Child's painting sells for $86.9m

[Hermit]

Elephants can paint like Turner? They're wasted in th circus....

Ever hear of the art hoax called "Sunset on the Adriatic" by Joachim-Raphaël Boronali?
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boronali would you believe that the painting was made by a donkey with a brush tied to its tail?

Pity the link is in French, but here is an account of the hoax in English. The painting was sold for 400 Francs. Not bad, considering Picasso paid for his drinks with a painting one night in the same period. (That painting was auctioned by Sotheby's for $41m in 1989.)

[Svartalf]

Actually, I was too lazy to google for an English account, I just took the first page that showed the picture.

[mistermack]

You can criticise art as much as you like. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how ill informed and uneducated. This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum though and being educated about it, as I am having gone to art college, gives you a different perspective and frankly a more informed one.

Say what you like, just don't be expected to be taken seriously.

And Turner, one of my all time favorites was a fucking genius.

Basically, all that shows is that, the longer you are fed with bullshit, the more likely you are to absorb it.

I think that MOST people would say the same as me, but for the danger of being thought ill informed and uneducated, as you put it.

Isn't it strange how you don't need to be well-informed and educated to see the quality of music, or of a building, or a piece of furniture, or a musical instrument?

You call it informed and educated, I call it soaking up bullshit, when it comes to modern art.

Now and again, a little bit of proof comes along, as in the donkey painting, and stuff like this :

The Disumbrationist School of Art

[Thumpalumpacus]

Now and again, a little bit of proof comes along, as in the donkey painting, and stuff like this :

The Disumbrationist School of Art

hahaahahahahah

[Rum]

You can criticise art as much as you like. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how ill informed and uneducated. This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum though and being educated about it, as I am having gone to art college, gives you a different perspective and frankly a more informed one.

Say what you like, just don't be expected to be taken seriously.

And Turner, one of my all time favorites was a fucking genius.

Basically, all that shows is that, the longer you are fed with bullshit, the more likely you are to absorb it.

I think that MOST people would say the same as me, but for the danger of being thought ill informed and uneducated, as you put it.

Isn't it strange how you don't need to be well-informed and educated to see the quality of music, or of a building, or a piece of furniture, or a musical instrument?

You call it informed and educated, I call it soaking up bullshit, when it comes to modern art.

Now and again, a little bit of proof comes along, as in the donkey painting, and stuff like this :

The Disumbrationist School of Art

Well I think you are wrong about all those things. If you know something about the history, the materials, the craftsmen and designers and if you know what influenced them, how a style or look came about it enhances not only your knowledge but your enjoyment because it puts the object into context and gives you knowledge with which to discriminate the good from the crap and to compare and devlope the relative merits of a given object compared to its fellows. Its like wine. You can just guzzle a bottle and its great (or perhaps not great), but some people can tell exactly the grape variety, the vineyard and the slope it comes from by taste alone - Dev has that ability. I have a small degree of it myself.

The point being that you can make of it what you will, but to blanket rubbish the whole field just because you haven't gone down that particular branch of knowledge/taste is at the very least an arrogant position to take.

[Pappa]

You can criticise art as much as you like. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how ill informed and uneducated. This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum though and being educated about it, as I am having gone to art college, gives you a different perspective and frankly a more informed one.

Say what you like, just don't be expected to be taken seriously.

And Turner, one of my all time favorites was a fucking genius.

Basically, all that shows is that, the longer you are fed with bullshit, the more likely you are to absorb it.

I think that MOST people would say the same as me, but for the danger of being thought ill informed and uneducated, as you put it.

Isn't it strange how you don't need to be well-informed and educated to see the quality of music, or of a building, or a piece of furniture, or a musical instrument?

You call it informed and educated, I call it soaking up bullshit, when it comes to modern art.

Now and again, a little bit of proof comes along, as in the donkey painting, and stuff like this :

The Disumbrationist School of Art

You don't need to be educated about it to appreciate it, you just need to "get it". You clearly don't.... but worse, you don't understand that just because you personally don't get it it's not bullshit. I don't get most forms of representational art. It doesn't engage me at all. I'm not impressed with the skill involved any more than I would a piece of good draftsmanship. But that doesn't mean I go round shouting that representational art is utter bullshit every time the topic comes up.

[mistermack]

Well I think you are wrong about all those things. If you know something about the history, the materials, the craftsmen and designers and if you know what influenced them, how a style or look came about it enhances not only your knowledge but your enjoyment because it puts the object into context and gives you knowledge with which to discriminate the good from the crap and to compare and devlope the relative merits of a given object compared to its fellows. Its like wine. You can just guzzle a bottle and its great (or perhaps not great), but some people can tell exactly the grape variety, the vineyard and the slope it comes from by taste alone - Dev has that ability. I have a small degree of it myself.

The point being that you can make of it what you will, but to blanket rubbish the whole field just because you haven't gone down that particular branch of knowledge/taste is at the very least an arrogant position to take.

The first time I heard Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits, on a crappy radio, I KNEW it was special.
I didn't need to do any research. I'd never heard of Dire Straits. I didn't need to go to pop school and study. I didn't need to read the pop critics.

I suppose with me, I've got into the habit of questioning EVERYTHING. I don't accept religion or art, just on what I'm told.
Forty odd years ago, I read a lot about art. I had some extremely good reading material, and quality prints of about 100 "masters" and I read and looked through every single one.
Piet Mondrian sticks out. I went through it again and again, trying to match the prose to the art.
I wasn't so cynical then, so I left it that I wasn't read up enough.

But now, I've had a lifetime of it, and never detected the slightest glimmer of some vital thing that I'm missing.
The more I see and read, the more obviously it's hype.

[Rum]

I feel sorry for you. But pictures speak louder than words.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Mack, not all art is immediately accessible. Sometimes our personal experiences have to catch up to it in order to supply its meaning to us, or sometimes we need to understand the it need not have meaning in order to be valued as art.

I think there's good points being made on both sides of this discussion.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I feel sorry for you. But pictures speak louder than words.

Astigmatism.

[mistermack]

You don't need to be educated about it to appreciate it, you just need to "get it". You clearly don't.... but worse, you don't understand that just because you personally don't get it it's not bullshit. I don't get most forms of representational art. It doesn't engage me at all. I'm not impressed with the skill involved any more than I would a piece of good draftsmanship. But that doesn't mean I go round shouting that representational art is utter bullshit every time the topic comes up.

If I "get" something, I can assure you that I have no trouble communicating it to others.
That's where your argument fails. You are intimating that you "get" something about modern art that I don't. So what is it? I've been waiting 50 years, so no need to rush.
And by what you write, I get the impression that you think I'm unusual. I would be willing to bet that I'm just saying what everybody else thinks, but doesn't say, because they don't want to appear ignorant.

I'm saying, ignorant of what? And nobody's telling me. Even people in the art world ask the same questions, but you wouldn't think so from this thread.
Even the greatest authority on Van Gough in his day often declared his work worthless.
How come nobody questions it now? Because of the bandwagon of art fashion, that's how come.

People who know fuck-all about art will today confidently declare Van Gough a genius, but REAL art experts in his day would not. That's the power of peer pressure. And that, I believe, is what I'm not "getting".

[mistermack]

I feel sorry for you. But pictures speak louder than words.

Well actually, no it doesn't.
That picture has some nice colours. But so does a paint box.
The blue is all wrong, and there's no "impression" of a surface to the water. The flowers seem to float in space, rather than on the surface of a pool. The surface would be vital to me, it's the boundary between two different worlds.
If I'd painted that, I would be less than happy with it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Can somebody show me some works that aren't famous, but you like?

[Svartalf]

I'm no great lover of impressionists, but I'll take that, or better, a Van Gogh, before I'll put the horror from OP on my wall, or most "concept art" (and of course, I mean posters solely for decorative purposes rather than canvases worth millions)

[Thumpalumpacus]

I like Monet. I also like Kandinsky. I don't expect them to serve the same function, except to please my eyes, and nothing more.