The Top 40

I've had the impression that Picasso was a phony in the intellectual department. Artistically talented? Yes. Emotionally/politically profound, I don't think so. His views come across as studied rather than organic.

Well he certainly painted like an imbecile.

Never thought of Picasso as much of an artist, more like someone who's mother magnets their shit to the refrigerator. But what do I know, I've only sold a million dollars worth of my art on 4 continents.

Picasso loved his wahinis. But that's getting personal.

He was an Anarco-Communist who, after making Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, followed this up by supporting the Norks in the Korean conflict. That's right: the communists. And what paragons of virtue they were!

I hold his art as: brilliant, transgressive, breakthrough, and often (but not always) ugly. He is an important figure, but I think his art will shrink over time.

My weariness at the people who feel qualified to condemn Picasso's work goes on and on. Why not just admit that you know nothing about painting and get on with your life?
Yes, he was a commie. So was everyone else of his type in those years.

Taken all in all from the blue period forward Picasso was a titan of 20th century art and painting. That's just the facts when you come to brass tacks.

His personal life and politics have nothing to do with it.

Never take anybody's word for it when it comes to art. Ignore the nattering of art historians. Especially ignore the natterings of the artists themselves, who when not with their Muses show themselves to be foolish grubbers in the dirt like all the rest of us.

Art for everyone is either mostly "ooh, ick" or "meh", and rarely "that is so way cool, moar!". One men's "ick" is another wym's "moar!"

Hey Picasso. You keep using that word "political". I don't think it means what you think it means. Shut up and paint. I don't think anybody ever told you "Never apologize, never explain."

Sir, would you be willing to extend those same courtesies to someone on the opposite side of politics? Say, an author, five movies, fifteen books, haven't been out of print for 50 years, beloved by millions? Or in that case, are ad hominems not only appropriate, but to be encouraged? Who are the anointed few who decide these things, the arbiters of our cultural heights? "Titans!" Feh! Nobody decides for me, I'll like what g d well pleases me.
And I also adore being challenged, and new things, and new looks at old things. Yeah, well, if I have to wade through the muck to find the pearl, that's just the way life goes. No point crying about it, best just get on with it.

I loved the quote, and love Picasso.

He never once mentioned "actors," thus reinforcing his brilliance.

William F. Buckley liked to paint. When asked how it went he responded, " Excellent, I paint five or six masterpieces a night."

A proper perspective on one's work is always helpful.

I knjow how to pain, I'm a professional artist, and I know Picasso sucks as a painter. Time will eventually weed him and the rest of his era's trash out like Kadinsky and Jackson Pollock.

"Artists" of all kinds are generally imbeciles when it comes to worldly affairs outside of their pervue. Picasso was no exception.

ghostsniper,

Now we're curious. Perhaps you could post us a link to your art - or, as an alternative, the art of someone you like?

I'm your huckleberry. Take out the spaces:

http ://www.pbase.com/joanofargghh/portfolio

Of course, my erstwhile dabbling is presented with this caveat:

http ://yellowhammernews.com/faithandculture/alabamian-gets-schooled-mike-rowe-dirty-jobs/

"... painting ...is an instrument of war."
Quite true in some cases, like the beheadings we see painted across our computer screens and newspaper front pages. That 'art' is war on our courage and sense of decency.
Koran 8:12, among other Koran verses are the art instructor's orders for action.

People who call themselves "artists" are usually full of it. Lets see some!

http://www.christaylorart.com/gallery/browse_photo/7

If its this stuff, he's a competent illustrator. Good deal.

I prefer art that is self explanatory and doesn't need to be explained, nor is confusing. Call me a traditionalist if you will, but not strictly. I too am a victim of "art is in the eye of the beholder", but I have enough education and experience in the topic to also appreciate the unmentioned slave in all art which is "effort". I've mentioned this before on these pages. Throwing a can of paint at the wall is not art no matter who says otherwise. My appreciation of art is not contained to any particular genre and spans millennia, back at least to Vitruvius but not as far as cave paintings. I have a special allegiance to 3 dimensional art as that is where we live, however the cunning of 2 dimensional art that mimics 3d tickles my brain and is always of major interest. Digital art? Not so much. Perhaps in time. Again, effort. What do I like? WWII nose art, Rockwell, 18th century dutch painters, anything with wood, the colors blue, gray and brown, the major pentatonic scale, 3 point perspectives, fore shortening, tessellations, fluted columns, and Escher.....and the fact that most people would not put a comma after the word columns.

Joan: VERY NICE!
Now I need to go photograph my stone work.
(Evvverybody wants to get into the act!)

JWM

Thanks, John.

LOVE, the Christopher Taylor works! That's what full-time artists achieve. I've always been too chicken-shit to attempt it as a career. Probably for the best, but I came back to art much later in life.

I'm an artist. I just saw a huge collection of Picasso's works in Russia last month, BTW.

Political content in art is of the lowest order, since it is something other than the visual content. If the artist is a political animal (so to speak) then those will be his ideas, and so be it. But, I still find it to be base. My educated opinion.

This quote is about politics, my friends. Can't defend Picasso by saying his art is separate from his politics. He had a long career and I liked his work better when he was focused on sex. And his politics sucks eggs.

He made a work following up on Guernica that was anti US and UN and pro North Korea during the Korean War. Defend that.

Great titan of 20th Century art: yes. Human being: not so great. He is a great control group for art versus the man, that is for certain.

PS: the Modernists were anarchists and patriots. Some commies, but certainly not all, or even most.

Wrong Christopher Taylor, I work mostly in ink and pencil. I'm an illustrator, not a fine artist. And Picasso is crap

I'm not confused about Picasso as an artist, or as a politician. But the quote stands quite nicely on its own. I don't love cubism but that's what bad drugs do to art.

I'll say this much: there are very good artists who attempt great subject matter, with the attendant majesty or technique, and there are mediocre artists who exalt the quotidian by capturing its spirit. All art is just this way: the spirit that goes into it comes out of it when we experience it. There is also a technical aspect of reproduction or illustration that can be appreciated for its craftsmanship, but leaves us none the better for having seen it.

Now, Dali? The spirit that I experience when I see his work is a dark and disturbed one. Picasso, even his most distorted, never gives me that dark and spiritually troubling edge. Music affects me the same way. Life's too short to celebrate the darkness.

Oy, "Art."

My art is aural, not visual, so I'm for sure not qualified. For the rest, it's pretty much "I know what I like." Come to think of it, that's pretty much how I feel about music too. Like Frank Zappa un-answerably put it, "Talking about music is like dancing to architecture."

In re Picasso.....what I think is that any of the 20th-century "isms" like cubism are best understood through Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word, which imo makes pretty clear that to those guys the in-group Message behind what you see on the canvas was (a) the only importance of the artwork itself, and (b) only to be understood by the in-group of the Art World, which I have conveniently labeled The Hipnoscenti.

From this perspective, which I think is the only correct one, "art" of this type is essentially literary, not visual - and therefore the political content of Picasso's painting not only cannot be ignored, but to do so would be to miss the point that Picasso himself intended.

Beyond that, the whole concept of artists making art for the approval of other artists (and ultimately screamingly-hip and rich "patrons") fills me with despair. Surely no one here can miss how conveniently that miasma of mutual masturbation feeds directly into the Communist ideal of brutalizing the senses of the populace through the promotion of public ugliness in the name of Dialectical Materialism.

Why will the music of Bach and Mozart and the paintings of the Flemish and of Norman Rockwell outlive the Rothkos and Pollacks and the immortal poetry of Lou Reed and "Art Rock"? Because they give voice to the longings and humanity of the great mass of people who have emotions of which they are incapable of expression, that's why. Thankfully the percentage of the population that responds viscerally to Cubism and Punk Rock is very, very low, and will always be.

I am not an artist of any kind. I do enjoy walking around art galleries and looking at the older paintings. Some paintings, like the cubists, I don't spend much time on. Jackson Pollack and the like, I don't spend any time on.

People appreciate different things. I'm OK with letting others like what they like.