What picture do you think is overrated...
Posted by: Eloise on 23 August 2017
Okay so there is a thread "What is your favourite picture" ... but lets turn that on its head. What acclaimed picture / artist (modern or historical) do you think is over rated? What picture do you just not get the appeal of. To quote Graham Norton (omg ... yes sometimes in the car on a weekend) ... "I can't believe its not better!".
So my entry in the "WTF! Why?" category...
Don't get me wrong ... I see great artistry and beauty, even genius, in much of Van Gough's work ... but this ... what is anyone thinking holding it up as great work? I thought perhaps seeing it "in the flesh" would help. But no ... its just a picture of a chair ... if it was a photograph I'd say Van Gough was putting his camera down and caught the shutter release accidentally.
Why? Someone ... help me ... what is the appeal of this painting that so many people buy copies to hang on their wall?
Just to reiterate, this isn't about bad art as such. But my question is specifically about art which is held up as being inspirational or of great value (not necessarily financial value) ... but you just don't "get'.
Some of Monet's pictures that focus on the pastel shades do me are overrated and there used to be that horrible fad in the 90s of having the print and then the name of the artist and painting added add as graphical captions under the image in some sort of gaudy faux stylish frame...
Speaking of contemporary art in general terms, 'big size' is a way overrated. It seems these days that more and more art is produced on a very large scale. It may be easy to impress with but a lot of the works loose the important elements of delicacy and intimacy.
A good example is the the Canadian photographer Edward Burtinsky whose huge prints (typically 8x12 feet or larger) of grand scenes, a lot of them captured from the air, catch the eye quite often and seldom the heart. The on going bargain prices for his images vary from $5000-$40,000.
Simon-in-Suffolk posted:Some of Monet's pictures that focus on the pastel shades do me are overrated and there used to be that horrible fad in the 90s of having the print and then the name of the artist and painting added add as graphical captions under the image in some sort of gaudy faux stylish frame...
I had one of those! That exact picture mounted directly on a board, with the graphic frame and artist's name exactly as you describe. Was in the early 80s, though.
For me this is a much easier topic than the opposite thread, but which of so many to choose? This perhaps is the epitome, Yves Klein's IKB79, apparently occupying wall space in the Tate.(They couldn't affort to paint the whole wall, no-one having told them that you can buy blue paint in 5 litre pots for a few quid in B&Q.)
Sorry, for me no deep meanings in a canvas painted blue - or any other colour. It might be a background for a picture to be painted, but really to me it is taking the mick, a prime example of an "artist" conning the art establishment , and an art establishment that is too ready to be conned. I know some won't agree with me, but that is very much how I see it.
It's a nice shade of blue, though.
I painted my kids' bedroom ceiling that colour when they were young, intending to stick luminous stars on. It wasn't a success (before the stars), giving a heavy, opressive feeling in the room. I painted some white cumulous clouds dotted around it, overall about a third coverage, and that made a tremendous difference, so then I stuck the stars on the remaining blue (small, translucent stickers, and almost imperceptible in the light unless you looked directly at the ceiling). It was a great success, both day and night, latter aided by a small UV tube arranged to shine upwards to 'charge' them for a few minutes before lights out. Perhaps I should visit the Tate one day with a tin of white paint and some luminous stars...
Innocent Bystander posted:For me this is a much easier topic than the opposite thread, but which of so many to choose? This perhaps is the epitome, Yves Klein's IKB79, apparently occupying wall space in the Tate.(They couldn't affort to paint the whole wall, no-one having told them that you can buy blue paint in 5 litre pots for a few quid in B&Q.)
Sorry, for me no deep meanings in a canvas painted blue - or any other colour. It might be a background for a picture to be painted, but really to me it is taking the mick, a prime example of an "artist" conning the art establishment , and an art establishment that is too ready to be conned. I know some won't agree with me, but that is very much how I see it.
I painted my kids' bedroom ceiling that colour when they were young, intending to stick luminous stars on. It wasn't a success (before the stars), giving a heavy, opressive feeling in the room. I painted some white cumulous clouds dotted around it, overall about a third coverage, and that made a tremendous difference, so then I stuck the stars on the remaining blue (small, translucent stickers, and almost imperceptible in the light unless you looked directly at the ceiling). It was a great success, both day and night, latter aided by a small UV tube arranged to shine upwards to 'charge' them for a few minutes before lights out. Perhaps I should visit the Tate one day with a tin of white paint and some luminous stars...
Have you actually seen it in real life? I understand how people can scratch their head and mutter over this picture but I found it has real intensity in the gallery. Maybe the audacity of it was part of the effect. I have no problem with people not liking it but especially with abstract art I think you can sometimes be surprised seeing them in real life.
Definitely I found this true of some Rothko (I found the Seagram murals room at the Tate exhibition very powerful) and for Jackson Pollock in general which I decided were fantastic. Couldn't live with one mind you.
Bruce
winkyincanada posted:
I had one of those! That exact picture mounted directly on a board, with the graphic frame and artist's name exactly as you describe. Was in the early 80s, though.
Did you buy it from Athena?
Bruce Woodhouse posted:Innocent Bystander posted:
Have you actually seen it in real life? I understand how people can scratch their head and mutter over this picture but I found it has real intensity in the gallery. Maybe the audacity of it was part of the effect. I have no problem with people not liking it but especially with abstract art I think you can sometimes be surprised seeing them in real life.
Definitely I found this true of some Rothko (I found the Seagram murals room at the Tate exhibition very powerful) and for Jackson Pollock in general which I decided were fantastic. Couldn't live with one mind you.
Bruce
No, I haven't seen it - it might be stunning as a piece of audaciousness (in my words above, a con), and even striking as a bold splash of blue againsr the white wall, but it is the artistic equivalent of a piece of 'music' consisting of a single tone from start to end, and yes, it is likely to stir emotions - mild appreciation of richness of the colour, together with incredulity that it is framed and displayed as art, and a combination of amazement and amusement that people have actually parted with good money to buy it.
I don't know how much that particular one cost the Tate, but gather the painter was prolific at producing blue rectangles, of different sizes, one an eighth the size (area) of this one being sold for £668k in 2012, and another 1/50th of this size went for £195k in 2014.
De Gustibus - innit?
Odd what we like and don't.
I recall wandering the Tate and, on that day and in that mood, being most struck by a little painting by Gwen John.
As my eyes moved across it I couldn't help but dwell upon a variety of mistakes or apparent ineptitudes - none of which diminished it in my regard.
In the area of, and beyond, the abstract - I am fascinated with pretty much all the work of James Turrell , a manipulator and master of light.
Difficult to post an image as these need to be experienced - which, as yet, I haven't.
Eloise posted:Bruce Woodhouse posted:
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There is an interesting space between the man in the brown hat, and the young lady leaning on the railings. So much unspoken between them, so many thoughts in her head. Her unspoken desires, whether for him or perhaps for someone else she cannot be with. And all around, people relaxing, getting on with their lives ... while she is left watching, dreaming.
Hmmm, looks to me if the pair are simply in mid conversation, and he is probably in the middle of speaking - it would be an odd way for the two of them to be positioned if they weren't actually in conversation (other than if they were in love and just gazing at each other during a break in conversation), and one or other would be likely to be uncomfortable - so I'm not sure why it invokes imagination of unspoken desires on her part, for him or someone else... It appears to my mind just as a captured moment during a dinner party, though a curious one given the very odd assortment of people, notably the two men in vests clashing with the attire of everyone else, otherwise possibly odd is the man at the left leaning against the railing who seems to have separated himself from the conversations.
Overall I'm rather ambivalent - to me it is a mildly interesting picture, nothing more - it doesn't make me want to scrutinise it, nor spend time wondering about the thoughts of the characters - but then again I am not artistically minded. However I certainly don't find it an objectionable picture.
Eloise posted:Okay so there is a thread "What is your favourite picture" ... but lets turn that on its head. What acclaimed picture / artist (modern or historical) do you think is over rated? What picture do you just not get the appeal of. To quote Graham Norton (omg ... yes sometimes in the car on a weekend) ... "I can't believe its not better!".
So my entry in the "WTF! Why?" category...
Don't get me wrong ... I see great artistry and beauty, even genius, in much of Van Gough's work ... but this ... what is anyone thinking holding it up as great work? I thought perhaps seeing it "in the flesh" would help. But no ... its just a picture of a chair ... if it was a photograph I'd say Van Gough was putting his camera down and caught the shutter release accidentally.
Why? Someone ... help me ... what is the appeal of this painting that so many people buy copies to hang on their wall?
Just to reiterate, this isn't about bad art as such. But my question is specifically about art which is held up as being inspirational or of great value (not necessarily financial value) ... but you just don't "get'.
Eloise, this is an interesting and worthwhile topic, but carries the danger that. like many threads here, it goes down the Daily Mail route in the direction of "my three-year old could have painted this ...". Also, its much easier to diss a painting than to write eloquently about it at least without being classed as a poncey intellectual airhead. However, foolishly no doubt, I'll stick my head above the parapet and try to explain why I like the picture.
This is one of a pair of VG paintings of chairs. The other one is Gauguin's chair and it's worth looking at a good reproduction or, ideally, popping over to Amsterdam to give an opportunity compare them. They were both painted in 1888 and contrast in many ways. One is a night picture and yours is a day picture so the techniques differ. The items on the chairs are also different and are I suspect personal to each artist. They may have been chosen to represent aspects of the characters of the two (at the time) friends. Why not portraits? Well I think we would then be comparing the faces of the artists rather than their characters: outgoing, modernist, extroverted in the case of Gauguin, plain, traditionalist, introverted in the case of Van Goch. Also an empty chair associated with a person often has a melancholy aspect as it forces you to think about the absent individual and why they're absent -- the armchair in the corner where grandfather always used to sit, for example. Finally, although it's dangerous to read into pictures events that postdated their creation, Gauguin and VG fell out spectacularly only a month or so later with VG threatening Gauguin with the razor blade that he (probably) subsequently used to sever his own ear. So the pictures may say something about the transitoriness and fragility of friendship.
Rereading this guff, you'd probably be wise to ignore, it but at least it's an attempt to summarise why I find the picture moving.
Roger