Hockney's painting sells for £23m.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51458346I don't think it is very good at all and could have been done by a GCSE art student.
I have felt for years that elements of the art world is just a big racket and it is very much a case of the emperor's new clothes....question its credibility and the default response is you don't understand it/ too narrow minded etc or some overtly intellectualised response to understand why this very basic painting or lightbulb, tent, butchered cow is a marvel of humanity.
Would really like to understand it because it seems to me once you make it as an artist and have an established brand you could knock a cup of coffee over a canvas and it be hailed a masterpiece if presented by the right artist.
I probably appear very ignorant on this and very much am but instinct (and my eyes) tell me it's all a bit of a self perpetuating hoax with no one who has any credibility or standing in the industry willing to stand up and say come on now that's just not very good at all and certainly not worth the plaudits and valuations attached to it.
Comments
Art has always been about opinions and choice.
Last decades/century radical is this year's establishment.
Sure, it's a market and the name on the bottom is very important when it comes to price but that's the buyers choice. Prices are only what someone will pay and fluctuate all the time.
Personally some art (classic and modern) I like, some I don't. That's it.
As the Splash. It's very 1970s. I like it.
Had this appeared in the portfolio of an average art college student it wouldn't be held in such high esteem surely.
I am very much a facts and figures bloke and I had no appreciation of any art until I met and married a girl with a History of Art degree. ( Our daughter is an artist.) My wife’s specialism and favourite is Italian Art of from the 14th century onwards through the Renaissance but she is also very keen on modern art including painters like Hockney. I was very sceptical about this but having been taken to scores of galleries throughout Europe I can understand her enthusiasm for it. Putting it as simply as I can, art is not just about what showing a literal copy of reality but showing things in different ways. Make no mistake Hockney or Picasso could paint a copy of the Mona Lisa that you couldn’t tell from the original but they choose to look at things differently. If you want a perfect copy of what you can literally see, photograph it. The nearest equivalent I can think of is jazz music where the performer plays around with notes of a tune rather than give a straight reproduction of what is written on the score.
(This has the potential to be a great thread btw).
Your doing exactly what you are critising the art world of doing. You're judging it by its price.
And unless you teach art students how do you know?
I really like it too
Very ignorant on the subject and would like to better understand what makes art like this so revered and valuable and things like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emins stuff.
Music I suppose is similar with different genres appealing to different folk etc but with some art I really dont get it and am trying to understand why some work is deemed so credible and special when to the uninitiated appear very ordinary.
Used to struggle with Henry Moore - can spend hours looking at his work now.
It is a side issue, but Redgrave is bedridden, but by golly she used her hand in her acting superbly.
You have a signed X 4 Beatles and a signed x 5 Oasis Album.
Which is worth more?
You grew up listening to Definitely Maybe, it brings back loads of memories but you've never really liked the Fab Four.
So to you the Oasis album is more desirable.
But the dealer says half the Beatles are dead, there are more and richer collectors worldwide of their stuff and it's more likely to hold its value so sorry you love of Oasis is trumped by market.
The Beatles album costs more. You can argue over who was better (well, not really) but that's the market.
If enough super rich people like your stuff more than they do 300 year old more technical pieces, good luck to you. (not aimed at Hockney at all)
It reminds me a little bit of trained and highly skilled furniture designers / builders,
vrs Ikea etc.,
vrs "creaters" who screw 4 hairpin table legs to a scaffold board, chuck a load of Danish Oil on it and stick it on their Etsy site for £300
Good luck to them all
Love the CAFC grafitti on one of the pics (Massala Grill). And the general theme of how an area has changed.
Will look out for her.
Don't feel like I'm an expert on art, and had never even been to see any until I met my first girlfriend, but will now make time to go to see things.
I'm more comfortable talking about music, which is kind of parallel. The thing with music (and it applies to art as well), is it does loads of different things: the music you grow up with is evocative and keeps your memories alive. There's music you associate with particular times or people in your life or events. Some of it is intimate, some of it is on a grand scale.
The skill it is executed by can be judged in a neutral way, but your reaction to it is subjective - like I can see how a musician is playing well but it doesn't make that emotional connection to me.
But you're seeing a tiny photo not the actual work itself in full size.
There was no clip art and no microsoft in 1967 when it was painted.
Maybe Hockney influenced the clip art?
But what could be "better" about it? That's a genuine question. What would make this - if done by a GCSE student - better? And is it the execution, the colour palette, or something else that you might object to? (As someone else has already mentioned, Hockney could certainly paint differently, or recreate the Mona Lisa if he wanted to. He chooses differently, though.)
Something that wouldn't happen, though, is the idea and thought process behind Hockney's choice. Why has he chosen to paint like this? Why this image, and instant?
As for either being branded ignorant or intellectual - they're not the only two options. Art, and our interpretations of it, lies on a spectrum. (See what Henry Irving and I have said to each other previously!)
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What makes something "worth it", though? Art has always been about controversy. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, with its pioneering exploration of bitonality, was so disturbing and arresting that the audience near rioted at its premiere in Paris in 1913. People thought it was shit! But now, we might regard it as genius for what it is.
And as for value - well, it's sold for an eight-figure sum. Barnett Newman's Black Fire I sold for $85m in 2014. That could be viewed as even more simplistic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Fire_I
Value... another interesting concept. What does the value stem from? A great deal of it, I would say, stems from a painting's history, and the web of associations within which it fits.
Is that wrong; is that bad? I don't think so. And if you think so - why?
Personally I like that painting, if I had £1bn would I pay £23m for it, no. I don’t want to own it that much.
But art is subjective. I'm with RodneyCharltonTrotta in that I think it's the emperor's new clothes. But of course it's just our opinion (which doesn't matter anyway).
I'd be about £23m better off and have an iconic piece of art (although a copy).
Its no Constable or Vermeer and would have very little interest to me value wise but would cover an empty wall I suppose.
As someone wrote up the thread, he could probably paint a copy of a master piece. I visited the the Salvador Dalí museum in St Petersburg, an absolute fascinating tour, his works were explained and his styles throughout his life. It helps when you are Philistine like me . He could paint a multitude of different styles but most people only remember him for his dripping clocks and lobster telephone.
Personally I wouldn't give you a tenner for it. Actually that's not true, I would, then I'd sell it for £23m.
There is plenty of art out there though that I like, personally I quite like a good medieval portrait or battle (not that i'd ever be able to afford one). But I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who think that they're not very good, or boring.
Each to their own, it's worth what it's worth and if they're willing to pay for something like the above mentioned Newman's works that look like they took about 5 minutes to make then fair enough.