After seeing a B painting, I certainly look at my own work in a different way: it sucks!

So this piece is called Laocoon and his Sons. It was likely sculpted before 100BC. It was unearthed around the time of Michelangelo's birth and toured around europe - it is likely that Michelangelo and many of the artists of his time saw this sculpture which was regarded to be the pinnacle of artistic endeavor...1,500 years before...

Now imagine if someone had taken Michelangelo to this sculpture and said to him,

"This has been done before. Perfection has already been achieved and you might as well not even try to tread this old ground again."

Can you imagine our world without the Pieta? Without the David?

Perfection in stone had already been achieved 1500 years before Michelangelo was even born...

I think you are painting with too broad a brush here Peter. There is merit in many artistic paths, and each path has its own challenges and rewards. Granted, each will speak to different people as they view the works from those artists. :)

This argument fascinates...

My favorite painting (at the moment) has terrible technique and is loaded with idyllic fantasy and sentiment. I love it anyway! Chagall's Promenade.

Hope you all wrap this argument up soon, because it interests me and I keep checking my computer. And I've really got work to do!!

Later,
Christy

Michelangelo was an artist of the renaissance during which artists were breaking from the conventions imposed by the Catholic Church and rediscovering the naturalism of the Greeks and Romans not only in the visual arts but following the capture of Islamic libraries in Cordoba and Seville of Philosophy and theatre. It was new to them after centuries of conformity and limitations regarding how the human figure could be portrayed following the disaster of the Iconoclasts. B lived several unbroken centuries after Michelangelo and chose to build nothing new and that was precisely the point that artists from Courbet to Monet were making.

Have you visited the Opera House in Paris?

You know, and it is wonderful that a group of artists were able to make the leap to impressionism and succeed at it. But just because Beaugereau did not hear that particular call in -his- art does not make his work unworthy of appreciation, and certainly does not warrant dismissal, IMO.

I for one see in his work, a focused lens of perspective that I think no painter in history had before him. It is expressed not only in his facility for creating incredible visual illusion that stops you dead in your tracks, but also in his ability to create freshness in allegory, fable, and the fantastic. :)

Now as a portrait painter I look at Bouguereau with a self-interested eye seeing what I can learn as I do at many artists. I will not have him on my walls but I have no shame in seeing how he painted flesh just as I look at Klimt, Lucien Freud and others - for the rest we will have to agree to differ.

You presume? Quite the compelling argument! Peter do you actually believe that having never heard of something is reasonable cause for assuming it's insignificance? How could any artist, unknown to you, be any good, let alone great? I have no response.

I think this discussion has gotten to the point of pointlessness. Christy, you can now go back to work.

Peter,

Healthy discussions and debate about art are more than acceptable. That you have decided that your opinion of any of our members' work - in this case, Marvin's- has a place in this discussion is clearly misplaced.

Since you have been reading the forum posts for two years, it should be pretty clear that if Marvin, or any of our other members, wanted to hear opinions about their work, they'd have posted in the critiques section. Even in that venue, critiques are expected to offer constructive, helpful input, not relate to personal tastes of the viewer.

And I agree, this thread has reached a point of pointlessness.

Surely you understand the notion of ad hominem argument.

Have I entered the twilight zone? I understand the term ad hominim all too well but how is it relevant here since I have only praised Marvin's work which I like very much? I am genuinely confused.