Reads more like a cautionary tale of what happens when you don't save for retirement than a story of a struggling artist
The Struggling Artist at 86
41–50 of 66 posts
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#42Compare 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 p…
Not always, look at Jeff Koons and other more recent top artists.
Can I look at any other recent artist but Koons?
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
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.
I liked his work until I saw it in person. Then I loved it.
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#44Compare 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 p…
[deleted]
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 interactio…
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.
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great comment. 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.
If I could duplicate the work in a weekend, it isn't real art :-)
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#47> “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 val…
This seems close to assuming that financial value is ultimately the only value of art. That couldn't be further from the truth.
Ultimately it is. If nobody is willing to pay $10 for something, then its value is less than $10.
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If I could duplicate the work in a weekend, it isn't real art :-)
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.
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I could duplicate the work in a weekend, it isn't real art :-)
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'm not suggesting the converse is true - just because something took a lot of effort/skill to create doesn't necessarily make it art.
Simplicity is often genius, I agree with that, but I also don't see Minecraft as a work of art.
Re: The Struggling Artist at 86
#50No wonder he's still struggling, his art isn't good.
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