Bob W wrote: >> >> So, the "Painter of Light" (tm) has passed at the early age of 54 >> >> years. The Kenny G of painting is gone... >> > >> > He may not have been too fast to live, but 54 is too young to die. >> I'm >> > 54. I shall be mightily pissed off if I don't live well well beyond >> 90. >> > >> > I love this phrase from the article someone linked to "it has become >> > fashionable for art critics to dismiss his pieces." >> > >> > "It has become fashionable" - as if it was a mere passing fad among >> > the ignoranti, and the true artistic value of this oeuvre will come >> to >> > be understood with the passing of the years. >> >> Hi work was conceptually trite and formulaic in execution, but he was >> not without talent. Of course his main talent was marketing: he >> discovered a way to turn painting into a very lucrative enterprise. For >> that, he is to be commended. > >sure, if you think making money out of shit is the be-all and end-all, but >his work is still shit and it will always be dismissed as shit by people who >know shit from shinola.
He turned painting into a *commodity*. A friend of mine at the George Eastman House often complains about Ansel Adams, not over his photography, which she likes, but because she says he was "a shameless self-promoter". My view is that his self-promotion played a large role in getting photography accepted as an art form by the general public (there are plenty of non-photographers who couldn't name any famous photographer aside form Ansel Adams). For this all photographers - in all genres - owe AA a great debt. But Kinkade did exactly the *opposite* for painting. -- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
