Chess 'fever'.

Yes, you are right.  I was referring to skill and technique in art.  In the end I suppose, if you find something to be art, that is your choice, so it's a hard word to define.  I saw the three bags of sand and the bricks at the Liverpool Tate.  Although I wouldn't call them art, I could see that there was a beauty of sorts to them, as in many inanimate objects.

I quite like art that looks nice.  Is Vettriano claiming more than to produce pictures that are nice to look at?  I think he conveys certain ideas (glamour, nostalgia, melancholy) rather well, so for me that makes him a good artist, but we all have our own ideas.

Your retort does nothing to address the issue that the work of the artists that you mention has no intellectual content and also bears NO relevance to whether I may be considered successful or otherwise.  Its a rather insipid and somewhat transparent logical fallacy and ad hominem. Try to divorce your arguments from the personality behind them in the same way you manage to divorce your opinions from reality.  Who knows you may do better.

On the contrary i have not been condescending to you and in fact I have respected you enough to attempt to engage you in what so far has been an interesting discussion.  May I suggest that this unwarranted attack and affront to my personal dignity is not a reflection of me but of your perceptions fomented by a limited grasp of the subject? 

I do not think any less of you or anyone else for that matter because no one can know everything and if you have never studied art then its entirely unreasonable to expect anything else.  Then again civility costs nothing either.

Try an education.

No my art is empty and deviod, it has no meaning to anyone except me and even then thats pushing it.  Its a gimmik! that is all, nothing more.

I have watched some interviews of Vettriano, hes entirely honest about his work.  Its generally autobiographical and is mostly like you say about things like nostalgia and sex.  As I have stated many people find it appealing and they do not care if it has intellectual content or not, they simply want something to hang on their walls.  There is nothing wrong with this, people have been hanging decorative pieces on their walls for ages, first tapestries and latterly wallpaper.  But art has gone beyond the merely decorative.  We now demand meaning. Does Vittrianos work have any meaning beyond the merely decorative? This is the question.

European city of culture and knife capital of Europe in the same week!

Yes so do we, a picture of the Queen Mother.

Any thoughts on graffiti...passed this today...it's by Trix...thought of this thread!!...

kaynight wrote:

Great post.... Geddit?!!!

Yes!! :-D

I think it can communicate an emotion (nostalgia, melancholy etc) which is what I see as the principle purpose of art.  I am puzzled by what you mean by 'intellectual content', could you give an example?

The fact that Vettriano seems honest about his work is why I wouldn't agree with your word 'charlatan' which implies deception. He is quite honest about producing art that people like to look at and put on their walls.  I'd be more suspicious of less traditional artists who may or may not be peddling rubbish for vast sums of money or acclaim.

I don't know a lot about art, but my bullsh*t detector is in good working order.

The term charlatan was merely a jest to provoke Kaynight.

As for intellectual content, yes, take Van Gogh his famous work Starry Night painted during his convalescence after his breakdown. It has not a single figure perhaps depicting a feeling of alienation, it may be construed as religious or spiritual due to the prominence of the church, the Cyprus trees may be symbolic as they stretch from earth to the heavens and are associated with death.  All of these elements foment intellectual thought.  Its the same with his earlier work the potato eaters which depicts a very frugal dinner.  You can see the hands of the workers gnarled from tilling the soil, each seated at the table but somehow disconnected as if in their own world weighed heavy by labour, its evocative of honesty and simplicity, a way of life far removed from decadence, of virtue and self-reliance.  This is intellectual content.  Gauguin went even further and started to introduce philosophical themes, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? An amazing depiction of life.  This is intended to foment intellectual thought. Its intellectual content.

Ah yes, see what you mean now.  Thanks for the examples.  

Hmm...It could be possible that Van Gogh was simply painting a scene of a starry night as he actually saw it, because he found it visually beautiful, and the intellectual contents are simply the projections of the person observing the art.

From his writings and letters, it seems his primary aims in painting were more about trying to capture the world as he saw it, and was entirely devoid of intentional symbology.

I mean he was on  a hill where there were cyprus trees, a church, and some stars...and he painted that.

kaynight wrote:

Great post.... Geddit?!!!

Oh!! Because the owl is sitting on the post!!! I really do 'get it' now....seven hours later.... :-D

So there were these people sitting around and eating potatoes...

and he painted a picture of them, no need for psuedo-proletariat interpetations.

Geez...next thing you know, the "Art Cogniscenti" will be telling us he had a foot fetish because he painted a pair of shoes.

Van Gogh used new techniques to paint pretty, basically decorative motifs, or chose to practice by painting things he actually saw, per the newer ideas of plein-air introduced by the impressionists.

It's as simple as that.

For instance, he did a lot of pictures of irises...simple still lifes; probably irises have some kind of mythological or metaphorical overtones.

My guess, he saw some irises, liked the way they looked, and painted pictures of them. 

So, if "The Potato Eaters" is a comment on worker alienation from each other and society, then "Cafe at Night" must be a scathing excortiation of the opposing lifestyles of the bourgeois...right?