{"id":1222,"date":"2009-07-20T06:47:27","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T14:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2009-07-20T10:08:25","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T18:08:25","slug":"bad-art-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=1222","title":{"rendered":"bad art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0I’ve always known that one way to win fame and fortune in the art world is to produce bad art.\u00a0 Not unbelievably terrible art, but just stuff that looks perhaps childish or unfinished.\u00a0 Often this will be praised as “abstract genius” when it is little more than lack of skill and\/or imagination.<\/p>\n

It pains me to no end to know that a young great artist like James Jean is largely unknown outside the comic book and “young artist” world (i.e. the network of young artists themselves) while hacks like this guy<\/a> get to meet Muhammad Ali, Larry King and even the President (both the new and old).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Go ahead and check out the story about him presenting his art to Mrs. Obama here<\/a>.\u00a0 I just read this and kept thinking “really?….really?!\u00a0 … REALLY?!”\u00a0\u00a0 C’mon Michelle, I’m sure Maleeyah has created more impressive portraits of her mom in her grade school art class.\u00a0 At least those probably had a face…and fingers.\u00a0 This guy, Patrick, seems like a nice guy.\u00a0 I’m not meaning to say he is a bad person, just a bad artist.\u00a0 It pains me that guys like this are able to make a good living doing their “art” while more talented people languish in 9-5 “jobs.”<\/p>\n

James Jean doesn’t have to do that, he’s won enough Eisner Awards to ensure that, but many others aren’t as “lucky.”<\/p>\n

Like these folks:<\/p>\n

Nathan Ota<\/a><\/p>\n

Stephanie Brown<\/a><\/p>\n

J Cooper<\/a><\/p>\n

and so on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course I don’t know for sure that they aren’t millionaires selling their art to Presidents… but reading their blogs makes it seem like they don’t have the freedom of Patrick.<\/p>\n

And this leads back to the debate about what is “good” art.\u00a0 I’ve always stood by the notion that a work must be aesthetically pleasing, skillfully produced\u00a0and with purpose (for the artist, audience or both).\u00a0 Patrick’s commissions surely have purpose, but they’re hardly aesthetically pleasing (although that is an individual opinion I suppose) or skillfully produced.\u00a0 In the same way I don’t believe that Duchamp’s Fountain is art simply by calling it art.\u00a0 There is a difference in assigning your name to something to denote “skill” and actually demonstrating your skills.\u00a0 Often Patrick’s work (check out the website) doesn’t even look nice, it looks like muddy rubbed out pastels that were left in the trash after art class.<\/p>\n

In the old days, the abstract masters would learn how to make art with skill before setting their sights on abstraction.\u00a0 Picasso could actually paint and draw very well if he wanted to.\u00a0 I doubt Patrick can.<\/p>\n

I also have mixed feelings regarding my own work.\u00a0 Two friends saw some of my work this weekend that had never seen it before (the new work that isn’t on this website) and said I should show it somewhere.\u00a0 The cleaning guy that cleaned my carpets said the same thing.\u00a0 I still think I have a way to go before doing anything like that, but when I see things like Patrick’s it blows those notions out of the water because (at least in my opinion) my work is at least better than that…. and Michelle Obama bought something from him!<\/p>\n

However, even though Patrick’s work is not pleasing to my eye – he does have a consistent style, which is something I’m still working on.\u00a0 Perhaps that is the key.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0I’ve always known that one way to win fame and fortune in the art world is to produce bad art.\u00a0 Not unbelievably terrible art, but just stuff that looks perhaps childish or unfinished.\u00a0 Often this will be praised as “abstract genius” when it is little more than lack of skill and\/or imagination. It pains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1223,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions\/1223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}