Emperor's New Clothes

[Clitheroekid]

The sheer stupidity of some art buyers never ceases to amaze me.

I get regular emails from an outfit called fineartmultiple. Some of the art they feature is excellent, but there's a fair amount of trash masquerading as art.

Today I was honoured with this presentation - https://fineartmultiple.com/laure-prouvost

The sheer pretension of the narrative alone is enough to put one off - if art has to be explained in such absurd terms it's only art in the imagination of the creator and the gallery agent that's trying to flog it.

But even if somebody was inclined to shell out £1,000 for one of the posters they might just as well print it themselves. It's only a print anyway, it has no intrinsic artistic quality, and I'm sure it could very easily be copied onto high quality paper and mounted for about £50 so that it would be indistinguishable from the original.

Bah, humbug!

[Gaggsy]

Pretentious? Moi?

(Even the font did my head in).

[OLTB]

The sheer stupidity of some art buyers never ceases to amaze me.

I get regular emails from an outfit called fineartmultiple. Some of the art they feature is excellent, but there's a fair amount of trash masquerading as art.

Today I was honoured with this presentation - https://fineartmultiple.com/laure-prouvost

The sheer pretension of the narrative alone is enough to put one off - if art has to be explained in such absurd terms it's only art in the imagination of the creator and the gallery agent that's trying to flog it.

But even if somebody was inclined to shell out £1,000 for one of the posters they might just as well print it themselves. It's only a print anyway, it has no intrinsic artistic quality, and I'm sure it could very easily be copied onto high quality paper and mounted for about £50 so that it would be indistinguishable from the original.

Bah, humbug!

I might be being thick, but the only images that I can see are white words on a black background - there are no sketches/pictures/drawings. Words like, 'IDEALLY THIS PRINT WILL TAKE YOU FAR AWAY'.

If I'm not being thick and this is the art, then I'm missing something and may start to rant like my father does in these situations.

Seriously - £1,000?

Cheers, OLTB.

[UncleEbenezer]

You should read Private Eye. Going back six months or so.

A series of articles exposing a posh art gallery chain[1] as a front for large-scale money-laundering. And - ahem - funding the Tory party. Funnily enough, the co-owner of the art galleries also owns the party.

[1] Not the one you name.

[kiloran]

Don't worry. I see the artist is french. We'll get rid of her when we Brexit

The really sad thing is that the artist only needs a few idiots per year to fall for this garbage to fund an acceptable lifestyle. Like online scammers who send millions of emails. A hit rate of 0.000001% is all they need

--kiloran

[UncleIan]

Art. Noun. The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.

The slogans were made by someone using their creative skill and imagination, therefore, it is art. Whether it's "good" art or not is entirely subjective. And if someone pays £1000 for one of them, then it's worth £1000. I wouldn't, and I can't see it being much of an investment either, but what do I know?

[scrumpyjack]

At least it isn't just a plain white canvas!

I recall as a young man in the seventies, my office sent me to New York for week. The senior partner of our office there kindly took me round the Whitney Museum- it was all blank canvas, pile of bricks stuff etc.

At the end he asked me what I thought of it. I replied it reminded me of the story of the emperor's new clothes.

He did not look happy!

Back at the office they told me he was one of the trustees of the Whitney.

Whoops!

Still get sent catalogues by some London Art dealers where most of the stuff looks like what an 8 yr old might do. (Actually that's insulting many talented 8 yr olds)

[bungeejumper]

Those Delphic texts remind me of the (very) Basic sentence generators that we used to muck about with, back in the days of early home computers. You take a random string from array one, then attach it to a random phrase from array two, and so on, and you come up with poetic sounding garbage. Like this: https://www.wordgenerator.net/random-se ... erator.php .

Breaks the ice at parties, I suppose. But you wouldn't want it on your living room wall.

BJ

[kiloran]

At least it isn't just a plain white canvas!

I recall as a young man in the seventies, my office sent me to New York for week. The senior partner of our office there kindly took me round the Whitney Museum- it was all blank canvas, pile of bricks stuff etc.

At the end he asked me what I thought of it. I replied it reminded me of the story of the emperor's new clothes.

He did not look happy!

Back at the office they told me he was one of the trustees of the Whitney.

Whoops!

Still get sent catalogues by some London Art dealers where most of the stuff looks like what an 8 yr old might do. (Actually that's insulting many talented 8 yr olds)

Six months ago, I went to a play in Edinburgh about exactly that.... a plain white canvas.
https://www.thereviewshub.com/art-kings ... edinburgh/

And over the past week I've been stewarding at a local art exhibition. Some of the comments from the artists were cringeworthy at a minimum. But we sold some, which will support the cost of the local hospice for a week.

--kiloran

[Clitheroekid]

You take a random string from array one, then attach it to a random phrase from array two, and so on, and you come up with poetic sounding garbage. Like this: https://www.wordgenerator.net/random-se ... erator.php .

That actually generates some statements that would at least get people thinking, if only to try and make sense of them. I can imagine that if some of the randomly generated statements were solemnly presented as great art, accompanied by some incomprehensible artspeak and packaged accordingly, they'd sell like hot cakes (assuming hot cakes do still sell well, which I'm not sure about!)

For example:

The heady glass acquires the shame

The obeisant belief licenses the plant

The venomous cotton condenses the colour

Now that's what I call art - where's my printer!

[Dod101]

You take a random string from array one, then attach it to a random phrase from array two, and so on, and you come up with poetic sounding garbage. Like this: https://www.wordgenerator.net/random-se ... erator.php .

That actually generates some statements that would at least get people thinking, if only to try and make sense of them. I can imagine that if some of the randomly generated statements were solemnly presented as great art, accompanied by some incomprehensible artspeak and packaged accordingly, they'd sell like hot cakes (assuming hot cakes do still sell well, which I'm not sure about!)

For example:

The heady glass acquires the shame

The obeisant belief licenses the plant

The venomous cotton condenses the colour

Now that's what I call art - where's my printer!

Your examples sound like something that Eric Cantona would have said.........wait a minute he is French!

Dod

[bungeejumper]

Your examples sound like something that Eric Cantona would have said.........wait a minute he is French!

LOL, so they do! The philosopher footballer is a veritable sage for our times. As he has never stopped telling us, worse luck.

BJ

[redsturgeon]

THIS PRINT IS LAUGHING ITS
HEAD OFF THAT SOME SUCKER
PAID $1000 FOR IT

[AsleepInYorkshire]

The sheer stupidity of some art buyers never ceases to amaze me.

I get regular emails from an outfit called fineartmultiple. Some of the art they feature is excellent, but there's a fair amount of trash masquerading as art.

Today I was honoured with this presentation - https://fineartmultiple.com/laure-prouvost

The sheer pretension of the narrative alone is enough to put one off - if art has to be explained in such absurd terms it's only art in the imagination of the creator and the gallery agent that's trying to flog it.

But even if somebody was inclined to shell out £1,000 for one of the posters they might just as well print it themselves. It's only a print anyway, it has no intrinsic artistic quality, and I'm sure it could very easily be copied onto high quality paper and mounted for about £50 so that it would be indistinguishable from the original.

Bah, humbug!

You could buy two thirds of Yorkshire for that and just look out your window

AiY

[bionichamster]

The problem with ‘art’ is that you don’t get to decide what it is. The contemporary art world may well be full of silly stuff like these prints, piles of bricks and unmade beds but it’s only proper art because certain types of people say it is. Eg critics, gallery owners and some buyers (eg Saatchi) have that power, and of course established artists, I.e. if you are an established artist then any crap you churn out is ‘art’, even if its churned our to order by someone else ( eg Damien hurst dot paintings)

I can recommend Don Thompson’s book ‘The $12million stuffed shark: the curious economics of contemporary art’. A very interesting look at how the system works.

To me Too much of the pricey stuff seems like a form of flagrant wealth display “I’m so wealthy I can throw large sums of money away” but the conundrum being if someone buys it then the price is validated to others.....

Bh

[scrumpyjack]

That's one good reason why I don't think public money should be spent on art. There have always been plenty of rich people spending money on it (gold loo at Blenheim!). Leave it to individuals.

Art will still thrive. Taxpayers money does not need to be spent on unmade beds

[bungeejumper]

Art will still thrive. Taxpayers money does not need to be spent on unmade beds

Back in my rentamob student-political days, we were told that the entire purpose of stupidly-priced art (and most jewellery, and a lot of other stuff) was to siphon at least some of the cash out of the bulging vaults of the very rich, and to put it back into circulation among the (slightly) lower orders so that it would eventually trickle down to the street and do something useful for the world. We wouldn't have cared whether the Duke of Westminster collected Tracey Emin's scribblings or a pile of unicorn droppings, as long as he spent the money somehow or other.

These days, of course, a lot of the super-rich's money goes into ludicrously expensive London property instead, where it has no effect on society apart from driving up house prices, and ultimately making everybody poorer, especially the young. Oh well, that's another Marxist tenet in the dustbin.

BJ

[bionichamster]

Art will still thrive. Taxpayers money does not need to be spent on unmade beds

Back in my rentamob student-political days, we were told that the entire purpose of stupidly-priced art (and most jewellery, and a lot of other stuff) was to siphon at least some of the cash out of the bulging vaults of the very rich, and to put it back into circulation among the (slightly) lower orders so that it would eventually trickle down to the street and do something useful for the world. We wouldn't have cared whether the Duke of Westminster collected Tracey Emin's scribblings or a pile of unicorn droppings, as long as he spent the money somehow or other.

These days, of course, a lot of the super-rich's money goes into ludicrously expensive London property instead, where it has no effect on society apart from driving up house prices, and ultimately making everybody poorer, especially the young. Oh well, that's another Marxist tenet in the dustbin.

BJ

But presumably whoever sold the property then has a huge wad of cash they can then spend, on cars, chocolate, tea bag strainers, or even stupidly-priced art?

Bh

[bungeejumper]

These days, of course, a lot of the super-rich's money goes into ludicrously expensive London property instead, where it has no effect on society apart from driving up house prices, and ultimately making everybody poorer, especially the young. Oh well, that's another Marxist tenet in the dustbin.

But presumably whoever sold the property then has a huge wad of cash they can then spend, on cars, chocolate, tea bag strainers, or even stupidly-priced art?

Also true. But the critical difference between art and property is that people really need to have houses, so it matters rather more to the young if property prices are forced upward beyond all reason. Original artworks can wait till they're older. All I needed on the walls of my first house was my tennis girl poster.

BJ

[kiloran]

All I needed on the walls of my first house was my tennis girl poster.

BJ

This one?
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/365073113522160275/

--kiloran