Realism in the art world today

[Michele Rushworth]

This post was motivated by some comments in other threads about how realism is or isn't valued in the art world today and I just wanted to share my perspective on it.

It has always seemed to me that the more obscure and unattractive a work of art was, the more praise it got from the influential people in the "art world". It's just like the "Emperor's New Clothes." No one wants to admit that the latest ugly, confusing, objet d'art is really ugly and confusing for fear that they will seem "unsophisticated" to others. A work of representational art that is beautiful and easy to understand is derided as too simplistic. People think to themselves, "if I can understand it, it must not be profound enough".

Any comments?

[Cynthia Daniel]

Much of modern art I wouldn't want to understand. I've read how some of these pieces are representations of the painter's deep subconscious. Boy, I wouldn't want to even try to understand that subconscious.

If you subscribe to the concept that truth is understandable (which I do), then artwork that can be understood aligns more with truth? Boy, I might get attacked for that foray.

And, from another angle, assuming the artist has something to communicate and that art is a form of communication, why would an artist want to communicate something that no one can understand? Unless they're the type of person that just likes to hear themselves talk or that they like confusing people.

I'll never forget when I was 17 walking in downtown St. Louis and for the first time saw a new modern sculpture that had just been installed outside a building. My immediate reaction was revulsion and then I felt indignant that someone would insult my intelligence with such a thing and call it art. I had pretty strong feelings against modern art from the moment I saw it before I ever heard anyone try to "sell" it as good and worthwhile.

All that said, I can enjoy some art that is abstract, but not contorted and supposed to be laden with some deep psychological meaning.

[Steven Sweeney]

Anyone wishing to see some sparks fly over this issue should go to this site's home page and access Art Renewal Center Chairman Fred Ross' speech on the subject of modernism's place in art history.

Art is, of course, not the only venue in which the 20th Century ousted, challenged or crippled longstanding tradition. For example, we've all read clumsily managed minimalist fiction, obscure poetry laden with self-referential symbolism, superficial pieces meant to be merely provocative rather than entertaining or edifying.

It seems that the "publish or perish" politics of academia, paradoxically both internecine and incestuous, contributed greatly to the momentum of such curious and confusing trends during the past century. "I'll write a glowing blurb for your little chapbook and come to your reading, if you'll do the same for me." Suddenly there are two critically acclaimed publications that no one will ever have read, and then four, sixteen, sixty-four, until more traditional works, the "standards" of literature, are displaced by the psychology of protocol and the physics of shelf space.

And yet, even as a serious realistic painter (hence my screen name!), there is heresy in my soul. I am already growing weary of the stridency of calls to arms, to abandon, to spurn, to deride modernism and pay attention only to "real" painting. I believe that real painting can speak for itself -- indeed, that it MUST speak for itself. (Okay, a few wealthy patrons don't hurt to spread the message.)

I usually give contemporary art museums a miss and head for the "Mets", but I consider it a matter of personal taste. Though my tastes are somewhat eclectic and I don't mind taking time to visit the MOMAs or the Guggenheims, it's perhaps because I know I won't use up much time there. One realist painter, asked if the elephant-dung medium of recent notoriety was what modernism had sunk to, replied, "No, that's what it's always been." If I'd never heard of, say, Jackson Pollock, my appreciation for art would be unchanged -- and yet, with one exception. I sat quite mesmerized, and more than once, in front of his "Blue Poles" drip painting at the National Gallery in Australia, and I'm happy to have been able to do so. (Its valuation at over $40 million is the least of things interesting about it.) I have been similarly if rarely affected by other contemporary pieces. Now Pollock is quoted as having said, "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing," and, despite my appreciation for "Blue Poles," most people might respond, "Well, that's the way it looks, too!"

On the other hand, I'm able to walk rather quickly past plenty of the "old Master" works in a large collection. If I don't care for a piece, then it doesn't matter to me, either, who painted it or when. Sometimes I'll study it simply to discern what it is that I don't like about it. But I find it just as offensive and arrogant to have every classical work of art crammed down my throat simply because of its pedigree and provenance, as it is has been to have contemporary work offered with similar insistence, even vehemence, for the opposite and other reasons.

I say, go to your studio and paint, paint what you wish to paint, and do it at the highest level of excellence of which you're capable. Learn as you go, open to ideas old and new. And then let your work speak for itself. Competent, well crafted, enchanting work has its own voice. Let those who will, hear it.

I'm told that this is a good time to get into realistic work, because -- these words are actually used -- "the bar is so low," owing to the influence of modernism. But when I look at the offerings on this and other sites, at the dozens and hundreds of web displays, at gallery exhibitions domestic and foreign, I know that traditions of excellence in realism are far from dead. If the bar was once low, it's certainly gotten higher, fast.

Time to quit making speeches and go to work!

Steven

[Lon Haverly]

People are for the most part uneducated in the classical arts. And even most artists today cannot create any realism because they were not classically trained. Picazzo was classically trained, but made an educated departure. Most people see it, and skip the training and think that they can go directly to the abstract.

An alumni of U of O art department said to me, "You portrait artists are such 'tight ass' realists. If I wanted to learn tio draw, I would just take a class!" He knows little about how difficult it is to master the art of drawing classically, or he would never have made that statement. He was just spouting the populer views of his professors, who do not know how to draw themselves!