#art, My Useless Artists Ranking Top Ten: Part 1

(Vogue Mexico)

1) Frida Kahlo. Mediocre, did not know how to draw or paint. At best a naïve artist, but hardly even there. It is hard for me to even call her a bad artist, because I tremble to use the word «artist» when referring to her. However, since her death they have converted her into the «queen of merchandising».

(Frida Kahlo Halloween costumes for girls and dogs/photo Jolly Green)

Need I say more about this supposed artist that never added anything to art history? (Sorry if you are a fan. I am hot here to discourage you. This is simply my opinion).

2) Joan Miró. Boring to the extreme. He never experimented, he never searched. He did not even mix colours. What for? Buy the tubes, they already come mixed and then «create» a series of paintings using simply the colours (primary ones) as they come out of the tube. Finish series in ten minutes. If his family had not opened the Joan Miró foundation where would all those canvases be? I suspect collecting dust in some attic or basement. However, I do believe he was a smashing good sort of chap.

(The incredibly «creative» Blue Immersion paintings by Joan Miró/image CAB WordPress)

3 A + B) (A)Yoko Ono. If she had not married John Lennon (who she did her best to seduce back in the late 1960’s), nobody would have ever heard of her. And that would have been hunky dory. The only thing she does worse than art is singing, composing and performing. Cannot say anything else about this woman, except that she may actually also be Yayoi Kusama, there is a likeness, no? That allows me to segway to #3 (B), Yayoi Kusama. Great curtain designs for the home of a blind man…

(Yoko Ono/Gala)
(Yayoi Kusama/The Washington Post)

Let me be clear on this very important point. I am judging only the art that these artists have brought to the world. I do not know these people personally therefore I make no judgements on their personality, lifestyle or anything like that. It is nothing personal. If you are a fan of any of these or of any of the ones in the forthcoming part 2, I am so sorry, but this is my opinion based upon a lifetime of study in art and art history. And I also base these opinions on common sense and good taste.

(2022)

CHEERS

#art, Remember Dora Maar?

(Serbian Times)

You might remember her as one of Picasso’s women. Or you might seem to recall that she was a little off, or perhaps totally crazy. Perhaps you know something about her history as a stubborn, difficult woman that ended up in various psychiatric facilities. But I will remind you that she was a genuine artist and a brilliant, intelligent woman.

She started off studying art (painting) and later changed to photography. She even had her own photo studio in Paris. She is recognised as a surreal photographer. Her photographs are ethereal, mysterious, engaging, well, simply brilliant.

(Portrait of Dora Maar/Pablo Picasso/Fair use)

She was born in Paris in 1907 and lived a very long life. She died in 1997. She is responsible for the photographic documentation we have of Picasso creating Guernica. But her work, both in photography and in painting, is phenomenal.

Although Picasso discarded her saying she was absolutely crazy and put her in a mental ward. Her friend Paul Éluard helped her cope and took her out of the institution. Picasso bought her the house where she lived until her dying day and he also gave her many paintings which he allowed her to sell if she needed money. When she died she had 130 Picasso paintings and a large collection of her photographs.

(This is how Picasso later saw her, as The Weeping Woman/Public Domain/Fair use)

I thought you might want to look into a most interesting woman such as Dora Maar, so I will leave you with this video…

(2022)

CHEERS

#poem, #art, #prose, ANUNCIAMOS «FEATURES» – ANNOUNCING «FEATURES» en/on VALENCIARTIST!

(Bodo Vespaciano/Actor portrayal)

FEATURES en VALENCIARTIST ya ha comenzado. Únete, participa, comparte tu obra, háblanos y déjate conocer.

Aquí va nuestra cordial invitación para que todos participéis.

Si eres poeta, escritor, artista o te dedicas a alguna de las bellas artes, puedes ser protagonista de FEATURES. Para unirte, solo tienes que responder a esta publicación con tu dirección de correo electrónico para que podamos ponernos en contacto contigo con la información necesaria.

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FEATURES on VALENCIARTIST has begun. Hope you join us. And we certainly hope you enjoy the poets, writers, artists and more which will be featured. All protagonists will be interviewed, a bio and samples of their work for your delight will be included.

We cordially invite you to join! If you are a poet, writer, artist or are engaged in any of the fine arts, you can be a protagonist of FEATURES. To join all you have to do is reply to this post with your email address so that we can contact you with the information necessary.

CHEERS

#art, My Useless Artists Top 10, part 3

7) Marina Abramović. The «grandmother» of performance «art». Frankly speaking I didn’t always feel the same way about this grandmother, but once her complete life of «art» played out I saw that she was no artist that I could call valuable or useful to art history. The way she uses people is akin to abuse and the way she manipulates the observers (or admirers) is a total farce. Her supposed «chance» meeting with Ulay, her one time partner, was contrived. And contriving art is okay by me, but don’t pass it off as real. Therefore she makes my list. Perhaps I am not as disgusted with her as I am with many of the others that populate this top ten, but…

(ELLE Decor)

8) Tracy Emin. Let’s start by saying that her claim to fame came when her «Bed» became a work of art. Frankly it is a disgusting piece and it may just show how untidy and unclean she could be or could have been. I don’t know, I’ve never met her. At least if she did sleep on such a bed. The bed is surrounded with vodka bottles, used condoms and all manner of rubbish. Whatever it is, if art it is, it is bad, useless art. She cannot draw or paint, as you can plainly see in the photograph below. Yet, she is held as one of the great artists of the UK.

(Magazine Artsper)

9) Fernando Botero. The painter of volume, as he calls himself. But those silly little fat figures that he paints are not representative of volume. If you want volume look at the figures of Rubens or the portraits by Jenny Saville. Botero’s do not even represent cartoons. Everything he paints is the same. All the figures have the same blank or withdrawn expression. There is no magic, no power, no charm in his work, therefore he is most definitely in my list.

(Galeria Duque Arango)

10) Keith Haring. This artist and social activist made it to the top of the art world by making doodles. Yes, similar to the ones we all made in our high school notebooks when we were bored in class. There is no aesthetics in his work, and absolutely no rhyme or reason. They could have easily been made by a seven year old. And for a seven year old they might have seemed like art, but really, it is not good art at all for someone that considers himself an artist. He started out making these doodle on or close to galleries. Why didn’t he make them on truck stops on an interstate highway?

(Financial Times)

Well here it is my top 10 most useless artists. I can re-arrange them as they are all really number one. And please understand that my words (passionate as they might be) are not meant to cast any aspersions on the artists themselves. I dislike their work. I do not know them, never met any of them and do not know anything about their lives or personalities. This is for sure not an attack ad hominem. It is an attack on their supposed «art».

CHEERS

#poem, #prose, ¡Arriba con la filosofía! – Up With Philosophy!

(Image from unknown author: «The essence of philosophy is that man should live in a way that his happiness does not depend highly on external things» Epictetus)

HAY QUE BUSCAR LA FILOSOFÍA DEL ARTE EN LA VIDA

Si vives simplemente porque respiras te estás perdiendo la mitad de la vida, y digo la mitad, pero puede ser mucho más. Ciertamente te perderás la mejor parte. Si eres artista, digamos pintor, escultor, poeta, bailarín, coreógrafo, músico, compositor, actor, escritor o practicas cualquier combinación de estas, las bellas artes, eres un ser espectacular. Diría yo, un autentico fenómeno porque haces lo que otros ni sueñan. Pero el artista sabe, instintivamente, que el arte no es solo para decorar o para recrear la vista. El artista reconoce que una obra de arte tiene que ir acompañada de una filosofía que le de valor, trascendencia y espíritu. Entonces podemos decir que el artista es una especie de filosofo que transmite sus ideas visualmente, como los compositores y los músicos lo hacen con la música que componen y que tocan. El artista entonces se nutre de lo que tiene dentro, lo que cultiva con pensamientos y aprendizajes y no en lo que le rodea, o sea lo externo. Epícteto tiene razón.

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ONE MUST HAVE A PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN LIFE

If you live simply because you are breathing, you are missing half of life. I say half, but it probably is much more and I guarantee you will miss the best parts. If you are an artist, let’s say a painter, sculptor, poet, dancer, choreographer, musician, composer, actor, or practice any combination of these, the fine arts, you are a spectacular being. I would say, a true phenomenon because you do what others don’t even dream of. But the artist knows, instinctively, that art is not just for decoration or to create a pretty picture to please the eye. The artist recognizes that a work of art has to be accompanied by a philosophy that gives it value, transcendence, and spirit. So we can say that the artist is a kind of philosopher who visually transmits his ideas, like composers and musicians do with the music they compose and play. The artist, in so doing, nourishes himself with what he has cultivated inside, what his thoughts and learning have provided. Not with what surrounds him, possessions and other things external. Epictetus is right one hundred percent.

GRACIAS – CHEERS

#art, Page 2: My Useless Artists Top 10, part 2

(Image Public Domain/Unknown photographer/All rights remain with its owner)

4) Romero Britto. Well Britto should take up a lot, if not most, of the slots in my ranking of my worst ten artists (my opinion). Really I should not even include him as an artist, because he is not. He is a mystery. I cannot understand why or who would purchase one of his atrocities. He stands next to the great bad ones like Miró and Kahlo. Yet those were simply bad artists, Britto is not an artist. And if you search, you find nothing about hi, He says he never studied art, and that is quite evident when you see his «works» which resemble a kindergartner’s colouring book. I will let you be the judge.

There really is no reason to put any more as they are all the same.

5) Jean-Michel Basquiat. The «enfant terrible» of the 1980’s. The boy-man who wanted to become famous and rich, and who managed it. I must say that I do respect him a bit more than most of the others, but I still consider him a terrible artist. His mother trained him in the arts and he profited from it, to a certain extent. He was a «graffiti artist» for a while, an abstract musician, a painter, a bohemian, a bum on the streets, and a spoiled brat who did not know how to live and ended up the way he did. Suicide by overdose of drugs. His works are uninspiring and quite cliché, boring to the max and do not, nor have they ever proffered anything to art history. The fact that he was always around the «greats» of his time contributed to his posthumous success. As to the value of his works, well, that is a mystery just like with Britto.

(Public Domain)

6) Damien Hirst. If anyone can be called a non-artist (besides the ones I have already mentioned) is Mr. Hirst. He thought he had invented the circles of colour, he put a shark in formaldehyde (which he did not mix well and the shark began to rot and had to be replaced) and he made a skull with diamonds who no one bought and who was secretly purchased by a group which included himself… He does not know anything about painting, drawing, well, nothing about art at all. Well, if I could put all the «artists» I have mentioned as number one on my list, I would.

(Image La Razon/Good grief, he even lied about the date of the animals he put in formaldehyde)

CHEERS