If your ailin', c.i., I understand he also sells snake oil on the side. (Or, maybe Oxycontin).
I was just thinking. It would be interesting to see who attends these art sales, and who buys them. It should be rather entertaining to watch people throw their money away. It'll be more fun than Vegas.
Thanks so much for the exercise. I will rty it this week and hopefully incorporate it into one of my classes. Who knows what will come it with my students?
One exercise I thought very useful was to simply cut up coloured paper and make a collage demonstrating each of the compositional movements...The horizontal looks stable, solid etc....
Yes, JL these "rules" can look formulaic but are very useful for rescuing a painting that isn't working....I still prefer the intuitive approach.....
but it often trips me up!
shepaints, I agree that the 'intuitive approach" that comes naturally is the best. I tend to react negatively to "technique" painting. My wife and I went for breakfast at Stacks in Campbell this past weekend, and they happened to have a art and craft show. Many of the artwork on display are 'technique" type paintings that seems to be popular with the buyers. It's disgusting!
You're right, of course, c.i. If the painting has no soul, no bravado, no visceral impact, it's not a successful work. Art can also have a sublime tranquility and peace but not contrived at by a sticky sweet sentimentality. Kincaid's plein air is like his previous imagery -- using banal, overused subject matter to beguil the viewer into buying the image for nothing more than a manufactured comforting illustration which should be accompanied by a poem written by GWB. Almost sounds like the kind of security in buying plastic sheeting and duck tape, huh?
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VERY well put, LW. I might add to your list of virtues: personality.
And I agree, SP with the need to go back to rules when we have gone too far, or too carelessly in the direction of "intuition". Nietzsche's distinction between Dionysian (intuitive) and Apollonian (analytical) art work applies here. He argued that BOTH are needed, and that the intuitive might best come first and the analytical second. As you suggest, "rule application" might come in as a cure for the excesses of Dionysian passion.
LW, Makes one wonder how many 'same scene' paintings one can stand to have in their home such as we see with Kindade. Different vegetation and house design with the very same theme in hundreds of paintings lack imagination and creativity. It also killed the "intuitive approach" by duplicating it over and over ad nauseum.
Painting does necessarily reflect the artist's personality. It can be the intellectual bent of one's personality as well as the emotional. Good point, JL.
Let's say Kincaid is the best example of the worst kind of pandering to common bad taste. His art belongs on a chocolate box where it will be disposed of after the product is eaten. Now people are stuck with it on their wall and it may, if fact, make them feel important or it may also fortify their ignorance of art and they are simply not concerned. They want to tranqulizing imagery and just because it is imagery repeated and repeated in variation doesn't bother some of them. It does bother some of those who have bought the art -- they've expressed it to me before I've even opened my mouth. Oh well, they say, we'll enjoy them as decoration and the kids will get them. Yes, they will end up in estate sales at 10 cents on the dollar or less.
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Yes, LW, a painting can express the artist's aesthetic temperament which is an aspect of his personality. I wish I had meant that. What I meant is that a painting, in addition to having "soul," "bravado," and "visceral impact" can itself have (metaphorically speaking, of course) personality. But thanks anyway. BTW, I do like the adjective, bravado, here.
I've just skimmed over the last thirty or forty posts and coughed, starting with 'branches aren't longer than trunks' ...well, actually sometimes they are. And sometimes the essense of trees is that they reach, or squat, or flail, or march, as the case may be. I think you are all too tough.
But I will reread in the morn and see if I can come around.
osso, Maybe, but I'm willing to listen to what you have to say.
I would have let this forum die a natural death, but there's an interesting article in today's San Jose Mercury News that I want to share with you folks. It seems sagging profits is going to force Kinkade's company to go private, because they've been losing money for several years. What is interesting about this deal is that GE Financial Services will provide a $33 million dollar loan and a $22 million line of credit to Media Arts. It will provide current stockholders $4 a share in cash for the company worth $32.7 million. If I had any say, I'd fire all the GE Corporate Financial Services managers.
They're out of their minds. Anyone buying the stock will also qualify.
