[wardaddy]

I published representational historic and native american art as a side business once. It was fun but not terribly profitable.

The problem with modern art is that artistic interpretation of subject matter or expression has gone off the charts.

I confess...i like some modern art...some.

When I was last at MOMA and saw basically a neat stack of bricks that someone paid 350,000 dollars for i knew I "had left Kansas".

Performance art is where the truly "out there" reside...IMHO.

PS: A big problem with canvas "art" today is that are too many illustrators posing as artists. I know I'll take heat for that one. That has really been a problem one way or another since Remington and Russell here in the US.

[Mamzelle]

re: PS: A big problem with canvas "art" today is that are too many illustrators posing as artists. )))

With art such a degraded commodity, illustrators would stand head and shoulders above most of those who "pose."

I'd classify even the good modern canvas-makers as decorators posing as artists. Their canvases are color charts for the parlors of the urbanites.

[solzhenitsyn]

PS: A big problem with canvas "art" today is that are too many illustrators posing as artists. I know I'll take heat for that one. That has really been a problem one way or another since Remington and Russell here in the US.

Just out of curiosity, what's your opinion of Andrew Wyeth? Artist or illustrator?

To me, the most satisfying art is representational (it looks like something a slob like me can recognize), but but human talent has stylized it in some way so that it has flare and beauty that wouldn't be apparent in a photograph of the same subject. If you're going to be perfectly exact and realistic, why not just use a camera?

[Yardstick]

I like some modern art, too. Here's the thing: regular ol' art, when it's bad, is just bad art. But when modern art is bad, it's not just bad art. It's an insult.

[mr.pink]

Performance art is where the truly "out there" reside...IMHO.

I have a close friend who is a performance artist, and he's definitely "out there"....but not so far "out there" that he doesn't appreciate, and laugh at, the seltzer bottle qualities of his genre.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

A big problem with canvas "art" today is that are too many illustrators posing as artists.

Thank you for saying that. There is a difference, and while I might not be able to describe it in words, my eyes can sure tell.

There are those that can capture the essence of a subject, whther that be by photography, oil, watercolor, charcoal or ink, and those are the artists.

There is another group, that can faithfully follow a mechanical process, and those are mere illustrators.

[jejones]

When I was last at MOMA and saw basically a neat stack of bricks that someone paid 350,000 dollars for i knew I "had left Kansas".

Maybe, but you hadn't left Iowa. The Des Moines Art Center paid $200,000 for a Jeff Koons piece consisting of three wet-dry vacuum cleaners stacked in plexiglass boxes with fluorescent lights. Clearly, I am in the wrong job.