[becomingagodo]

I will admit that two weeks ago I thought sculpture was for morons, however reading a book on michelangelo made me like sculpture. The current popular trend is away from classical art and toward modern art, which is depressing for sculpture as their is only two good modern popular sculptures Picasso head of a woman and Marcel Duchamp urinal.
I really don't know what is going to replace modernism, however I don't see sculpture being popular anymore. The only chance I see sculpture being popular is for it to be shocking, how to make sculpture shocking and intellectual has been one of my concerns.
People say classical music is dead and will never be popular again. I blame it on Picasso. So what do you think about art?

P.S. This website has the best similies.

[Irish]

Oh Jeez! This one is like dropping a big smelly red flag in front of an angry bull

Where to begin ....

Modern sculpture is based on creating a work from as few simple flowing lines as possible. It's about balance, texture, form and light. It about asking the viewer to stop - consider - and rethink the way they look at the world.

In classic sculpture the focus is on a realistic scene ... a general sitting on a charging horse, a Madonna and child ... a lion resting on the step ... the local reigning Deity. It was developed during a time period when the average person couldn't read nor write so visual and oral stories were the only way to tell the history of a people. The sculpture became the story, it was the visual history. It was about "Hey, you dummy ... this is what happened! Or at least what we want you to think happened!"

Today, many more people can both read and write plus with the advent of the printing press, libraries and now the Internet information is easily transferred from one person to another, one generation to another. Man is no longer dependent of the oral or visual imagery to teach or pass on our knowledge.

So ... Modern art in both 2 dimension (paintings, etching, prints) and 3 dimension work can now explore the under lying aspects of our art form. We can make light the focus of a work instead of a man's face, we can depict emotions far beyond any historical story would have allowed us by distorting and twisting visual images. We can use raw basic form to create shadows within a work .....

Modern art is perhaps the most difficult of art style to successful accomplish for an artist. It really is easier to 'copy' each and every hair, muscle and hoof of a horse then it is to translate that horse into as few flowing lines as possible. Unsuccessful, it becomes a stick figure or crayon drawing that your three year old could have done. Successful it can imply power, movement, strength, and courage!

OK .. Picasso! MY HERO!!! No, his art style is not one to my choosing and I wouldn't hang one of his paintings in my house. But he did something dramatic and revolutionary that changed the art world forever ... he taught us that we must approach our art as a business. He taught us that we, as artists, had the right to control the distribution, sales and marketing of our art and that we could get paid an appropriate amount for our effort.

Picasso destroyed the idea of "The Starving Artist" which until his time was a true and literal terminology.

Susan

[Irish]

OK ... back for a second thought here

One of my favorite modern paintings, and I wish I could credit the artist this morning but I am having a Senior moment, is a scene of a group of men leaning into a wooden fence. I have the impression that they are of a ranch watching the horses inside the pen ...

But it's just an impression because the painting only shows the men from the belt down the the middle of the knee and from their back side. So there is this row of Levi clad bottoms in various positions with the fence as the background.

The only color in the entire work is the blue jeans and all the glorious wrinkles that they develop everything else is in gray tones and everything is very abstract in the brush work .. the painting is about texture and light.

It's also about how in a day of modern techno-crazy life we still are all cowboys at heart! And it will never be hung in the Vatican or on display in City Hall because it is about the common man ...

Susan

[wade clark]

Velly Intellesting! I would say, art is for enjoyment, for stirring thought and emotion. If a piece moves the heart, the soul, the mind, then it's art to the beholder. Surely there is a bridge from there to making a living at art.
Being an Auctioneer, my dream Auction would be a "Starving Artists' Auction" somewhere like Key West, scheduled around Cruise Ship landings. Any artist could sell. Many would bring their art in when the rent was due or they were hungry. The beauty of this is, the selling would distribute their art around the world, and also those with no marketable talent would soon learn this or change their style or get a regular job, get over it and get on with life!
I don't think "classic" or "modern" makes any difference; it's the movement of the heart! Is art a popularity contest or an individual connection to the soul?
But what do I know?
Wade

[whitecree]

Originally Posted by Irish

It's also about how in a day of modern techno-crazy life we still are all cowboys at heart!

Errr... cowboys? :P

Art is the ability to make someone pause a minute to look at something and make them think about it. I have found very little - if any - so-called modern art that makes me do this.

I know I saw that painting you're talking about with the Levi clad backsides at a fence. Glanced at it, figured it out as a come on for a jeans company, and went my way. As art, it fails because it did not make me pause and think about anything.

Picasso was simply a seriously disturbed man who tried to paint the demons out of his head. Artist? Perhaps, but methinks only accidentally. Some critic (don't let me get started on critics - please!) decided Picasso had 'something' and started raving about him to his buddies. The rest - thankfully - is history.

What will replace 'modern art'? I think we are seeing it today. A slow shifting back towards historic values and definitions of art. Why? Because modern art leaves people cold and wondering why they wasted money on crap.







Hey, did I see a red flag or something?

[Irish]

ER ... s and indians and naturalists and mountain men and please fill in the blank

May that painting is a girl's thing!!!

Susan

[becomingagodo]

Picasso was simply a seriously disturbed man who tried to paint the demons out of his head. Artist? Perhaps, but methinks only accidentally. Some critic (don't let me get started on critics - please!) decided Picasso had 'something' and started raving about him to his buddies. The rest - thankfully - is history.

Van Gogh was a serioulsy disturbed man who tried to paint the demons out of his head. Do I think Van Gogh is a artist, hell yes. I would not be so hard on Picasso as he turned us away from the monkey days of art, you know a artist is a monkey because he copies what is in front of him. What did Picasso do to make two of his wifes commit sucide, Picasso does have a sadistic quality, however I don't know if that is a bad thing. If you look at his youth he was good at classical art and then his friend died and he went crazy.

Why? Because modern art leaves people cold and wondering why they wasted money on crap.

I really doubt this as going around Tate modern and looking at the Turner award and people who do art in the twenty first century, it would be really hard to go back to classical values.

Picasso destroyed the idea of "The Starving Artist" which until his time was a true and literal terminology.

All the artist I know were not staving artist, except Van Gogh.

he taught us that we must approach our art as a business.

This is abit harsh, Picasso is more then a business man, plus his influence is more then money. Cubism for example taught us that we can use more then one perspective.

So ... Modern art in both 2 dimension (paintings, etching, prints) and 3 dimension work can now explore the under lying aspects of our art form. We can make light the focus of a work instead of a man's face, we can depict emotions far beyond any historical story would have allowed us by distorting and twisting visual images. We can use raw basic form to create shadows within a work .....

This is not controversial so it not modern, I remeber the sensation exhibition children with D**ks on their heads didn't really tell a story or emotion or focus on artist form.

[Kenny_S]

I like Art, He is a Nice and helpfull guy!

[becomingagodo]

I like Art, He is a Nice and helpfull guy!

I should have chosen Art as a username. Why can't Art be a girl?

[Lynn O. Doughty]

Art is completely driven by the collector not the artist. For every well know or discovered artist there are scads of others who for some reason are passed over. Take woodcarving....you can hardly get it in the gallery door!

I liked Picasso's eariest work. However, he must have had a serious brain fart or something to cause him to totally lose his grasp on reality. Van Gone? He painted some really striking and at times beautiful things. Unfortunately, he was a total nut case. Modern art is pretty much a joke on the viewer and a really big joke on the buyer. I remember the story about all the critics and collectors oooing and aaahhhhing over a major work of a major artist only to find out that the Gallery had hung the painting upside down. Guess that pretty well sums up the whole business of modern art.

Now western art is a totally different story. Pick up any issue of Southwest Art, Art of the West, or visit any western art museum. Inside you'll find pictures and sculpture of actual people doing things that you can actually recognize. Guess thats why this part of the art scene continues to be so successful.