The Chairman notes that a certain Sarah Pickstone has won the John Moores Prize with a work entitled "Stevie Smith and the Willow, shown below.
Sarah Pickstone is about 7, right?
Seems to me that the rarefied world of the art establishment (dare I say vacuous world) is exhibiting the 'prizes-for-all' mentality that has bedevilled education for the last few decades. I'm afraid I'm with Brian Sewell on this: "The trouble with most art since the second world war is that it has been, when claiming to be modern, merely repetitive..... Critics unquestioningly accept as art all that is given them by the Arts Council, Serota, a tiny bunch of canny dealers, and now the Royal Academy."
I'd like to add Saatchi to the above list, but I suspect it's more the lackeys who fawn on his every word and the YBAs who churn out the dross that panders to his tastes and money. One must remember that Saatchi made his first fortune from advertising - and his second from promoting YBAs.
I was hoping that, in a new age of austerity, Emperor Rothko's new clothes would be seen for what they are - tawdry tat or a mirage. Unfortunately money has its claws too deeply embedded in 'art'. Today we are seeing metaphorical degrees awarded to artists where even a D grade GCSE isn't warranted. An establishment clique and a bunch of all-too-compliant critics rule the art world.
The word art, like the word poverty, has lost its true meaning through overuse and vested interests.
But that's only my opinion.
I'd like to add Saatchi to the above list, but I suspect it's more the lackeys who fawn on his every word and the YBAs who churn out the dross that panders to his tastes and money. One must remember that Saatchi made his first fortune from advertising - and his second from promoting YBAs.
I was hoping that, in a new age of austerity, Emperor Rothko's new clothes would be seen for what they are - tawdry tat or a mirage. Unfortunately money has its claws too deeply embedded in 'art'. Today we are seeing metaphorical degrees awarded to artists where even a D grade GCSE isn't warranted. An establishment clique and a bunch of all-too-compliant critics rule the art world.
The word art, like the word poverty, has lost its true meaning through overuse and vested interests.
But that's only my opinion.
5 comments:
I found some blurb about Sarah Pickstone's paitings:-
It’s an act of transformation with an eye to the place where lifeforce meets the thinking eye itself. It’s a body of work galvanised by the fluidity of the mind and the symmetry connected to reflection. It's a simultaneous re-creation and understanding of psychological, diachronic and geographical space, and a defying of the borders between them. These paintings, lit by their own leafy syntax, by a deep sourced and communal imagination, fuse the mind, art, nature and the thinking spirit into an affirmation as big and unfussed as a sky.'
These paintings don't work. My mind is not fused... Maybe if I see on up close and personal then I will get this fusing thing?
Blimey, the blurb more or less infers that these paintings can give you some sort of religious experience...
Sx
And here is the link where I got the blurb from:-
Here
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I just call it pretentious shite.
As my father would have said, It's all bullshit." I am beyond tired of the art world, and I worked in it for several years. The fawning over claptrap never ends. I think she won because she named a woman poet in the title. That gave her a leg up....
I'm glad I stopped by today.
Strikes me Stevie in that picture is neither waving nor drowning. She's just kind of wading.
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