My feeling is that most classical modern painters (first half of the 20th century) were well trained and very skilled painters. And they would have been good or even great painters in others eras of painting.
The problem begins, in my view, when in the fifties and sixties under the influence of modern art, the academies start to get rid of a lot of the things that one needs to make a good painting. Anatomic drawing, the 'classical' approach to painting, modelling forms etcetera. After I finished my education in art I had the feeling I had to start all over again to learn the techniques the old masters used to make portraits. Making paintings like Mondriaan did (victory boogie woogie for example) requires an advanced insight in painting. Composition, use of colour etcetera. Making a cubist painting is actually a very difficult thing to do. That's why only very skilled painters succeed in making quality modernist paintings. And because much of the classical knowledge is lost, not only realist painting is technically at a low level at the moment, also paintings in a modernist style are technically far below the quality-level of what people like Braque and Mondriaan did.
I have seen technically very good realist paintings by Picasso, Ensor, Mondriaan. They reached a technical skill I don't see in the best realist paintings of today. One could say that they gave an energetic impulse to the art of painting of their time. The art of painting was becoming boring, although I like some of the 19th-century academic french salon-paintings (some of the paintings of Alma-Tadema, Bouguereau, Gerome are actually pleasant to watch).
The response to modern art on the academies was a disaster for the art of painting, is my feeling. One goes to school to be educated, but what does one learn at an academy. I liked my school, but I didn't learn there what I needed, to do what I wanted to do in painting. It took another 7 or 8 years to learn what I had to learn for that (and the learning-process will never be finished, but that's something which every artist will experience, I think).
Greetings,
Peter
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