Hockney

[annadomino]

Do you honestly think he has talent? Have seen better paintings done by 10 year olds.

[VHG]

Since when has talent been involved in being a "great artist" (well in recent years anyway).

Talentless people like Tracy Emin seem to make a fortune (and get a lot of fame) by exploiting the confused world of "modern art" (which has a lot of the emporers new clothes about it).

A visit to the Tate Modern in London will convince you that many "modern artisits" have little or no real talent, and a broom leaning against the wall left there by a cleaner could easily be mistaken for a piece of modern art.

I went there a year or so back and went into one small gallery where it looked like they had the decorators in, with a step ladder and a trestle table covered in paint pots, paint brushes, empty cups, ash trays, old newspapers etc.

Only when i saw one of the gallery caretakers sitting on a chair next to it did I realise it was a piece of "art".

[Buenchico]

It's his choice of subject, rather than his technical style which wins him plaudits. For example it's almost impossible to view this without thinking about the scene just BEFORE the picture was painted:
http://upload.wikimed...C_A_Bigger_Splash.jpg

Chris

[ichkeria]

It is surely a sign of a great artist that he/she can have people thinking they could do better (naturally there are people - me, for example - who have the same effect but that's because most other people COULD do better!).
I remember a hilarious discussion about Joyce's Ulysses where a string of people lined up to say they could do a better job of writing a book in which nothing happened (!)

[Maydup]

What makes you say that anna?

I really liked his Yorkshire series when he moved home from America a few years ago.

http://www.artknowled...shire_Landscapes.html

[jno]

oh sure, 10-year-olds churn out this sort of stuff every day

http://www.shafe.co.u...rk_and_Percy_1970.jpg

[sandyRoe]

That chap with the cat was eventually murdered by his lover. I thought it was black cats were unlucky.

[jno]

the cat was lucky, nobody stabbed it.

[rojash]

"It is surely a sign of a great artist that he/she can have people thinking they could do better"

Oh yeah, I often glance at a Da Vinci or a Canaletto, and "I could do better"

[jno]

that's inspiration, isn't it, rojash? One of the things art is said to be able to do.

I don't know about Leonardo but I've often thought I could do a Canaletto - when you look at it closely and see exactly how he's drawn the little wavelets, and the way coloured dots miraculously merge into Venetians.

It's possible my self-confidence is misplaced, of course. But making it look easy is also something artists may do.

[heathfield]

IMHO, having only attended art school for four years, I can still tell you that there's an awful lot wrong in Hockney's painting of Mr and Mrs Clark, though everyone seems too scared to admit it. That it was listed among the 'Best 10 in British Art' tells you a great deal about the state of art in Britain, and rather more about those self-aggrandizing pundits who pompously declare to us what's good and what isn't.

[jno]

Hockney also went to art school, and had been painting for more than 10 years when he did Percy. But perhaps it was a different art school from yours and he was taught all wrong; though why anyone should be "scared" to admit it beats me. Scared of what?

So - apart from the fact that a 10-year-old could have done it - what's wrong with it?

[Craftypig]

This is a polite request heathfield, can you point out some of the things that wrong with the painting, I'm not being sarcastic or anything, I hold similar views about "modern art"n as you do based on what you have said your post.