Compare him to Picasso. Picasso never said "I had to pay the rent." He never considered earning money with anything other than painting. When he had no money he lived in friends' apartments. He faced and accepted poverty and hunger. Picasso did not compromise. Same with Van Gogh. Paintings on their own have no value. Buyers pay for the life story of the painters. The more heroic is your life the more expensive your paintings. Painter's job is to market himself in order to create a life mythology. This guy just painted. He did not create a myth around his life.
The idea that there is some One True Path to becoming an Artist (as if either path or role were a consequence of universal natural law) is myth-making at its most obtuse.
Even a cursory glance at art history will show the heroic myth is anything but universal. There are tortured artists yet others who are at the peak of mental health. There are poor artists, rich ones, uncompromising artists, artists who'll sell their soul for a drink or a fuck, artists who beat their partners, those who die young, or live to a ripe old age; organised artists, yet others who can barely find their studio.
A shorthand: there's no such thing as 'an artist' (let alone a 'real artist').
I think that's a far harder question! And as it has (in the West alone) at least a 2500 year intellectual history behind it that I'm only very shallowly familiar with I don't give my own thoughts much credence.
But FWIW I'd try a distinction between Art (particular local social institutions, in our case hosting oil paintings, galleries, openings, etc) and art (a superset -- all human activities spawned by the apparently perennial drive that gave rise to Art, Burrup peninsula & Lascaux rock paintings, etc).
The former is obviously culturally-historically defined; it's not so much that Art is anything that any bozo calls 'Art', but rather it's whatever the culture comes to institutionally admit as Art. Along with this comes related culturally-specific legitimating myths (heroic artists, obedient servants of the proletariat, God-drunk poets, shamanic intermediaries, etc).
The latter however seems to be an H. sapiens species characteristic. In this much wider sense, 'art' would be anything created in response to the basic drive. Sometimes Art stagnates, or gets too academic, or complex, or appeals only to a shrinking elite, or otherwise loses relevance and needs re-invigorating from the vernacular (ie. the wider category of small-a art).
There is a huge difference between "all great artists did X" and "there is nothing particularly in common between all great artists". My intuition is telling me that the truth is definitely in the middle, and if there was some way to perform a "clustering" algorithm on artist's lives/work/legacy/commercial success we would see some clear patterns emerge around certain "archetypes" or "personas" of artists, and this guy doesn't seem to fit into one.
Fair enough, you're right that there would surely be patterns. But there's no advance reason to think these would line up with popular stereotypes. PCA & factor analysis often come up with highly unintuitive components! And unless the fit was spectacular, there'd be many 'great artists' falling outside of its net, so we'd just be falling back to judging the work, not the person's life.
This mythology surrounding the suffering artist is pretty much a fairly modern invention.
That's not to say that earlier artists didn't struggle - but it was not fetishished in the same way.
Mozart, Handel both had wealthy patrons, and made music for their use. Mozart also made quite a lot of fairly commercial music. Bach and Teleman both worked for the church.
Was Rembrandt a worse painter than Van Gogh, since he had wealthy patrons?
"He never considered earning money with anything other than painting. When he had no money he lived in friends' apartments. He faced and accepted poverty and hunger. Picasso did not compromise. Same with Van Gogh."
I'm not sure that Van Gogh is a great example of someone who never compromised or gave up.
He wanted to be a preacher, but nobody liked him. He also painted, and continued that after giving up on preaching. But nobody liked his paintings either, so he killed himself.
Uncompromising, relentless, with a lot of luck too (which he completely acknowledges in the video played a big part). But luck will only find you if you put yourself out there to be found, which White did.
Thanks for this link. I didn’t know who he was. I found his story inspirational. He says some chefs are artists. This may be true but there is a fundamental difference between a chef and a fine artist such as a painter. Chef’s product is useful. He has customers. There are well-defined standards for excellence such as the Michelin stars. But what an artist produces by definition is useless. Must be useless. Otherwise it will be denigrated as “not art but illustration,” or “decoration” or “commercial.” So the problem is to find a value system for something which is useless.
Kinkade is considered an 'outsider artist', which is a category an artist falls in when they are successful but not cool or young, like a celebrity.
The "artist's story" being discussed in most of these comments is more like a brand. If an artist is a brand, parent's comment is supported. If an artist is a commodity of skill and intellect, parent's comment is a farce. The same goes for if an artist is a celebrity. More and more every day, successful artists must be feasible celebrities.
The overlap of artist and celebrity marks something of an end to commercial Art's intellectual integrity, which is maintained only through symbolic links such as the insistence that artists have an MFA. This requirement came about following conceptualism. For example, Rothko, who the article's subject was shown beside in the 1950s, was a middle-aged philosopher with no art school experience and a miserable origin story, which did not matter then. Note a commitment to intellect did, which was not assumed when one partook in the dealings of Madison Ave.
Contemporary art critics would like you to confuse conceptualism with abstract expressionism. Don't do it. The artist in the article exemplifies the difference.
Conceptualism is popularly defined by an incomprehensible history and a host of needless exaggerations around what an art object is. A more likely history is that conceptualism is an opportunist side effect of abstract expressionism, which was a highly intellectual and honest project. Conceptualism asks what can be art?, which simultaneously allowed artists to become their art. This uncoincidentally occurred alongside an explosion of popular obsession with celebrity. To have a good artist story is to have a story worthy of celebrity fame, which is another topic entirely. The point here is that conceptualism is not, despite popular manipulation, a legitimate or interesting art movement. It is a flash-pan quasi-philosophical excuse for quasi-intellectualism in art. Conceptualism makes the celebrity nonsense quasi-reasonable, so it was adopted as the origin story for the current contemporary Art world as a whole, which depends on notions of celebrity to compete in such a commercial society.
Note Warhol stands out for having actively subsumed Madison Ave. with his intellect, not in place of it.
To be honest, this guys approach to creating a myth around himself seems much more compelling and unique to me. As is the (post mortem) Vivian Maier story.
Despite knowing several artists - I made artistic studies and used to follow the art scene - I'm yet to know a real artist. It takes a lot of courage to be one.
Could you please define what a real artist is to you? Not trying to be snide but rather really curious. This is a question coming from an engineer that sometimes has to try to be a bit artistic (and failing catastrophically) on some of his works.
Try to dissect the parent comment, is really spot on. I can't explain better. Some extra hints:
You are using the word artistic when you should use the word creative instead. An artist, sometimes, is not even the best painter, musician or sculptor. An artist is somebody that has the courage to live life trully according his way - being innovative by definition - and not to please somebody else.
Examples of artists (IMHO): Jim Morrison, Salvador Dali, Picasso, Basquiat, Paul Gauguin became one when abbandoned his life in Paris and went painting natives in Pacific islands in 19 century, probably Madonna and Michael Jackson while younger, probably Trump.. Jesus Christ..
I'm not sure about that. Coming up with something new that millions of people like is the hard part. It matters not if you can duplicate it easily. Just look at Minecraft, compared to AAA games it is simple, yet its simplicity is genius.
i think your talking about “craft” not art. i dont think skill required to create is the big factor, i think its more about your choices. but i conceed that the line is blurred and there are counterexampled
Wish there was a better proxy for the value of an artist than what their works sell for. For example, how many people did this guy influence, how did his work change art or how people understand the world? Neither was really discussed in the article
His day job was "working as a freelance graphic designer creating logos, packaging and advertising for brands like Pond’s cold cream and Bufferin." So he may have anonymously influenced a ton of people to buy one brand of painkiller or another.
He also lived in Cleveland from about 1952-1961, which means there's a not insignificant chance he may have done work for American Greetings. Which means that maybe his art was on some number of cards that began or ended a relationship. That's an influence, I think? Probably an anonymous one, though.
It sounds like pretty much everything he's drawn or painted for himself is still in his apartment. So most of it hasn't had any chance to influence anyone or their understanding of the world. This may change now that he has people in the NYC gallery scene becoming interested in his work as a new artist to promote as worth investing in. Or it may not; the few pieces of his work shown in the article didn't strike me as saying anything that hasn't already been said a thousand times by the "New York School" of 50s/60s abstract expressionists that he exhibited next to back then. YMMV, abstract expressionism ain't my thing in general.
He's 86. Fifty years ago in 1958, when he was a young 26, prudent retirement planning was getting a good stable job with a pension. Forth years ago in 1968, when he was 36, prudent retirement planning was holding a stable job with a pension. 1978, he was 46 and prudence was still a pension. Even thirty years ago in 1988, it was the same for someone at 56. Now twenty years ago, when he was 66, new employees were typically being put in 401k plans rather than pensions, but in 1998 he was 66 and retirement age.
The world changed in ways that were not consistent with conventional retirement wisdom. Or to put it another way, people looked at the piles of money sitting in pensions and figured out a way to get their hands on it because that was their full time job. For what it's worth, there are people who spend all day everyday thinking about your retirement savings becoming their money because skating to where the conventional retirement wisdom for retirement is going is still a job people have.
For what it's worth, a lot of people who had retirement savings saw that money shrink by 40-60% in 2008-2009. There's no coming back from that even with ten years of 7% net growth, you're still behind inflation without drawing any of the capital and profits...and you're not going to get ten years of 7% net growth without extraordinary good luck.
> and you're not going to get ten years of 7% net growth without extraordinary good luck.
Typically, I would agree, however in the cited time period I would not. From the middle of 2009 to now the DJI is up 180%. Significantly more than the 7%.
From Peak 2007, that money is up 90% since 2007.
By simply holding and not selling broad index funds, you would have been fine.
Unlike real portfolios, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gets to replace losers with winners. Dropped by the DJI since 2008 are:
+ Alitra, Honeywell for BOA and Chevron: Remember Honeywell?
+ AIG for Kraft Foods: AIG was worth close to $0 and Kraft was worth something and so the DJI went up because averaging in something is better than averaging in nothing.
+ Citigroup, GM for Cisco and Travelers: GM was at about $10 and getting bailed out by the government. Consumer spending was down for Citi. The internet was exploding and Travelers had cash reserves to invest in the down market.
+ Kraft for United Health Group. More money in fixing the problems that come from eating Cheez Whiz than selling it.
+ Alcoa, BOA, HP for Goldman Sachs, Nike, Visa. Remember HP?
+ ATT for Apple: Replacing the ~$50 ATT with the ~$500 Apple made the average go up. If you can swap out shares in your portfolio similarly, my advice is to do so.
The conventional advice is to play the market because the DJI is up. It doesn't explain how the DJI works and that you can't replicate its performance. And if you are retired, you have to live off the money and the size of your pile is shrinking not growing. The conventional advice comes from an industry that has no problem using your life savings for its own purposes.
I am not claiming the Dow is a ideal index I used it for its name brand, however
Here is a link to a comparison to .DJI and VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market)
If a person had bought into it in 2007, they would have done reasonably well...a little worse than 7% per year compounded. All that a person needed was an oracle to pick a winner. On the other hand, the ten year from 1999 to 2009 would not have looked so good and it's not providing DJI like increases in value because the DJI is Public Relations not finance (that's why it doesn't indicate when to make money as a bear).
Keep in mind that in terms of retirement, pensions looked good and in 1992 when the Vangard fund became available the artist was already sixty-two years old. There's no guarantee that today's Vanguard Fund will look as attractive in twenty, thirty or forty years when the people following conventional retirement advice have to cash in their chips. The fund performed better than average.
Finally, people lost their jobs in the downturn and often had to dip into retirement savings to keep themselves afloat. Even with a time machine, it isn't possible for many people to have timed the market perfectly by investing heavily at the 2009 trough. That's the smoke and hand waving that the conventional financial advice uses to dismiss actual individual circumstances...well that and the idea that poverty reflects a lack of virtue.
> “Harry’s never been a salesman,” said Mary Bertschmann, his wife of more than 50 years. “He didn’t get his art out there for them to see.”
Like pretty much everything in life, it all comes back to marketing. In order for people to want a specific artist's art they have to know the artist exists and they have to be familiar with his work. The more people that know, the more people will want the art, and the more valuable it will be.
For example, a Rothko is worth millions, but if I paint a large fuzzy colored rectangle it's worth practically nothing. People know about Rothko, what he was doing, and why. His art has a well-known, proven track record of being a good investment and buyers already know this.
Even in art, it doesn't matter how good the product is if nobody knows about it.
> Even in art, it doesn't matter how good the product is if nobody knows about it.
I would say - _especially_ in art. People will mostly pay at most a couple grand for a painting based solely on its esthetic value (and I'm guessing most of the market is below $1k). For higher numbers, the purpose of the purchase is investment and obviously investing in an unknown arist is a terrible strategy.
Yves Klein is even more fun.. literally a blue canvas. Granted, it was a shade of blue that Klein invented, but still.
However, in defense of modern art, it isn’t about what’s on the canvas as much as it’s about context. Klein’s blue canvases essentially demolished the status quo of the time. It was like a musical note sounding discordant against the melody of what “art” meant. Brilliant actually.. not unlike how Mappelthorpe’s photos where exactly the images that captured the zeitgeist of the AIDS crisis. Disgusting in many opinions, but brilliant when seen in the context of the time. Same idea with Warhol’s soup cans and Brillo paintings.
And speaking of music, listen to Klein's “Monotone-Sikence” — it will blow your mind that the dude got away with that.
Some have said that Klein was the last of the great French artists. I’m inclined to agree even though he is famous for an f’ing blue canvas and a one note “symphony.”
You don't seem to have heard of any value except monetary. (OK, maybe that's not fair/likely, but you sure talk like it.) I guess it's (just?) a confusion in the word 'value'.
The way you are talking of the value of art in money terms is.. well... People who love art don't talk like that. Do you speak of love, life, health etc in similar terms?
Oh anyway. It's pretty amazing to me to hear such views in person. I mean, scary, horrific, chilling. It only happened to me once in my life before this thread.
I think...you have been brainwashed to think that all value is (or can be put) in terms of money. Is it possible to be happy while thinking like that? ..There are a thousand things I could say to that, not sure where to start. (Unfortunately I've learnt quickly in my brief time here that discussion on HN with those of different views is very counterproductive. It has been so far anyway.)
God, Rothkos... nobody has ever been able to explain why I should care about him or his fuzzy rectangles. And I was engaged to an artist that loved him...
Rothko's paintings are ideas just like Duchamp, Kandinsky, Richter and Pollock.
There are two kinds of people that criticize them:
- First kind, the ones that criticize and challenge their ideas. Not the process, not the method, not the work itself. Examples - David Sylvester and Michael Peppiatt who criticized Francis Bacon [0]. Those were constructive, extremely interesting encounters that challenge artist's notions and provide different perspectives. They vehemently opposed the artist [1], but thoughtfully to incite and open new conversations around their ideas. They also understand the historical time frame and overall art history, especially the turn of the 20th century.
- The second kind, criticize materialistic, physical and methodical manifestations of art. Such as trying to judge how relatively easy/hard was it to paint; "Any one can do that"; paintings are trash because I personally do not resonate with it visually; no revolutionary methods or interesting ways of physically making the art, etc. They also try to find deeper meaning where there isn't and make up far fetched meanings to justify their understanding of something that is not meant to be literally understood. There are also people on the other end of the spectrum such as people working in the galleries that try to bullshit you with their sales pitch which often contains non-sense and wordplay.
That first video is awesome, thank you! As for the second type of postmodern-art-hater you quote, do you ever think that someone can be making a valid point about the valuelessness and meaninglessness of someone's creations that have been chosen by another person to be displayed in a gallery? Is everyone who draws or paints a picture an artist? I myself see much of postmodern art as "meta-art," or a work of "art commentary," a statement about what people can be made to see as "art" (such as: excrement on a floor, a pile of rocks, or a piece of paper that says "This is art") but it's not art. I'd say that Duchamp's urinal is meta-art.
If you have not seen a Rothko in person, you may want to postpone judgment a bit. I've known a few people who have independently told me that they didn't get Rothko until they went to a museum with his work.
Rothko is the visual art's embodiment of the emperor's new clothes. I've seen Rothkos up close and personal. They're fuzzy rectangles painted by a guy who couldn't draw. They're interesting cultural artifacts, but as an art school graduate, I hate when the smart set elevates mediocre artwork to make the unenlightened feel dumb.
Pollock's paintings at least have a sense of dynamism and there are interesting interactions in the paint. DeKooning has a sense of dynamism, but so did most classical artists with a bunch of other benefits to boot. Frankenthaler/Kline/Twombly all had one move they repeated for decades. Rauschenberg and Johns predicted a lot of modern graphic design, but you'll find more interesting visuals in an issue of Lucky Peach. Diebenkorn made an attempt to add the rudiments of representation.
Modern art is endlessly interesting. There are personal dramas, changes in cultural norms, and financial stories that are much more compelling than anything on the canvas. AbEx stuff is fine, but you'll find equally compelling designs on bedding at Target.
I was told that Rothko's Colour Field paintings were great many times and I didn't believe it because I didn't see it with my own eyes. It wasn't until after I had came to appreciate the work of hundreds of other artists that I one day stumbled across a Rothko and found it to breathtaking.
If you can get that kind of feeling looking at the bedding designs at Target, that's great, you've saved yourself a lot of trouble. I had to go on a decades long odyssey to learn how to appreciate any painting as much as I appreciate the work of Rothko.
> nobody has ever been able to explain why I should care about him or his fuzzy rectangles.
I mean he's arguably the best painter of all time, because while everyone else was trying to win the game of showing off how good they were at painting, he was just trying to make something that looked good on people's walls.
If you're serious (not sure), that would make him arguably the best painter of his time and place. But all time? Let's hear an argument for that. (I don't say, a good one)
Maybe try appreciating a grid painting by Agnes Martin. If that makes sense to you as something beautiful (calm, orderly), go back to Rothko and see if it feels a bit sublime (clouded, heavy, dense). This is not about ideas.
Makes me think about something I recently heard from the Dirty Jobs guy about not following your passion but rather opportunity; basically he argued that passion is no guarantee that you'll actually be good at something.
https://youtu.be/CVEuPmVAb8o
