When we 'won' the UK/Irish distributorship for a Dutch company we were given tickets for a Van Gogh exhibition in Amsterdam. which were like 'gold dust'. After wandering around for 15 minutes I just thought "why am I here/why am I wasting my time? then left.
No idea. How the **** someone thought this was worth 1.3 million in 1973 is beyond me. please log in to view this image
One of my favourite Sir Thomas Beecham quotes is, ---- The English don't understand music, but they do love the noise it makes This applies to me and I suppose the equivalent, applied to ART would be something like, ---- I dont't understand Art but I like some of the pictures and some of the patterns and shapes. For example Caneletto's paintings are almost photographic, but better without, as far as I can tell, being in any way untrue. But once what I'm looking at is almost unrecognisable, someone trying to paint thoughts or the result of failing sight' then it's meaningless to me. The daubing of random colours looks just that usualy, but in my youth I used to visit a pub in Edinburgh that had a folk club upstairs. On the wall in the bar were paintings for sale. All black with random multicoloured small paterns scattered accross the canvas. I wish now that I'd bought one, they were not dear, because I found them so very restfull. In a similar way I'm attracted to the work of the native Australian artists. I havn't a clue what it's all about, but I like the patterns. I can't get excited about most sculpture either, but some of the oriental works, metal or ceramic can be stunning in their execution. A dead shark in a tank of formalderhide, or an unmade bed, though????? If thats ART, I'm happy to be classed amongst the Phillistines.
If you are ever in Marbella find Avienda del Mar, it's a boulevard with 5 sculptures donated to the city by the Salvadore Dali foundation. They are all bronzes and one is of Perseus holding the head of the Medusa, another is Mercurio the Roman God Mercury, there are 2 sculptures of Dali's wife and a sculpture called 'Tranjano a Caballo' the Roman Emperor Tranjan on a horse. You can touch them, kids even climb on them,
it may have been on 'That's Life' many many years ago...they had several paintings done and got these art experts in to discuss the finished paintings, they all waffled quite happily about the bold use of brush strokes and masterful use of colours and most of the other art expert lines that they like to use to make it sound like they know a damn sight more than us common folk and, after a while, they were asked if they would like to meet the artists and they all wanted to meet and greet these creative people...a door opened and several chimpanzees were brought into the room, some still holding onto their paintbrushes...the experts stormed out. after that, i figured it was all upper class bollox along with most other high brow crap.
I saw that and always believed that the critics were told that the artists could hear their comments, which I suppose was true ... ... personally I liked Bobo's effort the best
