Abstract Art Needs to Die

in art •  8 years ago  (edited)

The problem with abstract art is anybody can put blobs on paper and call themselves an artist. So if a person is a great salesman they can even sell hundreds a year convincing unsuspecting customers, who are not knowledgable about art; as art is not taught in American schools or art appreciation; that it is the real deal. Especially by asking what colour their couch is and pointing out various blob configurations to match.
Vassily Kandinsky, a Russian-born painter is seen as the leader in avant-garde art of abstraction in painting in the 20th century. Kandinsky was accepted into a prestigious namely the Munich Academy of Arts. He formed the New Artists Association in Munich and was a member of the Bauhaus movement alongside Klee and composer Arnold Schoenberg. He created a new genre, something unique and original in the art world and there were a few other greats, like Rothko and Agnes Martin, but today it is glutted with artificially produced crap and nobody knows the difference.
It is time for abstract art to die so we can again respect the real artists with education and vision. Because it has become a Walmart Poster Business and unscrupulous people are making a lot of money off of it.
That does not mean we need to go back to traditional art BUT we do need for artists to prove that they are educated and DO have technique, and DO have something important to say, before they are loosened on the public and exposed in galleries.
In America there is an unvoiced value system of, if something sells it has value. Well art can not fall into that system without falling into total disrepute. Art has to be treated with the same respect that other vocations like law and medicine are treated, and it won't as long as NO standards exist! And anybody can be an artist thanks to the prevailing embracement of abstract art.
You can't call yourself an artist in Europe unless you have an education and artists there have a social status equal to doctors and lawyers.

Vassily Kandinsky

Mark Rothko

Agnes Martin

These are but a few of the great abstract artists of our time, dedicated to their art and expressing each individually a different emotion and attitude...

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My test of whether abstract art is worth anything is if it makes me feels something, positive or negative, without the artist having to explain their own creation. Too many times I have seen people stroking their chins and nodding their heads while an artist has to explain the thought behind a piece. The first time I saw a Jackson Pollock up close it blew me away, spoke to me deeply about life and the human condition. I got it, and no one had to explain anything.

You make it sound like any idiot can just piss a bunch of random shapes and colors on to canvas and make money as an artist. That doesn't happen. Most artists can barely make beer money selling art.

If you're already famous for real art (abstract or otherwise), then, and only then, you can start selling stupid crap like soup-cans and blue squares. But if you or me, tomorrow, just start trying to sell some random hodge-podge of shapes and colors, we won't even get our work shown at a gallery, much less sell it for real money.

Art sells based on the name attached to it, not the shapes and colors.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Actually most of the people I know who sell very well in America are simply great salesmen...not real artists and have no qualifications...

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