Last week I watched a 2007 documentary titled My Kid Could Paint That. It chronicles the rise and fall of four year old painter Marla Olmstead.

Watching the film was an academic exercise for me. However, it was also enjoyable. I took notes on a number of things as I watched. The most interesting part of the film, though, is easy to recall, and that is how the adults and the art world reacted to the four year old’s paintings. Even the documentary notes that this story isn’t about the little girl; it’s about the adults.

I’ll start with a little background. Dad was painting one day and daughter, Marla, wanted to join in (she wasn’t even two years old at this point). She took to painting like a fish to water. After a while, a friend of the family sees the girl’s paintings and wants to put them in his coffee shop — just for kicks as much as anything. Customers began to want the paintings. Marla sold her first work for $250. A local reporter wrote a story about Marla and her family after being encouraged by a local artist who saw the toddler’s canvases. From there it steamrolled. The New York Times picked up the story, and the family began traveling around the world for shows. At one point, the waiting list for Marla’s works was more than 70 people.

Mom didn’t know what to make of the situation early on, rightly concerned for the well-being of her child. “If this never happened again I think that’d be OK,” she said at one point, referring to one of Marla’s first exhibits. Mom is a dental hygienist and admitted that she wouldn’t know if the paintings were extraordinary or not. She photocopied the first check from the first sale for Marla’s scrapbook, thinking the whole ordeal would be short-lived. The reporter who did the first story, Elizabeth Cohen, also worried about the girl after the hype became so much.

Just as fast as the fun began it ended. A 60 Minutes story speculated that the paintings were actually done by the girl’s father. Sales tanked (by this point the family had already made $300,000 on the paintings) and vicious hate mail poured in. Eventually the family was able to film Marla painting a piece titled Ocean from start to finish, which seemed to vindicate the family and the young artist.

Now to some of the artistic implications of the whole scenario. First off, the artist who encouraged Cohen to write the first newspaper story has it in for modern art. He said so on camera. Anthony Brunelli is a hyper-realist who’s paintings can take 9 months to finish. The most Brunelli ever sold a painting for was $100,000, which he admitted was a lot of money, but he’s right in questioning why a four year old can make $15,000 for something she might have spent five distracted hours on.

Something is wrong with this picture, and it’s no fault of the girl, her family, the reporter or the hyper-realist. (more…)

Explanations are the traitor of art according to Jonathan Jones of the Guardian’s art&architecture blog. Jones actually has one or two good things to say in this post, but you wouldn’t know it by the first two sentences. “Serious art defies easy interpretation, and artists should resist the call to explain themselves,” he starts with. “It is a vice of second-rate art to come with its own eloquent explanation attached.”

The term “serious art” always throws up red flags for me. I know there are hobbyists who dabble in painting, retirees who pick up a brush and paint from their back porch because they don’t know what to do with themselves after retiring. Bella Vista, Arkansas — a retirement village in my own county — seems to have plenty of these.

Yes, I know that was a bit of a harsh example, but the point is that there’s a difference between people who paint for relaxation and people who paint because they have to. It’s in the latter’s blood to be visually creative. They are restless and incomplete if they don’t have the time or opportunity to regularly be in their studio. However, Jonathan Jones doesn’t seem to be segregating hobbyists from those born with artistic passion. From what I can tell he’s referring specifically to the passionate types.

Further, he implies in no subtle terms that serious art is a certain kind of art by using Jackson Pollock as an example. Pollock is largely representative of 20th century art — however myopic this point of view may be — which is a very small slice of the millennial pie. I happen to like Pollock’s drip series, but using him and other expressionists as an example leads one to believe that the only kind of serious art is cutting edge (to a fault, in my opinion), always looking for the newest thing. Also implied is that serious art is only non-representational art. This is bogus as well.

Being modern, cutting edge or novel does not necessarily make for serious art. That said, it is good and important for artists to eagerly explore new ideas, new media, but they need to constantly remember that “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Is art second-rate just because it comes with an eloquent explanation? Of course not. Judge the work on its own merits, please. If the artist wants to attach a few paragraphs of his or her inspiration and intent, let them. This has no bearing on the formal qualifications of the canvas, even if it might give viewers a different way to look at a painting.

So what does Jones get right in his post? Particularly this: “As soon as you start saying what people want to hear, adapting your art to the common sense political and moral platitudes of ordinary speech, you betray subtlety and poetry.” I’m not exactly certain what he means by “common sense political” speech, but I wholeheartedly affirm the importance of subtlety and poetry in art.

I just finished a brief examination of Picasso’s full and long life in the book Pablo Picasso: A Modern Master by one Richard Leslie. I’m not sure the book is worth commenting on in depth, but I sat down to write a little about it and we’ll see what the html editor spits out.

The presentation of Leslie’s short biographical work is impressive. The reproductions of Picasso’s work are very nice, printed on heavy, glossy paper. It feels good in your hands. That’s where my praise for the book ends, however. The short work is adequate enough in giving a person an overview of the artist’s life, but it does so with pretentious and unsubstantiated language. More than once I read a paragraph and came away wondering what orifice the writer pulled that out of. These recurring and somewhat convoluted observations would bother me less if they were elaborated upon. They might actually be accurate or warranted statements if Leslie gave us citations, or even if he prefaced certain paragraphs with “in my opinion,” but the author makes no reference to where his ideas are coming from.

As already noted, the writing does communicate the basics of Picasso’s life and work, from his youth and background to cubism and from harlequins to minotaurs. Unfortunately, the images of his paintings don’t follow the text with any semblance of order. I found myself paging around after seeing a reference to a particular work, wondering if it was pictured in the book on some far flung back page. The writing is chronological. The images are, in a very loose sense, attempting to chronological. But not.

I eluded a few weeks ago to the fact that, as I read through this short book, my respect for Picasso was ebbing. This caused me to wonder where this respect came from in the first place. Sure I knew who the artist was from college courses — even from culture at large — but I knew very little of him other than “cubism” and “Guernica.” He’s held up as this mythical figure in the art world, but few details go along with this unspoken heroism in my experience. It takes independent research to really examine an artist’s life and body of work. History classes don’t cut it.

I’m still smitten with Guernica. The painting above of the war in Korea is impressive too, although this painting isn’t one from the book. A lot of the paintings and sculptures featured in A Modern Master come across as scrappy. I’m hard pressed to see the craft I expected to see from a man so revered in the art world. Perhaps this book chose poorly when selecting works to represent the life of this prolific artist.

A disclaimer, this post is not intended to be an affront to Catholics. Please keep this in mind while reading the following entry which does discuss the denomination, as evidenced by the title above, and feel free to correct me on any points where I may have misrepresented any related doctrine or theology espoused by the Catholic Church.

A story via ArtsJournal reports the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue is at it again. I mentioned him last year when he raised Cain over Cosimo Cavallaro’s Sweet Jesus.

Donahue and the League are upset about a series of paintings by one Felipe Baeza, a student at the private Cooper Union. Baeza’s offending works combine erotic images with traditionally Catholic symbols such as rosary beads and a Crucifix. I haven’t seen the paintings in question, and by their description have no desire to see them, but I don’t agree with the Catholic League’s approach to these exhibits. Donahue also lead other recent protests against questionable art, such as Brooklyn Museum’s Sensation exhibit and Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ.

By no means do I condone the way the assumed subject matter in works such as Baeza’s — based on description alone, mind you — is presented. I did a Google search for some images of the paintings but, thankfully, didn’t come up with anything. I did find his Facebook profile, and the following painting which seems to be by the same man:

[Per a comment from a friend of Baeza's on another site — which I've added to this post — I removed the image after receiving clarification that it was not done by this particular Felipe Baeza.]

I’m not a fan of censorship, but there is a balance to be struck between an artist’s exploration in subject and media, and resulting useful (read in part, “tactful”) artwork. It’s not too difficult to think of the messages Baeza might be trying to get across when reading slightly more elaborate descriptions of these paintings than I’ve posted here, but I can’t help but think he could have approached his canvases in a more deft manner. I’m not suggesting here that an artist change their intent, merely that they rework their presentation. Difficult (but still valid) subjects aren’t easy or fun to look at either way; works that come across as overtly sensational probably won’t garner enough respect to communicate to the generally hoped-for broad audience.

Regardless, I don’t think people in the Church, Catholic or otherwise, have much right to complain about works of art that don’t exactly put the best face on this fallible institution. The manner in which such artistic commentary is crafted might be worth noting, but not necessarily making public statements about — which I’ll get into shortly.

Referring back to Donahue’s criticisms, perhaps he believes his own denomination to be Divine and therefore infallible. I’ve known of Catholics with this attitude, although I don’t sense it’s a prevailing conviction. If I may be so bold, this would in fact be a naive belief, and I don’t understand how anyone could presently think so highly of the Catholic Church in light of the recent scandals that — unfortunately — plagued this enduring institution. No part of the Body of Christ can say with a straight face that they or their particular congregation has not made certain gross missteps along the way. I’ve grown up in, and still attend, non-denominational churches where scandals also mar the image of the Body. All such circumstances do harm to the name of our Holy God, which goes without saying. We are all guilty. We are all human.

However, this naive understanding is the only way I can validate The Catholic League’s public criticisms of such “ugly” paintings. Making formal statements against these exhibits only heightens awareness of them. This creates more publicity for the artist, which aids his or her career — unless they only intend to market themselves to a very narrow group of people — likely encouraging them to create additional similar pieces. With few exceptions, all publicity is good publicity. It seems to me that Donahue and the League are inadvertently doing themselves and their cause a disservice. Were they to keep quiet about the artworks, or keep their discussion and disgust internal, it’s much more likely such shows will go unnoticed. I’d never heard of Cooper Union before today, and were it not for the fuss raised by Donahue I would probably still be ignorant.

Art has historically addressed social and political ideas. It will likely continue to do so within its cycles. The Church’s past and recent Faux pas will remain potential targets, so to speak, for paintings and sculptures, just like war, politics and other cultural ills. Artists have every right to broach these subjects. The ones that do so in a respectable way will likely be the ones named in history books.

In the last pages of Time-Life’s The World of Bruegel, I came across one of the most poignant quotations on art — speaking, it seems to me, particularly to the making of art — that I can remember in quite some time. From page 169:

Great paintings are not photographs but doorways into another world, a world so complete and so compelling that the eye and the mind of the viewer are drawn deeper and deeper into it. If the painting has too little content or none at all, only the eye will be pleased. Nor will the mind and imagination be engaged in it if the content is too literal or commonplace, stating everything but implying nothing. Such paintings, though recognizably real, will remain mere factual surfaces.

This from the editors of a book I criticized, too harshly in my wife’s opinion, this past March. I’m not exactly certain what to take away from the quotation as someone who 1) works in three dimensions as opposed to on canvas or board and 2) is innately drawn to minimalistic and abstract forms, but the observation seems to possess some value so I’m diving deeper into the rabbit hole.

Portraiture is often guilty of attempting to convey too much content in my opinion. Very little is left to the imagination in works such as Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon. Part of this may be a generational or historical ignorance if the painting utilizes symbolism lost on viewers not intimately familiar with art history, but frankly this work is little more than eye candy in a visual sense.

It’s easy, however, for me to think of portraits that I do find engaging. Girl With a Pearl Earring, the Mona Lisa and — though less formal — Manet’s A Bar at the Folies Bergere come to mind.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of my favorite paintings, not just portraits. It is wonderfully successful in it’s use of color, composition and countenance. The slightly open lips and black background add an incredible amount of interest. The Mona Lisa, while not a personal favorite, succeeds in the imaginative department with its surreal setting and, again, a facial expression that’s not quite definable. The Manet pictured above is another on the top of my own list. It is so easy in this painting for the viewer to climb into the bartender’s thoughts through her countenance. And while the proportions of her figure seem a bit awkward (though they may be accurate taking into account the crazy corsets of the represented time), the fact that her body is just off center — note the different spaces between her arms and torso on each side of the figure — lends an incredible sense of believability.

The aforementioned Napoleon has none of these things. It is stern and matter-of-fact, not asking anything of the person looking at the painting.

Perhaps a more interesting direction to take this discussion is how the quote relates to non-representational works, if it does. It’s easy to see how people might think these kind of paintings have too little content. For instance, does Jackson Pollock’s work from his “drip period” have any content to speak of? What about Rothko’s famous works? Does a piece of art need to have a recognizable element in order to have content?

Americans generally like to spout their opinions. We’re not shy about the teams we cheer for, the brands we love or the states we hail from. I’m reminded off-hand of San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, haughtily exclaiming “As California goes, so goes the nation,” last week.

Speaking about the arts is different than touting your favorite football team though. With a variety of styles and innumerable personal aesthetics in the visual world, artistic critique is more complex (it seems to me) than being high on your home state, something that probably owes more to our roots.

Over Easter dinner we talked briefly with new friends about visually inclined people’s tendency to critique the things and environments around them. The question was, in essence, How do we as artists, designers, architects offer constructive criticism without coming across in an oppressive or negative manner?

As an art and architecture student I learned to take criticism. Architecture projects were judged by local and visiting professors. Art studios were usually classroom affairs, where all of the students were expected to contribute to the discussion. There are a few keys to gracefully receiving other people’s opinions about your own work, or your own home decor, or fashion sense, et cetera. Two are most important. First of all, don’t take things personally (as much as this is possible, which varies for different personalities). Secondly, try and learn to discern when people are giving constructive criticism and when they are speaking out of their own aesthetic. In other words, as an artist we need to be able to take the best advice with us and know what to leave behind.

As an artist and person interested in all things visual, I’m also practiced in giving criticism. Often this happens unintentionally, and some of the time it’s solicited. Being so innately involved with the visual environment I — and others like me — are predisposed to making observations other people are less likely to make. A lot of these observations I keep to myself, but not all of them. This is where tact comes in. If I’m with friends or among other artistic types I will be less reserved, naturally. If I’m with people I don’t know or people I know who might misunderstand my noble intentions, I’m more likely to keep my trap shut. Hopefully my non-verbal language is tactful as well. I’m no good at all with putting on airs. Even if I’m not saying anything, I fear my body language or countenance give away my lack of interest or distaste. Although I don’t recall anyone ever actually telling me this.

Then how do we speak tactfully about the arts? The following is a list I devised of my own experiences on how to be a good critiquer:

* Be aware of when you’re reacting to an artwork through the lens of your own personal aesthetic. This is most if not all of the time. There is nothing wrong with this, but it can cause you to say things that don’t benefit the broader discussion.

* Focus on formal elements such as line, color, and composition, but don’t ignore conceptual elements. Ask questions about the artist’s concept, their inspiration. This can shed an entirely new light on a painting or sculpture. Some of Frida Khalo’s work comes across as more than a little macabre if you don’t know about her background, as an example.

* Comment on both successful and problematic areas of a piece. Look for the successes first.

* Think of “constructive” criticism as much as possible. Give suggestions based on proven principles. Don’t just say “I don’t like this color.” Say instead, “That color would be more appealing or dynamic if . . . “

These principles, I think, will help a person avoid becoming critical about most things most of the time almost always in a negative way. I’ve known a few people like this, and I just can’t imagine life is enjoyable for them on the whole — and certainly not for the people around them. Please feel free to add to my list or shuffle it around in the comments if I’ve left something out. I probably have.

The somewhat infamous Brooklyn Museum, known mostly for it’s berated Sensation exhibit, is sponsoring a “crowd-curated exhibition” by means of the internet.

Click on this link to get started. After confirming an easy registration your browser redirects you to the curation pages. The first step is to fill out a two question form asking about your personal artistic knowledge. As you can see in the following screenshot, I chose “ABOVE AVERAGE.”

And then you curate! There are a total of 389 submissions, and the museum asks that you evaluate each one using these criteria:

* How well does the image illustrate or express the theme “The Changing Faces of Brooklyn”?
* Do you consider this an exceptional image, given the technique and aesthetics?

If I taught a photography class, this is something I’d assign to the students for extra credit. So far I’ve made it through a measly 15 entries. The registration process allows you to login later if you can’t get through the list in one sitting. The crowd-curating process will go through May 23rd.

I learned of this story via TechCrunch.

Click on the photo to view the video:

This is my third line of thought following up Jack of all arts, crafts, wannabe and Is art defined by communication? It was also prompted by “Mo-Coffee’s” comment on the latter post, in which he paraphrases Tennyson on poetry: “A poem doesn’t ‘mean,’ a poem ‘is.’”

Tennyson’s commentary, it seems to me, more or less represents the idea of art for art’s sake, which Wikipedia defines as “a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only “true” art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function.” The idea is credited to Theophile Guatier who lived in the mid nineteenth century.

The inclusion of the phrase “the only true art” sends up all kinds of red flags. Perhaps this part of the idea and definition was meant to exclude propaganda in its many forms, but it makes me think of the isolating and — in my opinion — counterproductive and potentially dangerous artist-as-genius mentality (an idea of mine that needs more exploration). That said, let’s look at art for art’s sake as “a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function.”

Art that “is,” or art for art’s sake, is affirmed by Francis Schaeffer in his little treatise, Art and the Bible, on page 33 of my 1973 edition: “A work of art has value in itself.” He goes on in the same paragraph to point out that “Art is not something we merely analyze or value for its intellectual content. It is something to be enjoyed.” The point is made earlier in the book that certain instructions for for the fabrication of the tabernacle and then the temple were abstract and “for beauty“: Multi-colored pomegranates on garb, chains and pomegranates adorning freestanding pillars and and precious stones for beauty.

What about works of art that are not necessarily “for beauty” — and I say this without desiring, at this point, a discussion on personal aesthetics. What about paintings intended to comment on society, such as Picasso’s Guernica? Do these works also possess innate value though their content is less than pleasant?

But then where do you draw the line between works of art and propaganda, perhaps on the basis of how well-known an artist is? Maybe judging by the quality of the craft?

Agreeing that art bears an intrinsic value — regardless of message, intent or ability to communicate, relevance to a cultural context — lends an incredible amount of validity to modern conceptual or non-representational artwork. If a person agrees with the doctrine of art for art’s sake almost anything can become art. Is this a slippery slope, one that leads to curators fabricating boxes with a set of instructions sent to her by the artist — a box that many people in our culture will, for whatever reason, look at and think “That’s not art?”

I’m going to call this inquisitive ramble part one on art for art’s sake, and hope I can come back to it in the near future.

This post is continuing the line of thought I began in the Jack of all arts, crafts, wannabe entry.

Communication lies at the heart of the definition of art for a fair number of people. I included “communication” in my own living document thinking about the eternally elusive meaning of the word “art.” Herein I explore a series of preliminary thoughts about the relationship — or lack thereof — between art and communication.

At the most basic level, a person could argue that everything communicates. For instance, an undecorated ceramic bowl communicates a certain function — which can vary with context. If you add decoration to a bowl, such as the figures commonly found on Greek attic-ware (like this kylix),

the reality of a more complex and intentional communication presents itself. I’m assuming in my following thoughts a more intentional communication, not implied potential as in the undecorated vessel.

* Craft, in and of itself, does not communicate — per my above clarification. (Is it art by itself?)

* Decoration, such as Sullivan’s ornamentation on the Wainwright building, does not convey an intention to communicate (in my own estimation). (Is it art?)

* Abstract artworks usually intend to communicate, even if the viewers can’t tell from the finished work. For instance, Pollock’s later and more famous works represented, he said, the chaos in the modern world.

* Realistic works of art seem to be the most communicative, but in what way? Does a landscape or still life really speak to the modern viewer in more specific terms than abstract or purely conceptual works? I say “modern” viwer on account of most people’s ignorance of classical symbolism — indeed, perhaps any kind of visual symbolism — such as momento mori, where a skull in a still life was more than just a skull. (How much does the perception of the viewer play into the definition of art as it relates to communication? Is something not art if the viewer doesn’t comprehend some, most, all of the artist’s intended meaning?)

Note that in my living (i.e., subject to change) definition of art I also mention intentionality. Perhaps I need to combine the two terms, qualifying communication with the need to be intentional. The idea of intent as a part of the definition of art I first heard as a college student. At the time it seemed like a good one-liner to slap on the idea of fine art; in retrospect, I realize that for anyone seriously thinking about, engaging in and observing the arts it’s a gross oversimplification — even for those of us who realize pinning down a singular definition of art isn’t a realistic expectation.