Posted on 05/23/2014 5:13:41 PM PDT by windcliff
That’s what I think about the Girl With a Pearl Earring. It’s from the 1600s, but she looks like a 21st century girl. It’s a little startling when you look at how different from us people in paintings from that era usually look.
It seems to me that you are letting so-called experts define for you what art is, and to me, that is as absurd as letting someone else tell you whether or not what you just ate tasted good.
"Wow! That tasted like crap!"
"No, no... that was a very important piece by an excellent chef."
"Really? Can I have some more then?"
Rockwell's biggest problem with his critics was his popular appeal.
I studied art myself in college, degreed in it and have worked in the field all my professional life. I’m not “letting” anyone define anything for me. There are concrete, objective measures of artistic excellence, in technique, in color palette, in composition, mood and subject matter. There are subjective measures based upon personal opinion, fashion of the time, bias due to personal or political enmity, and so forth. It all gets weighed and vetted. Some opinions are more valued and therefore more valid than others. For instance, people who know the field and therefore know what they’re talking about, rather than an accountant or a real estate agent.
Rockwell’s biggest problem was that he was a commercial artist producing vast amounts of thematically similar work, work that veered too far into cartoonish for the more conservative art critics who deemed his work to not be serious art. They had a point to an extent. Expectations of great art have, however, changed a great deal in the intervening years. So, possibly Rockwell will come to be regarded critically as a great artist, or maybe he won’t. I’ve pointed out just which of his works, a very limited number of them based upon my personal assessment and opinion only, actually do rise to the level of fine art, and have posted images of several.
Sounds to me as if you’re not altogether knowledgeable about the topic or the field in general. Sounds to me as if you just “like” Norman Rockwell for sentimental reasons and because it’s pretty. Furthermore, you’ve become fixated upon some stereotypical image of an art critic based upon the admittedly very political northeastern art establishment that foisted off a fair amount of deliberately offensive junk as art, as if art is the only creative endeavor to have been co-opted and distorted by leftist political machinations. There is crap leftist politically motivated music and plenty of it, too, that has been critically acclaimed. Very few people go off on rants about that. Same for literature. Same for theater. I guess The Vagina Monologues wrecked all theater and none of it is any good other than a high school play you happen to like because, well, you just liked it?
He did several of those over the decades of his fame. The LBJ one is nice too, although the subject matter is less agreeable, lol.
Hey don’t laugh. I like that series of dog paintings too!
***Warhol’s art is nothing more than a reflection of vapid admiration.****
You must admit, Warhol knew how to get rich on his fame. He went to stores and bought lots of dishes, bowls, and such items knowing that when he died they would be auctioned of as “Owned by Warhol” and go for fabulous prices even though they had never been opened.
This reminds me of the woman who visited Charlie M Russell at his studio.
She wrote that he was the most vain man she had ever met because all he did during the visit was sit with his back to his painting and look at himself in a hand mirror.
She did not realize that by looking at the reflection of the painting in a mirror shows up errors in perspective.
Andy Warhol was a sixties countercultural icon who deliberately set out to manufacture fame for himself. He was cynical, manipulative and often tongue in cheek. The funny thing about his intended spoof is that he actually did possess some level of accidental talent, and thus became what he and his followers hated. Establishment. Popularly acclaimed. Buying up housewares and doodads en masse in the full knowledge that they’d have posthumous collector value at auction was just his one final parting jab at the ignorati.
You’re perfectly entitled to purchase whatever you like, but your comparison is the visual equivalent of comparing the music of John Cage to Burl Ives.
I’m reminded of a Western Artist charles schreyvogel. He did a painting and the critics savaged it and him unmercifully.
Then that painting won a prestigious art award. Suddenly the same critics did a turn around and lauded his work as great.
saw same.
great art.
horrible curation by Crystal Bridges.
So why is it everyone likes N C Wyeth’s illustrations but the critics love his son Andrew’s watercolors so much? Is there some “artsy” difference?
Even his son-in-law Peter Hurd did beautiful works in the museum in Roswell NM (No flying saucers).
If illustration is a curse why are Gustav Dore’s illustrations a liked so well?
Rockwell
Bouguereau:
But Rockwell often lapsed into caricature:
I don't know how much of this was determined by the editors of the Saturday Evening Post.
Regardless, at his best, Rockwell has to be considered one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century.
I don’t have a problem with either Wyeth, personally. NC Wyeth was regarded critically as more of a commercial artist, guided by and compensated for a specific image. That has tended to put illustrators and artists such as himself and Norman Rockwell at a disadvantage as compared to artists who have a unique vision expressed masterfully that is allowed to go where it will. NC Wyeth’s works can be a bit of a visual assault at times, somewhat garish. He did understand color and used it very well, just not as fashionably as his son. Watercolor is a different, more difficult medium to master and the mood it creates, the personality of it at the hands of a talented individual with a great eye and a vision can be a powerful thing. Andrew Wyeth is an outstanding example of this.
Gustav Dore benefitted from a halo effect as a result of having illustrated so many great works of literature. His style, more akin to medieval engravings and woodcuts than anything else, carries a certain weight and force that is almost Biblical. Some of his subject matter is Biblical. But most of it is dark, moody, verging upon demonic. This suits the spirit of the times for many people. He was a very skilled artist who produced highly detailed, even lush textures with his illustrative technique. The tension between the beauty of his craftsmanship and the dark, powerful nature of the imagery is something that numerous old masters utilized as well. To me it’s a matter of taste, there’s nothing inherently suspiciously commercial about his work. It stands alone for the most part, and so he was not tainted with the same commercial artist label that others labored against.
A couple of years ago I went to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum in western Massachusetts. It's well worth the trip.
I was stunned to see that the gift shop was selling original-series lithographs for just a couple grand. I think they were signed. I couldn't afford one then, but I may go back and get one.
My brother got a hand-written note from Rockwell with a sketch on it.
I'm a professional illustrator, so you can take the following FWIW.
With fine art, you have to consider theme, composition, harmony, expression, etc. Illustration can be as simple as a form of photography. An example of pure illustration would be a painting of an apple for a Smuckers label.
Rockwell did both. An example of his fine art would be the "Thanksgiving Meal." There are numerous examples of his more illustrator-y, commercial art. And there is a continuum from one to the other.
I'm envious. 8-)
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