This is why people hate art. It hangs in some gallery with a $20k price tag on it and conveys nothing more than pretension. It's mute. It does not take skill to produce this. It only takes skill to convince people that the outrageous price is somehow justified.
I think the art of painting has been in a long decline. Somewhere in the late 1940's, novelty supplanted skill, abstraction replaced emotion, and art became disconnected from reality. Today, 50 years after Pollack dripped his paint (again, no skill), not even novelty remains.
There was a brief respite with pop artists like Warhol. They brought back accessibility. People could understand the language of iconography and apply the experience to their lives and times. Then it was lost again.
My core complaint is this; if art does not communicate in a visual language that is naturally accessible, if it requires a pamphlet, art history class, or knowledge of the artist's back story, if art requires explanation, then it doesn't have anything to say. It's gibberish and therefore irrelevant. Most people wouldn't indulge a film that was nothing but static or music that was random noise, so why should painting and sculpture be exempt?
Fortunately, accessible art has returned in the form of pop surrealism. Artists like Mark Ryden and Camille Rose Garcia have created engaging paintings that connect to the human experience in a tangible (albeit nostalgic) way. They use a visual language grounded in the actual. People, places, and things can be identified as such. Instead of a nebulous fog, we are given form, we are given color, we are given emotion, we are given art.
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This is the blog of Richard Conn, Oxford MBA. I'm originally from Vancouver, Washington, but have lived in LA for the past ten years. So far, I've traveled to 26 countries and have a passion for digital marketing.
