Here is a short response, I will go more in-depth on some of the issues raised later, but first I have to say something to Jim:
Jim, you say:
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...I have little contact with and admittedly am not familiar with the curriculum and spirit of contemporary art schools but it has historically been true that art students have been among the least likely to buy into something that their artistic heart and soul does not believe. It's not a place to easily sell snake oil.'...
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Is it historically been true ? Why did I go to a contemporary art school for 4 years and DIDN'T LEARN A SINGLE THING about representational painting? All I know about that is self-thaught.
Jim, you talk about 'an insult to any of the many millions of people that regularly make an effort to see and appreciate the visual arts. That's not an argument. That's hiding yourself behind statistics. And what about those 'millions of people' who never go to such a museum?
Jim, you say:
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...someone with a distinctive skill as artist like Vermeer was able to do in his day. It was realism but not as anyone had done before or since and had a profound/lasting effect on the art world.
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... Vermeer had an effect only after 200 years of being almost forgotten. When you look at the work of Frans van Mieris, Pieter de Hoogh you will notice that Vermeer did, in many ways, what others did before him, but more perfect. The way you describe his effect is how art critics want to paint a romantic view about certain aspects of modern art. It's a cliche to describe it like that, and not accurate with how it really went.
Why, do you think aren't there any painters with the skill of someone like Vermeer, or let's say an average 17th century painter? Because the art schools decided not to teach the proper skills since the fifties and the sixties.
Calling myself an artist is making me feel like I am calling myself the village-idiot, because of the current situation in art.
If one had lived in 1702, and one had compiled a list of the greatest painters of 17th-Century Holland, neither Rembrandt, Frans Hals or Vermeer would have been on that list. Just a thought...
Greetings,
Peter