[Argus]

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

[Rembrandt_fan]

You wrote, "It's a crummy painting anyway..."

No, it isn't, at least not by any qualitative measure one uses to evaluate artistic merit: delicacy and mastery of line, interplay and emotive impact of color, placement of form within the picture plane. It is a great painting, just as nearly all of Picasso's works are great paintings.

While many flatter themselves that beauty is wholly subjective--some like roses, some like daisies, some like daffodils--informed aesthetic judgment of man-made works of art is another matter entirely. It doesn't take a degree in art history or theory or a thick tome of critical writing to learn enough to discern the good from the bad from the simply mediocre. Spend a few weeks of your life studying color and form and composition--or even better, take a beginning drawing or painting class, and then tell me that Picasso does crummy work.

Conservatives need to shake this notion that art, particularly modern, nonrepresentational art, is a some kind of con game. Sure, there are and were lots of poseurs and fakers and flimflam artists out there, but Picasso most certainly wasn't one of them. Comments like yours make my head hurt.

[leilani]

"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!