[Nick5]

I looked at the salon winners. As a poster above stated there’s no accounting for taste. So of course I’m just stating an opinion when I say that the winners’ work kind of depresses me. There’s so little grappling with anything. The great academic masters dealt with emotional conflict—there’s conflict and anguish and hope and striving in every portrait by Rembrandt and every one of Caravaggio’s dark masterpieces. Looking at these salon winners is like going to see a production of Romeo and Juliet in which there’s no feud between the Capulets and the Montagues and Romeo and Juliet meet at the ball and instantly live happily ever after. It’s like Cinderella without a wicked stepmother. There is contemporary art which is figurative and well drawn as well as emotionally involving—Lucien Freud and David Hockney come to mind (though I’ll skip Hockney’s thesis on Vermeer.)

[Fairview]

It astonishes me that you don't see the "emotional conflict" you seek in the winning portrait of the elderly black lady (just as one example). I find it very exciting that people ar doing work like this today.

And Lucien Freud?? Good God. Chacun a son gout.