if you had never heard of picasso before and just passed this same image, maybe as graffiti on the street, would it have had a similar impact on you?
I ask because I've seen a lot of art when traveling with friends and nothing other than sculptures has ever come even remotely close to impressing me as far as traditional art goes. So I'm curious if it's mostly celebrity status or something else I'm just missing.
> I’ve never really understood why Picasso is considered as good as he is
Picasso (with Georges Braque) literally invented, pioneered, and perfected a new artistic style, cubism. It's like saying "I've never really understood why Isaac Newton is considered as good as he is."
> It's like saying "I've never really understood why Isaac Newton is considered as good as he is."
I think there's something to be appreciated in Picasso, but that's a bad example. Physics has Newton, Einstein, maybe Galileo, and then no one who can match those 3. Art easily has dozens of people who can match Picasso. Just because he invented something new doesn't mean the work he did extends throughout the entire discipline, like Newton does. Picasso is not that important.
It would be better to compare to, say, Wilt Chamberlain in basketball or something. Or if you want to reach to physics, say Neils Bohr or James Clerk Maxwell. But then I think Bohr might even be reaching too far. Schrodinger?
I know: Hugh Everett is the Picasso of physics. He gave us an interesting and different way to see the world (many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics). He was no doubt brilliant, and many modern physicists continue to lean on his ideas regularly. But, of course, tons of physics would exist without him.
I have a hard time taking this comment seriously. How am I supposed to equate a drawing any graduate art-school student could reproduce with foundational discoveries in mathematics that have changed the world in ways that quite literally were only imagined in fictional stories before the production of technology that was created on the back of mathematics.
Give me a picasso painting and a year and I guarantee you I could reproduce something indistinguishable to 99% of people. If I gave anybody a year to learn and make mathematical discoveries even 1/100th as impactful as Newton, it's likely no one would come close.
Of course you could reproduce such a painting easily enough. I can also reproduce F = ma ... look, I just did!
Invent an entirely new and impactful style of painting, that hasn't been seen before, from dust. Just like Newton invented a whole new "style" of mathematics.
I still think Picasso is less important but you haven't even begun to draw the correct analogy here.
>How am I supposed to equate a drawing any graduate art-school student could reproduce with foundational discoveries in mathematics
Pretty sure that's GP's point. Nowadays, any graduate physics student can solve calculus problems. The amazing part is the creation of new ways to see and describe the world.
A year of training would have anyone reproducing picassos art with likely high accuracy. A year of training in calculus is effectively what you have with juniors in high school. To be honest, saying it would take most people a year to reproduce picassos artwork feels very generous. His artwork is not particularly skillful.
his point is that the skill does not lie in the manual process of making the art, but in the process of _creating_ the art. copying something (even with a high degree of precision) is less difficult than imagining the thing in the first place.
It's not same thing. I used be amazed by many of these works because I would try to think if I would have drawn that and why and how. It took me a while that lot of these works have no reasoning and rational or even internal representation or mystery whatsoever. Many of these works even stem directly due to mental health conditions.
While working in AI research, we have known that many of the similar works gets generated when you accidently wire networks differently or if network has short of schizophrenia and works on a region and then sort of randomly but still somehow similar way does something else on other region. There is no rhym or reason except that our brains gets surprised by patterns that it hadn't expected.
I feel people who appreciate this art and put down others for not seeing things are in same category as wine testers. As one of the commentor said, if you didn't knew if this was from Picaso, your level of appreciation would be much less.
They say skill without creativity is craftsmanship and creativity without skill is modern art. I wonder what creativity without skill would be in science...
I guess what I'm trying to say is that art and science aren't really comparable like this. If science us a synonym for precision, you need skill to do things precisely and logically. As for modern art, I wouldn't mind having a few Picassos ;)
> if you had never heard of picasso before and just passed this same image, maybe as graffiti on the street, would it have had a similar impact on you?
Probably not as big, but I think it would have some kind of impact. I've certainly seen "street" art that impressed me greatly, as compared with simple scrawling of initials or similar.
I don't think you can really divorce art from its creator and your knowledge of the history behind it, unless you have no previous knowledge of the artist at all.
In this case, yes, the context around it, his age etc. definitely colored my experience of it.
Even more obvious with modern art. There was literally a blank canvas on display at the SF MOMA. Some others a child could do better. There was cool stuff too, but a lot of bullshit imo.
Hard to say until we've seen the results of your scribbling! A There are a lot of people who say "I could do that!" but curiously few who actually do it.
Of course trying to perfectly emulate another human at painting is going to be virtually impossible. You could try and emulate my 5-year-old's art, but I could then demonstrate with a team of forensic analysts that you've failed to exactly emulate some of the nuances that my 5-year-old displays in his art. Will you then appreciate the kind of work my 5-year-old produces when you realize how difficult it is to perfectly emulate him?
> trying to perfectly emulate another human at painting is going to be virtually impossible
No one is saying "draw a copy of something that already exists with near-pixel-perfect accuracy". When the parent comment said "emulate", they meant "create something of your own in a similar art style/genre".
I can bet you that if you try to "scribble a random mish mash of curves", it won't look and feel anywhere as great as that Picasso painting, and it will be extremely difficult to get anywhere even close to his level. And even if you show both yours and Picasso's paintings side-by-side to a person who has never seen a Picasso's painting before (and who doesn't even know who Picasso is), they will always pick the Picasso's painting as more artistically impressive.
It's not about copying or perfect emulation. It will – probably – be very difficult for you to paint something that looks like it was made by Picasso to yourself. There is no need to involve any experts in this, you can be the judge of your own painting.
art, like writing, is all about the ideas, not the literal, physical object (or lack thereof in some cases), and as such, that's either a fool's errand or an intentional deceit. while some (post-modern) art has woven the medium into the message, the medium takes a backseat to expression (of ideas) for art in general. to "emulate" the art of any so-called master, you'd need to have powerful ideas that are begging to be expressed, not masterful painting prowess (as an example). your challenge wouldn't bring about appreciation of art so much as an appreciation of the lack of technical skill, which is not art, but simply painting. many people are skillful painters, and yet are not artists, and vice versa.
this is also why art generally follows fashion rather than being truly avant-garde--artists need to pander to the wealthy/powerful (the church for many centuries, for example) to make a living, so trying to "emulate" popular art would first require a pandering/fashionable perspective, which is hard for an outsider to truly achieve without first becoming an (art) insider.
You can see every motion, every measure, the size of the flame, there are no cuts.
But if you actually go ahead and try to make this it turns out to be INCREDIBLY difficult to get it right.
Not every random mish mash or scribble is as random as a layperson will at first think.
The other analogy is look at the original post. Picasso COULD have painted like he did at 15 or 18 or 20 - which I assume you would agree you couldn't scribble yourself. But he CHOSE to paint in the style you are criticizing. You should default to assuming that there is more skill to it than you can see.
So are you arguing that it's impossible for skilled artists to make bad art? You're saying a master chef never makes meals that objectively taste bad, even if they are experimenting with completely new flavors and techniques? I think some people in this thread have raised Picasso to Godhood status. In my reckoning, Picasso was a skilled artist in an ocean of other skilled artists so he was desperate to do something different to try and stand out from the crowd. So he started experimenting with new "flavors and techniques". Assuming he is human, we can safely assume some of his experimental creations fell flat and objectively turned out bad. To deny this is to uphold Picasso as a God who is incapable of producing anything but perfection.
Well, these photos evoke “some” reactions in people. Do your portraits evoke any reactions? The purpose of art is to express thoughts, in some dimension. And then viewer can make their own interpretations
Would they evoke these same reactions if the people weren't aware that they were looking at picassos?
Modern Art is a cultural placebo for the vast majority of admirers. If it has the right signature or is hanging in a museum people will dig for rationalizations of their faux appreciation.
You know the movie "Yesterday" where everyone except a small handful of people forget The Beatles ever existed?
Well, I sometimes wonder... if everyone in the whole world forgot about artists like Picasso, could the masses still be convinced his art is good in modern times? I for one would be pretty unimpressed with most of his work ("is this some random grade schooler's work you are showing me?").
Meanwhile if the whole world forgot about Michelangelo, my mind would still be blown if I saw any number of his works for the first time. The first time I saw The David up close I was astonished at the level of detail carved into the marble. Like... you could see individual veins in the hands and forearms.
People are ragging on you for this question, but it is an important, and not an uncommon one at all. Thanks for being brave enough to ask it publicly.
I have wondered this myself. People think they recognize great art because of its inherent qualities, ignoring the hard to dispute fact that culture, fashion, and economics influences a lot of what we consider great in art. Tastes change over time, and the pantheon is always in flux, even though the art itself is still the same. So, of course people can look at something and "fail" to recognize its genius!
That's not to say that some things aren't better than other things, or that everything is relative. Only that the relationship between aesthetics and culture is complicated and woven together in a way we struggle to untangle in ourselves, let alone more broadly.
In the particular case of Picasso, I think I can look at paintings like Guernica and Man with a Guitar and say "well, shit, there's something going on here that deserves my attention". But there are other widely-hailed artists I don't respond to in this way. I think they're garbage, and people are crazy for paying millions of dollars for their work. Maybe I'm deluding myself.
The only thing I'd challenge you on is your confidence that you'd always recognize certain Michelangelo works as genius (with the implication that they are universally and timelessly good, not just that you would happen to personally like them). All I can say is that I'm not sure I am confident that I would pass that test.
> “could the masses still be convinced his art is good in modern times?“
Is your actual question directed towards the quality of the art, or towards the ability of the masses to recognize it? Maybe it’s because I used to paint a bit, but man, Picasso was amazing. If you actually know a random grade schooler who “comes up” with this, hook me up!
ART is not about about aesthetical appeal or about realism. Art is about art, and what makes an artist just that is the ability to translate his perception into something. Look at the way the style of the self-portraits changed… you can look into his soul.
No one, and I mean no one, is driven towards art because they want the masses to be pleased about their artwork (if anything, the opposite is the case, but it’s not about that). Expression needs no public appeal.
Will what Picasso expressed still be accessible to humans removed from our contemporary culture? Yes. For the masses? Not in the chaotic absence of culture that dominates our time.
That is a very modernist way of looking at it. I think art ceases to become art when it is self-referential. Art is truth, and great art can stand alone, divorced from context.
> is driven towards art because they want the masses to be pleased about their artwork
Agreed, artists are self-driven.
> Will what Picasso expressed still be accessible to humans removed from our contemporary culture? Yes. For the masses? Not in the chaotic absence of culture that dominates our time.
Artists like Picasso could only become so influential because the art buying elites were hellbent on rejecting the existing bourgeois order. This included a distaste for conformity, which turned into an obsession with originality. I genuinely doubt that humans removed from our contemporary culture will look in awe at art produced in such an incestuous context, rather, more they will pity the conditions in which such art thrived. Or just ignore it.
Wikipedia seems to be claiming they called her "petite Picasso," but I remember her being called "pocket Picasso." It was a while ago and possible my memory is bad. She went to middle school across the street from my high school and was friends with a freshman in my class when I was a senior, so I got to meet her and work with her a bit.
I guess it's an open question whether she would have been as popular and successful if not for the original Picasso already existing. There is always an element of luck in who gets discovered. It's not like she was the only uniquely talented person I ever met in all the years I dabbled in art. But people seem to consistently underestimate what this takes. It's not like you just wake up every day with no training or practice, inspiration strikes, and 20 minutes later you have a cubist masterpiece, and you can repeat that every day. This girl was legitimately special.
This reminds me of Salvador Dali's quip that "the first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot."
It also reminds me of Marcel Duchamp, who (speaking of his tremendously famous and influential Nude Descending A Staircase[1]) said "This idea of changing, not repeating myself. I could have done ten nudes probably at that time if I wanted to. I decided not to go that."[2]
One way to appreciate a piece of art is to recognize the technical skill that was applied in creating it. The David's veins and or Jesus's musculature and Mary's flowing robes in the Pieta are virtuosic demonstrations of Michelangelo's skill in representing lifelike human scenes.
That said, skill in creating realistic representation is not the only measure of art's value. Consider Starry Night by Van Gogh. What is it that makes this such a striking and stirring vision of the night sky? It is certainly not a photo-realistic rendering of the stars and moon. Instead, I think it represents a radically different perspective and I find beauty in art that allows me to have a different vision of the world. A more extreme example of the same idea is Islamic art, which strictly forbids representations of life, but still strives to express a vision of god/allah. Consider the mosque ceilings in this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/BaytAlFann/status/1517074277312389121. There is absolutely no representation of any recognizable form, no people, no animals. Only geometry. Yet, they are undeniably beautiful. Why is that?
For Picasso, I would make a similar argument. No, his art doesn't immediately strike one through its technical skill. This is not the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. However, what it provides is a completely different perspective. Faces are inverted and laid flat, arms are arranged in strange configurations. Try to look at a scene around you, right now, and imagine how Picasso would see it. Then, I think you'll see how extremely peculiar and valuable his art is.
But he moved on, because there's only so much you can do with representational figurative drawing. He was more interested in psychological and perceptual abstraction.
So his imagery is often grotesque, deliberately primitive, and visually distorted.
But powerful psychologically, often in uncomfortable ways.
And hard to do - never mind invent out of almost nothing.
I never really understood Picasso until I went to the Picasso Museum. I personally (as a non art expert) can't see how the individual paintings are the greatest when considered in isolation, what makes them great is his evolution, and the time in which he created them, and how he effected other painters.
Yes, if you just dumped a random pile of his paintings out now, I don't think they would be great (or at least, I wouldn't be able to understand why they were great myself).
What made Picasso partially "click" for me, is seeing some of his early work. He was extremely talented in the traditional, realistic style (it's unfortunately not too apparent from the article), and he got too bored of it and single handedly invented the style that is now famous (and often copied, and thus doesn't stand out as much anymore for our modern eyes).
Vincent van Gogh is such an artist. When he lived not a lot of people thought he was good. Only much later people noticed he was ahead of his time.
But I also think you sometimes need to learn how to look at art.
For example Piet Mondriaan is a like Picasso. They both slowly transformed into the abstract. In the end Mondriaan only created lines and colors. So it is easy to think that anyone could create such a painting. But a trained eye can see that there is balance in Mondriaan's work.
But in the end it's all about taste. Personally I don't like Van Gogh's work very much.
> But I also think you sometimes need to learn how to look at art.
This is a key point. Many people assume they can judge art because they have eyes. But it requires experience, knowledge, immersion and time to develop appreciation for it.
An analogy that just occurred to me: I have some really good organic dark chocolate right now, that is 90% cacao. I love it. The taste is intense but also balanced, with a silky mouth feel, and the berry notes really come through. My kids detest it and would much rather eat cheap milk chocolate from the corner store.
What is better? Well, let’s not be so contrarian that we insist that better is simply a matter of perspective. The fine chocolate is better. My kids just don’t have good taste (yet).
This doesn't do much for me as a criticism of Picasso (I'm not sure if that's what you intended or not). But it is an interesting question nonetheless.
As in any other form of art, I think there is a continuum in painting between art that is great because of its surface aesthetic qualities [1] and its display of technical skill, on the one hand, and works that are less accessible, and made great by their relation to other works and their broader historical situation. I certainly think that Picasso is much farther towards the second pole than Michelangelo. And there's nothing wrong with preferring Michelangelo on that basis.
The problem with this as a criticism of Picasso is that it pretends to but ultimately fails to identify any objective reason for preferring Michelangelo. I personally prefer Picasso because I think his work is interesting in the way it relates to other works of art and the ideas it communicates if you go looking for them. It's true that I would get much less of that if a Picasso work were torn from its historical context. But that's just a thought experiment. How does that relate to the value of a Picasso at it exists in the real world? (I hasten to add: to say that I prefer Picasso is not any sort of criticism of Michelangelo! I'd happily travel half way around the world to look at his work all day long as well.)
[1] This is, of course, just a first order approximation. I'm willfully ignoring the likely interplay here between so-called "aesthetic properties" (what colors look nice near each other, etc.)--and the broader cultural context.
could the masses still be convinced his art is good in modern times?
That's an interesting way to phrase this. There are hype beasts out there that camp out and spend tons money on a sneaker because it says SUPREME on it. I think people in this theoretical world can be convinced that Guernica is a masterpiece. I would go a step further and say most people wouldn't even need convincing.
You possibly miss quite the point of what art is about. Yes, technique is a part of it, and Michelangelo's works are great, no question, but don't diminish something just because you don't see the point.
See, you were "astonished" by Michelangelo's work, you felt something about it, the realism and the details of the carving aroused something in you, emotions.
People can also feel powerful emotions from other types of visual arts - there are more nuanced things, like colors, shapes, lines and things that you can't describe but only experience, partly subconsciously.
Go see a Rothko painting, for example. You can even naively tell me that it's just some colors and anybody could paint it, but no, stand there and try to experience what that raw visual data makes you feel, without trying to find some logic.
I disagree and I think it’s a legitimate question. Are you impressed by the artist or the art they produced? How much can a piece of art stand on its own without the context of the artist and their journey, perspective, evolution?
> Picasso mastered "typical" art before he engaged in the abstract forms, right? That's what makes him special.
So in a hypothetical future where memory of Picasso's 'typical art' mastery has been lost, that which makes Picasso special will also be lost?
> This is such a techbro opinion
Scoffing at Picasso and (particularly) Pollock seems very mainstream in the working classes (and has been for as long as that art has existed.) It's not a "tech" thing.
And? That would be like if Chris Lattner got bored of making compilers and languages so he started making bizarre ML-generated creations and everyone started worshiping it because "he previously mastered typical programming, so anything bizarre or abstract he churns out now is automatically special!"
IMO thinking Picasso is special is more "tech bro" than not. Specially crypto-bros. Every time I see someone defending art like this and its value, it reads exactly like people defending crypto.
>Well, I sometimes wonder... if everyone in the whole world forgot about artists like Picasso, could the masses still be convinced his art is good in modern times? I for one would be pretty unimpressed with most of his work
I mean... probably? "The masses" aren't the only judges of art, although broad appeal does count for some of it. Go see the documentary "The Art of the Steal" about the Barnes Foundation and its founder, who purchased a trove of post-Impressionist work in the early 20th century. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_Foundation#Notable_hold...) The Philadelphia high society art snobs of the time thought all that stuff was grotesque. Yet Barnes, a chemist of working-class background and sparse art education, assembled a collection that the "critics" would eventually recognize as masterpieces.
Art we would call "realist" (a term which begs the question) always impresses people. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's good that that is not the totality of human expression.
I used to hold a similar position to you until I actually saw these paintings close up at a Picasso exhibition. In real life there's a presence about them that one doesn't get from reproductions. That said, I've definite preferences - some paintings from his rose and cubist periods such as Demoiselles d'Avignon and Ma Jolie and his Weeping Woman that was painted a little after Guernica are some of my favorites. I have a much less favorable impression of many of his later works.
It's moot whether Picasso's paintings would stand up solidly in isolation as you suggest but on balance I reckon a significant percentage of them would.
How would I rate Picasso in the great order of things? In my opinion he ranks pretty high but I'd never rate him amongst the pinnacles of Western European Art such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer - and even Michelangelo. I think by any measure these artists would stand high in any era.
Whilst the masses mill around da Vinci's Mona Lisa you'd find me in another wing of the Louvre staring transfixed at wonderful paintings such as Caravaggio's The Fortune Teller. For me, works by these artists represent the epitome of art - but then that's just my opinion (but I know that I'm far from being alone in thinking this way).
I recall decades ago on my first visit to Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and not knowing what to expect, I walked into an alcove in which only one painting had pride of place and that was a Rembrandt self portrait.
I was completely transfixed as this old man stared directly into my eyes from across four centuries past. There was a strange realism about the experience, it was as if he were actually standing there beside me. I was alone in the alcove and only several feet away from the painting (just being that close alone, I consider a remarkable privilege). This experience is one of the most memorable of my life. (Picasso's paintings have never impacted me to that degree.)
Around several corners and not far away were some Vermeers including The Milkmaid. Even now, my brain is overloaded just thinking about the experience.
It's hard to evaluate art without the context of its origins. Michelangelo's works were done in 15th and 16th century, so it's quite obvious that similar art, no matter how detailed or precise couldn't have been considered revolutionary at the beginning of 20th century, but it turned out that Picasso's "grade schooler's work" has been.
Another example of this is Andy Warhol's "Marilyn Monroe" that was just sold for $195M. Currently, you can write a neural network that will create better looking portraits, but it wouldn't convey any of the context in which Warhol first created his pop-art.
Art is about storytelling. People are drawn to the story of someone realizing something technically difficult; if the world forgot about Michelangelo, and I recreated The David using a 3d scanner and and some sort of CNC machine, would the level of detail impress as much?
The story of Picasso's paintings extend beyond an individual painting. If a painting on its own, without any context, doesn't impress, then so what? You need to read a whole book to appreciate its story, not just a page.
as someone who draws and creates art but isnt necessarily enamored with much of art history (though I'm well aware of much of it) I will say that the experience of creating art and looking at these portraits... there 100% is something that happens once you've gotten to the point of being able to put a realistic image onto a page where instead you start thinking of and reading into every movement, every color every bit of information and imbuing those with meaning.
this has happened in my 3d art and in my 2d art where once I got to a point I was happy with my technical skill, the emotive desire really starts opening up.
of course that doesnt mean I'm some sort of maestro of technical skill, it just means that I have accomplished enough of what I feel like doing technically that I feel perfectly comfortable leaving THAT path and exploring others.
Those “simple” artworks are surprisingly difficult to execute. For that matter, being able to achieve the naïve unrepressed expression of a random grade schooler is also difficult to achieve. Your comment reads like someone who has probably not drawn or painted anything since his last required art class.
And yours reads like someone who can hardly paint but has pride in their developed taste. The "naive unrepressed expression of a random grade schooler" is absolutely not difficult to achieve, especially compared to something like this from Ramon Alex Hurtado:
I think you can say this about a lot of 20th century artists. Most of them could paint like the masters if they wanted, but point has changed somewhat. Where a famous picture of Napoleon was painted to commemorate an like this
>Most of them could paint like the masters if they wanted...
This opinion is common and untrue. If you've ever seen Tim's Vermeer, David Hockney, a well-known and very successful 20th painter, claims that Vermeer absolutely could not have achieved a particular gradation without some sort of optical aid. Then, check out https://www.instagram.com/grandcentralatelier/. Buncha 19 year olds with proper instruction developing near-absolute control over the kind of gradation Hockney claims is impossible. Hockney just can't paint, like most 20th century painters.
I’ve heard people compare Picasso’s art to that of a grade schooler so many times and I think it’s a lazy opinion, sorry. Picasso was a virtuoso, to put it mildly. When I saw Woman in White[1], it practically jumped off the wall at me. Never saw grade school art that could do that.
I'm a painter, and your instinct is right. The art establishment has no clothes. Look into "The Twilight of Painting". It's expensive but worthwhile.
There are well-intentioned people here explaining to you why your natural instincts are wrong because they have learned how to carefully tamp theirs down. Picasso and other modernists were an important step forward, but the ideas were taken too far. Twombly is a hack, full-stop.
This guy's art is way better to me than 90% of what I've seen in SFMOMA. And, like Picasso, his later "ugly" work is more interesting and more expressive than his earliest work.
I mean, it's not like Utermohlen is some entirely unknown artist. Though most of his popularity was posthumous, he was in exhibitions and galleries throughout his career. The probable reason he has not risen to the profile of something like SFMOMA is the aesthetic similarity in some of his work to Francis Bacon's, which is very distinct and well-known, and who enjoyed success before Utermohlen even began his career.
Interesting, but auction houses are historically known who sell fakes as authentics (sometimes/often knowingly) & eBay would be one of the easiest hiding in plain site for a thief to offload his wares…
That said, your comment is probably the true one in reality.
What an unfortunate choice of title considering that it goes against the artists wishes, quoted in the very same article: "The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting…"
I'm always surprised to see Picasso was alive until the 70's. He feels like much more of a "historical figure." I mean, he was a brief contemporary of "Queen," haha.
It's the name. "Picasso" sounds similar to names like "Michelangelo", "Leonardo (da vinci)", and "Raphael" (short but not too much, easy to remember, and pleasant to the eye/ear). It's also a very uncommon name. Hence why we are tempted to associate a famous painter named "Picasso" with the distant past. Like we would associate a painter named "Jennifer" or "Peter" with more modern times.
Only sort of; great artists do get referred to by a single name, regardless of the time period. Dali is one such; we aren't shocked at his modernity, because he feels like a modern artist. Matisse lived into the 1950s, Monet into the 1920s. Van Gogh until the 1890s. Picasso is -weird- because he was a contemporary of Monet and Matisse and Cezanne...but also Dali and Pollock and O'Keefe. He was alive, painting, when Andy Warhol was active, for crying out loud.
It's the age, not the name. Picasso feels like a late 1800s, early 1900s master, but he lived so long he saw the moon landing, and was painting the entire time.
Did one of his eyes bother him? From the earliest images on this (fantastic) website, one of the eyes is always a bit black-ringed, or asymmetrically placed, or covered over.
It's always interesting how artists go from generic to eccentric. There's no one as divisive as Picasso. Are there any artists who just took the fundamentals and did everything textbook to become successful? Any near unanimously good ones?
I think a big reason many artists end up being "good" is because they can create very highly technical works of art and choose not to.
"Why would they draw that?" gets you a lot further in the art world than, "That is a very high quality work of art." IMO for good reason (you are free to disagree obviously).
Hard to say without knowing what was fundamental and textbook throughout the years. I imagine nearly all successful pre-renaissance western artists and most successful pre-photography artists were more or less by the book, but even then, they probably changed things incrementally.
Without outside restrictions, any creative pursuit almost requires deviating from the norm though, even coding. Think of it like this, are you still using only the techniques you learned in college and nothing more? Do you not talk shop with your coworkers and try to think of new ways to do things?
Frederick Hart, Thomas Kinkade, Norman Rockwell. None too well respected, I suppose.
The problem is that there are thousands (or more) young people with all the technical ability of Michelangelo, and so they absolutely need something else to distinguish them. Thus many artists go through their "Michelangelo phase" to get to their "weird scribbly splotchy phase" which is the real lottery ticket.
Perhaps more importantly, the critics needs something to say about art, or they won't say anything. See "The Painted Word" by Tom Wolfe
It kind of baffles me that the critiques of modernism were already so comprehensive in the 70s, e.g. Wolfe wrt art and architecture, and then,... nothing really materially changed.
Are you talking painting/sketching specifically? I'd suggest Ansel Adams as somewhat consistent. What about Andy Warhol? I don't recall any of his work that went drastically different, but admittedly not an art student
I love a lot of modern Art, but I do feel Picasso is both way overrated and simultaneously a bit under appreciated. I think this is true of most of the big names in modern art. “Meme art” if you will. Some of it is deserving, but most of it is going to lose value over the next century, by a lot, and that will be a good thing for Art and for artists.
Really wish there was an easy way to short sell art. Artists themselves are pretty good at judging this stuff, but the market can stay irrational a long time.
IMHO If Picasso was 24 today, painted what he did today, there would be no Picasso. Artists need to be at the perfect time + the perfect skill set at said time. This is a hard ask. EG. If you paint realism - 2020s+ is going to be hard time to make money.
How much of art popularity is people wanting to feel in the know, and desperately trying to find reasons to enjoy it?
If you say Picasso was a genius, then you're automatically accepted into a "smart" or "high class" or whatever group of people. If you criticize, then you're ostracized.
It's exhausting to criticize, because the arguments for are so lacking in any substance. You get arguments like "art is about art", "its subjective", and "there are lots of people who paint pretty pictures, but only one Picasso". All actual arguments from this thread, all completely lacking in substance. Another good one: "if you're talking about it then it must be good". Barf.
I truly do not believe even 50% of people who claim to like Picasso actually like Picasso's paintings. I'm very confident the majority are people who say they do to fit into a group.
Why isn't enough to just say you don't like it? That's fine. You don't have to. What is tiring here, to me, is all of the completely idle and evidence-free speculation about why other people merely "say" that they like it. I promise you: I really do like it. And it's not just because I want to be part of a club. (And I assure you that there are plenty of popular/fashionable artists that I don't like.)
Maybe you could put forward some specific reasons that you don't like Picasso's work, instead of just accusing others of being sheeple for disagreeing with you?
To put my money where my mouth is, a bit, here are some things that I think make Picasso great, other than their relationship to other works and art history more broadly:
1. Picasso's best cubist portraits move away from representing people just as they look and make an attempt to communicate what it might feel like to be a person in all of its inner deformity and (for some) turmoil.
2. He synthesized traditional iconography (especially the Bull) onto modern art in a way that illustrates (and creates) the continuity between modern culture and more ancient ones.
3. Particularly in works like Guernica, Picasso's composition makes me feel--if only dimply--an appropriate sense of sense of (in the case of Guernica) chaos and terror.
Picasso's paintings are, to me, very emotionally expressive. That (again, to me) is more important than how "realistic" a painting is.
I've seen a bazillion highly realistic paintings that are so emotionally flat. The technique in them can be impressive, but otherwise they tend to be both unimaginative and emotionally hollow.
Even more extreme than Picasso in the "it takes no skill to make this" (apprently) but conveying real feeling is Jackson Pollock.
Lots of people will look at Picasso and Pollock and say "my 5 year old kid could do this" -- and there's something to that, as children's art tends to be more fresh and expressive than art made by trained adults -- but kids don't do either (unless they've seen and try to emulate Picasso or Pollock). Neither do adults.
It took Picasso and Pollock to come up with art like that. Same with Malevich's Black Square and Duchamp's Fountain, which are also about as simple as art gets, but things like that weren't considered art before, and it took these artists to make us look at the world in a different way and stretch the boundary of what art could be.
John Cage's work with randomness in music is yet another good example. His compositions could sound awful or boring, and I personally don't like them -- but why must music be something that we like? Can't we appreciate and value music that isn't pleasing?
The paintings of Francis Bacon and Goya are similar -- pretty "ugly" stuff.. but to me they speak the truth about the ugly/horrible side of life that is valuable to look at.
At their best, such artists open our eyes and ears to the world around us and let us see it in a fresh way that we might not have appreciated before.
Only if you think appreciation and value is synonymous with what is pleasant. I don't.
Malevich's Black Square is not pleasing to me, but I value and appreciate it for expanding the boundaries of art. Same with John Cage's music. What's so oxymoronic about that?
> Why isn't enough to just say you don't like it? That's fine. You don't have to. What is tiring here, to me, is all of the completely idle and evidence-free speculation about why other people merely "say" that they like it.
Imagine every once in a while there's the same man screaming on a busy street you frequent. Most people around you watch and comment on the beauty of the man and his actions.
After a while of ignoring it and moving on with your day, you eventually have to stop and say "what the fuck are you all talking about?"
Everyone looks at you like you're crazy.
"You know, that man was a child prodigy. He mastered classic singing styles and is now showing off his abstract work"
"You don't have to get it. I find it powerful."
"Art is art. It's playful. He's expressing his emotions. Not everything has to fit in the lines."
The man continues to scream. You comment, "My 5 year old does this every day. Why is this special?" You're desperately looking for answers. Maybe there's something you're missing.
"I doubt your 5 year old could scream like this."
"There are millions of 5 year olds. Only one of Him."
> The man continues to scream. You comment, "My 5 year old does this every day. Why is this special?" You're desperately looking for answers. Maybe there's something you're missing.
Okay — but outside your narrative, people can tell the difference. Even when the labels are reversed.
So, in your analogy, it’s because everyone but you is paying attention to the words and style of the man screaming — which is quite unlike your child’s tantrum. And you’re blinded to that by your own biases.
You've illustrated the point. If you say "I don't like it" and move on or "What do you like about it?" then we have a mature discussion and everyone is content.
If you get aggressive and say "what the fuck are you all talking about" and act like you're superior and noticing the emperor has no clothes, then you're being an asshole and no one will want to give you any respect.
> How much of art popularity is people wanting to feel in the know, and desperately trying to find reasons to enjoy it?
Some for sure.
> If you say Picasso was a genius, then you're automatically accepted into a "smart" or "high class" or whatever group of people. If you criticize, then you're ostracized.
By who? I have a ton of family and friends who think Picasso and "all those other guys" suck, none of them are "ostracized". You're more likely to be ostracized if you say "I love Picasso, he was a genius.", and your reply to "what is your favourite work" is "ummm, the melting clock thing?". Mostly because that was Dali.
> It's exhausting to criticize, because the arguments for are so lacking in any substance.
I'm not sure how to respond to "I can't criticize Picasso because your defence will lack substance."
Why, how, would I even "defend" Picasso?
> I truly do not believe even 50% of people who claim to like Picasso actually like Picasso's paintings. I'm very confident the majority are people who say they do to fit into a group.
A majority of people will say they don't like Picasso if they could even identify his work. I didn't really like Picasso until I started seeing his work in person. Even then, he's hit or miss for me.
I'll bet nobody jumps on this comment to ostracize me.
Since "art is about art" came from me: I see nothing unsubstantial in that very expression. Art is expression, art is play, but most importantly, art is free. I don't see why anybody has to be ostracized for not finding access to it, but ironically you're making the case for the opposing claim: nobody here judged people for not "getting it", yet you're insinuating various things about the group that "claims to get it".
Why bother making it about identity and individual attributes? I find that exhausting. I'm blown away by Picassos work, because I find true beauty in his way of abstracting. He very clearly saw the world from a special point of view, which he translated in a way that language is not meant to convey. I can't claim to truly see what he saw just by looking at his work, but I'm seeing something, and I couldn't care less wether you find this to be an unsubstantial claim, because I don't have to make everything in life about groups and identity, peer confirmation, etc etc.
Some well meant food for thought: not all data has to fit your model of the world. Usually when this happens, it's not a data-problem. Now you can say "well people who claim they see value in abstract art are noise to me", and that's ok, it's your model - but I found it to be a far better strategy in life to keep my mind open instead of being reactionary when confronted with something that doesn't please me. Cheers!
> Art is expression, art is play, but most importantly, art is free.
Of course, and I'm not offended that Picasso decided to create his art the way he wanted to. What I'm talking about specifically is art popularity.
I'm also not say that there's no one that legitimately would be able to pick Picasso's work out of a lineup and genuinely find beauty in his work. You very well might be in that category.
My main point is that it seems that some artists such as Picasso (and I'll throw in Rothko as well since I saw them mentioned here) are artificially popularized by people trying to seem high class/intelligent.
> My main point is that it seems that some artists such as Picasso (and I'll throw in Rothko as well since I saw them mentioned here) are artificially popularized by people trying to seem high class/intelligent.
Rest assured: while such dynamics (artificial boosting of specific artists) do exist, they are a property of the art market, not of the artists or their audience. This isn’t to say that 100% of people who claim to find beauty in $artist actually do so, but there is a reason that an artist either shapes the culture and his peers - or he does not. Picasso and Rothko got big through organic content aggregation - they checked the boxes of their peers, you will have a hard time finding someone versed in the craft who doesn’t appreciate them.
Saying that some of the people who identify as fans of their work actually just look to belong is in no way directly related to the art, it’s an emergent dynamic in any group, so it’s pointless to bring up when the actual art is being discussed - it’s just dismissive of the work and the conversation ends with exhausting fingerpointing and games of groups and identity.
The various motivations behind art, specifically Picasso and Rothko, are free from this exact burden :-)
This makes me sad. This is not because you dislike Picasso. It is because you're making art an issue of classism.
If we just ignore the aesthetic of Picasso's art, you can categorize Picasso as a genius purely on his influence of other artists that follow him. It's possible to dismiss his influence by saying those other artists are fools or deranged. However, Picasso's influence is undisputed and absolute. Purely on that metric, he is classified as a genius. My hope is that anyone who is reading this will ask "Why is Picasso influential?" instead of "Why would anyone like this?"
It is possible to dislike Picasso and appreciate his influence on art.
I think GP is pointing out that the ability to command a following or convince people to follow in your footsteps does not a genius make.
Brenton Harrison Tarrant commands a following and influenced a lot of copycats (his most recent disciple being the perpetrator of a certain shooting in Buffalo). So... can we categorize Tarrant as a genius purely on his influence of [others] that follow him?
> I truly do not believe even 50% of people who claim to like Picasso actually like Picasso's paintings. I'm very confident the majority are people who say they do to fit into a group.
What happened to "assume good faith"? People assume everything others do now is for clout, or virtue signaling, or somehow disingenuous. It's fine not to like popular things without assuming everyone else is lying about liking it.
Exactly, truly appreciating art, or an artist requires coming across one or more pieces that really resonate with you (which is really a function of what's going on in your life, state of mind, mood, sensitivity, and general ability to engage with art, and in some cases understanding its historical context, within the art community and in the broader world).
Once that happens though it opens the door to appreciating other pieces.
I have experienced that same phenomenon with bands, where people say "X" is great and I hear a song and don't "get it" until I find some other song by them years later and it all sort of "clicks" in a way it originally didn't.
With that said, there are definitely people that try to say "I like X" to fit in. I just don't know about the 50% bit in the OP, but then again, 90% of statistics are made up.
BTW -- The Old Guitarist is on permanent display at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is wonderful in person if you haven't been yet.
A lot of any kind of popularity might work in this way, not just Art! Did people truly think that 70s hair looked incredible? You might enjoy the work of Pierre Bourdieu, who writes about these issues in depth. There is a reason mass media works.
On the other hand, there is a social context to style and taste - we grow up in a certain aesthetic environment, and may feel true attachment to that, although a large part of it because we grew up with it! So the two factors of authentic enjoyment and social influence don't necessarily need to be in conflict.
Finally, a lot of things are popular for the straightforward reason that large groups of people actually like them. It doesn't even mean they're good. I can't stand most of the best-seller novels personally, but enough people buy and read them. A "Live Laugh Love" piece is probably more popular household item than a given print from Picasso..
Edit: You might also be interested in checking out Rene Girard, with his theory of desire and mimicry. Why people might imitate high-brow tastes etc.
A huge part that is rarely discussed is the shift based on consumer demographics at the turn of the century. Academic/ salon paintings were extremely grand, time consuming and expensive, so they were out of reach for most people that weren't wealthy or royalty. The new growing middle class had an appetite for art but there was limited supply of things they could afford, also seen in the craft movement that was happening at the same time where consumers desired for something greater than soulless, mass produced factory goods. Art dealers filled the gap by adopting salon rejects which would in turn popularize the new impressionist styles that were counter to pieces you would see at salons. An academic painter like Bougereau would complete much fewer pieces over their career than someone like Picasso.
It’s not just what is on the canvas but what it entails in the midst of the world. One example is Massacre in Korea for instance [1]. Picasso was much more than a guy drawing on a canvas.
To expand on what a sibling comment suggested, the art world since the early 1900s has become defined by speculative trading, and some of those early artists were ultra-hyped, and their art has appreciated by millions-fold in the speculative art markets. Picasso is one of those ultra-hyped artists that was at the center of the initial FOMO fevers. Picasso is a good artist, but you have to wonder how, what, and whether Picasso would have painted if the art world didn't gain this feverish speculative dimension with Picasso at the center of it.
"the art world since the early 1900s has become defined by speculative trading, and some of those early artists were ultra-hyped, and their art has appreciated by millions-fold in the speculative art markets"
Not only that, but there's evidence[1][2] that the CIA secretly manipulated the public's perception of modern art in the cultural war against the Soviet Union.
Picasso was a pioneer, and this alone means he gets the kudos by default. Many pioneers didn't make the best content, but they were the first to introduce the world to that type of content, and just like Black Sabbath was no where near the best metal band, they will forever remain legends.
Exactly. I'm currently getting downvoted elsewhere for comparing crypto-bros to art enthusiasts.
Are some crypto technologies cool and useful? Sure.
Are some artworks nice to look at and/or thought provoking? Absolutely.
But some are just hyped by people who are all-in on it, without any actual merit. And convincing someone otherwise is like convincing a devout religious person that there's no god. No amount of convincing is going to change their mind because they're all-in.
The last time he pushed art, someone named Braque was doing the significant pushing with him. That collaboration ended in 1914. He is a great artist but not a genuine lifelong innovator.
>>> (common people like me would call by lake of knowledge)
That's fine. My take is that it's perfectly OK to have art for popular appeal, and perhaps separately, art that takes some investigation to fully appreciate. I face this as a musician, specifically playing modern jazz. A lot of my friends find polite ways of telling me they don't like that kind of music, and I reassure them that I'm not in the least bit offended.
Of those Picasso portraits, if I could afford just one, I'd take 1971. Turns out I can afford just zero.
Not OP, but been playing classical music for ... christ, 17 years.
It often is.
"Modern" usually implies dissonance, syncopation, and sometimes downright atonality and free time.
These concepts are fun from a musicians standpoint, as they break away from formalities and rules, but do so within a complex musical context in ways that are very difficult as the instruments are balancing between having the cake and eating it against each other, simultaneously.
This is hard to pick up on, which in effect often leads to the sub-genre confining itself to musicians-listening-to-other-musicians demographics, eg. "are they high?"-jazz.
Similar comparisons can be made for Picasso and art in general I suppose(?).
Probably a combination of acquired taste, and non-conformism. I took classical lessons as a kid, and played in the school jazz band. I think among some musicians, we get sick of the same old stuff, and thirst for "hotter" music. This tendency was what propelled jazz forward, so if you progress through jazz along a more or less historical path (as a player or a listener), you will kind of experience the same thing.
In high school, being interested in anything but top 40 made you a freak. Oddly enough the kids who were accepting of a shy nerd who liked jazz and classical, were the punk rockers. That's whom I hung out with.
For some musicians, "hotter" can also mean older, such as baroque or early music specialists.
exactly: he went from boring art student to full on immortal artist with his own style.
edit: not contesting the garbage definition. it might as well be it, at least if you feel it is, you have every right to feel that way. Doesn't mean that he wasn't one of the best painters ever.
Art should provoke emotions ( even repulsion is an emotion) not just "look how pretty that is". That's the easy part.
Anyway, he was following a path, he was getting better, not deteriorating.
I'd rather learn to draw gesture (which is what is described even if they didn't know the name for it) and simplifying from Glenn Vilppu or Steve Huston, personally, and you don't need mystique about the class like this article tries to evoke. You can find both at New Masters Academy (NMA.art) for a super reasonable monthly cost - sort of like an art lessons netflix.
If your goal is to draw like picasso you need to be where he is at 15 before you understand what you're simplifying. Even after you take apple's class you'll have concepts but you won't have thousands of hours of practice that actually using any of those lessons requires.
IMO learning to draw is sort of like creating your own compression algorithm. There are many different ways to distill the huge amount of visual information into that which can be expressed through abstraction on a two-dimensional plane. The coolest part to me is that while some of these algorithms are lossy, others are...gainy? (what's the opposite of lossy...?) Depending on how you tune your simplification of the subject, the result can look MORE like the essence of the thing than the thing itself. The magic of caricature.
My girlfriend she's a painter and studied fine arts in a London art school.
First thing she told me is that everything is asymmetrical, if you're measuring distances, you're doing it completely wrong.
Second thin she told me is that details are completely useless - if not confusing - if you don't get the basic shapes right.
As you correctly point out it's like a compression algorithm, and like compression algorithms (as a computer scientist) I think implementing what's already working is easier than come up with your own new algorithm.
But, despite all the help I got, I'm - unfortunately for me - still a terrible draftsman.
Skilled artists often get bored with photo real art. Why paint if a camera phone is within reach. Artists also often resist optimizing for commercial success (“selling out”).
I understand why you might not like the later paintings (or at least prefer not to hang them on your wall).
The later paintings are best understood in the context of history. Picasso and his peers were experimenting during the industrial revolution when trains and fast motion were new and video cameras didn’t exist to film them. Cubism was a response to some of those social changes at the time.
Art like this is also, partly, about community—having a good time with other artists in a “hey, check out a thing I tried” sense. Picasso may have intended these as a “Ask:HN” or “Show:HN” rather than a post of a gallery ready piece of work.
Well photorealistic art for me is too much information. More abstract paintings, simpler ones get saved into long term memory easier. For example you can take a look athanasart (google search), which is a friend of mine. Simple abstract paintings, not always that simple but avoiding the overwhelming amount of information. That friend of mine, usually states that he is painting, because if he doesn't he will go crazy.
also for Show HN, i have published just the last week 6 cubism art, picasso style computer generated of course, Dalle, and i have created already 10 other different variations of cubism, in the style of picasso, some of them are really good. And hundreds of them to come in the future. Dalle and Picasso are a benign combination. If anyone is curious insta/pramatias and the albums will be uploaded elsewhere as well. The albums are annotated with the Dalle prompts as well.
I have long thought that programs, operating systems etc could be annotated to ease the understanding of the program. Especially big programs like operating systems, browsers etc. We could annotate for example every function with an image. Black n white could mean that the function has side effects, and colorful images could be used for the pure functions. That way in one glance of a file, just a millisecond we can tell which function is probably to have caused a strange panic.
A lot of these are also probably paintings he did for practice, never planned to show publicly, and just never threw away. Then, after he died, people found them and sell them as Picasso originals.
* https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/...
* https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/...
* https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/...
* https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/...
He was near the end of his life when he painted those self-portraits.