srt101fan

Hi Bipod! I kind of agree with your underlying beef here. A lot of sunset pictures are kind of "kitschy". And I don't like Kinkade either. I don't know enough about Keane, Parrish or Salgado, but Wyeth's work kitsch? NEVER.....!

Spirit Vision Photography Loc: Behind a Camera.

Sahel: The End of the Road (Series in Contemporary Photography) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0520241703/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mWWLCb7ST99AS

Bipod

Oops...I don't know I got Sebastião Salgado's name in this context--except that I've
been looking at his work a lot. He's a wonderful photographer from Brazil--
anything but kitsch.

I meant M. Medeiros:
http://medeiros.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/6/8/2568573/6250166.jpg

As for the rest, brace yourself:

Maxfield Perrish:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Dinky_Bird_by_Maxfield_Parrish%2C_1904.jpg/441px-Dinky_Bird_by_Maxfield_Parrish%2C_1904.jpg

Margaret Keane:
https://www.keane-eyes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/THE-STRAY-copy.jpg

The story with Margaret Keane gets even better: the paintings first appeared under
her husband's name, Walter Keane. Only after their divorce in the 1960s did it become
known who actually painted them. And of course, she was imitating M. Meidoros
(as if one wasn't bad enough). Someone called her "the Wayne Newton of the art world".

But man, it sold! According to WIkipedia, "One reviewer pointed to its ubiquity
in discount stores: 'They hung in Woolworth's, next to the velvet Elvis, or maybe it
was Walgreen's, by the clowns.'[2]"

As for Wyeth, well, his work is like the Belgian Congo: if you just look at one
example, it's not so bad. In only when venture into the heart of darkness and
view them one after another, that you exclaim "The horror!, The horror!"

Andrew Wyeth, "Chirstina's World" (a.k.a "Christina's Backside")
https://theredlist.com/media/database/fine_arts/arthistory/painting/realism/andrew-wyeth/010-andrew-wyeth-theredlist.jpg

Andrew Wyeth, "Sea Boots" -- is that a house or a pyramid in the background? Does it matter?
http://www.andrewwyeth.org/images/gallery5/Sea-Boots-1976.jpg

Andrew Wyeth, title unknown (Mr. Clean? Mental patient? Gollum?)
https://www.artbrokerage.com/art/wyethandrew/_images/wyethandrew_101823_4.jpg

Andrew Wyeth, "Dragon" (brown study with pooch)
https://skyethelimit.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/andrew-wyeth-the-intruder-tempera-on-panel-1971.jpg

Andrew Wyeth, woman wearing a pizza for a hat and a jacket made from vulcanized rubber
https://mydailyartdisplay.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/magas-daughter-by-andrew-wyeth.jpg

Andrew Wyeth:
http://andrewwyeth.com/test-2/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Nogeeshik-NEW.jpg
Cigar store:
https://images.bonanzastatic.com/afu/images/1403/8758/21/18731-indc.jpg
http://theantiquesalmanac.com/cigar-store-indian5.gif

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

Love photograph #2.

johnmccarthy Loc: North Hampton NH

I use a Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 on a Canon 5DIII for most sunrise and sunset work. This is a great lens for general purpose landscape as well. It is sturdy, but heavy as a boat anchor. Almost always used on a tripod.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

The truth is that for most people, somewhere around half of what passes as art isn't. It's just not the same half from person to person.

The photography club that I am a member of has a contest most months. I've entered a few times. Some images that my wife and I both like have received nice comments but not scored well. In the most recent contest, a photograph of a small town cemetery taken well after sunset ended up placing very highly. I've already been notified that there is no way that it will ever go up on the wall in our house.

So the bottom line is that it is not always whether the arrogant snobs think something is art. (No personal judgement intended, Bipod.) It's also why I don't post a lot here. I really don't care what anyone else thinks about my images, since I'm not asking anyone to buy anything. Most of the greatest artists didn't really care either. After all, they didn't need everyone to like a painting or sculpture...just one person.

I think that may be why many do not consider photography to be art anyway...it's too easily reproducible. That kind of by definition would make all photographic "art" kitsch, or at least kitschy.

uhaas2009

you got 6 vertical shot, how do you did this with this long lens? Your panorama locks incredible

BlackRipleyDog

Thank you. The mother of a man who got married there bought it for him. A bit different from the summer day of his wedding. She liked the contrast.

Bipod

Thanks, KK. Salgado is superb, of course! I meant the painter M. Medeiros,
of "big-eyed kids" infamy.

srt101fan

I'm puzzled. By what sort of art appreciation metrics do you put Kinkade and Wyeth in the same neighborhood??

Do you like Botero? How about Pollock? I'm guessing Soutine or Bacon are more your style...or maybe Hockney?

Move Wyeth out of your Kitsch group and we can agree....

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Bipod

I'm learning a lot at UHH. Not only are science and engineering B.S., so is art!
"I don't know anything about art--but I know what I like!" is the motto of philistines everywhere
(no personal judgement intended, L.P.)

I'm not sure what you were expecting from a photo contest held by a local photography club
(unless you happpen to live someplace like NYC or Carmel, CA, where there are a large number
of fine art photographers). Can your club judging modern art? Or science?

In 1896 when two local camera clubs merged to form The Camera Club of New York,, they
chose Alfred Stieglitz as VP. He turned its newsletter into the magazine Camera Notes.
He became dissatisified and in 1902 resigned his position in the club, joined the Photo-Secession
movement, and begin to publish Camera Work.

In the early 1930s, Ansel Adams and Willard van Dyke (apprentice to Edward Weston)
formed Group f/64 in San Francisco--to promote "straight photography". There were many
photography clubs in the SF Bay Area -- Adams, van Dyke and Weston didn't belong to
any of them--only to Group f/64.

In 1933, Adams traveled to NYC to meet Alfred Stieglitz for the first time--he did not call
on the Camera Club of New York. Adams and others managed to convert Alfred Stieglitz to
"straight photography", and as they say: the rest is history.

Some opinions matter, some don't. Neither science or art is a democracy. (Nor was the USA--
as the founders made it--not until the individual States passed laws binding their Electors to vote
the results of the primary. The purpose of the Electorical College was to prevent a lying, low-life
demagogue from being elected US President.)

It took two generations of breathtakingly good photographers between the 1880s and 1930s
(from Steichen to Adams) to get photography accepted as an art form. In order to do it, they
first had to free photography from the conventions of painting (pictorialism). Some of the
other West Coast photographers responsible include: Dody Weston Thompson, Minor White,
Charis Wilson (2nd wife and model of Edward Weston), Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange,
Wynn Bullock, Don Ross, William Garnett, Ruth Bernhard, Nata Piaskowski, Beaumont Newhall
and Nancy Newhall, and artists Georgia O'Keeffe, Morris Graves and Jean Charlot

So you see, it took almost 100 years from the invention of photograph to when it was more than
a novelty, a sentimental keepsake or a documentary record.

I have an idea: let's throw that all away! Yeah!

Bipod

Good questons.

If you look at the draftsmanship and perspective in Kindade's work, it's very good.
His use of color is quite competent. Indeed, his paintings are impressive except for
one some thing: they are hopelessly kitsch. Hard to believe this is the work of an adult:
https://thomaskinkade.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/evemaj.jpg

Maxfield Perrish was even more skilled--and more kitsch:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Daybreak_by_Parrish_%281922%29.jpg

And Wyeth is the most skilled--and most kitsch of all. Kinkade is kitsch in a harmless,
childish way. Abodes worthy of happy hobbits. But Wyeth is a sick-o -- he takes
sentiment and twists it into something morbid. His work has the same quality as the
hidious Albert Memorial (which R. G. Collingwood described as "verminous").

Consider (if you have the stomach) this painting by Wyeth:
https://skyethelimit.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/andrew-wyeth-the-intruder-tempera-on-panel-1971.jpg

Remove the dog, and it might pass for a fin de siècle decadent landscape painting
which I could quite like. But somehow a (well-drawn) canine has strayed from an
Edward Landseer canvas into this picture--converting it to bathos.

Almost every one of Wyeth's painting suffers the same fate: it's not complete until it
has the "human interest" tugging at the heartstrings (or whatever part of the anatomy).

Consider this portrait by Wyeth, "Nogeeshik" (1972) tempera on panel:
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5027/5782146521_57f8f52bd0_z.jpg
At first glance, it seems fine -- or perhaps a bit too much of a "type". But then you
notice the parted lips -- a familiar device from publicty photos of Hollywood starlets,
where is suggests sexual availability. What's it doing here?

Wyeth constantly sabotages his own work--like a Navajo weaver who for religious reasons
is forbidden to produce a perfect design, and introduce a defect. But in Wyeth's case the
defect is always something that undercuts the whole meaning of the work. The result is
a paricularly twisted form of kitsch.

Photorealism in painting is always dangerous, because painting lacks the objectivity
of (straight) photography. If the artist allows his neuroses to leak into every dab of
the brush, the result is more symptom than art. But a more balanced and stoic painter
such as Edward Hopper can pull off realism and also make it seem modern,

Edward Hopper, "Marshall's House," 1932 Opaque and transparent watercolor over
graphite on wove paper.
http://www.artfixdaily.com/images/pr/dec8_amoncarter_hopper.jpg

In the famous painting below, there is emotional content but it is integral to the
scene and not gratuitous or intrusive:
Edward Hopper, "Nighthawks" (1942)
https://legaltowns.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/nighthawks_by_edward_hopper_1942.jpg

Pollack's works aren't kitsch. But have become (though no fault of the artist) a hackneyed
emblem for modern art. How good they are is another question. They are better than most
people think, but maybe not as good as Clement Greenberg thought. They are quite varied,
but there are many similar canvases in each variation. They look much better in person than
in a reproduction. I really like this one (at MOMA):
https://www.moma.org/d/assets/W1siZiIsIjIwMTUvMTAvMjEvNWZ6cDZmMzFsNl9qYWNrc29ucG9sbG9jay5qcGciXSxbInAiLCJjb252ZXJ0IiwiLXJlc2l6ZSAyMDAweDIwMDBeIC1ncmF2aXR5IENlbnRlciAtY3JvcCAyMDAweDIwMDArMCswIl1d/jacksonpollock.jpg

Botero has a mannerism he uses on all figures. Well, we except a different but almost as
distorted mannerism in El Greco, so why not in Botero? As a living artist who is still creating
new works (and more ambitious ones!) it's too soon to judge. But his best-known painting
definitely is kitch (and a pastiche):

Ferdinand Botero, "Mona Lisa" (1977)
http://www.wikigallery.org/paintings/8501-9000/8871/painting1.jpg

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

That's all well and good. But the fact remains that neither I nor the vast majority of us here are not in any of those groups, never will be, and are not at all bothered by that reality. And that includes whichever group Kinkeade and others grouped with him are in. (We could do worse than that, by the way, since we would have a nice income stream coming to us from nice, benign images that cause no harm to anyone.

Following style and technique is fine. But it's not how any of those "artistic leaders" became artistic leaders. Sure they visited with each other and sometimes even collaborated with each other and sometimes even modeled for each other. But in the end, their own individual visions drove their career. And they were just fortunate that enough of the buying public agreed with what they were creating and opened their checkbooks to keep them in business, since even artists have to eat.

In the world we live in now, acceptance doesn't matter. Style doesn't matter. I'm not sure how much technique even matters. So I expect that what is "art" is going to change. It's already changed a lot. The amount of stuff that is judged as "not art" is going to get smaller and smaller, except by a few hangers on. So is the value of what is art. Art has always been judged by and paid for by the elite. Now, like everything else, it is going to be by and for the masses. So unfortunately, as suggested by Bipod and othets, everything being discussed here is going to matter less and less, and yes (Horrors!) kitsch, like memes, will be art.

Spirit Vision Photography Loc: Behind a Camera.

I haven’t seen those or thought of him in decades.