What makes a painting popular? As I write, the social media-style art site Artfinder lists the top five works collected by its users as follows:
1. Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise
2. Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night
3. Gustav Klimt, The Kiss
4. Gustave Caillebotte, The Parquet Planers
5. Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave
It’s interesting that popularity in this case depends on what people add to their online collection. I have always believed that artistic taste varies wildly between works we might find challenging and stimulating in a gallery, and those we’d love to own. Putting a work of art in your digital collection is not quite the same as buying the actual painting – but it means you want to have it around, at least on screen. Collecting a work of art, even virtually, means you can live with it.
So it is not surprising that the Artfinder top five may strike some as conservative. Or a little bit obvious. After all, the only surprising name here is Gustave Caillebotte, whose enigmatic, arguably homoerotic image of working men is a fascinating treasure of the Musée d’Orsay.
But popularity always is obvious. And it is healthy. On the whole, the world’s favourite works of art are the world’s best works of art. Monet deserves his number one slot. He is an artist you don’t find a lot of cooler-than-thou art theory books being written about – because he is popular. But there are few experiences in art as rapturous as losing yourself in a Monet. What is retardataire about the sensory and psychological journeys into which his paintings lure the beholder?
Van Gogh, the visionary, and Klimt, the hedonist, are two more artists whose popularity is heartening. It is a great posthumous gift to Van Gogh to be loved by so many when he was so lonely in life. And Klimt, however many snobs try to do him down, is a mystic priest of love.
Japanese art was loved by Van Gogh and his contemporaries, so Hokusai confirms that the mood here is early modernist.
Perhaps what it reveals is that the most popular art, that hits most people most deeply, is the art of the early modernist era from the 1860s to the 1900s, when new visions changed painting forever while still drawing on its long global history. It was a golden moment.
i think the article is very interesting because it shows how art is apprecited from many different points,it also show me many famous painters and their paintings,and the meaning of them
ReplyDeleteRodrigo Boza
In my opinion the article gives me too many points of view- And it also shows me to appreciate the art in a different way by comparing different art pieces and different painters.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting and also shows different painters who were very important in the field of art
ReplyDeletewe realize the importance of art in different ways in which the various painters were able to express the different ways to paint there. is a very important item.
gabriela torres
Freom my point of view it´s interesting because this article give differents opinions and also they give us the importance of the art in that time and that was the meaning fron this paintings
ReplyDeleteFabiola Ore
It is a good point of view,I agree on the part that says:"The artistic taste varies wildly between works we might find challenging and stimulating" because people have differents points of view, so can we say: If a group of people think that a painting is exiting,it would be popular.
ReplyDeleteDANIELA ALEMAN
ReplyDeleteART IS THE EXPRESSION OF AN ARTIST'S EXPERIENCE AND FEELINGS. THIS IS A WAY TO SHARE WITH THE PEOPLE THE PERCEPTION OF A PAINTOR .
AN ARTIST ALWAYS NEEDS TO BE STIMULATED IN ORDER TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW. THIS IS A HUGE CHALLENGE FOR AN ARTIST.
Leevan Urquizo Rubio