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At $142.4 Million, Triptych Is the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at an Auction
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NathanMcMahon
Banned
it hurts some people to open their mind and world perspective. a sad existence indeed.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
The discussion in this thread is very much helping me clarify what I don't completely understand.
I completely agree with you that the value of art is that it makes your life emotionally better or richer, and that is more than enough to give it significant value.
As someone who personally finds this satisfaction in music more often than in painting/photography/sculpture, I feel that looking back at how my taste and appreciation of different types of music has changed over time gives me the impression that this process is a constructive one.
By that I mean that I feel like my tastes and ability to appreciate music are constantly evolving and being refined, and there's a sense that my taste is genuinely "improving" over time. I imagine the same is true for paintings.
And so my question is, if indeed you do feel this way, do you sometimes look back at your younger self and the taste you had at the time with a feeling that "today you know better/are more educated?"
If so, can it be said that certain artistic tastes are more correct than others? Similar to how some scientific views are more correct than others, even if the majority of the world doesn't share those views?
Nice, we're shitting on Bacon now.
Also, there is no piece called "Triptych". A Triptych is a specific style of three panel art. Bacon has done many of these. His "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" (the one sold here) is probably the most famous one, though I'm most fond of his Black Triptychs, especially the May-June 1973 one (easily one of the most haunting, personal and terrifying pieces of art I've ever come across).
Also, there is no piece called "Triptych". A Triptych is a specific style of three panel art. Bacon has done many of these. His "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" (the one sold here) is probably the most famous one, though I'm most fond of his Black Triptychs, especially the May-June 1973 one (easily one of the most haunting, personal and terrifying pieces of art I've ever come across).
SquiddyCracker
Banned
I don't particularly care for any of the art posted in this thread.
It's all too typical "art" imho.
It's all too typical "art" imho.
curlyfriski
Banned
But the point of pieces like Yves Klein's Blue isn't to show one's craft. It's a piece that is meant to provoke a specific spiritual and psychological experience, and some exhibition of technical expertise would do nothing to further that goal.
http://garethleaney.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/ikb-79-1959-by-yves-klein/
Saw this sucker in person once, at the Tate Modern in London. I shit you not, they were selling posters of it in the gift shop. Of a solid color blue rectangle. And the defense of this piece of nonsense in the above blog post is ludicrous.
I'm on the fence about Pollock. I can kind of see how his art might be genuinely great and in-imitable. But anything more "modern" or abstract than Pollock is bullshit, especially when it's as obviously simplistic and devoid of craft as those stupid balloon dogs.
Christmas card art? you stupid man, that is the work's of The Painter of Light.
I can't even begun to tell you the emotionless I see from this painting.
White, snow, kids, the smell of the burning wood. The house Those cut be as deeply as any picture, more so than a goat watching it's on entrails as dogs smoke and watch.
Maybe he's not acclaimed, maybe the critics never gave him a chance. Maybe if created a QVC brand to deliver his seminal works to consumers for four easily payments. He does it for the people.
At yet we are the freaks that would rather worship at that sight of a light painter than see a penis, or a suggestive nod.
Art that is grim, meaningful, and not instantly recognizable is you shit. Keep telling yourself how good swirly circles that don't tell you have to feel are better than this.
That actually took skill, and hard work.
There is nothing to discover in these paintings. They are the movie equivalent of any hollywood popcorn flick, easy to digest and very marketable. Put it on place mats, put it on gift cards, Nana might want to hang one on the wall.
I wouldn't call these paintings art, like I wouldn't call the movie Jack and Jill artful.
Staring into a piece of blue cloth does not provoke a spiritual nor a psychological experience in me. Otherwise I couldn't sleep since I have blue linens in my bed.
^this
meanwhile everywhere
Phat Michael
Banned
In answer to the first part of the bolded: Yes. i've always adored art and colours - but my art tastes have changed quite a bit and definitely matured - but not in a boring way. Im a HUGE fan of graffiti (I collect graff art books) and my house is purple inside and filled with KAWS figures and paintings.
In answer to your 2nd question: yes i believe someones tastes can be more refined and educated than others, even if they are only opinions and viewpoints. To use your music analogy, if someone listened to Justin Bieber and someone listened to Beethoven, i would say that the person listening to beethoven has a better music taste than someone interested in Bieber. It may be his taste but I think some things can be argued better even if others dont share those views.
For me, i dont care if you dislike a piece of art, that's fine. What is NOT fine however is saying that "Well an IDIOT could paint that, that takes no skill or talent, only an idiot would pay $$$ for that!" <-- that shows a closed mind.
I think as you get older and can afford nicer things you really do develop a taste for the finer things in life if you have access to them and are open minded. As i get on in years i have managed to travel more and see incredible "art" in the flesh - something in my younger days i would have only been able to see in books.
Let me recommend all of you The $12 Million Stuffed Shark. I read this book last year and it really helped me understand how the contemporary art market works.
See, this is the problem I have with art discussions: I can't tell whether this is sarcasm or not. If you are serious, then that explanation seems completely ludicrous. Is he some kind of genius for coming up with the fact that the color blue confined in a square "provokes a specific spiritual and psychological experience"? I don't get it, but perhaps I'm just not cultivated enough or something.
Just ordered it. I think that may be my first impulse buy in I don't know how long.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
I didn't mean to imply that is has to happen the "boring" way, although that's probably how it came out when I wrote it. I appreciate electronic music and rock much more than I did as a teenager, as part of having a more refined and educated taste in general. As a child I might have said that "pop and electronic music" take less skill than classical, and therefore ignored them categorically. But as an adult I am better able to examine each piece of music individually, regardless of its genre, which allows me to create a more "evolved" taste.
The way I see it, as my ability to appreciate art matures, I am able to recognise certain qualities which transcend genre and period and medium, as well as technical difficulty and other measures which are incorrectly considered to be indicative of artistic merit. And while I am not always able to put in words why I appreciate certain works over others, I do generally believe there is a "correct" set of measures by which art can be appreciated, it's just not related to those measures commonly considered by society.
Personally, I believe one of the main driving forces of art, on a cognitive level, has always been to better define what exactly these measures are.
I think of it very much as a kind of complex system with governing rules or dynamics that while obscured, can with time and experience be gradually revealed.
edit: And as a consequence I tend to value art that helps me understand these measures better, either on a conscious or subconscious level.
entremet
Member
GAF would seem to prefer the low brow movement, which is feature in Juxtapoz magazine.
http://altpick.com/spot/jeff_soto/index.php
http://altpick.com/spot/jeff_soto/index.php
Blake'sGrave
Member
General Patton
Banned
IMO, art is about the relationship between myself and the piece, and as I said, those landscape and nature pieces speak volumes, whereas the Triptych I wouldn't look twice at if I fell over it. That's just the way I'm hard-wired though, I love the magical, natural wonderment of the environment, and those picture-perfect scenes and landscapes transport me to places I really want to experience. They are fascinating to me.
I've always despised abstract and lateral concepts, and by extension art, and I think you need an appreciation of those concepts to really appreciate stuf like Triptych.
For the record, I don't dislike that particular piece, it just does nothing for me.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
I'm not sure that this is a good line of argument. Much better art than this has sold for much less, and there are many factors at play other than pure artistic merit (whatever that even means). Established artists dealing with things that are abstracted to this level of weirdness probably could spend zero effort farting out something and sell it for exorbitant sums while a no-name off the street would be laughed out of the room.
Perception is absolutely everything here. On a technical level somebody could make a painting that was four blue triangles with slightly blurred edges and it would be about on par with half the stuff in this thread. If you knew that they were creating it in a cynical effort to dupe pretentious art critics, you would probably dismiss it out of hand. If you thought it came from somebody who had poured their soul into this abstract expression of something, you might appreciate it as good art. All art requires interpretation to be meaningful since in the end, there is no such thing as intrinsic meaning. Abstract art takes it to the utmost extreme, where essentially all of the meaning is created by the viewer and not by the artist. I definitely understand why people think its nonsense.
Coreda
Member
Christmas card art? you stupid man, that is the work's of The Painter of Light.
That actually took skill, and hard work.
Whatever rocks your boat...
MY EYES
Bingo. However the cottage painting was hardly realistic
There are plenty of illustrations and technically well painted artworks that have been created for centuries, however only some of those works have qualities that go beyond composition or craftsmanship alone. So while on one level I can appreciate brilliant commercial artists like Mucha or Leyendecker, their work doesn't reach as deep as others (nor is it meant to, it's for a different purpose).
And also it has to be remembered only some people are going to think these artworks are worth so much, as it obviously means a lot to them. Some people spend ridiculous amounts on virtual game items after all, yet even those that love a game mightn't think they're worth as much even if they can appreciate them.
Personally the kind of works that speak to me are what I think of as the more humanist kind. Works that capture something intangible. Anyway, might as well post a few while I'm here that I love/like from Titian and others (click for full view).
Titian - Portrait of a Man (Ariosto)
Titian - Portrait of a Young Englishman (face detail) - had to scan this myself as there wasn't one online.
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema - A Hearty Welcome
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Under the Roof of Blue Ionian Weather (mostly as an example of his beautiful marble rendering)
Tintoretto - Last Supper
And then something like a Japanese woodblock print that is something simply made to be pleasant to look at.
Kawase Hasui - Shuzenji no Ame
There are of course so many others I appreciate, from the impressionists, to the more abstract, etc, but my general belief is the best art is that which rewards the patient viewer.
not really. it usually takes a real master to make something that simple but still appealing. It's like sushi, people think it's simple because a slice of fish on a cushion of rice looks very simple. Still it can take life time to master the art and anyone who has tried sushi made by a real master knows how huge the difference is.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
The bolded is what I was trying to get at with my earlier posts. If the meaning is primarily in the interpretation, then we should place value more in the theory behind a work of art than in the work itself, or at least strike a fairer balance between how we distribute the value between theory and result.
That way art would actually have something that is closer to a measurable academic value. It could end up being a step in the right direction.
ElectricBlue187
Member
Rothko's paintings always stir up conversation in a GAF art thread.
I like art that elicits an emotional response and/or connection from me without having to know it's complete history and importance. While the colour field theory might be interesting, Rothko's personal story heart breaking, and the techniques used required some skill, I would like to have a raw connection that hits me when I see something for the first time because I actually think it looks good/interesting.
Devolution said that the Rothko painting I posted is supposed to fill your field of vision with colour. I can understand how that could draw out a response from the viewer, but I can't see how it goes beyond "it has nice depth and looks colourful." It seems to me that many people who appreciate these type of paintings do so for factors outside of visual pleasure. These outside factors is what catapults them to high art territory and has more influence than the actual visuals.
I can't tell if this is serious but it sounds like someone trying too hard to get some type of response out of a blue rectangle.
I like art that elicits an emotional response and/or connection from me without having to know it's complete history and importance. While the colour field theory might be interesting, Rothko's personal story heart breaking, and the techniques used required some skill, I would like to have a raw connection that hits me when I see something for the first time because I actually think it looks good/interesting.
Devolution said that the Rothko painting I posted is supposed to fill your field of vision with colour. I can understand how that could draw out a response from the viewer, but I can't see how it goes beyond "it has nice depth and looks colourful." It seems to me that many people who appreciate these type of paintings do so for factors outside of visual pleasure. These outside factors is what catapults them to high art territory and has more influence than the actual visuals.
I can't tell if this is serious but it sounds like someone trying too hard to get some type of response out of a blue rectangle.
Spring-Loaded
Member
$86.8 million dollars. I think someone tried explaining why this is so amazing in another thread but I can't remember the exact post.
What's in the op is like, an actual painting. An actual thing. This though...
Vicetrailia
Member
It's true that art has a snob culture barrier that needs to be shattered, but I'm pretty disappointed in the opinions against contemporary art, or against the humanities in general.
A poster mentioned seeing art in person and he's right. Internet pictures are great, but you MUST see it in person to get the most out of it. Art is worth what people are willing to pay for it, can't really get mad.
A poster mentioned seeing art in person and he's right. Internet pictures are great, but you MUST see it in person to get the most out of it. Art is worth what people are willing to pay for it, can't really get mad.
Black Door
Banned
Beating your wife and making up some bullshit story about how throwing a paint can at a canvas is you "illustrating your soul" makes you a great artist
Monocle
Member
It's shit. I would much rather own a Craig Mullins piece. Doesn't matter what other people would say it's worth compared to the item in the OP.
Which corresponds to my increasing disdain for people who favor those styles over traditional representational approaches. My general attitude is this: if it looks like an ugly mess, it probably is.
Technosteve
Banned
Can't wait for my olly moss to be wotth millions
Some people, and by some people I of course mean many people (a good deal peppered within this thread), don't understand that art is not only about the content being skillfully portrayed through painstaking technique. Its not even always about the actual content itself. Some art, a great deal of contemporary art and I would say most modern period art, is purely conceptual.
White on White, which is a white canvas on a white canvas is conceptual. Its not about the painting. They aren't meant to portray anything real in particular.
Art doesn't have to be a picture of a house or a person. Art doesn't have to "look good".
And most of the criticisms in this thread have been made about art for as long as someone dared to do something different. So congratulations on simply echoing past sentiments over and over again under the facade of "intellectualism" without even realizing it.
Research Marcel Duchamp, and Andy Warhol.
White on White, which is a white canvas on a white canvas is conceptual. Its not about the painting. They aren't meant to portray anything real in particular.
Art doesn't have to be a picture of a house or a person. Art doesn't have to "look good".
And most of the criticisms in this thread have been made about art for as long as someone dared to do something different. So congratulations on simply echoing past sentiments over and over again under the facade of "intellectualism" without even realizing it.
Research Marcel Duchamp, and Andy Warhol.
Perspicacity
Banned
Balloon dog is awesome, I want one for my front yard.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
I already said I've seen such paintings in person. I could "lose myself" in my own farts, but that doesn't give the farts any immanent meaning. If the ONLY meaning a work of art has is on the level of the individual, the artist has done zilch. Given color doesn't even symbolize the same things across cultures, even that level of interpretation is denied.
Poe's Law in motion.
There's a different between inviting a multiplicity of interpretations via skillful elision, intelligent ambiguity, and simply wading into ideas where there may not BE right answers, and creating works whose interpretations are basically infinite because you've not given your audience even the slightest grip of something objective to be communicated.
"Color field theory" is definitionally pretentious, i.e. assuming an air of unearned importance. One can know the context of the paintings, and their form, and still find them to be empty exercises in intellectual fraud. Regardless, if you have to start referring to "theory" outside the work itself for the work in question to have ANY real meaning or import, you've already strayed away from art's highest possibility, i.e. the communication of something immanent, the interpretation of the reality. That people may or may not feel emotions from such paintings does not mean they have more or less value than anything else that can elicit emotion. I welled up watching a video of a Boston Terrier being rehabilitated last night, smiled petting my own Boston this morning, but neither the video nor the dog are art for that fact. Folks like Pollock and Rothko, if what they do can even be called art, are minor practitioners, at best, falling well behind masters like Caravaggio, Cezanne, and Picasso, who used the art of painting to actually engage with viewers, not to pose and to capitalize monetarily by carrying the trend of increasing abstraction to its logical(ly absurd) end and emptying their work of all meaning, context, and skill.
Excellent strawman, but the condemnation of a certain kind of poseurish "abstraction" is not a condemnation of abstraction, en toto. I admire Picasso greatly.
Again, nice ad hominem. Easier to attack "lack of understanding" than to engage with an understanding that's coupled with an outright rejection and discursive counter.
I would. If only I were a multi-millionaire. I'm an enormous Francis Bacon fan.
I find his work aesthetically pleasing, in the sense that it straddles an interesting line between the figurative and the abstract. Bacon's a "painterly" painter who also uses the techniques of the cubists. I find his figures (often in triptychs, often in cages) to be both full of ominous foreboding and yet sympathetic.
Bacon's works always sell for a ton of money, in part because he's a painter who brings both figurative and abstract work to the same painting, which is easier for some people's palates than a pure abstract artist like Pollack or Rothko. There's a gloominess and unpleasantness to his work that some people find a more accurate representation of who we are as people than his contemporaries. He likes to work with triptychs, which make an impressive hanging for the people buying the art, and he's only a decade dead, which means the various works are actually available to purchase, unlike other artists they might want to collect (like Goya, who painted in similar territory).
The last best selling painting was Edvard Munch's "The Scream" so I suspect there's just a very hot market for darker, less pleasant work. There's also some history involved in the painting, as it's a study of Lucian Freud, anther well known painter.
For those not interested in art history, let me say that if you read Sandman and like Dave McKean's art, you have -- in a round about way -- Bacon to thank for some of it. McKean was profoundly influenced by Barron Storey, who in turn was heavily influenced by Francis Bacon.
bodyofanamerican
Member
Not saying it is worth that, but Francis Bacon was an amazing artist.
I kinda like this one, Bob. Leave it.
I'd say Bacon's work is fairly traditional. That's why I'm a bit surprised by some of the reactions in this topic.
I could see why someone wouldn't be impressed by say Pollock or Hirst, but Bacon should be appealing even to the 'my daughter could do that' crowd.
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