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I have a degree in Art (Okla. State U. 1973)

If you go to museums and see the art by the masters of old, and the newer art, the new art does not hold a candle to the old masters. Go to Getty or some museum like that which has a huge collection of old and new.

Study one of the old master's paintings. Look at it from across the room, walk up close to it, walk back away from it, keep doing this. Notice how up close there is no detail, just globs of white, black, and other colors. Step back and see once again, skin, lace, hair, silk, satin, bark, leaves, dirt, sky, water, clouds, fruit, flowers, reflections in a brass jar.....

The old masters were called masters for a reason.

There is still good art being done today. Without it there would be no new cars designed, no buildings, no new clothes designs, no new furniture designs, no labels on cans, jars, bottles.... etc. Every thing from a new movie theatre to the carpet and decor inside was designed by an artist. There is a lot of great commercial art being done today. The Art Institute of Houston is a good place to learn that talent/trade, but it is VERY expensive.

I just have not seen a lot of great painting or sculpture since the masters all died.

BTW JMW Turner was ridiculed in his day. They said his paintings didn't look like what the subject matter was. Once he rode in a train during a storm and did a painting of it. It was ridiculed, trashed. But if you look at the painting, and ride a train during similar conditions, he captured the essence of the ride. It is very realistic, if you know what he was trying to capture.

J.M.W.Turner - Rain, Steam, and Speed
Rain, Steam, and Speed The Great Western Railway

The National Gallery of London

Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844. Oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm. Turner Bequest.

The scene is fairly certainly identifiable as Maidenhead railway bridge, which spans the Thames between Taplow and Maidenhead. The bridge, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and completed in 1839, has two main arches of brick, very wide and flat. The view is to the east, towards London.

On the left people are boating on the river, while to the right a ploughman works on a field. The tranquility of these traditional activities contrasts with the steam train rushing towards the viewer, the stark outline of its black funnel clearly visible. In front of the train a hare, one of the speediest of animals, dashes for cover.

Turner's picture can be associated with the 'railway mania' which swept across England in the 1840s. It is also an outstanding example of his late style of painting. Sky and river landscape are dissolved in a haze of freely applied oil paint, to give a striking impression of the contrasting movement of driving rain and speeding train.

See more of his work at Click Here

Artist J.M.W.Turner 1775 - 1851. Perhaps the best-loved English Romantic landscape and marine artist. He became known as 'the painter of light'.

The artist J.M.W.Turner was often misunderstood during his life. He is now perceived as the outstanding painting genius, who bridged the gap between English Eighteenth Century traditional landscape art and today's free flowing painting style. From topographer to universal art visionary, pulsating with colour and atmospherics. Turner was distinguished for his supremely accomplished watercolour paintings his free and relaxed treatment of colour in art.

No art degree here, but an abiding interest in the field.

I agree that the "old masters" really were. . . . and I think it is because they were required to master a certain body of technique. In those days, an apprentice to a well known painter or a student in the Academy had a definite course of study to follow, and it set a sort of minimum standard of competence in accepted skills.

Now, anybody with some money to buy the materials (or the chutzpah to persuade the NEA or some gullible soul to pay for them for him) can self-ordain himself an "artist" and proclaim his product as "art". The result is pretty much the same as with all those self-ordained "preachers". The NEA jury members, each striving to outdo their fellows for radical "significance" and "perception", give their imprimatur to more and more outrageous products - with the result that there are no standards and (as my mother says) "Art is whatever you can get away with."

That said, I think this fellow paints with way too broad a brush (sorry, couldn't help myself.) While the strict representational style displays tremendous skill, there are other ways of conveying emotion and meaning - Turner is an excellent example as you point out. But for every trail-blazing genius like Turner, there are 1,000 modern wannabes perpetrating trash on the gullible.