Maybe you could put forward some specific reasons that you don't like Picasso's work, instead of just accusing others of being sheeple for disagreeing with you?
To put my money where my mouth is, a bit, here are some things that I think make Picasso great, other than their relationship to other works and art history more broadly:
1. Picasso's best cubist portraits move away from representing people just as they look and make an attempt to communicate what it might feel like to be a person in all of its inner deformity and (for some) turmoil.
2. He synthesized traditional iconography (especially the Bull) onto modern art in a way that illustrates (and creates) the continuity between modern culture and more ancient ones.
3. Particularly in works like Guernica, Picasso's composition makes me feel--if only dimply--an appropriate sense of sense of (in the case of Guernica) chaos and terror.
I've seen a bazillion highly realistic paintings that are so emotionally flat. The technique in them can be impressive, but otherwise they tend to be both unimaginative and emotionally hollow.
Even more extreme than Picasso in the "it takes no skill to make this" (apprently) but conveying real feeling is Jackson Pollock.
Lots of people will look at Picasso and Pollock and say "my 5 year old kid could do this" -- and there's something to that, as children's art tends to be more fresh and expressive than art made by trained adults -- but kids don't do either (unless they've seen and try to emulate Picasso or Pollock). Neither do adults.
It took Picasso and Pollock to come up with art like that. Same with Malevich's Black Square and Duchamp's Fountain, which are also about as simple as art gets, but things like that weren't considered art before, and it took these artists to make us look at the world in a different way and stretch the boundary of what art could be.
John Cage's work with randomness in music is yet another good example. His compositions could sound awful or boring, and I personally don't like them -- but why must music be something that we like? Can't we appreciate and value music that isn't pleasing?
The paintings of Francis Bacon and Goya are similar -- pretty "ugly" stuff.. but to me they speak the truth about the ugly/horrible side of life that is valuable to look at.
At their best, such artists open our eyes and ears to the world around us and let us see it in a fresh way that we might not have appreciated before.
This is an oxymoronic sentence.
Malevich's Black Square is not pleasing to me, but I value and appreciate it for expanding the boundaries of art. Same with John Cage's music. What's so oxymoronic about that?
Imagine every once in a while there's the same man screaming on a busy street you frequent. Most people around you watch and comment on the beauty of the man and his actions.
After a while of ignoring it and moving on with your day, you eventually have to stop and say "what the fuck are you all talking about?"
Everyone looks at you like you're crazy.
"You know, that man was a child prodigy. He mastered classic singing styles and is now showing off his abstract work"
"You don't have to get it. I find it powerful."
"Art is art. It's playful. He's expressing his emotions. Not everything has to fit in the lines."
The man continues to scream. You comment, "My 5 year old does this every day. Why is this special?" You're desperately looking for answers. Maybe there's something you're missing.
"I doubt your 5 year old could scream like this."
"There are millions of 5 year olds. Only one of Him."
The man continues to scream.
Okay — but outside your narrative, people can tell the difference. Even when the labels are reversed.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761140091...
And preliminary work suggests machines can as well.
https://cs230.stanford.edu/projects_fall_2019/reports/262372...
So, in your analogy, it’s because everyone but you is paying attention to the words and style of the man screaming — which is quite unlike your child’s tantrum. And you’re blinded to that by your own biases.
If you get aggressive and say "what the fuck are you all talking about" and act like you're superior and noticing the emperor has no clothes, then you're being an asshole and no one will want to give you any respect.
Some for sure.
> If you say Picasso was a genius, then you're automatically accepted into a "smart" or "high class" or whatever group of people. If you criticize, then you're ostracized.
By who? I have a ton of family and friends who think Picasso and "all those other guys" suck, none of them are "ostracized". You're more likely to be ostracized if you say "I love Picasso, he was a genius.", and your reply to "what is your favourite work" is "ummm, the melting clock thing?". Mostly because that was Dali.
> It's exhausting to criticize, because the arguments for are so lacking in any substance.
I'm not sure how to respond to "I can't criticize Picasso because your defence will lack substance."
Why, how, would I even "defend" Picasso?
> I truly do not believe even 50% of people who claim to like Picasso actually like Picasso's paintings. I'm very confident the majority are people who say they do to fit into a group.
A majority of people will say they don't like Picasso if they could even identify his work. I didn't really like Picasso until I started seeing his work in person. Even then, he's hit or miss for me.
I'll bet nobody jumps on this comment to ostracize me.
Why bother making it about identity and individual attributes? I find that exhausting. I'm blown away by Picassos work, because I find true beauty in his way of abstracting. He very clearly saw the world from a special point of view, which he translated in a way that language is not meant to convey. I can't claim to truly see what he saw just by looking at his work, but I'm seeing something, and I couldn't care less wether you find this to be an unsubstantial claim, because I don't have to make everything in life about groups and identity, peer confirmation, etc etc.
Some well meant food for thought: not all data has to fit your model of the world. Usually when this happens, it's not a data-problem. Now you can say "well people who claim they see value in abstract art are noise to me", and that's ok, it's your model - but I found it to be a far better strategy in life to keep my mind open instead of being reactionary when confronted with something that doesn't please me. Cheers!
Of course, and I'm not offended that Picasso decided to create his art the way he wanted to. What I'm talking about specifically is art popularity.
I'm also not say that there's no one that legitimately would be able to pick Picasso's work out of a lineup and genuinely find beauty in his work. You very well might be in that category.
My main point is that it seems that some artists such as Picasso (and I'll throw in Rothko as well since I saw them mentioned here) are artificially popularized by people trying to seem high class/intelligent.
Rest assured: while such dynamics (artificial boosting of specific artists) do exist, they are a property of the art market, not of the artists or their audience. This isn’t to say that 100% of people who claim to find beauty in $artist actually do so, but there is a reason that an artist either shapes the culture and his peers - or he does not. Picasso and Rothko got big through organic content aggregation - they checked the boxes of their peers, you will have a hard time finding someone versed in the craft who doesn’t appreciate them. Saying that some of the people who identify as fans of their work actually just look to belong is in no way directly related to the art, it’s an emergent dynamic in any group, so it’s pointless to bring up when the actual art is being discussed - it’s just dismissive of the work and the conversation ends with exhausting fingerpointing and games of groups and identity.
The various motivations behind art, specifically Picasso and Rothko, are free from this exact burden :-)
If we just ignore the aesthetic of Picasso's art, you can categorize Picasso as a genius purely on his influence of other artists that follow him. It's possible to dismiss his influence by saying those other artists are fools or deranged. However, Picasso's influence is undisputed and absolute. Purely on that metric, he is classified as a genius. My hope is that anyone who is reading this will ask "Why is Picasso influential?" instead of "Why would anyone like this?"
It is possible to dislike Picasso and appreciate his influence on art.
That's a dangerous game. You can surely think of plenty of counter examples here in history and modern times.
Brenton Harrison Tarrant commands a following and influenced a lot of copycats (his most recent disciple being the perpetrator of a certain shooting in Buffalo). So... can we categorize Tarrant as a genius purely on his influence of [others] that follow him?
What happened to "assume good faith"? People assume everything others do now is for clout, or virtue signaling, or somehow disingenuous. It's fine not to like popular things without assuming everyone else is lying about liking it.
Once that happens though it opens the door to appreciating other pieces.
I have experienced that same phenomenon with bands, where people say "X" is great and I hear a song and don't "get it" until I find some other song by them years later and it all sort of "clicks" in a way it originally didn't.
With that said, there are definitely people that try to say "I like X" to fit in. I just don't know about the 50% bit in the OP, but then again, 90% of statistics are made up.
BTW -- The Old Guitarist is on permanent display at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is wonderful in person if you haven't been yet.
On the other hand, there is a social context to style and taste - we grow up in a certain aesthetic environment, and may feel true attachment to that, although a large part of it because we grew up with it! So the two factors of authentic enjoyment and social influence don't necessarily need to be in conflict.
Finally, a lot of things are popular for the straightforward reason that large groups of people actually like them. It doesn't even mean they're good. I can't stand most of the best-seller novels personally, but enough people buy and read them. A "Live Laugh Love" piece is probably more popular household item than a given print from Picasso..
Edit: You might also be interested in checking out Rene Girard, with his theory of desire and mimicry. Why people might imitate high-brow tastes etc.
Here is a lecture that discusses this shift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G8UfISpb0I
Not only that, but there's evidence[1][2] that the CIA secretly manipulated the public's perception of modern art in the cultural war against the Soviet Union.
[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...
[2] - https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-...
It's not about it being bad or something. It's just that it's not for me. And that's fine
There is no way to tell this, I am the biggest Picasso fan boy.Some of his paintings are total shit but some are beyond genius.
He had a very long career that spans so many tastes and even within that taste, so many low points. He is the height of being human to me.
This is not to be "cool". My Picasso love is so within my own head.
There is a reason he is a super heavyweight of art. He is not Warhol.
Art is my best analogy to crypto.
Are some crypto technologies cool and useful? Sure. Are some artworks nice to look at and/or thought provoking? Absolutely.
But some are just hyped by people who are all-in on it, without any actual merit. And convincing someone otherwise is like convincing a devout religious person that there's no god. No amount of convincing is going to change their mind because they're all-in.
If you say Picasso was a genius, then you're automatically accepted into a "smart" or "high class" or whatever group of people. If you criticize, then you're ostracized.
It's exhausting to criticize, because the arguments for are so lacking in any substance. You get arguments like "art is about art", "its subjective", and "there are lots of people who paint pretty pictures, but only one Picasso". All actual arguments from this thread, all completely lacking in substance. Another good one: "if you're talking about it then it must be good". Barf.
I truly do not believe even 50% of people who claim to like Picasso actually like Picasso's paintings. I'm very confident the majority are people who say they do to fit into a group.