Hey! The site ate my text! Thank god for the back button. Here’s what my post actually said:
#makesuthinkyeah?
So apparently the Great British Public™ have voted this picture as their favourite piece of art ever. Bristol’s very own Nathan Barley (who is definitely not Robert del Naja out of Massive Attack definitely not no sireee) has a fonder place in the heart of the nation than anything in the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate, Tate Modern, [insert non-London art collection of choice here].
I hate to say it, but would it kill the GBP™ to crack a frickin’ book or visit a frickin’ gallery? 🙄
I like the idea of Banksy but the works are really just decorative but shallow cartoons. On balance I’m glad he’s out there.
It looks like the vote was from a shortlist of 20 helpfully provide for a couple of thousand people to choose from so I don’t think we call really call it the nation’s favourite, though I don’t don’t it would rank highly in a wider poll. Apart from ‘Stik’ I was familiar with all of the shortlist and it’s an odd selection. Mares and Foals rather than Whistlejacket? The ugliest thing Anish KApoor has ever done?
Like anything creative, a great piece of art for me is one that makes me wish I was talented enough to produce something that good. At no point have I wished for the ability to creep around in the dark with a spraycan and a stencil.
I just wrote a long diatribe about the utter paucity of understanding or care that a large proportion of the British public demonstrate whenever “art” enters the public sphere.
I deleted it.
I am now going to delete from memory the result of this poll.
Good grief I despair sometimes. I really do.
For me, what I love about great art is its multi-layeredness. You can go back again and again and find new beauty, and keep mining emotional resonance from the beauty you’ve already seen in it.
Banksy barely has one layer. It’s all right there on the surface, being whatever the opposite of a palimpsest is.
The top three “winners” of this preposterous poll demonstrate a British lack of understanding or dare I say it taste.
Sentimental, nostalgic, easily read with a glaringly obvious narrative.
The Constable is at least a good painting from a top notch painter but one can’t help but feel that it is only there because of it’s ubiquity. Voted for by a section of the public that think Poldark and Downton Abbey are historically accurate portrayals of our “glorious” past.
The Banksy is just sentimental guff.
“Sentimental, nostalgic, easily read with a glaringly obvious narrative.”
But then this is pretty much the case with any poll of this type, in which yer Great British Public get to vote on cultural matters, be it art, music, poetry or historical figures etc etc
FWIW, I’m not especially a Banksy cheerleader but I did enjoy his sneaking a Guantanamo Bay orange-clad figure in a kneeling stress position into Disneyland, or the Dismaland project, a couple of years ago.
Perhaps the ‘Great British Public’ [or the 2,000 questioned for this poll] of which you’re so sniffy, have simply gone for something they can actually see without having to visit an art gallery.
Perhaps if Constable’s Hay Wain or Jack Vettriano’s Singing Butler were reproduced on the side of a building they might have taken first place.
Perhaps ‘Balloon Girl’ just touches people in a more visceral way than Constable’s Hay Wain or Jack Vettriano’s Singing Butler. Isn’t that also a function of art? To move, and to stir feeling?
Perhaps they’ve voted for something they covet. ‘And how do we begin to covet? Do we seek out things to covet? No. We begin by coveting what we see every day.’
I’d have preferred Hockney to win myself, doesn’t make it the best though, does it?
Visceral. Really? Are you seriously suggesting that the public best appreciates art when it’s sprayed on the side of an anonymous building? That a dull, third rate stencil of a child losing an obvious metaphor in the form of sprayed on heart shaped balloon is visceral?
Art isn’t exactly hard to gain access to if one has a mind to do so or you can pay no attention to it at all until the next charlatan catches the attention of the media with a cheap gimmick.
Sniffy about great painting? Yep guilty as charged and bloody glad to be so.
I’m not suggesting it, the poll is.
A quick search online for the definition of visceral – based on deep feeling and emotional reactions rather than on reason or thought – I’d say that’s fairly accurate.
I’m sure if you were to post a list of your top three paintings that I’d appreciate them all in one way or another, I just enjoy Banksy also, and bloody glad to do so.
Not “visceral”. Emptily sentimental. No depth. Two-dimensional in every possible meaning of the phrase. Easy sentimentality is often popular.
I don’t buy into this “everything is as good as everything else” stuff, and any fan of culture shouldn’t either. Some really popular pop music is amazing; much is empty formula-based sentimental drivel. The Sun is incredibly popular but is very very bad. Dan Brown sells more books than Jonathan Franzen.
But tbh it’s not Banksy himself that slightly annoys me about this. It’s that everyone in this country is a maximum of a shortish drive from a *free* art gallery, and yet has seen so little great art. This ain’t theatre or opera or literature, where there’s a definite price on it: some people can’t get access to those things (especially given library cutbacks). This is people being surrounded by great stuff that is *free* to experience and not being arsed.
OOAA, of course, about Banksy. To my eyes he’s Anne Geddes with a baseball cap and a spray can, but half the population of these islands lives within easy public transport distance of The Fighting Temeraire and has never seen it. Maybe it’s not their fault but then people said that about voting for Brexit too.
You dismiss the Banksy as being sentimental, yet present The Fighting Temeraire as an example of what the GBP should be enjoying. You don’t find TFT sentimental?
No should about it. If you genuinely prefer Banksy to Turner I don’t have a problem. It’s an informed opinion at least.
Incidentally, TFT is only open to ideas of sentimentality if you know its historical and cultural context and are as interested in the artist as the art. I don’t care why Turner painted it nearly as much as I care about its beauty and its accomplishment, neither of which – to me – the Banksy has.
Why is it sentimental to you? Is it something to do with Empire?
You need more? Its a symbol of a bygone age [tall mast sailing ship] being towed for scrap by a steam tug [the new age].
With a sunset looming over the whole scene.
A sunset.
But you’re right, it’s not a Hallmark card
Whatever sinks your boat. As I’ve said, I come to most art on the basis of whether or not I find it beautiful and fascinating and multilayered. I’m glad you find the Banksy beautiful and fascinating and multilayered: I don’t. I find it gives up everything it has on one viewing and isn’t about beauty, but about explicit, quick messaging. You think different. That’s fine.
There’s no doubt Turner meant to evoke an emotional response from the ship, even if he was really more concerned with the sunset and was, to an extent, using the ship as something for the sunset to act as a metaphor for. In real life the ship would have been a basic hull, stripped of all the rigging and glinting finery that Turner shows, by the time she went to be broken up.
Incidentally, the Wetherpoons in Saffron Walden is called the Temeraire and has a large reproduction of the painting over the fireplace, It used to be called the fighting Temeraire, but rumour has it the name was change because some of the weekend clientele were taking the name too literally.
The navy tends to keep the names of vessels, but sometimes they’re reused for land bases. I often used to walk past the current HMS Temeraire. It is an anonymous looking physical recreation building in Portsmouth. I don’t know what symbolism Turner would find in that.
Oh don’t get me wrong, Moose. Im a classicist at heart; noble subject matter rendered with impeccable technique. Just look at this masterpiece by Gustave Courbet, “Le Growleur Enorme”. Note subtle play of light. Note deft brushwork. Note chromatic and compositional harmony. Expensive frame, too – always the hallmark of a masterwork!
I suspect people value art the same way they do tattoos, or hats, or vinyl, or sculpted facial hair – it’s the image of themselves that these items project that matters. How many here, I wonder, have album sleeves on their wall compared to how many have a Constable. Banksy says street, edgy, outlaw, bold, anti-establishment. I’d wear that hat if it I thought it would fit.
Art, like music and foodie culture, is all about the story, not the product. Struggling painter in his garrett, mysterious anarchist stenciller, cross-dressing potter. She wrote it in an Edinburgh coffee shop, you know. He made the whole album in his shed. All our crisps are hand cut by virgins.
It’s an advert for a new TV so the aim would be controversy and publicity and the idea that new is as valid as classic. More than half of the shortlist are from the last 100 years, and seven from the last 30. Not really a fair fight – and not intended to be one either. If you go to the source material, you see it’s not a ‘pick one’ choice. Short version – don’t take it too seriously.
Isn’t it funny, I knew the Afterword didn’t like Banksy even though I’ve never seen him mentioned on the site.
If he was a cartoonist for the Spectator, or Private Eye (which he could be) you’d like him. And you certainly wouldn’t drone on about him being someone who’s been to public school or isn’t sufficiently poor or whatever else he’s supposed to have done wrong.
I can’t say I dislike him but I would describe him more of a graphic artist than an ‘artist’. I also can’t say that I dislike his content which I think conveys a shallow, short attention span society in which we increasingly live.
His ‘two lovers on the phone’ is a fantastic representation of just that and as such is more of a ‘comment’ than ‘art’.
Eh? Public school and insufficiently poor? Where’d you get that from?
He is a cartoonist, you’re right, and on about the same level as Matt. Who you’ll notice isn’t topping anyone’s list of great artists, because of not being one.
Just an observation, btw, but I rarely see anyone on here taking up the cudgels on behalf of The People when Angels by Robbie Williams is voted Bestest Ever Song again, or when the X Factor gets its latest Christmas number 1…
To be fair, nobody claims that Bansky is the greatest, just that the great unwashed voted it as their favourite, from a list of 20 compiled by art critics and writers. That’s fair enough isn’t it?
Personally I find art galleries the very definition of tedium. I cant get excited about prowess that I don’t understand but I do get pleasure looking at pictures of things like abandoned shopping malls (Seph Lawless if you’re interested), and of course my 2 original Squeezers representing my grandsons (they reflect their individual personalities so perfectly that I’ve caught myself talking them).
For what its worth, I would have put the Hockney painting higher up but otherwise it wouldn’t be too far off based on the ones I know. I’d better go and shower.
But again, if this was – say – that poll from a couple of years ago that voted Angels as the public’s favourite ever song, I bet you wouldn’t be saying the same thing.
I’m not saying you have to go to galleries, but I am sort of saying that if you want to opine about art it might be an idea to have seen some. Seems a little odd for a public that doesn’t like art to be voting in a poll about it, no?
I mean, fine, not everyone has to have the deep attachment to visual art that some of us have. I’m no expert but I LOVE art and get a massive emotionally immersive experience from it. I do get that some people just want pretty wallpaper, and don’t engage with it in the same way I do.
But the Afterword’s genial tolerance of Joe Public just wanting pretty flat wallpaper doesn’t extend to music, does it?
It’s an interesting comparison. If you asked people who don’t like music to pick from the equivalent of Banksy (trip hop) Vettriano (1990’s pop) Lowry (Gracie Fields) or Turner (Elgar), what would their choice be based on?
I don’t mind Angels. It’s a well-crafted bit of pop with not much depth to it, and in that sense exactly analogous to Banksy, for me. But my point isn’t really about the work itself as about when it’s OK to eye-roll at Joe Public’s taste in stuff.
But perhaps Angels just touches people in a more visceral way than [insert music you like here]. Isn’t that a function of music? To move, and to stir feeling?
I’m not writing it off though. I think it’s exceptional. But let’s end this here. It’s become a debate on who is most wrong on the internet. I’m sure neither of us wants that 😉
of course I would. How could I challenge the “publics favourite” result unless I constituted the whole public. If the criteria was “as a music expert, rate of the following 20 pieces of music in order of artistic merit” then maybe not, although Angels is pretty good if not my typical fare, and in a field of 20, who knows?
I’m not sure these people were actively opining, they were probably polled at random and asked to rate the following…etc.
There was a poll a while ago which voted “The Fighting Temeraire” as most popular which surprised me as I never thought it was that well known, much as I love it. I just think of Banksy as glorified graffiti, ok to look at but hardly great art.
I went photographing around London towards the end of my massive sick-leave session earlier this year and stopped in at the National, as I always try to when I’m in the area. I sat in front of the Fighting Temeraire for about 40 minutes, despite having seen it hundreds of times before. I can never tire of it.
Same with the Canalettos on the trip before that. That’s what I love about the National Gallery – I always come out having fallen in love with something that had previously passed me by. There’s this whole hall of Canaletto, and that was me done for the day. I was in that room so long I think they suspected me of casing it for a heist 😉
There’s a wonderful documentary about it, (maybe one of the Simon Sharma “Power of art” ones? OK he’s a bit of a self caracature now but that series was great, especially the Rothko one) which had me welling up when I understood some of the history and underlying message in the picture, apart from its undeniable power as a thing to look at.
EDIT….it was an “In our time”…. the welling up happened next time I saw it. …
I’ve been told by someone who works in the gallery world, that Sunflowers, The Fighting Temeraire, Whistlejacket , and Rousseau’s Surprised! are usually found to be among the most popular pictures in the National Gallery. The further back you go, the paintings tend to be less popular as people are less familiar with the biblical and mythological stories behind them, and so have to read up on them. I suppose there is also a story behind The Fighting Temeraire, but you can pick up quite quickly from the label beside it, and it has an emotional impact without knowing that.
Plus it’s just bloody beautiful, which is my reason for loving it.
Being a lapsed choirboy, I love all the Renaissance stuff, and you’re right – those rooms are often quieter. You can get up close to a Piero della Francesca without any jostling. Incredible experience.
Hooray for the Renaissance! Works of sublime beauty and also downright weird. I love it.
On a broader note I sometimes wonder why the British in particular have an almost atavistic need for narrative in painting? Is it because of the undoubted strength of English Literature I wonder?
It’s an interesting question. I have to say that the “story” of the Fighting Temeraire has never really been a factor in how I see it – I love the colours, is basically what it comes down to – and maybe the reason I don’t like Banksy is because to me it’s nothing but “story”. I just remembered that when we were discussing poetry the other day I mentioned that the reason I don’t like Kate Tempest is because I find her so literal and unlayered. Just as in poetry it’s the music of the language that often means more to me than the narrative, I feel the same with colour and texture in visual art. It’s why I love Rothko and Kandinsky and and and and. It’s why, of the English canon of 19th C artists, I tend to prefer Turner to Constable: JMW was just obsessed with colour, to the extent that the rest of the RA relentlessly mocked him the less figurative he got. He had this rabbit hole of colour and texture that he couldn’t stop burrowing to the bottom of. I love that.
Plus, I don’t like my art to tell me what to think. Maybe it’s that.
But then, you and me are also dyed in the wool Taffs, P. Maybe it’s that too. All about the senses, rather than the intellect. Bloody Celts. 😉
I concur. Unsurprisingly.
Understanding the symbols and codes can be useful when looking at certain genres and periods. I like you enjoy to bathe in the beauty first though. The narrative, if one exists can wait. The dialogue comes first, let the paint speak freely.
Well, personally, if an artist can’t present protest imagery that includes a fully costed alternative that wouldn’t upset the FTSE100, I think they should only be allowed to do watercolours of woodland scenes.
Good example of how backstory defines art – he did nothing in his lifetime, but once the myth and the marketing got going, he’s a bloody genius. He owes it all to Don McClean you know.
I’ve stood in the room Theo found him at Saint-Remy and looked out at the same wheat field he did. It was full of tourists on the Vincent trail. My feeling was that they were buying their posters and prints for his story, or some monetised retrospective image of him, not for his art.
I find the chosen list of twenty even more baffling than the result, TBH. Would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall when the panel got together to debate and vote on what to include in that list!
Thoroughly agree Lo. As with most lists, what and who has been excluded is much more interesting. I’m guessing that this is a compromised list with the compilers attempting to create a list of artworks salted with a number of populist pieces from household names in the pursuit of not being seen as elitist and highbrow.
The choice of the top three “winners” under those circumstances is completely unsurprising.
As P. T Barnum once said “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the general public.”
I think it fairly well established I am a music snob, hell, we most are. And too an art snob, albeit arguably an inverse art snob: my favourite bits of art tend to be somewhat throwaway, discounting our learned friend’s work. I like Roy Lichtenstein, Edvard Munch*, Ralph Steadman. And, yes, Banksy. His images make me smile.
(*Trolling? Moi?)
We are all cultural snobs. It is endemic in anyone who has an opinion (and maybe even a sniff of education?). It’s a first world thing really; I don’t suppose hut dwellers up the Amazon think that one canoe design is more worthy than another. Snobbery should not be a term of abuse.
Me. I’m proud to be a snob, just as I am happy to be a pink liberal leftie or whatever.
PS I have no real opinion about Banksy’s graffiti. I do like the clandestine idea though.
Artery is spot on. We ARE all cultural snobs. It probably varies according to what our personal ‘ bag’ is – a lot of what we appreciate the most in any field is as a result of what we have decided to discard or ignore – the definition of being discriminatory.
I pretty much know what I like musically, artistically and literature-wise & hope that if I’ve learnt anything by my age it’s to be as receptive as possible to the idea of stuff that’s new to me.
It took quite a while to get to this stage, as there’s tons of stuff out there that’s worth checking out.
We shouldn’t condemn the great British public for a lack of sophistication or taste – anything , really ANYTHING that might point the way to an appreciation of the wider world of the arts has to be a good thing. Banky’s stuff is simple & instantly accesible – more akin to an agit prop poster than fine art but I’d put money on his stuff sparking something for numerous as-yet unknown artists who are just kids now but have found it engaging.
Access points to the arts are vital & for many ( perhaps most) they are not via the Art ( with a capital A) world but pulpy movies, names dropped by performers that kids like & TV & the net. I reckon Banksy is one such access point.
My folks were culture vultures & as a kid I was dragged round galleries regularly & bored almost to tears – endless canvases of pasty ugly people wearing wigs who really said nothing to me about my life .
At the Tate (now Tate Britain) aged 9 or 10 I saw Lichenstein’s ‘ Wham’ & made my first ever connection with someting appealing that grown ups considered ‘art’. Without that spark, it’s entirely possible I’d have never developed any appreciation of visual art at all – even with parents who loved all that stuff & exposed me too it.
The ‘value’ of Banksy’s is a source a hilarity to me – I can’t do anything about it, so why rail against it? I find his gimmicky stuff a lot less cynical than that of D Hirst Esq for example, & believe it essentially does no harm.
Im not convinced by the argument that the great British public’s taste is any worse than it ever has been. An equivalent poll 150 years ago would, no doubt, have seen a top choice of some sentimental narrative painting showing a grieving soldier and his faithful dog or somesuch which the critics of the day, and, indeed, the Victorian Afterword, would have been appalled by. And whilst Beethoven and Mozart would have been widely recognised as the greatest composers ever, I doubt more than 5% of the population, if that, would ever have heard any of their music.
So I’m not really bothered by the outcome of this poll, but I am bothered by the way it’s been reported. What we have here is a poll of 2000 people conducted to promote a new TV. They’ve been shown images of a number of works of art (not clear how many, and what ones, apart from the reported top 20) and asked, presumably, to pick their favourite four or five. As an indication of how much that actually represents their favourite works of art, note that Andy Goldsworthy’s Balanced Rock Misty is number 13. Now Goldsworthy is a fantastic artist but I wonder how many of the 2000 had ever heard of him, never mind seen an image of this particular work before being asked to look at if for this poll.
So, all a bit of fun, but no more indicative of the nation’s taste than an Afterword poll of the best Beatles B-sides. (Actually, that’s not a bad idea – have we done that?).
No, it’s not the choice that bothers me about this, it’s the way it’s been reported. So, the supposedly serious and authoritative BBC tells us the Banksy has been ‘chosen as the nation’s favourite artwork’. The Guardian does the same, and its art critic writes a column about the nation’s stupidity. But it hasn’t been chosen as the nation’s favourite artwork and it demonstrates nothing. And this matters. Because if we demean our language in this way on silly season nonsense, we give sanction to our politicians and media to do so on much more important things and we debase our critical faculties and ability to challenge what we’re being told. And that, people, is how a 52/48% result of a binary poll in which 28% of the population didn’t participate becomes ‘the will of the people’.
Of those on the top 20, by the way, I’d have gone for the Gainsborough although for me Turner has the greatest overall body of work by a British artist.
Damn you British Public!
I’ve had to spend a perfectly serviceable Friday evening getting shitfaced on cheap vodka whilst weeping over a poor reproduction of Millais Bubbles just to try and find some sort of equilibrium in this topsy turvy hill of sorrow beans…
Ok. 81 comments: but more than half are from you, Disappointed Bob (21), Pencilsqueezer (12) and Lemonhope (10).
It’s a bit of an argument in an empty room. @blue-boy and @Chiz both summarised it well . . . Samsung want to sell a telly, let’s create a Mrs Merton debate.
Here’s my contribution. My dad (a lorry driver) and my father in law (a tractor driver), both good men, would no more choose to visit an art gallery than Bob, for example, would choose to attend a football match. They both would have appreciated the poster of a gal scratching her bum on a tennis court. I too could spend 40 minutes staring at that!
@moose-the-mooche The only way I could make my feeble point was by doing some research, Why are you picking on me when there are others more deserving? Particularly on this thread. Counting is my hobby. I am currently up to 1,111,123.
On this pointless thread you have made 9 comments (9%). None of them smutty. Shows how much you care!
I found this whole conversation interesting. I have nothing worthwhile to contribute, so here it is:
– I have no paintings in my house for the same reason I have no tattoos on my body: a total inability to commit.
– I think the business of paintings and sculpture is more about branding a name (and less about talent) than any other field of art.
– I adore London’s National Gallery. One of my favourite places on the planet. Not so much for the art as for the atmos. A great place to chill.
– Love Turner, think Rothko is nonsense.
Mine is 5 (NPower statement, stupid catalogue, Electoral Register, postcard from Mrs M’s cousin, specialist photography magazine in the plain brown wrappers)
I donI know about art but I know what I like. And I got to about 5 exhibitions a year. I judge art, like music, purely on how much I like it and I really like Banksy. 2,000 people looked at internet images of 20 works of art and chose Banksy, so what?
I recommend the film Exit Through The Gift Shop to anyone interested in Banksy or street art. For me ideas and imagination are a significant factor in what constitutes good art today and Banksy has both in abundance.
You lot get all worked up about the British public’s refusal to engage with great works of art, and yet I bet hardly any of you have played Bloodborne.
I am, I think, unsophisticated about art. I have no talent for it. Zero. As in, “allowed” to not take any art/design classes when I was at school.
I couldn’t give you any sort of informed criticism about art if you gave me a big book to read from. I am firmly at the “I like what I like” end of the spectrum.
I love the NPG in London, and the Guggenheim in NY. Some stuff just stands out. But one of my absolutely favorite places in D.C. is the Phillips Collection. It’s a (relatively) small museum and can be occasionally hit or miss with its displays. But it has the Rothko room, for which it may be forgive all errors. It is breathtaking, and much like Bob looks at the Temeraire, I can sit in that room for ages and just drink in the colors – at least until I get the hurry up from Sharon.
Not my usual thing – I tend to prefer pictures with stories, or stories you can imagine new for the picture; find something in it every time you look at it. But Rothko, man. That dude could paint.
Whenever these deep philosophical debates about art arise I’m always reminded of the immortal words of John Cleese…
“Look! I’m the bloody pope, I am! May not know much about art, but I know what I like.”
An art thread with no art? (Mr Saucepot, take a bow for your lovely Courbet). Now that no one is reading this thread any more I’ll stick my tuppence worth in. I’m no expert, but I do know what I like, and my inclination is to agree with most of what Bob and Mr Squeezer have said. Banksy isn’t my cup of char, but if his work says something to the GBP, then that’s okay, but great art? Not to my eyes. For what it’s worth, I’m rather partial to the one below, Love Among The Ruins by Edward Burne-Jones. It’s late pre-Raphaelite, unmistakeably Victorian, and some sort of symbolist dreamscape / pile of sentimental tosh depending on your point of view. It’s rather good though, and I’d stick it in my front room and stare at it for hours in preference to a Banksy any day of the week.
But activated how? Powered how? Feels like these aspects haven’t been interrogated at all by the media.
It all seems very fishy to me, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Sotheby’s were in on it. In fact, if you watch the video, it looks as though the auctioneer presses something right after he does his ‘going, going, gone’ bit.
JustB says
Hey! The site ate my text! Thank god for the back button. Here’s what my post actually said:
#makesuthinkyeah?
So apparently the Great British Public™ have voted this picture as their favourite piece of art ever. Bristol’s very own Nathan Barley (who is definitely not Robert del Naja out of Massive Attack definitely not no sireee) has a fonder place in the heart of the nation than anything in the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate, Tate Modern, [insert non-London art collection of choice here].
I hate to say it, but would it kill the GBP™ to crack a frickin’ book or visit a frickin’ gallery? 🙄
Gatz says
I like the idea of Banksy but the works are really just decorative but shallow cartoons. On balance I’m glad he’s out there.
It looks like the vote was from a shortlist of 20 helpfully provide for a couple of thousand people to choose from so I don’t think we call really call it the nation’s favourite, though I don’t don’t it would rank highly in a wider poll. Apart from ‘Stik’ I was familiar with all of the shortlist and it’s an odd selection. Mares and Foals rather than Whistlejacket? The ugliest thing Anish KApoor has ever done?
rotherhithe hack says
Banksy is Jack Vettriano for people who wear hoodies.
Tony Japanese says
Like anything creative, a great piece of art for me is one that makes me wish I was talented enough to produce something that good. At no point have I wished for the ability to creep around in the dark with a spraycan and a stencil.
pencilsqueezer says
I just wrote a long diatribe about the utter paucity of understanding or care that a large proportion of the British public demonstrate whenever “art” enters the public sphere.
I deleted it.
I am now going to delete from memory the result of this poll.
Good grief I despair sometimes. I really do.
JustB says
Ha, I don’t blame you.
For me, what I love about great art is its multi-layeredness. You can go back again and again and find new beauty, and keep mining emotional resonance from the beauty you’ve already seen in it.
Banksy barely has one layer. It’s all right there on the surface, being whatever the opposite of a palimpsest is.
pencilsqueezer says
The top three “winners” of this preposterous poll demonstrate a British lack of understanding or dare I say it taste.
Sentimental, nostalgic, easily read with a glaringly obvious narrative.
The Constable is at least a good painting from a top notch painter but one can’t help but feel that it is only there because of it’s ubiquity. Voted for by a section of the public that think Poldark and Downton Abbey are historically accurate portrayals of our “glorious” past.
The Banksy is just sentimental guff.
slotbadger says
“Sentimental, nostalgic, easily read with a glaringly obvious narrative.”
But then this is pretty much the case with any poll of this type, in which yer Great British Public get to vote on cultural matters, be it art, music, poetry or historical figures etc etc
FWIW, I’m not especially a Banksy cheerleader but I did enjoy his sneaking a Guantanamo Bay orange-clad figure in a kneeling stress position into Disneyland, or the Dismaland project, a couple of years ago.
Lemonhope says
Perhaps the ‘Great British Public’ [or the 2,000 questioned for this poll] of which you’re so sniffy, have simply gone for something they can actually see without having to visit an art gallery.
Perhaps if Constable’s Hay Wain or Jack Vettriano’s Singing Butler were reproduced on the side of a building they might have taken first place.
Perhaps ‘Balloon Girl’ just touches people in a more visceral way than Constable’s Hay Wain or Jack Vettriano’s Singing Butler. Isn’t that also a function of art? To move, and to stir feeling?
Perhaps they’ve voted for something they covet. ‘And how do we begin to covet? Do we seek out things to covet? No. We begin by coveting what we see every day.’
I’d have preferred Hockney to win myself, doesn’t make it the best though, does it?
attackdog says
Good points, but Banksy is just art for these populist times.
pencilsqueezer says
Visceral. Really? Are you seriously suggesting that the public best appreciates art when it’s sprayed on the side of an anonymous building? That a dull, third rate stencil of a child losing an obvious metaphor in the form of sprayed on heart shaped balloon is visceral?
Art isn’t exactly hard to gain access to if one has a mind to do so or you can pay no attention to it at all until the next charlatan catches the attention of the media with a cheap gimmick.
Sniffy about great painting? Yep guilty as charged and bloody glad to be so.
Lemonhope says
I’m not suggesting it, the poll is.
A quick search online for the definition of visceral – based on deep feeling and emotional reactions rather than on reason or thought – I’d say that’s fairly accurate.
I’m sure if you were to post a list of your top three paintings that I’d appreciate them all in one way or another, I just enjoy Banksy also, and bloody glad to do so.
JustB says
Not “visceral”. Emptily sentimental. No depth. Two-dimensional in every possible meaning of the phrase. Easy sentimentality is often popular.
I don’t buy into this “everything is as good as everything else” stuff, and any fan of culture shouldn’t either. Some really popular pop music is amazing; much is empty formula-based sentimental drivel. The Sun is incredibly popular but is very very bad. Dan Brown sells more books than Jonathan Franzen.
But tbh it’s not Banksy himself that slightly annoys me about this. It’s that everyone in this country is a maximum of a shortish drive from a *free* art gallery, and yet has seen so little great art. This ain’t theatre or opera or literature, where there’s a definite price on it: some people can’t get access to those things (especially given library cutbacks). This is people being surrounded by great stuff that is *free* to experience and not being arsed.
OOAA, of course, about Banksy. To my eyes he’s Anne Geddes with a baseball cap and a spray can, but half the population of these islands lives within easy public transport distance of The Fighting Temeraire and has never seen it. Maybe it’s not their fault but then people said that about voting for Brexit too.
pencilsqueezer says
Anne Geddes. *snort* Very good Bob.
Lemonhope says
You dismiss the Banksy as being sentimental, yet present The Fighting Temeraire as an example of what the GBP should be enjoying. You don’t find TFT sentimental?
JustB says
No should about it. If you genuinely prefer Banksy to Turner I don’t have a problem. It’s an informed opinion at least.
Incidentally, TFT is only open to ideas of sentimentality if you know its historical and cultural context and are as interested in the artist as the art. I don’t care why Turner painted it nearly as much as I care about its beauty and its accomplishment, neither of which – to me – the Banksy has.
Why is it sentimental to you? Is it something to do with Empire?
Lemonhope says
It’s a painting of a ship which is being towed to be broken up – c’mon!
JustB says
Eh? It’s hardly a Hallmark card, is it?
Lemonhope says
You need more? Its a symbol of a bygone age [tall mast sailing ship] being towed for scrap by a steam tug [the new age].
With a sunset looming over the whole scene.
A sunset.
But you’re right, it’s not a Hallmark card
JustB says
Whatever sinks your boat. As I’ve said, I come to most art on the basis of whether or not I find it beautiful and fascinating and multilayered. I’m glad you find the Banksy beautiful and fascinating and multilayered: I don’t. I find it gives up everything it has on one viewing and isn’t about beauty, but about explicit, quick messaging. You think different. That’s fine.
Gatz says
There’s no doubt Turner meant to evoke an emotional response from the ship, even if he was really more concerned with the sunset and was, to an extent, using the ship as something for the sunset to act as a metaphor for. In real life the ship would have been a basic hull, stripped of all the rigging and glinting finery that Turner shows, by the time she went to be broken up.
Incidentally, the Wetherpoons in Saffron Walden is called the Temeraire and has a large reproduction of the painting over the fireplace, It used to be called the fighting Temeraire, but rumour has it the name was change because some of the weekend clientele were taking the name too literally.
David Kendal says
The navy tends to keep the names of vessels, but sometimes they’re reused for land bases. I often used to walk past the current HMS Temeraire. It is an anonymous looking physical recreation building in Portsmouth. I don’t know what symbolism Turner would find in that.
Gatz says
According to the ‘Soons’ website the pub is in the home of the Harvey Family, one of whom, Eliab Harvey, commanded the Temeraire at Trafalgar. It all makes sense now https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/pubs/all-pubs/england/essex/the-temeraire-saffron-walden
H.P. Saucecraft says
Well, I think he’s brilliant.
Moose the Mooche says
Commie.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Oh don’t get me wrong, Moose. Im a classicist at heart; noble subject matter rendered with impeccable technique. Just look at this masterpiece by Gustave Courbet, “Le Growleur Enorme”. Note subtle play of light. Note deft brushwork. Note chromatic and compositional harmony. Expensive frame, too – always the hallmark of a masterwork!
http://i.imgur.com/e0BbMzt.jpg
Moose the Mooche says
I saw this at Musee D’Orsay. It’s helpfully placed at the lower part of the wall so that the kiddies can enjoy it.
chiz says
I suspect people value art the same way they do tattoos, or hats, or vinyl, or sculpted facial hair – it’s the image of themselves that these items project that matters. How many here, I wonder, have album sleeves on their wall compared to how many have a Constable. Banksy says street, edgy, outlaw, bold, anti-establishment. I’d wear that hat if it I thought it would fit.
Art, like music and foodie culture, is all about the story, not the product. Struggling painter in his garrett, mysterious anarchist stenciller, cross-dressing potter. She wrote it in an Edinburgh coffee shop, you know. He made the whole album in his shed. All our crisps are hand cut by virgins.
It’s an advert for a new TV so the aim would be controversy and publicity and the idea that new is as valid as classic. More than half of the shortlist are from the last 100 years, and seven from the last 30. Not really a fair fight – and not intended to be one either. If you go to the source material, you see it’s not a ‘pick one’ choice. Short version – don’t take it too seriously.
https://news.samsung.com/uk/streets-ahead-graffiti-triumphs-over-classics-as-the-art-of-the-nation
Rigid Digit says
Yep, that save against Pele was something special
I like the guerrilla concept of his dawbings, and the general “disposable nature”, but just can’t remember too many fantastically memorable ones
Sewer Robot says
Exactly. Gatz says it’s a “shallow cartoon”, but you can’t expect the man to do perspective well when he’s only got one eye…
JustB says
Haha
Moose the Mooche says
Isn’t it funny, I knew the Afterword didn’t like Banksy even though I’ve never seen him mentioned on the site.
If he was a cartoonist for the Spectator, or Private Eye (which he could be) you’d like him. And you certainly wouldn’t drone on about him being someone who’s been to public school or isn’t sufficiently poor or whatever else he’s supposed to have done wrong.
attackdog says
I can’t say I dislike him but I would describe him more of a graphic artist than an ‘artist’. I also can’t say that I dislike his content which I think conveys a shallow, short attention span society in which we increasingly live.
His ‘two lovers on the phone’ is a fantastic representation of just that and as such is more of a ‘comment’ than ‘art’.
JustB says
Eh? Public school and insufficiently poor? Where’d you get that from?
He is a cartoonist, you’re right, and on about the same level as Matt. Who you’ll notice isn’t topping anyone’s list of great artists, because of not being one.
Just an observation, btw, but I rarely see anyone on here taking up the cudgels on behalf of The People when Angels by Robbie Williams is voted Bestest Ever Song again, or when the X Factor gets its latest Christmas number 1…
Sid Williams says
To be fair, nobody claims that Bansky is the greatest, just that the great unwashed voted it as their favourite, from a list of 20 compiled by art critics and writers. That’s fair enough isn’t it?
Personally I find art galleries the very definition of tedium. I cant get excited about prowess that I don’t understand but I do get pleasure looking at pictures of things like abandoned shopping malls (Seph Lawless if you’re interested), and of course my 2 original Squeezers representing my grandsons (they reflect their individual personalities so perfectly that I’ve caught myself talking them).
For what its worth, I would have put the Hockney painting higher up but otherwise it wouldn’t be too far off based on the ones I know. I’d better go and shower.
JustB says
But again, if this was – say – that poll from a couple of years ago that voted Angels as the public’s favourite ever song, I bet you wouldn’t be saying the same thing.
I’m not saying you have to go to galleries, but I am sort of saying that if you want to opine about art it might be an idea to have seen some. Seems a little odd for a public that doesn’t like art to be voting in a poll about it, no?
I mean, fine, not everyone has to have the deep attachment to visual art that some of us have. I’m no expert but I LOVE art and get a massive emotionally immersive experience from it. I do get that some people just want pretty wallpaper, and don’t engage with it in the same way I do.
But the Afterword’s genial tolerance of Joe Public just wanting pretty flat wallpaper doesn’t extend to music, does it?
chiz says
It’s an interesting comparison. If you asked people who don’t like music to pick from the equivalent of Banksy (trip hop) Vettriano (1990’s pop) Lowry (Gracie Fields) or Turner (Elgar), what would their choice be based on?
JustB says
Turner is more Stravinsky than Elgar 😉
I dunno. I’m just struck by how arbitrary the distinction between being an informed, cultured person (music) and a snob (art) seems to be.
Lemonhope says
But you’re presenting the wrong song in comparison – comparing Banksy to Angels. No, no-one would leap to defend Angels.
It’s apples and oranges
JustB says
Why wouldn’t anyone leap to defend Angels? Are you saying Angels is objectively worse than Banksy? Bit snobby, no? 😉
Moose the Mooche says
I like Angels. On the evidence of this thread* I’m evidently a cunt. Perhaps I’ll list this as my profession on LinkedIn.
(*and many others, to be fair)
JustB says
I don’t mind Angels. It’s a well-crafted bit of pop with not much depth to it, and in that sense exactly analogous to Banksy, for me. But my point isn’t really about the work itself as about when it’s OK to eye-roll at Joe Public’s taste in stuff.
Lemonhope says
I’m confused – you brought up Angels.
For the record I’m saying that Angels is more the Anne Geddes [*snort*] of music.
JustB says
But perhaps Angels just touches people in a more visceral way than [insert music you like here]. Isn’t that a function of music? To move, and to stir feeling?
😉
Lemonhope says
Yes it does. You’ve hit the nail on the head.
JustB says
And yet it’s fine for you to write it off as Anne Geddes sentimentality but less fine for me to do the same with Banksy?
Lemonhope says
I’m not writing it off though. I think it’s exceptional. But let’s end this here. It’s become a debate on who is most wrong on the internet. I’m sure neither of us wants that 😉
JustB says
Ha, fair enough 🙂
Sid Williams says
of course I would. How could I challenge the “publics favourite” result unless I constituted the whole public. If the criteria was “as a music expert, rate of the following 20 pieces of music in order of artistic merit” then maybe not, although Angels is pretty good if not my typical fare, and in a field of 20, who knows?
I’m not sure these people were actively opining, they were probably polled at random and asked to rate the following…etc.
JustB says
Well, you’re bigger than ten men, Sid. 😉
Twang says
There was a poll a while ago which voted “The Fighting Temeraire” as most popular which surprised me as I never thought it was that well known, much as I love it. I just think of Banksy as glorified graffiti, ok to look at but hardly great art.
JustB says
Well that’s cheered me up a bit at least.
I went photographing around London towards the end of my massive sick-leave session earlier this year and stopped in at the National, as I always try to when I’m in the area. I sat in front of the Fighting Temeraire for about 40 minutes, despite having seen it hundreds of times before. I can never tire of it.
Same with the Canalettos on the trip before that. That’s what I love about the National Gallery – I always come out having fallen in love with something that had previously passed me by. There’s this whole hall of Canaletto, and that was me done for the day. I was in that room so long I think they suspected me of casing it for a heist 😉
Twang says
There’s a wonderful documentary about it, (maybe one of the Simon Sharma “Power of art” ones? OK he’s a bit of a self caracature now but that series was great, especially the Rothko one) which had me welling up when I understood some of the history and underlying message in the picture, apart from its undeniable power as a thing to look at.
EDIT….it was an “In our time”…. the welling up happened next time I saw it. …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b081r260
David Kendal says
I’ve been told by someone who works in the gallery world, that Sunflowers, The Fighting Temeraire, Whistlejacket , and Rousseau’s Surprised! are usually found to be among the most popular pictures in the National Gallery. The further back you go, the paintings tend to be less popular as people are less familiar with the biblical and mythological stories behind them, and so have to read up on them. I suppose there is also a story behind The Fighting Temeraire, but you can pick up quite quickly from the label beside it, and it has an emotional impact without knowing that.
JustB says
Plus it’s just bloody beautiful, which is my reason for loving it.
Being a lapsed choirboy, I love all the Renaissance stuff, and you’re right – those rooms are often quieter. You can get up close to a Piero della Francesca without any jostling. Incredible experience.
pencilsqueezer says
Hooray for the Renaissance! Works of sublime beauty and also downright weird. I love it.
On a broader note I sometimes wonder why the British in particular have an almost atavistic need for narrative in painting? Is it because of the undoubted strength of English Literature I wonder?
JustB says
It’s an interesting question. I have to say that the “story” of the Fighting Temeraire has never really been a factor in how I see it – I love the colours, is basically what it comes down to – and maybe the reason I don’t like Banksy is because to me it’s nothing but “story”. I just remembered that when we were discussing poetry the other day I mentioned that the reason I don’t like Kate Tempest is because I find her so literal and unlayered. Just as in poetry it’s the music of the language that often means more to me than the narrative, I feel the same with colour and texture in visual art. It’s why I love Rothko and Kandinsky and and and and. It’s why, of the English canon of 19th C artists, I tend to prefer Turner to Constable: JMW was just obsessed with colour, to the extent that the rest of the RA relentlessly mocked him the less figurative he got. He had this rabbit hole of colour and texture that he couldn’t stop burrowing to the bottom of. I love that.
Plus, I don’t like my art to tell me what to think. Maybe it’s that.
But then, you and me are also dyed in the wool Taffs, P. Maybe it’s that too. All about the senses, rather than the intellect. Bloody Celts. 😉
pencilsqueezer says
I concur. Unsurprisingly.
Understanding the symbols and codes can be useful when looking at certain genres and periods. I like you enjoy to bathe in the beauty first though. The narrative, if one exists can wait. The dialogue comes first, let the paint speak freely.
Moose the Mooche says
Well, personally, if an artist can’t present protest imagery that includes a fully costed alternative that wouldn’t upset the FTSE100, I think they should only be allowed to do watercolours of woodland scenes.
attackdog says
Quite. van Gough never quite got it.
chiz says
Good example of how backstory defines art – he did nothing in his lifetime, but once the myth and the marketing got going, he’s a bloody genius. He owes it all to Don McClean you know.
pencilsqueezer says
Read his letters to his brother Theo if you get the chance. They are most interesting and in hindsight extremely moving.
chiz says
I’ve stood in the room Theo found him at Saint-Remy and looked out at the same wheat field he did. It was full of tourists on the Vincent trail. My feeling was that they were buying their posters and prints for his story, or some monetised retrospective image of him, not for his art.
Lemonhope says
‘Ear ‘Ear
pencilsqueezer says
Boom! And indeed tish!
Locust says
I find the chosen list of twenty even more baffling than the result, TBH. Would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall when the panel got together to debate and vote on what to include in that list!
Lemonhope says
That’s the contention right there, isn’t it? It’s a strange list.
Apples and oranges again perhaps?
salwarpe says
Cezanne? Yes please!
pencilsqueezer says
Thoroughly agree Lo. As with most lists, what and who has been excluded is much more interesting. I’m guessing that this is a compromised list with the compilers attempting to create a list of artworks salted with a number of populist pieces from household names in the pursuit of not being seen as elitist and highbrow.
The choice of the top three “winners” under those circumstances is completely unsurprising.
As P. T Barnum once said “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the general public.”
retropath2 says
I think it fairly well established I am a music snob, hell, we most are. And too an art snob, albeit arguably an inverse art snob: my favourite bits of art tend to be somewhat throwaway, discounting our learned friend’s work. I like Roy Lichtenstein, Edvard Munch*, Ralph Steadman. And, yes, Banksy. His images make me smile.
(*Trolling? Moi?)
pencilsqueezer says
I am utterly trivial and thrown away but in a raffish, rugged yet strangely winsome kinda way.
Artery says
We are all cultural snobs. It is endemic in anyone who has an opinion (and maybe even a sniff of education?). It’s a first world thing really; I don’t suppose hut dwellers up the Amazon think that one canoe design is more worthy than another. Snobbery should not be a term of abuse.
Me. I’m proud to be a snob, just as I am happy to be a pink liberal leftie or whatever.
PS I have no real opinion about Banksy’s graffiti. I do like the clandestine idea though.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Rob’s a crafty geezer. Ooops.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Democracy innit? They’ve took back control. Stop all the Banksmoaning. Get used to it.
DogFacedBoy says
Wasn’t the previous ‘Britains fave artist,Like, ever’ Rolf Harris?
Junglejim says
Artery is spot on. We ARE all cultural snobs. It probably varies according to what our personal ‘ bag’ is – a lot of what we appreciate the most in any field is as a result of what we have decided to discard or ignore – the definition of being discriminatory.
I pretty much know what I like musically, artistically and literature-wise & hope that if I’ve learnt anything by my age it’s to be as receptive as possible to the idea of stuff that’s new to me.
It took quite a while to get to this stage, as there’s tons of stuff out there that’s worth checking out.
We shouldn’t condemn the great British public for a lack of sophistication or taste – anything , really ANYTHING that might point the way to an appreciation of the wider world of the arts has to be a good thing. Banky’s stuff is simple & instantly accesible – more akin to an agit prop poster than fine art but I’d put money on his stuff sparking something for numerous as-yet unknown artists who are just kids now but have found it engaging.
Access points to the arts are vital & for many ( perhaps most) they are not via the Art ( with a capital A) world but pulpy movies, names dropped by performers that kids like & TV & the net. I reckon Banksy is one such access point.
My folks were culture vultures & as a kid I was dragged round galleries regularly & bored almost to tears – endless canvases of pasty ugly people wearing wigs who really said nothing to me about my life .
At the Tate (now Tate Britain) aged 9 or 10 I saw Lichenstein’s ‘ Wham’ & made my first ever connection with someting appealing that grown ups considered ‘art’. Without that spark, it’s entirely possible I’d have never developed any appreciation of visual art at all – even with parents who loved all that stuff & exposed me too it.
The ‘value’ of Banksy’s is a source a hilarity to me – I can’t do anything about it, so why rail against it? I find his gimmicky stuff a lot less cynical than that of D Hirst Esq for example, & believe it essentially does no harm.
Vulpes Vulpes says
This. In spades.
pencilsqueezer says
Just for the record I have no problem with Banksy, it’s the bloody public I deplore. 👅
Junglejim says
I’m with you Mr Eyeballpleaser, though your comment did immediately make me think of Charlie Brown ‘ I love humanity, it’s people I can’t stand!’😄
chiz says
or this:
Blue Boy says
Im not convinced by the argument that the great British public’s taste is any worse than it ever has been. An equivalent poll 150 years ago would, no doubt, have seen a top choice of some sentimental narrative painting showing a grieving soldier and his faithful dog or somesuch which the critics of the day, and, indeed, the Victorian Afterword, would have been appalled by. And whilst Beethoven and Mozart would have been widely recognised as the greatest composers ever, I doubt more than 5% of the population, if that, would ever have heard any of their music.
So I’m not really bothered by the outcome of this poll, but I am bothered by the way it’s been reported. What we have here is a poll of 2000 people conducted to promote a new TV. They’ve been shown images of a number of works of art (not clear how many, and what ones, apart from the reported top 20) and asked, presumably, to pick their favourite four or five. As an indication of how much that actually represents their favourite works of art, note that Andy Goldsworthy’s Balanced Rock Misty is number 13. Now Goldsworthy is a fantastic artist but I wonder how many of the 2000 had ever heard of him, never mind seen an image of this particular work before being asked to look at if for this poll.
So, all a bit of fun, but no more indicative of the nation’s taste than an Afterword poll of the best Beatles B-sides. (Actually, that’s not a bad idea – have we done that?).
No, it’s not the choice that bothers me about this, it’s the way it’s been reported. So, the supposedly serious and authoritative BBC tells us the Banksy has been ‘chosen as the nation’s favourite artwork’. The Guardian does the same, and its art critic writes a column about the nation’s stupidity. But it hasn’t been chosen as the nation’s favourite artwork and it demonstrates nothing. And this matters. Because if we demean our language in this way on silly season nonsense, we give sanction to our politicians and media to do so on much more important things and we debase our critical faculties and ability to challenge what we’re being told. And that, people, is how a 52/48% result of a binary poll in which 28% of the population didn’t participate becomes ‘the will of the people’.
Of those on the top 20, by the way, I’d have gone for the Gainsborough although for me Turner has the greatest overall body of work by a British artist.
minibreakfast says
No need, stop right there. It’s Rain.
Moose the Mooche says
I’ll Get You.
Both my answer and a promise.
Blue Boy says
Yup – I’ll Get You would be my call too.
John Walters says
You can’t do that.
Or
I’m down
None better IMHO !
John Walters says
Bugger – “Don’t let me down”
Forgot about that one.
Again. None better
slotbadger says
Old Brown Shoe!
Declan says
I Am The Walrus
JustB says
81 comments you guys! Reviews site schmeviews site! Amirite?
Moose the Mooche says
This thread is essentially a review of a list. Afterword in excelcis.
pencilsqueezer says
Damn you British Public!
I’ve had to spend a perfectly serviceable Friday evening getting shitfaced on cheap vodka whilst weeping over a poor reproduction of Millais Bubbles just to try and find some sort of equilibrium in this topsy turvy hill of sorrow beans…
chiz says
This week’s top 10; poetry, politics, puns, art, cars, fretless bass… and not a YouTube list to be seen. Good times, innit.
Moose the Mooche says
Boo-dowwwww!
chiz says
Ptchoo!
Peanuts Molloy says
Ok. 81 comments: but more than half are from you, Disappointed Bob (21), Pencilsqueezer (12) and Lemonhope (10).
It’s a bit of an argument in an empty room. @blue-boy and @Chiz both summarised it well . . . Samsung want to sell a telly, let’s create a Mrs Merton debate.
Here’s my contribution. My dad (a lorry driver) and my father in law (a tractor driver), both good men, would no more choose to visit an art gallery than Bob, for example, would choose to attend a football match. They both would have appreciated the poster of a gal scratching her bum on a tennis court. I too could spend 40 minutes staring at that!
Moose the Mooche says
You counted them!
You….. counted them!
Fuckin’ actual hell!!
Peanuts Molloy says
@moose-the-mooche The only way I could make my feeble point was by doing some research, Why are you picking on me when there are others more deserving? Particularly on this thread. Counting is my hobby. I am currently up to 1,111,123.
On this pointless thread you have made 9 comments (9%). None of them smutty. Shows how much you care!
Moose the Mooche says
None smutty, all facetious. If I’m not one I’m t’other. Thank you for noticing 😉
Peanuts Molloy says
Yes but you’ve hurt my feelings. And I am quite sensitive actually. So what do you think about that, kiddo? (PS don’t feel obliged to reply.) x
PPS. Beware . . . if you do reply you’re up to 11% on this stupid thread.
Tiggerlion says
His I’ll Get You comment was smutty. And, he means well.
As for me, I’m impressed with your ability to count. There’s nothing as effective as facts to help make a point.
JustB says
The point apparently being that this is a “stupid thread” and an “argument in an empty room”.
Me, I thought we were just having an interesting conversation. I see no trace of an “argument”. My mistake, apparently. 🙁
pencilsqueezer says
Me too Bob.
Tiggerlion says
And a very interesting conversation it has been too. I’m enjoying it. 👍
Gary says
I found this whole conversation interesting. I have nothing worthwhile to contribute, so here it is:
– I have no paintings in my house for the same reason I have no tattoos on my body: a total inability to commit.
– I think the business of paintings and sculpture is more about branding a name (and less about talent) than any other field of art.
– I adore London’s National Gallery. One of my favourite places on the planet. Not so much for the art as for the atmos. A great place to chill.
– Love Turner, think Rothko is nonsense.
chiz says
Introducing facts into an Afterword discussion is like taking a gun to a pillow fight. You’ll win, but it won’t feel as good as you thought it would.
Moose the Mooche says
“He means well” – how durrr you?
JustB says
Um… re. the post count, I was joking.
Moose the Mooche says
Mine is 5 (NPower statement, stupid catalogue, Electoral Register, postcard from Mrs M’s cousin, specialist photography magazine in the plain brown wrappers)
Alias says
I donI know about art but I know what I like. And I got to about 5 exhibitions a year. I judge art, like music, purely on how much I like it and I really like Banksy. 2,000 people looked at internet images of 20 works of art and chose Banksy, so what?
I recommend the film Exit Through The Gift Shop to anyone interested in Banksy or street art. For me ideas and imagination are a significant factor in what constitutes good art today and Banksy has both in abundance.
Moose the Mooche says
My trouble is I know a lot about art but I don’t know what I like.
(A Bit Of Fry & Laurie, 1989)
Bingo Little says
You lot get all worked up about the British public’s refusal to engage with great works of art, and yet I bet hardly any of you have played Bloodborne.
Hypocrisy, is what I call it.
Sitheref2409 says
I am, I think, unsophisticated about art. I have no talent for it. Zero. As in, “allowed” to not take any art/design classes when I was at school.
I couldn’t give you any sort of informed criticism about art if you gave me a big book to read from. I am firmly at the “I like what I like” end of the spectrum.
I love the NPG in London, and the Guggenheim in NY. Some stuff just stands out. But one of my absolutely favorite places in D.C. is the Phillips Collection. It’s a (relatively) small museum and can be occasionally hit or miss with its displays. But it has the Rothko room, for which it may be forgive all errors. It is breathtaking, and much like Bob looks at the Temeraire, I can sit in that room for ages and just drink in the colors – at least until I get the hurry up from Sharon.
Not my usual thing – I tend to prefer pictures with stories, or stories you can imagine new for the picture; find something in it every time you look at it. But Rothko, man. That dude could paint.
JustB says
Absolutely adore Rothko. 🙂
aging hippy says
Whenever these deep philosophical debates about art arise I’m always reminded of the immortal words of John Cleese…
“Look! I’m the bloody pope, I am! May not know much about art, but I know what I like.”
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/michpope.php
bungliemutt says
An art thread with no art? (Mr Saucepot, take a bow for your lovely Courbet). Now that no one is reading this thread any more I’ll stick my tuppence worth in. I’m no expert, but I do know what I like, and my inclination is to agree with most of what Bob and Mr Squeezer have said. Banksy isn’t my cup of char, but if his work says something to the GBP, then that’s okay, but great art? Not to my eyes. For what it’s worth, I’m rather partial to the one below, Love Among The Ruins by Edward Burne-Jones. It’s late pre-Raphaelite, unmistakeably Victorian, and some sort of symbolist dreamscape / pile of sentimental tosh depending on your point of view. It’s rather good though, and I’d stick it in my front room and stare at it for hours in preference to a Banksy any day of the week.
Kid Dynamite says
I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like, and it’s an exploded shed.
pencilsqueezer says
Connie is an old friend. I first met her in 1979.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Ah, so it was you that left a smouldering dog-end near her acetylene kit?
Leicester Bangs says
I thought this was great. (But how did he activate it?)
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/oct/06/banksy-sothebys-auction-prank-leaves-art-world-in-shreds-girl-with-balloon
Moose the Mooche says
It’s all shed’n’shred.
Tiggerlion says
Apparently, its value has doubled. The buyer must be pleased from a financial point of view.
Arthur Cowslip says
Remote control? First rule of magic – the simplest, most obvious, boring solution is usually the correct one.
Leicester Bangs says
Definitely remote control, yes.
But activated how? Powered how? Feels like these aspects haven’t been interrogated at all by the media.
It all seems very fishy to me, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Sotheby’s were in on it. In fact, if you watch the video, it looks as though the auctioneer presses something right after he does his ‘going, going, gone’ bit.
robert says
This is good from the ever-reliable Bendor Grosvenor: https://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/5303_Shredding_Banksy
Leicester Bangs says
And *that* is the article I’ve been looking for. Thank you very much.