Abstracts Art "a 5 Year Old Could Have Done It."

What about a chimp?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau

a computer could have done it.

At least a five year old doesn't produce cliches.

elephants paint pretty well. there is a zoo in fact where all the animals paint. i don't know how old they are though.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Anyone who says that isn't in the market for abstract work.

The same amazing five year old could take an Ansel Adams snapshot of The Grand Canyon.

Response...."But they didn't."

I once watched an elephant paint and its pretty much a paint by numbers deal. They paint by memory according to a fixed pattern; first horizontal line A, then line B etc. Still pretty cool though, albeit assembly line-esque.

there was one zoo in another country where the elephants would paint landscapes, but it seemed that the trainers were prodding it in certain ways to get the thing to stop at certain points to make it look like it was painting it on its own.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Does the elephant know when to stop?

"At least a five year old doesn't produce cliches." hahahaha +1

I did the art fair circuit for 10 years. High end fine art, no craft shows ( people with $20 in their pocket are looking to buy a pair of earrings)
Here's what I discovered....
90% of the people skimmed, at best, and walked on
5% made a face or mumbled a dumb remark
5% stopped, looked, pondered and spent time with me, sometimes hours. Of this group came my collectors, never haggling over price.

There will never, never, never, ever be a time when 100% of the people in this world will love your abstract art.
You can moan about that 95% or zero in on the 5%...your choice.

Besides the same things are said of world famous abstract painters hanging in MOMA.

At the zoo where I worked(Topeka) we had an Orangutan named James D.(Dean) Orang. He loved to smear his feces all over the plexiglass out of apparent boredom so the head primate keeper, Bill Gage, got a brilliant idea. He taped canvas on the plexiglass and presented a pile of acrylic paints for Jimmy to play with. He ate some of it but then began to smear solid colors upon the glass.

Well we stretched and framed the "originals" and then Bill got another great idea; enter the abstract looking art in the state(Kansas) high school art competition.

Well Jimmy won first place and the news hit all the newspapers locally before world press got a hold of the story and sent reporters down. Jimmy became an instant celebrity!
Prints were made and the best one"Train From Tokyo" was presented to then president Nixon in the White House.

The judges of the high school competition told the press that Jimmy deserves 1st place even though no indication was mentioned early on of Jimmy being an ape.

Vincent, several possible reasons for this, one James might have been a gifted ape. Two the high school students might have sucked. Three the jurors might have not known much about abstract painting and could not break down and analyze the works in any real way. Four all abstract art is a lot of bull.

In an earlier thread on the same subject there is a story I pointed out about a guy that felt the same and made an ass out of himself trying to prove that abstract art was bull.

The guy created a fake name and identity and then showed some quickly done paintings which apparently got not only national but international attention as a new and exciting artist.

New york galleries all competed for his work which had already brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars before he broke his silence about the rue...to prove his point that abstract art was nothing. The critics explained that even the fake painters and copyists have a unique talent and this fellow was no exception only he had no respect for art.

Too bad because he could have been among the Picasso level of groups in art history if he had just known more about art, artists and himself!

but 5 years old has no money to buy art supply!

Abstract art is just not everybody's cup of tea...stein of beer...glass of wine...
On the other hand, just because one doesn't like it, doesn't give them license to tear it apart. What is it in our nature that keeps so many of us from allowing something we don't understand to just coexist?

I would think it a great compliment if someone told me that my art looks like a 5 year old painted it.

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." Pablo Picasso

Abstract or representational. It's an old conversation which is never ending....but there is one interesting characteristic one might take note of regarding abstract art expressions.

The abstract venue is almost a mark of authenticity acting as a barometer of the level of intelligence and sophistication among various human cultures throughout history.

To draw , paint and sculpt in traditional photo realistic styles in today's time is almost a sure sign of rural back woods and old fashion-ness which can be a death sentence to
the careers of fine artists.

Now PHOTOGRAPHERS have jumped into abstraction too as they push visual representation to new levels.. Even film has moved into a less narrative and more abstract level than I've seen in the past. This means that abstract is winning the race for artistic expression not just in dollar sales and popularity but as the only art people are going to be doing. The digital age is taking away people's time and physically made art takes TIME.

So the question there is "Does that make physically made work more valuable or obsolete? FYI to answer my question earlier the only possibility I would eliminate would be four "All abstract art is bull".

I think it's obvious that the real physical art will increase in value over time just like antiques and collectibles.

That would be my hope.

Someone mentioned elephants that were painting. I heard they work for peanuts just like a lot of artists do. Jimmy the orangutan however had received a lot of bananas from fans who had felt Jimmy's work had "appeal"!

There is a market for animal made paintings but the Thailand painting elephants seems like a hoax.

A five year old could have done it.

RESPONSE: A five year old could NOT have sold it, however, because he has not mastered the crafts of making personal contacts, writing press releases, filling out grant proposals to pay his salary while promoting it as the latest thing, participating in interviews,answering deep probing philosophical questions to support the legitimacy of it, and other skills that require much, much, much more time than a mere five years to perfect.

The five year old, thus, has a very limited investment in it, so the five year old is NOT DOING what adults do, when ADULTS do it. The effort of crafting the art object extends beyond the effort of crafting the art object itself, involving the added effort of elevating the art object and embedding it in the culture. This RE-definition of ART allows almost anything to achieve the status of a masterpiece.

Five year olds with strong marketing departments could probably do quite well, along with elephants, and chimps, and maybe birds doing bird-dropping drip paintings to challenge Pollock's legendary genius.

Five year olds may or may not have an intuitive sense of composition but fall short in the knowledge and use of color as a space making device. They do use symbolism in a crude fashion but their work is very different than an adults. To a five year old it is a story, an adventure, one thing leads to the next. It is sort of like a movie or cartoon going on while they work. Product at the end means little or nothing to them. Only in the sense of pats or approval from a valued adult. A circle might be a dog or a person, a line the same. FYI try this, have a child do a drawing and tell you about it. Whats going on, what represents what and so on while you take notes. Pull this work out in about 6-8 months and ask them to tell you about it. They will not tell you the same thing as before. Development is very rapid and changes occur at an amazing pace! My guess would be that an animal would get something entirely different than an adult human or a child from creating art but that would be straying far out of my comfort zone. Knowing that a young child views art very differently than an adult human, makes me wonder if an adult ape would view art differently than a child ape? There is a doctorate there for someone!

Abstract art is more than dripping paint or swirling it on a spindle. Those of you who do this should quit before you loose your minds. A true abstract expressionist has put heir souls into each work just like a writer in a novel.

The Snail is a collage by Henri Matisse, The work was created from summer 1952 to early 1953. It is pigmented with gouache on paper, cut and pasted onto a base layer of white paper measuring 9'4³⁄₄" × 9' 5".

Reminds me of the good old days of kindergarten. ;-)

"Reminds me of the good old days of kindergarten. ;-) "

It's fun for you to insult artists, isn't it, Ed? What is that about? Insecurity?


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

There is an eight year old little girl by the name of Autumn Deforest who has been painting since she was less than five, so yes, a five year old can do it and become famous and worth millions by the time she is twelve. http://autumndeforest.com/

I haven't a clue whether a 4,5 or 90 year old could do it - frankly - I don't really care. There are those that delight in abstract art of all forms - photographs, collage, paint on canvas or paper, or done digitally -

It's not an insult. Its just the reality. You can't offer the world paper cut outs and not expect someone to say "I could do that or my kid could do that".

The insecurity lays within the person who takes it as an insult.

Like I stated before. Its really no different than a photograph that seems easy enough to take.

In some ways familiarity with the medium over comes this notion. If someone has struggled to create a great photograph of say the Grand Canyon and then sees an great photograph of it, they have more appreciation for the work.

Autumn Deforest is just the latest in a long line of adult hyped kids. Her work is derived from a variety of modern masters. The problem is, the thinking process of the adventure taking place within a work of art, is vital to mind development and creativity. The hype and marketing going on with her is arresting this creative development and like the mass majority of children subjected to this, her work will most likely never crawl out of the shadow of others. So much of visual art is based on life experience and flexible thought that I find this sort of sad. She has potential but I doubt her work will survive and develop into anything of real lasting value.

That's why I advise the youngsters here that perhaps they don't want to find easy success at their age. Just look at what happens to child actors or Justin Bieber. The rest of their lives are spent trying to recapture the past success rather then building up on previous work.

...

Matisse was a bed ridden old man when he cut out the shapes of the snail above. It really is because of his lifetime of work that its displayed in museums instead of a refrigerator.

"After 1948 Matisse was prevented from painting by ill health but, although confined to bed, he produced a number of works known as gouaches découpées. These were made by cutting or tearing shapes from paper which had been painted with gouache. The shapes were placed and pasted down by an assistant working under Matisse's instruction."

We often bring out the child in us! Create, create, create, that is the essence.

My Kid Could Paint That TRAILER

You have to love the honesty from Gehard Richter in this interview with Time magazine.



Gerhard Richter how did you create these works? "I played like a child"

How do you respond to people who look around and say it looks like wrapping paper? "It could. You're right".

When I hear, "I could have done that" or "A child could have done that"

The only thing that I hear in my mind is....


"..... but then didn't. I did and here it is for you to enjoy....."

That response, that a child could have done that, is as a result of what the general public, and sadly, most artists, think abstractionism is.

The thing is this child artist scam could not be done with any other prodigy. Try faking a chess prodigy, math prodigy or even music prodigy. Since art is subjective so you can't measure it. It would be tough to stage a "The Great British Paint Off" TV series.

I'm not calling the child artist thing a scam, what I am saying is the adults in her life are directing her away from normal creative development for a child's brain and instead injecting her with adult expectations. I feel this ultimately will have detrimental results to her personal development as a person and an artist. I see what you are getting at however and that is a good point.

Mike;

I think I'm in that zoo. It's called FAA!

Dan has it right again!!

A true abstract expressionist has put heir souls into each work just like a writer in a novel.

... guess I'm not a true abstract artist, then. Heart and soul are not what I put into it ... more like blood, sweat, and tears.

I do not EXPRESS anything. The sheer physical ACTON that brings the satisfaction with the final result is the expression. There is no preconceived emotion behind it - it's all trial, error, observation, correction, trial, error, observation, re-correction, multiple times, layer upon layer, searching, exploring, responding to insights, failing perhaps multiple times, until finally the layers start to come together and have some higher appeal to my senses. THEN and only then does an emotion enter the picture - AFTER the work is done.

Looks like you put your soul in it to me Robert!

Like all serious artists the process is really intense and not frivolous in any way. Everything is geared to "getting it right" for you in your work even if you are not alway's conscious of that like race car or bike drivers.

Edward;

Thanks for the video.

Conrad Richter pointed out the reality of the trend of art is one of having left a venue of a more serious nature and evolved into a popular entertainment level of measurement in todays times. I agree in that I've always said for the most recent years how art has become a sort of cartoon carnival based upon pop art and social entertainment values. I am saying it is just one impression I have noticed. It may be unqualified. I love art none the less.

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." - Pablo Picasso

I suppose the adults who most want to believe that a child is bestowed with miraculous abilities are those who have most forgotten what its like to be a kid and to have incredible imaginations.

When a kid brings you a scribbly crayon drawing and says its a underwater kingdom, they truly see an underwater kingdom.

I think abstract art is the most heartbreaking medium. It's the one I work hardest at, yet the one that's valued the least. In the end, my work is judged by how pretty the colors are; the concepts are generally missed.

Dorothy,
The problem with abstract art is it can be very much an insider's game. I took a quick look at your profile... I really like your abstract art, and to the extent that I understand the concepts, they're pretty wonderful (the titles are clues). As a reality check, I have no idea whether I understand the concepts or not -- I can guess what some of the concepts are, but I have no way of knowing for certain whether I'm on target, or close... or completely off base.

When I look at someone else's art, I'm not inside the artist's head...I'm inside mine. Guessing. Sometimes it's an educated guess, sometimes not, other times I'm not in the mood for a guessing game and the pretty colors are enough to satisfy me, if not the artist who placed them on the canvas.

All I have to go by is my own life experience, and the colors, lines and patterns the artist put on the canvas. If I miss the concepts... I always get the unpleasant feeling that the artist assumes it's because there is something wrong with me, I'm somehow a lesser being for failing to fully understand.

I do value abstract art... it's interesting and can convey messages, emotions, and abiguities that realistic art can't convey. I just get tired of being treated like a second-class art-citizen when I'm not omniscient.

My favorite abstract painter at the moment is Sylvester Stallone. Sly communicates something to me that I can relate to and feel I understand where he as an artist and man is coming from. None of the famous modernist painters at Moma except for Pollack communicates anything to me. Like the movies however my interest in pop and expressionist art varies from time to time. This does not mean that I cannot "learn" to get something from them if I tried to. What good is an artwork whih requires special knowledge from viewers to understand or relate to?

I wouldn't say abstracts are valued the least. The sales record for a photographic based work (not including the fake Lik sale) is an abstract. Abstracts sell briskly in the modern art market.



Willem de Kooning's "Untitled VIII": $32.1 Million (maybe it was the clever title)


Jackson Pollock's "Number 19": $58.3 Million (another great title)



Barnett Newman’s “Onement VI,” $43.8 million