EnMasse

[het heru]

[nonsuch]

He's right, you know... except for underestimating the amounts.

This is not a comment on Picasso. It's not a comment on art.
Any particular work of art may or may not have social value, emotional value, cultural value, aesthetic value, intellectual value. But it has no intrinsic monetary value. That is entirely a function of how much ill-gotten lucre the rich have to spend on showing off.
What famous pictures fetch at auction is as good an indicator as you can find of the amount of misery in the world.
_________________
Just don't buy the shit!

[het heru]

My calling him "harsh" had more to do with his Benjaminist outlook than assuming that it was a slight on the quality of the original pieces.

I completely agree that the prices are outrageous and that those making the purchases are doing so for their egos/portfolio rather than out of love for the painting.

What I disagree with is the idea that in this age the reproduction has the same value as the original. This is what the RIAA and the MPAA are missing - people still go to concerts, buy autographed pieces, etc. even though they can download a copy of a song at will.

While I took offense to the tone of most of the article, it was mainly this [img]idea[/img] that made me post that.

[Tommy Shanks]

I'd agree het heru.

From the Buckley article:

[nonsuch]

Well, sure.
I'm not a big fan of reproductions, except in books about art; not because i begrudge my fellow citizens the pleasure of seeing a Monet every day, but because there is so much else they can own.
I'd rather have an original Jane Doe than a reproduction Monet. But nobody much is interested in Jane's work; people assume it's inferior to Monet's, because it's not been made famous through endless copies in doctors' waiting-rooms and hotel lobbies.

But i'd still like to be able to see originals by famous dead people. I don't consider it entirely fair that public galleries should have to bid against super-rich private collectors for each little piece of the nation's cultural heritage.

Any work of art automatically gains some collector value the minute its creator dies, because there won't be any more. And, of course, a picture or statue becomes more precious after it has been cherished and protected and stolen and recovered and imitated and admired over centuries. So we can't know how much my Doe will be worth in ten years, or a hundred, or five hundred.
That's what i mean by no intrinsic monetary value.

(And i think it's okay to criticize Picasso, no matter how fashionable and famous he is. I myself hate pretty much everything he did after the blue period.)
_________________
Just don't buy the shit!

[Senor Magoo]

I think the world of expensive art is not unlike the bizarre "Tulip economy" that flourished in Holland a few centuries back.

Ironically, if I paint a flower, it's worth little. If Rembrandt painted one it's worth lots. But the original flower, in all it's three dimensions, exquisite detail, irreproducible colours, and even with its added intoxicating fragrance, is worth nothing.

My favourite art forms are naive art, and conceptual art. If it's already a poster in a dorm room then *blech*.
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ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,

[skdadl]

"Naive" art: Maud Lewis

[lagatta]

Well, skdadl, you have me confusing subject matter and artistic quality there...

Black cats... but I usually hate naïve art, and am not very fond of this example.

[skdadl]

And furthermore ...

I think it's possible to agree with both nonsuch and Tommy Shanks.

I believe in craftwork first of all, real craftwork, and our culture spent a long, long time encouraging substantial numbers of citizens to cultivate craft skills. In each generation, a few of those workers would do the Aufhebung and become what we call artists. That's how art used to work.

It's not the way art works any more. Generation by generation, craftwork itself, let alone real art, has been corralled by market realities into tiny niches, just enough producers to satisfy the egos of a tiny layer of extremely rich people, who would never themselves enourage a move to a craft economy in their commercial lives but who expect to live with nothing but accomplished craftwork in their private lives.

It is an exceedingly perverse system.

[goyanamasu]

I agree with skdadl. But I am not being honestly cerebral about it. I'll bet if I was rich and gave one of these Picasso pieces to one of you in the thread you'd start thinking in more monetary terms . . . but I ain't rich and no gift is forthcoming.

Benjamin is a genius, don't begrudge the man.

I'd like to go to Southby's or Christie's and hold up Picasso's portrait of Stalin. I'd introduce it by all sorts of political referants and add that it almost got the artist kicked out of the French Communist Party. I wonder if the sketch would top 50 cents. I'm sure it would. But would the buyer be from New York, Rome or from Moscow? What an event

[nonsuch]

The black cats are cute. That's about all - i certainly wouldn't make any large sacrifices to own the original.

But then, i'm not sure any picture is very important now.
Art was significant when it called the spirits of bison; when it communicated with the gods; when it chronicled the triumphs and troubles of a people... Those people, in those times, shared a set of beliefs and attitudes: the symbols used in their art had the same meaning for every member of the society.
When it's only about one person with a brush expressing hir feelings, it can speak to some other people on an emotional level, but it can't be important to society. Whether it's a perfectly-rendered nude, a formal arrangement of rocks and willows, a geometric grid, or random splatters of colour, i don't see how it can speak to the essence of humanity.

The Mona Lisa. It's a picture of a woman. We recognize it, of course, and it's a fine painting. But what is its significance - other than being famous? What universal human need does it fill? How are we changed by having seen it - or diminished by its absence?
We see 1200 pictures of women every day - at least six of them some version of the Mona Lisa. We are surrounded - assaulted! - by imagery, all the time. We appreciate some images more than others; few images move us profoundly; no image has spiritual significance for all who behold it. Every image means something, but our attention is divided among them all; we have little time to notice or evaluate one image before it's replaced by another. We can't even recall most of what we've seen in a day (unless it raises an unusual level of ire).

I like that; this is will look nice over the sofa; that reminds me of a recurring nightmare; i wonder what this is supposed to be; that should upset the old fuddy-duddies!; this makes me vaguely uneasy; that is pretty impressive. Our reactions to art are personal and, nearly always superficial. Art is an experience, a luxury, an embellishment: it's not a central part of our lives - except, of course, for artists. And that's the way it should be: art is a normal human activity, like sport or learning or singing. It's not sacred: it's just something everyone does and a few people do especially well.
_________________
Just don't buy the shit!

[Tommy Shanks]

Just to be clear, I was only trying to address the issue of reproductions. Heaven knows the art world has more then a few (a few, yikes?) issues and problems. I think we could all come up with a list of how the commoditization of art has pushed the process (to echo skdadl's point) away from what it should be and was.

I'd take a bit of an issue with this though:

[het heru]

[ronb]

What, architecture isn't art?

[het heru]

[vee michel]

[nonsuch]

[vee michel]

I get what you are saying about the steps. Let me refine that thought: I agree that the exchange is mediated. Some factors that mediate it, as you rightly point out, include: socialization of the viewer, training of the artist, trends in the art market at the various times it was sold, and I'm sure I could think of more if I had more energy

Compared to other contemporary visual material, however, original art is relatively unmediated by other people. Both the artist and the viewer have their own perspectives and socializations that impact the experience, but there is rarely a middleman who materially changes the artwork to make it fit better into a market. As is the case with ads, graphic design, tv visuals, etc. etc. The artist has done the best s/he could with what was available, and I am free to appreciate it or not as I desire. That's what I like about original art.

[nonsuch]

Oh, so do i like original art. Especially by unfashionable artists: less likely to end up on a T-shirt. (Some modernist self-expressions, you wouldn't want to wear!)
_________________
Just don't buy the shit!