Art and skill.
"Art is skill", the great Plato said.
This axiom has only been contested once in the history of art: in our time.
First, it was contested by the Modern school who were patently without skill. Cutting up animals and throwing paint at canvas, or painting flat squares with masking tape, piling bricks into a museum, are obviously not skilled activities. This travesty is still continuing because of the aging Modernists who still control all public-funded museums and art schools. More recently they have found a new skill-less art form to espouse: the work of unskilled ethnic groups whose work has to be shown as a kind of "democratisation" of art. They fear skill, because it is recognised by all; and their jobs depend on them alone being the arbiters of artistic merit. These jhighly paid jobs are lifetime appointments, so don't look for any changes here. They will leave only when the die of senility.
But now there is another, much more dangerous group who deny the role of skill in art.
They are the highly successful artists who project colour photographs onto their canvases to trace in pencil outlines and then to color in oil paints. There is NO skill is involved in this. They, like their mortal enemies, the modernists, say that skill is of no consequence; that it is only the result that matters. At least the modernists were honest about their uselessness; these photopainters are dangerous deceivers, selling fraud as art. They need to be exposed and identified for what they are.
Because at the heart of art lies this truth: "Art is skill".
The skill of observation, of empathy, of memory and of visualistion.
The skill of capturing movement in rapid sketches, and studying tone and form in careful studies.
The skill of composition and of arranging color and texture into passages of great beauty.
The skill of handling oil paint, pastel, and watercolour, as well as pencil and charcoal.
The skills of comprehending the secrets of chiaroscuro, palimpsest and paint quality.
The skill of conveying expression and mood qualities to shapes and forms.
The skill of integrating the various elements that make up the work into a seamless and harmonised whole.
One of the greatest flowering of pure skill was in the 19th Century, with artists such as Waterhouse, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Klimt, Alma-Tadema, Corot, Bouguereau, Gerome, Degas, Mauve, Mancini and others.
Why are they unknown today? Simply because the Modernists who control the exhibition and teaching of art, have so decreed. Ironically, the people who shout the loudest about these truly great artists, and who pretend to emulate them, are the fraudsters of photopainting.
Look up these artists of skill in your library, or on the internet, and rediscover the joy of loving art.
Then discover the joy of creating works of skill, truth, power, and beauty.
Ryno.
The picture below is by Waterhouse; Saint Cecilia.
.
This axiom has only been contested once in the history of art: in our time.
First, it was contested by the Modern school who were patently without skill. Cutting up animals and throwing paint at canvas, or painting flat squares with masking tape, piling bricks into a museum, are obviously not skilled activities. This travesty is still continuing because of the aging Modernists who still control all public-funded museums and art schools. More recently they have found a new skill-less art form to espouse: the work of unskilled ethnic groups whose work has to be shown as a kind of "democratisation" of art. They fear skill, because it is recognised by all; and their jobs depend on them alone being the arbiters of artistic merit. These jhighly paid jobs are lifetime appointments, so don't look for any changes here. They will leave only when the die of senility.
But now there is another, much more dangerous group who deny the role of skill in art.
They are the highly successful artists who project colour photographs onto their canvases to trace in pencil outlines and then to color in oil paints. There is NO skill is involved in this. They, like their mortal enemies, the modernists, say that skill is of no consequence; that it is only the result that matters. At least the modernists were honest about their uselessness; these photopainters are dangerous deceivers, selling fraud as art. They need to be exposed and identified for what they are.
Because at the heart of art lies this truth: "Art is skill".
The skill of observation, of empathy, of memory and of visualistion.
The skill of capturing movement in rapid sketches, and studying tone and form in careful studies.
The skill of composition and of arranging color and texture into passages of great beauty.
The skill of handling oil paint, pastel, and watercolour, as well as pencil and charcoal.
The skills of comprehending the secrets of chiaroscuro, palimpsest and paint quality.
The skill of conveying expression and mood qualities to shapes and forms.
The skill of integrating the various elements that make up the work into a seamless and harmonised whole.
One of the greatest flowering of pure skill was in the 19th Century, with artists such as Waterhouse, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Klimt, Alma-Tadema, Corot, Bouguereau, Gerome, Degas, Mauve, Mancini and others.
Why are they unknown today? Simply because the Modernists who control the exhibition and teaching of art, have so decreed. Ironically, the people who shout the loudest about these truly great artists, and who pretend to emulate them, are the fraudsters of photopainting.
Look up these artists of skill in your library, or on the internet, and rediscover the joy of loving art.
Then discover the joy of creating works of skill, truth, power, and beauty.
Ryno.
The picture below is by Waterhouse; Saint Cecilia.
.
posted by Ryno Swart | 1:25 AM
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