Wynn sues Lloyd's over $54 million damaged Picasso

See my post #39. And, while it may be true that most people are jerks, it is also true that most people in MY life are not jerks, nor are the people I admire. His misogynistic reputation is not based on a single painting-- I base my conclusion on a large number of his paintings of women, as well as on his personal life.

So, I stand by my previous opinion-- although undoubtedly important to the history of modern art, he's still a marginal painter and a jerk.

"It's a crummy painting anyway. I wouldn't give you a buck ninety-nine for it."

Well, goodness, that sure goes to show ya that de gustibus non est disputandum, doesn't it?

I have a fantasy that I go to a Christie's modern art auction and everybody else in the room bidding is a Freeper. I could make a clean sweep with just the spare change in my wallet!

You wrote, "As it was, he chose to be part of the avante-garde, to be popular with the "in crowd", rather than painting good stuff. He could have made a perfectly respectable living just painting well..."

Picasso was painting and drawing highly realistic, representational portraiture at the age of six. He chose to move forward with his talent, and I don't think anyone even faintly knowledgeable about art history would say he painted what he did in order to be popular with the 'in-crowd' or to be part of the avant-guard. He, along with painters like Matisse, photographers like Man Ray, and sculptors like Giacommetti, defined the avant-guard. They were the crowd others wanted to be 'in' with.

I guess it comes down to what you personally define as 'painting well' or 'painting good stuff'. If you dislike nonrepresentational art, so be it, but dismissing its proponents and exemplars--like Picasso--as marginal is missing the point of the whole modernistic, nonrepresentational movement of the 20th Century, at least in my view.

Conservatives need to shake this notion that art, particularly modern, nonrepresentational art, is a some kind of con game.

Thankfully, I am no expert. I like what I like, and do not like what I do not. Thus I do not feel beholden to evaluate artistic merit.

I will just say that if I had an extra hundred million just burning a hole in my pocket, I would not be browsing the modern, nonrepresentational art market, so to speak.

Thankfully we do not all like the same thing or the lines would be longer...

While I do usually prefer representational art, I certainly don't dislike non-representational work across the board. I like some of Kandinsky (interesting compositions, and often, a beautiful use of color), and I'm a big fan of later Monets-- while he's usually considered representational, if he didn't tell you what some of those later water-lilies were, you would never know. But, again, interesting compositions and a beautiful use of color.

I take a painting for what it is, but if it is neither true nor beautiful, in my view, it isn't good art. If a painting is true, it need not be beautiful, and if beautiful, it need not be true. Contrary to popular opinion, beauty is not completely subjective, at least not in painting-- it has to do with composition, color, and execution.

Moreover, since most of Picasso's paintings of women aren't true, they're unjust as well. Those women are people, real human beings, and it takes a real misogynist to come up with Picasso's version of those women. One of my favorite contemporary artists, Richard Schmid, said in one of his books (I'm writing from memory as I don't have the book with me),"If a lady is going to be nice enough to take off her clothes and sit for me, the least that I can do is to paint her splendidly." And, he does.

We're never going to agree, you know. But, I will say that most of the twentieth century added NOTHING artistic to art-- it was mostly a political and philosophical statement, of contemporary nihilism and the lostness of the individual. (After all, after one has said that nothing means anything, what else is there to say? The artist might as well just put down the paintbrush and kill himself at that point.) The good news is that more and more artists have turned away from that, and there's a lot of wonderful and exciting work being done today.

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