Replies: 17 Comments
on Wednesday, January 18th, thomas said
Hey All Y'All
Can't even begin to focus on everything in here, but the Impressionist were great. I don't think they are over exposed in museums, they at least show authentic works with aura....Get it!! The annoying thing is water lilly coffee mugs, mouse ads etc. But Where have you all been, this has happened to any piece of art ever canonized and I think the MoMa in NYC is to blame - they pushed the museum shop button, and now every museum of every painter sticks an image on every household object and voila more money moeny money money.
The art of the industrial age has long been pushed into the league of main-stream and pop-culutre. I personaly had a Kandiinsky poster on my wall in the '80 - great, but not great. Right?
In short, don't blame the museums for you r overload, think of all the other places where Impressionism enters you brain whethter you want or not. Scream
-Thomas
on Wednesday, January 18th, thomas said
Hey All Y'All
Can't even begin to focus on everything in here, but the Impressionist were great. I don't think they are over exposed in museums, they at least show authentic works with aura....Get it!! The annoying thing is water lilly coffee mugs, mouse ads etc. But Where have you all been, this has happened to any piece of art ever canonized and I think the MoMa in NYC is to blame - they pushed the museum shop button, and now every museum of every painter sticks an image on every household object and voila more money moeny money money.
The art of the industrial age has long been pushed into the league of main-stream and pop-culutre. I personaly had a Kandiinsky poster on my wall in the '80 - great, but not great. Right?
In short, don't blame the museums for you r overload, think of all the other places where Impressionism enters you brain whethter you want or not. Scream
-Thomas
on Wednesday, January 11th, walt said
www.Midwest-Painting-Group.org
Actually there are still painters who go out to work. The above site is one my brother, Tim King is part of and very worth a look. While you'll see a few who are working abstractly or from imagination, the majority of these artists are plein-aire, from the motif, as well as from the model and from nature morte. Artists of that persuasion are simply not heralded as they once were, as Corbin explaina, partly because, well, there is always an Impressionist show up somewhere. Although the market for their work like that of the Impressionists is still fairly strong.
One thing that we all have to realize is that while we artists are hopefully intellectually and spiritually educated about the possibilities of our art the majority of the public is really only interested in something they can grasp easily that relates to their own life and their perceptions of that life. Those few who breath a more rarified air and who are able like the artists to rise up and grasp those higher ideas and visions are truely few and far between. And as Sughi suggests in his current blog, most of those who have the money to collect can only rise to the monetary, or possible monetary value of art or something even more venal as proving their taste and social status. This is the reality we all live in like it or not and so we walk a line that divides a duality...on one side the love of digging deep into our own souls and making that reflection of the world that we percieve there and the need to feed the shell that houses that soul. Those artists who can find their souls in nature have found a way to, as Johnny Cash's song says "Walk the Line!" And I don't really mean this in the negative or non-committal sense. I have more respect for their work, when it is truly deep and strong, than I can express.
on Monday, January 9th, Paul said
One thing recently I have been feeling and thinking is that one doesnt see any artists anymore working outside,either in the streets or in the feilds,and I find this a great shame,and this ties in with the impressionists way of working sur la motif,which has all been lost,art has gone indoors,its hidden,obscure,somehow its heartning to see someone painting outside,of course though the first thought is a bunch of awfull narrow minds stuck in the past or just stuck,Walters point about the same old stuff being repeated,that goes for art books as well,there certainley are artists from the past who I would like to see more of,but hardly anything about them on the market,actually one doesnt hear so much at least in the popular sense about the Barbizon painters who were the forerunners of the impressionists,but there you go,its all the same really,working outside as opposed to staying in.
on Monday, January 9th, Andrew said
If you think about it, art education is meant to fail. If you don't know everything, you can't get the big picture, and almost no one I know has the time or the desire to become truly completely educated in a field that changes so quickly. So how can we expect that of the public? You can become a specialist in any given sector of the visual arts, which is why so many relatively ignorant people sound knowledgeable when they speak, or write about art. Most collectors don't stray far from their specialty, either, which is a frustration for artists who know the work they're presenting is good. Think about it, there are many people who make a judgement about all of Italian cuisine because they've been in one cheap spaghetti house, and didn't like sugar tomatoe sauce on overcooked pasta. Really, you know it all, or admit you don't. And few people, because of the association of a lack of art knowledge with a low social position, will do that. Except for the ones who say, "I don't understand art, why should I buy it?" That's still a pretty big group. An untapped resource. The social blackmail scene has resulted in some interesting collectors, though. Ask Marlborough. They just sold two three million dollar pieces, to Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzeneger.
on Sunday, January 8th, gabriella said
Walt, Michael, Peter, Michael,....Amen!
on Sunday, January 8th, gabriella said
Walt, Michael, Peter, Michael,....Amen!
on Saturday, January 7th, walt said
A show of bay area painters would be welcome as far as I'm concerned, Diebenkorn, Bischoff, Parks, Weeks.
The Chicago Art Institute did a big show of Caillebotte not all that long ago. I'd like to see some work by artists around the time of Matisse and Picasso like Derain. He was given short shrift during his later life because he would not follow into more and more abstraction. But this was by folks who do not understand how abstract any given work really is.
Educating the public is a tricky deal. First realize that many simply do not want to be educated. Then one must reduce all things to short sound and visual bites, strain out the nasty bits and add lots of water (or better yet-milk) for it to be paletable. Then offer it at a price that doesn't come too close to the cost of a ticket to Disneyland and you're in the right mode.
There is so much interesting art out there from any given period that rarely gets shown any more. And the same thing holds with contemporary galleries. Lots of the same old same old getting shown when I know for a fact that there is other work with a unique point of view out there not showing up. I once had an epiphany. Someone actually said to me upon seeing my work that I must not be very good because my work didn't look like the work they'd seen in the history books and the art magazines.
In the immortal words of Bob Dylan "What else can you show me?"
on Saturday, January 7th, Michael Fornadley said
Agree with you on that one, all the work could of been done by the same artist, great color and brushwork and adequate drawing skills, but the subject matter very unchallenging. Impressionism was great for it's time, about one and fifty years ago then guys like Van Gogh and Cezanne had to muck up the scene by bring emotion and intelligence to it. What is lacking for current impressionist style painters would be daring or fear of being unmarketable, face it it is real safe work to do and very sellable.
Again it comes down to the educating the viewing public who tastes generally ends with the impressionist movement. Even Picasso's blue/rose period works would invite an larger audience then is cubist pieces. You can not extend the visual understanding required to appreciate more complex works, much easier to get the warm fuzzies from visual eye candy. Making people uncomfortable will never place you in a popularity contest, same with art.
on Saturday, January 7th, peter mc farland said
A mention of the San Francisco colorists sent me here. I am hungry. http://www.williamlestergallery.com/artists/artists.html
Take a look. Am I wrong or does it look as most of this stuff was done by the same person? I think some of the paintings are rather good, but doesn't this demonstrate what the problem is?
on Saturday, January 7th, randy said
tHE Belgian monarchy should quit, it's evil leadrr in teh 1880s, killed 27million cobngolese, and spreasd disease into africa that killed 1mikllion, and made frabce build a similar colonu that killed a million
on Friday, January 6th, Bill Warren said
Caillebotte!!!YES Frank!!! just went to the Chicago Art Ins. which has got to be the pinnacle collection of impressionists beside the D'Orsay, and that huge Caillebotte street scene just stopped me in my tracks..He/We deserve an intensive show!!
Bowie doesn't cover much... but I bet he has listened to a lot of baroque
on Friday, January 6th, Ed Baron said
I knew a fairly decent painter who had a knack for copying the impressionists. His dealers gave him a French Pseudonym and he literally stayed in his attic in New Jersey chained to the easel turning out impressionistic canvas after canvas. He was a one man art gang made money to support his house and family, he so lost himself that I can't even remember his name.
His dealers sure sold a lot of frames to go around his Renoir type canvases and there are plenty of homes in Amerca that now boast a "so and so" French painter's art in fancy frames.
In the art business when you are hot, you are hot. I often wonder if he is still up there in reality. He stays with me as a reminder of the often limited choices a career in art offers.
on Friday, January 6th, Frank Ettenberg said
Many of the museum's I've visited recently are not at all fixated
on impressionism. The vogue is on 'meaning-driven' art, on
photographic or video=generated or conceptualized statements of various kinds. The institutions where this is happening are contemporary art centers, where they focus on developments since 1945.
Since I'm a ' classical' non-objective PAINTER I've been feeling more and more left out of the loop, since I don't do straight narrating and stay in a poetic realm. Focusing on this sensibility
seems quite missing in museums at this time, especially in the USA.
So, I would welcome a good show focusing on say, Gustave Caillebotte, Susanne Valatton, Claude Bernard, and other more
obscure impressionists or post-impressionists. A one-year
moratorium on Monet and Van Gogh-based exhibits - I could understand this...but not the full spectrum of the impressionists.
on Friday, January 6th, Olga said
Dreams...The reality is that everything is dictated by money. Probsably, many collectors like you, Michael, like impressionistic style so art museums feel safe exhibiting impressionism. So, you and other art lovers who support art should suddently change their preferences in order other styles will be more visible.
on Friday, January 6th, art@yahoo.com">Gabe Langholtz said
Impressionism is the art world's easy answer. It's a recognizable interpretation of something recognizable.
on Friday, January 6th, josh said
You're right, Impressionism is great and has it's place, but the goal of contemporary art is to keep ideas and styles new and not dwell on the paintings on grandma's calendar. David Bowie isn't covering a lot of Baroque music for good reason.
