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These paintings have no structure. They are just seemingly random splashes of paint on canvas.

What I do with some students who think like this is to suggest that they create an abstract painting (if it's so simple). Usually they find that the layering of color, composition and freedom of line is not so easy as it looks. (If you like what you do, take a picture and post if for me!)

I have to take issue with another statement of yours(especially since I'm getting involved with the classical music ping list too).

While music is not necessarily representational (Although the best music is) it does have harmony and structure and flow. Else it is not music.

Have you listened to Schoenberg? It does not have harmony nor flow. The woman's voice doesn't even really sing, it kind of slides (it's called sprechtstimme....making up fancy words to justify art?).

Listen to a clip here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000005J07/qid=1119014520/sr=8-3/ref=pd_csp_3/104-9133375-0606347?v=glance&s=music&n=507846.

But have your ear plugs ready. Maybe you'll appreciate the paintings better after listening to what the music is doing at the same time. I know all the intellectual rationalization for Schoenberg; I still don't enjoy it. It doesn't pass the "play me at the next party" test. (And even the music professors I know don't race to play Schoenberg at any opportunity.)

But I'd take a Kandinsky to hang in my house any day. I'd take and treasure any of the works I post!! May I win that lottery some day...

What I do with some students who think like this is to suggest that they create an abstract painting (if it's so simple). Usually they find that the layering of color, composition and freedom of line is not so easy as it looks.

Of course it as as easy as it looks. I've got some used paint trays that look remarkably like some of these types of paintings. Take some paint. Apply to canvas in random fashion. Sell for big bucks to people who've been snookered. Since it doesn't have to look like anything it doesn't matter how good your technique or talent is (after all, how would anyone know that you didn't want it to look exactly like that?)

(If you like what you do, take a picture and post if for me!)

I wish I had the time to try But I can guarantee that I wouldn't like anything that looked like anything on this thread so far. (I think I'd really enjoy painting/drawing although I have no talent in that direction at all. I can 'see' what I want but have never been able to translate that on to paper or other media. I send in those "learn to draw bambi' tests and they write me back telling me not to quit my day job. See, even the scam schools don't want me.) I have to take issue with another statement of yours(especially since I'm getting involved with the classical music ping list too).

me->While music is not necessarily representational (Although the best music is) it does have harmony and structure and flow. Else it is not music.

Have you listened to Schoenberg? It does not have harmony nor flow. The woman's voice doesn't even really sing, it kind of slides (it's called sprechtstimme....making up fancy words to justify art?).

I listened to "Columbine". My wife is laying in the hospital right now recovering from hip replacement surgery. There's a senile lady down the hall who sounds just like that.

Schoenberg is not music. It does however fit with the expressionistic type paintings as he had to be tripping out when he put the sounds together. (of course IMHO anyone who actually paid for that tripe would be accused of being on drugs also)

I stand by my statement. Music has structure and harmony and flow. Shoenberg has none. Therefore it's not music. Would fingernails on a chalkboard be music? Would the moanings and groanings of a senile old lady in pain be music? Sometimes a chain of ugly sounds is just a chain of ugly sounds. (Other times its rap)

What I do with some students who think like this is to suggest that they create an abstract painting (if it's so simple). Usually they find that the layering of color, composition and freedom of line is not so easy as it looks. (If you like what you do, take a picture and post if for me!)

Hmmm. I might take you up on that, since I pretty much concur with John O's comments. But for the moment, how about comparing a non-abstract work with a Kandinsky you posted?

Note that my rose pic is done with colored pencil and pen & ink, not paint, which would require more skill to do effectively. And I will freely acknowledge that the subject matter is both trite and pedestrian. Great art, it ain't.

However, I would argue that it is *better* art than the Kandinsky. And not just better, but objectively, measurably better. Cliche' that it is, at least my picture actually bears some resemblance to physical reality. And as such, my artistic skill can be judged by seeing how accurately I can represent the subject; a critical eye can point out the flaws, e.g., there should be darker shadows under the petals to show realistic lighting. The Kandinsky, on the other hand, makes no serious attempt to look like anything, so it eludes the application of such standards. Paint can be smeared on a canvas and called great art, because it is impossible to identify any flaws -- since there's nothing really there in the first place. It is valued because there are no standards for it to meet.

I am not ashamed to show people my picture. But if I somehow produced the other one, I'd burn it before anybody got a glimpse.

The woman's voice doesn't even really sing, it kind of slides (it's called sprechtstimme....making up fancy words to justify art?).

Rex Harrison war Sprechstimme, als Sphrechstimme nicht kühl war.