve come to this juncture.For me,most of the seminal,pure artists died or disappeared by 1960.Pop Art ruined everything;Irony replaced Substance (& any smuck thought they could be an Artist).YOU HAVE NO IDEA,PEOPLE,WHAT IT IS LIKE TO FACE A BLANK CANVAS AND THEN COMPOSE FROM A SINGLE STROKE!Abstract-Exprressionism will make a comeback because it is honest,vital & decidedly Modernist.The individual must triumph over the opression of world dominance& Totalitarianism , which threntens us all.
I think you are so right, I think contemporary art is total bulls**t. As long as you can BS your work, anything can be art.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE your post and am so happy that someone said it! Been feeling like almost giving up because there is just no point to today’s art. I paint realism and a lot of figurative art, my work is not commercial, it is collective art, I have worked very hard on making sure proportion is correct, the tones are correct and that my experience reflects what hits that canvas. For those who don’t get it .. this is usually referred to as “ART”.
I personally am insulted as an artist to see stuff like this out there. Paint blob equals art, give me a freakin’ break! Ran across a website the other day where the guy painted one color on a range of different canvases. Each a different color, perfectly square. I could not believe people call this art. It just goes to show how dumb people are becoming and that there are not many “artists” out there. You cannot just pick up a brush, put a stroke on the canvas and call yourself an artist. There is much more to it folks, like talent!
Unbelievable how this stuff sells. People are idiots.
I am also a realist, and am an art student. I refuse to paint abstract or anything of the modern variety. I think that type of art is for people with next to no talent looking for an easy way to make money. 8 hours for a realism painting= 10 minutes for a abstract “piece” Modern art is totaly bullshit, and I wish the art would burn along with the empty souls that lie behind the paintings themselves. No offense………………………..
The beauty of art is in the eye – and mind – of the beholder. The purpose of abstract art and representational are are very different. Realism is a demonstration of skill while abstraction is about getting people to think. Realists and abstract artists share a common problem today; finding something DIFFERENT to do – avoiding repetition.
I have a problem with the snooty side of the art world that gets off on passing judgment on art – as explained in the article. Ultimately,though, if someone goes to the trouble of creating a thing – and someone else likes that thing enough to want to own it, there isn’t anything more to be said.
I agree with you completely. Fashion is fickle and 200 years from now the so-called modern genius’s won’t be given as much respect. Everything abstract had already been done by the middle 50’s. These johnny come lately artists are only repeating what was done already fifty years before their time. The undiscovered realists of this generation will garner the future glory and most of the modern art in museums will be buried in the museums attic.
Well Sean, I concur with parts of that. It’s really difficult to know what people will care about in a hundred years or more: Maybe painters will just be a thing of the past and nobody will care about any of it. My guess would be, though, that some art from every style will survive at least so that people will know something of what we did back the old 20-aughts. And of course since we’ll all be long dead by then will it even matter? 🙂
I totally agree 🙂 Modern art sucks..
It’s like the famouse story, by H.C Andersen “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
They’re all “ooh it’s so pretty”, untill ‘the little boy’ yells “Hey why is he naked”, but in this case it would be “Hey this isnt art!”.
(Sorry, i am not very good at English 🙂 )
“Pop-Art is,…Pop your in, and then, Pop you’re out!” The world has digressed into drooling over “what’s next.” Because folks have become more simple minded at large, allowing convenience over effort, with fewer and fewer of them shooting for excellence in their crafts or “great works”; this age will be forgotten quickly when an earth shattering event changes the course of this era’s path (like a huge earthquake that destroys a major economy, or a comet striking an ocean and obliterating a continental shore). Today, most folks desire the latest gadgets, they want fame for nothing, and they want money for freedom; this has become the essence of their core, it is feed to them, and they consume it via the media. When that which is bad is good, and when that which is good is bad, whoa to thee!!! We live in an age of automatons, most give their lives over to material lusts, routine habits, and simple status quo desires; most are empty lost souls longing for fulfillment in a world of falsehood, deception, and confusion; very few understand the concept of sacrifice required for greatness, the utter strife involved in the lives of the true greats, or the truth of what it is to love a thing regardless of some reward. Time will be the only healer for this type of multi-generational sickness. Our age may be recognized as the most distracted and hasty ever to walk the earth. The future will marvel over how complex we made our world, to our demise, all while trying to solve the problems we kept creating. Today, man is continually fooling himself with some perceived intelligence he believes he possesses over the ultimate and natural course of the equilibrium of the universe. Some of us are in this world, but not of this world, and the world will hate us for it. Strive for excellence, be humble, study the past diligently, look forward, but realize we are all going the way of all flesh.
hmmm, creationism,evolutionism,…abstract..realism yet they all come from a single source of creativity. abstract from reality which realistically abstracts a tisket a tasket well it kinda sorta looks like a basket,this is why eye hate labels and stereotypes,how foolish i was to think that i left this behind in highschool.now all the cool art freaks are arguing with all the other cool art freaks.rather be dead than cool said the late kurt cobainif peoplel would open theyre minds they could learn so much after they break on through to the otherside yeahhhh! oh well course im just an illustrator my heroes are da vinci and disney jesus and bugs bunny. thats all folks oh yeah im the greatest artist that has ever lived suck on that dali
What, no Frank Frazetta? My personal favorite. 🙂 But I digress… we have labels because we’re humans and we communicate with words. Therefore, what we call things can be important. The post upon which you commented isn’t really about one kind of art versus another as it is about the current gallery-collector system and its apparent biases.
Great stuff! Contemporary art is generally, simply put, total rubbish. Mindless scrambling with low quality, earth damaging acrylic paints that aims to communicate nothing but sheer boredom. Perhaps it reflects on the personality of those who have started to appreciate such art!
I agree with Remember. While one sees joy/happiness the other gets upset and angry. Lets run it in the ground like we always do. In my opinion its another way the evil one is restraining us from experiencing Gods creations. Sitting at a computer- little fat boy sitting on the couch playing nintendo. Abstraction-impression-expression-confusion. Can anyone name a well known famous impressionist, expressionist, or abstact piece of art? Yes a hundred years from now people will look at the work of these hundred years and say “What freekin crap is that!”. Use your imagination – STOP BARBARIC CANVIS PAINTING. Like performing monkeys lets follow the lead horses ass smell. I always wanted to create my own ART THING and after searching the web I can find no person who works this medium. I started with something infant and made it mature. It is now evolving and entering into a new faze. I love & believe in what I do, and love the people who say “I’ve never seen anything like that before”. I have sold my works for 25 years making people happy with their purchase. When they view my work they know for a fact that there was many hours of thought, preparation, work, and patience. My art makes people happy. Look for my light etchings to be exposed to you soon.
Art is big business. Anyone can slop paint on a support, but when a vested interest thinks it can make money off of you, whether you have talent and vision or not — money trumps. A successful artist has a successful promoter, who will take a large percentage of your financial gain. Only you can decide if it is worth it or not.
Good luck,
ML
I was totally going to post this on my Facebook – until I looked at your paintings.