abstract art

if pictorial expression has changed, it is because modern life has made it necessary.

- Fernard Leger

cubism

For a long time I never understood cubism and why some of its art is so expensive. This following excerpt helps explain why it developed but still doesn't answer why it's so damn expensive. If you do want an explanation, check out some of my previous excerpts on contemporary art:

The aim of cubism was not to reproduce visual reality but to record a response to an object - whether still life, landscape, or individual - that was developed over time and was both visual, in reflecting different angles of vision, and intellectual. What was important was not the sitter as he appeared to the world but the painter's conception of him. Kahnweiler likened the process to that of poetry, quoting the French nineteenth-century poet Mallarmé, who claimed that his poetic goal was "to describe not the thing itself but the effect it produces." Once photography had freed painters from the obligation to create a likeness, they could abstract the portrait in a variety of ways.

Pablo Picasso - Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1910)

In order for the artist's subjective response to be considered the most important aspect of a portrait, it was necessary for a change to occur in the circum stances in which portraits were made. In previous centuries the relationship between sitter and artist had been dominated by the sitter: it was the sitter (or the person commissioning the portrait) who dictated how the sitter was represented, and it was the sitter's self- image that the portraitist was employed to convey. But when artists, represented by dealers, began to paint almost exclusively for the open market, portrait commissions gradually became less important to their financial survival. Since the late nineteenth century artists have been increasingly able to choose whom they paint. (Picasso's portraits were almost all of his friends, wives, lovers, and children.) Today when some one commissions a portrait from a leading artist he or she usually does so on the understanding that he or she will submit uncomplainingly to the artist's vision.

Abstraction in portraiture - which results from the imposition of the artist's own personal vision on the sitter - has many sources, but it always depends on the artist being seen as the more powerful partner in the transaction. However, when looking at portraits it is as well to remember how recent such a view is. Today we may remember Mona Lisa only because she was painted by Leonardo, and Mr. and Mrs. Andrews simply because they had the foresight to ask Gainsborough to portray them, but at the time they would have had no doubt that it was they who were calling the shots.

- Alexander Stugris

Pablo Picasso - Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)

Paris Society

The German artist Max Beckmann captures the atmosphere at a rich high-society soirée in Paris. Each party-goer is a caricature, and the thick black outlines give the impression of a spontaneous charcoal-like sketch. Just as this rough style contrasts with the polish and veneer of the party, the grotesque faces contrast with the elegant clothing of the party­goers, who push against each other in the cramped space. Most seem not to notice one another, and certainly no one is paying any attention to the singer in the background. This society is shown as fragmented and hypocritical.

Max Beckmann - Paris Society (1931)

tacky art?

contemporary art in quotes

I find that these quotes do a better job getting to the real foundation of what is going on in today's contemporary art world more than any book, article, or paper I read recently.

Art should chase life while the art world chases money; if you start chasing money with art the whole thing is fucked.

- Damien Hirst

Art prices are determined by the meeting of real or induced scarcity with pure, irrational desire, and nothing is more manipulable than desire...A fair price is the highest one a collector can be induced to pay.

- Robert Hughes


Art dealers are like surfboard riders.
You can't make a wave.
If there aren't waves out there, you're dead.
But the good surfboard riders can sense which of
the waves coming in will be the good one,
the one that will last. Successful art dealers
have a feeling for hitting the right wave.

- Andre Emmerich


Bernard Berenson [the critic] said to Bauer the antique dealer:
"A man as scholarly as yourself shouldn't be a dealer, it's horrible to be a dealer." To which Bauer replied,
"Between you and me there's no difference; I'm an intellectual dealer and you're a dealing intellectual."

- Rene Gimpel


On art dealers:
We act as a sort of broker trying to represent the desires of artists and the needs of private collectors and museums.

- Brent Sikkema


Art tells you things you don't know you need to know until you know them.

- Peter Schjeldahl


It is a great paradox of our times that visual culture should be vanishing even as the art market soars.
Abstract concepts take precedence over what the eye sees.
Artists' names matter even more, and the art to which they are attached ever less.

- Souren Melikian


There are no rules about investment.
Sharks can be good. Artists' dung can be good.
Oil on canvas can be good. There's a squad of conservators out there to look after anything an artist decides is art.

- Charles Saatchi


Money complicates everything. I have a genuine belief that art is a more powerful currency than money - that's the romantic feeling that an artist has.
But you start to have this sneaking feeling that money is more powerful.

- Damien Hirst


The museum has largely supplanted the church as the emblematic focus of the American city.

- Robert Hughes

sprezzatura

Leonardo Di Vinci - Mona Lisa (1506)

Sprezzatura means, literally, disdain and detachment. It is the art of refraining from the appearance of trying to present oneself in a particular way. The sprezzatura of the Mona Lisa is seen in both her smile and the positioning of her hands. Both the smile and hands are intended to convey her grandeur, self-confidence and societal position.