Posted on 09/21/2013 10:12:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
What makes it interesting to me is the day before I saw the painting, I stood on the very hill where it took place.
Yes Insp Clusau, as you wish
Yes, he’s dead now. He died from an accidental overdose of alcohol and prescription pain meds.
In the mid 90’s I had the displeasure of briefly speaking to him several times while I worked for a law firm that handled some of his estate planning. I can tell you that from my personal experience, he was not a “nice” man.
While Kincaid had some artistic talent, in reality he wasn’t any more or less talented than a lot of other artists who toil anonymously for greeting card companies and such, more good illustrators than what I would call great artist. In some cases not any better than what you might buy at one of those “starving artists” sales or from a company like this for a heck of a lot less:
http://globalwholesaleart.com/
Kincaid’s real talent IMO was in marketing himself. And what many people do not know was that lot of his later works, the stuff sold in his galleries during the height of his popularity were not even painted by him but by “artists” trained to emulate his style and technique or who splashed a few bits of paint to pop the light on the mass produced prints and thusly justifying charging the gullible thousands of dollars for them.
I agree with kabumpo - “Kitsch”. But hey, if you like it, more power to you. Just don't delude yourself that they are great works of art, that their value will increase over time over what you paid for them.
I never meant to imply they were, nor do I own any. OTOH if the subject painting is supposed to be the "greatest", you can have it. ;-)
Thank you - so rare that I find agreement about aesthetic standards on FR.
If you mean do I agree with Aldous Huxley that Piero’s “Legend of the True Cross” is “the greatest picture in the world.”? While I like Piero’s architectural works, Legend of the True Cross is not; at least it isn’t for me, although it might have been for Huxley. There are many paintings that I like more than Piero’s “Legend of the True Cross”. But I can’t and won’t be pinned down on what I think is the one singular absolute “greatest”.
Art in all its various styles and moods is rather subjective and much like music it touches and evokes different emotions in me and what I like best can change based on my mood and emotional state. Can I say that one single piece of music is “the greatest in the world.”? No. I do know what I like. Ralph Von Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is among my very favorite pieces of music of all time, but then I also very much like and am stirred emotionally by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Mahler's 9th Symphony. I also like jazz, Thelonious Monk for instance and some hard rock, Rush for example and a lot of other composers, musicians, groups and musical styles, all for very different reasons. But even across many musical styles, there are works that are great or even good and the best have a timelessness to them and then there is pure schlock and what is simply popular at the moment. Many, many years from now people will probably still be listening to Von Williams, Vivaldi, Mahler, Chopin, Beethoven Monk, even Rush; Miley Cyrus? Not so much (at least I certainly hope not).
But I could no more listen to the same piece of music, read the same book, watch the same movie over and over again, day in and day out any more than I would want to gaze upon one single painting for the rest of my life.
I can look at a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or Goya and see and truly appreciate the detail and artistry but find the depictions disturbing or even nightmarish. I can look at a painting by Monet or Renoir and equally appreciate the artistry but the emotion it invokes is quite different. Personally, I am quite fond of the Dutch realists, Rembrandt and Vermeer; their depictions of everyday people engaging in everyday life were for their time quite revolutionary as the subjects of most art prior to that were religious or historic or mythological depictions or commissioned and highly formal and stylized portraits of royalty and the wealthy.
As far as Picasso, while I’m not a big fan of much of his later works, he was a very talented artist as evidenced in his early works which I do like.
http://mesosyn.com/pp-early.html
So what makes great work of art?
IMO, aside being technically good in terms of composition and the skill of the artist, a truly great work of art draws you in. You can’t simply look at it and say “oh, pretty” and walk away; rather you gaze deeply into it and study it, it imprints on you not only its image but an emotion that stays with you long after you’ve seen it.
You might want to be in the painting yourself or it might evoke a place or emotion that you yourself experienced. When you look at Gustave Caillebotte’s Rainy Day for instance, you can almost hear the rain hitting the tops of the umbrellas and smell the rain in the air. You want to know more about the place or people depicted in it – who are they, where are they going, why is the Mona Lisa wearing that slight smile or why does Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci look so sad and wise and world weary well beyond her years and in Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid, who is the lady writing to and why is the maid gazing longingly out the window? Is there someone she wishes to write to or someone she wishes would write to her?
A great work of art might also depict a place or situation or people you would never want to witness in person, but it still stirs you emotionally and draws you in deeper. You feel their joy or their pain; you want to share their joy or intercede to save them from the tragedy being depicted.
A great work of art has a depth of field and a balance and even the littlest of details are interesting and they contribute to the whole of the piece. And while some great artists were prolific and repeated themes and styles, their works, unlike say a Kincaid, are not exact cookie cutters of the very same work over and over again and cannot be easily replicated except for the most talented of forgers or replicators.
When I look at a Kincaid, I think, “oh pretty, yet another cottage with glowing lights” but it does not evoke any true emotion in me, there is no personality or depth of emotion in them, I don’t want to be drawn in and while full of details, the details are flat and repetitive and they do not add or contribute to the work as a whole. When I look at one of Kincaid’s paintings, I think of schlocky sappy Hallmark greeting cards, Disney Princesses, pictures of big sad eyed clowns or those hideous mass produced Franklin Mint collector plates and while “popular”, pretty and overly sentimental as it might be, “art” it isn’t.
As Aristotle said, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” And as Winston Churchill said, “Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.”
Compare these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WhAZ7KNaiU
To these:
Excellent video presentation. Is that you?
sadly....no
but my interests lie there.
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