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| One of Van Gogh's famous impressions |
This is not just about the most celebrated ginger in the world (apart from Ed Sheeran obviously) but it is about art in general. Why do people continue to pay over the odds for some art that quite frankly if your six year old nephew had painted it you would be concerned that they have special needs?
Why isn't a copy of a masterpiece the same value as the original? Why are people who copy works of art frowned upon, surely they have similar painting ability? Surely you stare and admire the picture itself and not the letter of provenance.
What creates the value? I am pretty sure that many collectors create the value itself rather than the original artists? It appears to be clever marketing and the creation of perceived value. If one collector suddenly pays a million quid for the work of a new artist the rest of their work is worth something and all of a sudden the complete collection is worth more than the original outset. I think its all about creating a bubble and offloading the profit before that bubble bursts, similar to the subprime mortgage or dare I say it bitcoin. I am sure Tracy Emin's bed is very comfortable but was it really worth £2.5m for the bragging rights of owning it? What's it worth now I wonder or has the maid washed the sheets and made the bed?
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| Turning Roads (A51 probably) into fields |
Don't get me going on Cezanne either. I do admire the way that he very cleverly painted out the A51 and the massive Carrefour in some of his pictures but that doesn't mean people should pay over the odds for Aix en Provence's finest pictures. Interesting that his equally famous best friend from school Emile Zola never really gets a mention in Aix though he does get the enviable accolade of having a bottle of cheap rose named after him. Cubism is obviously more powerful than the pen in Provence.
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| My Ex-Mother-in-Law yesterday. |
I really like Picasso though, pictures with women with one eye higher than the other looking very much like the ex mother-in-law, who incidentally I like very much, it's just her daughter that I struggle with. I also agree with his statements that the ability to create art hasn't really changed since cave painting began. I did try and recreate a cave painting for my own man cave once but gave up when I realised that I wasn't as good as the Neanderthal I was trying to copy. The Cave Person clearly went to art school. The series of pictures I really like are Picasso's bull progression which really show how far we have come in art since Neolithic times.
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| Cave painting to modern progress |
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| One of Picasso's masterpieces sold for £45m! |
Not all of Picasso's work has been as well received, I understand from Jeremy Clarkson that the Citroen that Picasso made had a few issues.
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| Cheating at art in the olden days |
Canaletto, Guardi, Bellotti and Marieschi I absolutely adore as they show clear historical detail in their masterpieces. They did however cheat a little by using a camera obscura which can be compared to using tracing paper or painting by numbers as its difficult to get any of the perspective wrong. Just look how skilled they are drawing people in those pictures, pretty shocking. So are they masterpieces as they cheated? I would however quite happily stare at their brilliance in the form of a print.
Does that make me cheap?
