Head over to NYC's MoMa and you'll probably hear this -- "my kid could paint that!" It's an ages-old critique of pretty much all art after about 1900, and is especially applied to artists like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. But here's the point -- even if your kid could paint that, did they? No, someone else did, and stuck it in a gallery, and there you have it.
Besides that argument, here are 5 more reasons why "my kid could paint that!" only takes us so far when talking about art.
#5: Most Modernists Are Expert Draftsmen, Too.
One of the most common critiques of difficult modern or contemporary painting is the notion that the art is being created only because the artist is unable to wield enough skill to create more 'traditional' looking paintings. This was a charge often leveled against Picasso, for example, who critics said couldn't hope to match the greatness of Velasquez, so chose simply to 'destroy' it through deconstruction.
There's no substance to most of these arguments -- if you took a look through the private notebooks of thousands of modernist and contemporary artists, you'll see their consummate skill. But that's not really the issue, since there was no way forward from just being "great" at imitating old painters.
#4: No One-Trick Ponies Here.
If you use the typical kid-could-paint-that argument, you're not really focusing on the fact that your kid might be able to produce a convincing Rothko imitation if he got really lucky, but then he'd move on to drawing a cat that was bigger than a house.
An artist like Barnett Newman didn't just paint a few stripes over and over again and call it a day -- he grew and developed and held the public's attention with an artist's mind. It's not all just straight draftsmanship.
#3: Art is Made Out of the Actual Experience, Too.
I'd be overjoyed if my kid could paint a Pollock. But the whole point of moving past some of the boundaries imposed by the classic method in painting was to start exploring -- across all genres of art and culture -- what those classic models actually meant.
If you're not interested in all of that, that's OK -- there are plenty of galleries full of renaissance painting that can make you happy for the rest of your life. But some people are concerned with evolving the standards, established in the 1400s and before, about what real art actually is. Your kid probably isn't one of these, but many others were.
#2: Artists Aren't Responsible For The Prices of Their Work.
Arguments about contemporary (or modern) art's actual value tend to come out when a museum or government uses public funding to buy a piece of art that isn't universally acknowledged as 'great' (almost all modern and contemporary art, basically).
When chunks of public money go towards, say, a Newman painting, people tend to lose their minds, and the typical letters to the editor come out. But remember -- the artist didn't set his market price and isn't really responsible for it.
#1: Why Compete With Michaelangelo?
There are new things to discover (or at least there were new things to discover, back when we didn't have access to everything), so why slave away for years and years trying to imitate 'La Pieta' when you can do silk-screened Campbell's soup cans and start a discussion on art vs. artist that will last until the present day? - 31989
Besides that argument, here are 5 more reasons why "my kid could paint that!" only takes us so far when talking about art.
#5: Most Modernists Are Expert Draftsmen, Too.
One of the most common critiques of difficult modern or contemporary painting is the notion that the art is being created only because the artist is unable to wield enough skill to create more 'traditional' looking paintings. This was a charge often leveled against Picasso, for example, who critics said couldn't hope to match the greatness of Velasquez, so chose simply to 'destroy' it through deconstruction.
There's no substance to most of these arguments -- if you took a look through the private notebooks of thousands of modernist and contemporary artists, you'll see their consummate skill. But that's not really the issue, since there was no way forward from just being "great" at imitating old painters.
#4: No One-Trick Ponies Here.
If you use the typical kid-could-paint-that argument, you're not really focusing on the fact that your kid might be able to produce a convincing Rothko imitation if he got really lucky, but then he'd move on to drawing a cat that was bigger than a house.
An artist like Barnett Newman didn't just paint a few stripes over and over again and call it a day -- he grew and developed and held the public's attention with an artist's mind. It's not all just straight draftsmanship.
#3: Art is Made Out of the Actual Experience, Too.
I'd be overjoyed if my kid could paint a Pollock. But the whole point of moving past some of the boundaries imposed by the classic method in painting was to start exploring -- across all genres of art and culture -- what those classic models actually meant.
If you're not interested in all of that, that's OK -- there are plenty of galleries full of renaissance painting that can make you happy for the rest of your life. But some people are concerned with evolving the standards, established in the 1400s and before, about what real art actually is. Your kid probably isn't one of these, but many others were.
#2: Artists Aren't Responsible For The Prices of Their Work.
Arguments about contemporary (or modern) art's actual value tend to come out when a museum or government uses public funding to buy a piece of art that isn't universally acknowledged as 'great' (almost all modern and contemporary art, basically).
When chunks of public money go towards, say, a Newman painting, people tend to lose their minds, and the typical letters to the editor come out. But remember -- the artist didn't set his market price and isn't really responsible for it.
#1: Why Compete With Michaelangelo?
There are new things to discover (or at least there were new things to discover, back when we didn't have access to everything), so why slave away for years and years trying to imitate 'La Pieta' when you can do silk-screened Campbell's soup cans and start a discussion on art vs. artist that will last until the present day? - 31989
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