I’m no art expert, but it’s pretty shit isn’t it? It looks like Game of Thrones fan art done by a 15 year old.
Botticelli Painting sells for $120m
by 57 Comments
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Musings on the byways of popular culture
Aussie rules Art.
Crikey mate! Me bloomin’ kid could’ve knocked a half dozen of those off before ‘iz boomerang came around to knock ‘iz digeridoo round iz lug ‘ole!
“How much?!” Always good to hear the old “I’m no expert but … a child of five could have done better” argument. I used to work in an art gallery, where I heard it all the time, especially from the uniformed attendants whose job it was to sit on chairs around the place. Another favourite dismissal was “wouldn’t give it house room!”
Re HP Saucecraft
And here’s the five-year old boy in question
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Bragolin_Crying_Boy.JPG
We had his picture on the wall in our house – which as per the curse – promptly caught fire. Thank goodness this brave and noble youngsters’ tears were all that were needed to halt the conflagration in its tracks!
Harsh, but hear me out. I admit I have a poor eye for art and little understanding of its history, however I can usually recognise the attributes that others find appealing in a work of art, even if I don’t find that work appealing myself.
To me, old masters paintings are rich in colour and contrast, and usually have interesting composition. This one looks pale washed out and oddly two-dimensional. The poor, gormless lad who is the subject (What? The curtains?) is awkwardly proportioned and looks like his head has been cut off and put on backwards. So why on earth is this now the second most expensive painting ever sold? Is it just the COVID consumer craziness writ large? Or is this just what these things cost now and it happened to be the next one on the auction block?
For context, this was my favourite painting as a child, and I had a copy on my bedroom wall for decades.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Paolo_Uccello_047b.jpg/600px-Paolo_Uccello_047b.jpg
Jesus Christ man. It’s a fucking Botticelli. 🤦♂️
Botticelli? No, Jelly Botty!
Well I am an expert and I really like it. It’s clever and surprisingly modern-looking, given when it was painted. The very meta incorporation of old stylee portrait within new-stylee enigma (Who is the bloke with his back to us? Why can’t we see his face?) is well good. And the lighting on the blue background, fading from illuminating the mystery man on the right to dark shadow on the left, anticipates the later approach of Caravaggio and of Rembrant.
There’s no need to be flippant Gary, when you can just stick the knife in.
Mr. Hoity Toity and his fancy-pants book learning and fifty dollar words!
You tell him Mr Bellows.
Not to mention the disturbing questions the composition poses; why is the foreground figure in a straitjacket? Is his observation of the portrait one inspired by fear or by hatred? Who is the figure in the roundel and what is the relationship between them and the boy, or between them and the straitjacketed person, and why does the boy himself have that quietly accusatory smirk? Is the smirk aimed at the straitjacketed anonymous, or at the viewer? The combinations and permutations of possible interpretation are enormous, generating an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty. Irrefutably, even at this price, the purchaser has gained an endless source of unresolvable curiosity to hang in the dark in their bank vault.
And who is Rembrant?
Canine star of a series of heartwarming (I.e. witless) films in the 1980s.
Oh, hang about that was Beethoven
I have to say, thoughbut, Gar’s comment here sets a very high bar. I can hear it read by that posh blerk what talked about paintings an’ that. Him. Alan Titchmarsh? No. Ooh – it’s on the tip of me tongue. Brian somebody. Brian … Rix? Oh dear! Not him. Brian …
SEWELL!!!! Him! Posh blerk! Our Nan couldn’t stand him not for love nor money. “Oo put that stick up ‘is arse?” she’d say.
He wasn’t posh himself though, only his voice was instilled with essence of plum.
Second hand market ripping off the artist as ever…..
At least it’s not a friggin’ picture disc.
It’s a bit too Barclay James Harvest for my tastes. Still, it would brighten up a dull bathroom. I am fascinated by that preternatural middle finger and believe he may have used it to probe for grubs in rotting tree trunks, like the Madagascan aye-aye.
How can anything be too Barclay James Harvest?
It’s a fair question, but I think Botticelli has captured the essence of it. That and the aye-aye. On reflection, it’s a wonderfully complex and ambitious piece.
A Concert for the People was @h-p-saucecraft
It’s not a good reproduction, a photograph in which the painting takes up only a part of the image, it’s not seen in the best light. Really you would have to see the original, a wholly different experience, to make a proper judgement. Here’s a better image, look at the subtlety of the facial expression, the stands of hair, the way the hands holding the roundel come forward in space, the way the roundel is conveyed, the portrait on the roundel, it’s a marvel, incredible! https://www.luxuo.com/culture/auctions/the-sothebys-masters-week-sale-presents-sandro-botticellis-young-man-holding-a-roundel.html
That’s certainly a better image, yet there is still something strange and un-anatomical about it.
Here is a serious question for your expertise: The painting looks very bright and clean for its age, which I presume means it has been cleaned of centuries of soot and dirt. Maybe it’s this patina which I’m attracted to in old paintings, and which gives them the contrast and richness I like. With that removed, the tones look too fresh. Is this an issue in the art world? Do some people prefer the dark and weighty look pre-cleaning?
I suppose he had a way of doing faces that makes his figures and portraits quite recognisable as his. He was early renaissance, a bit more stylisation and no chiaroscuro. Looks brighter in colour. Not worse or better necessarily, just another style or idea of what art means. Interesting question about restoration. They bring works of art back closer to how they would have looked at the time they were made and some people don’t like it, they like them with the effects of ageing.
Patina reduces contrast, as any fule kno.
That’s the problem I have with my telly.
Boost the horizontal hold!
What, in these trousers?
Have you tried degaussing?
WRT removing the patina : my Nan says if you get one of your knees done you’ll probably need to get the other done shortly after. Maybe he’ll get that finger sorted when he’s in..?
“Botticelli?! What about Jelly Botti, where you have to eat 18 curries?”
Oho!
This Botticelli chap dashed off one figure – rather badly to my mind – and gets US120,00,000 for his trouble.
The bloke who came up with this beauty detailed four or five figures and yet his works go for a few pence down at the local Sue Ryder Shop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_Playing_Poker#/media/File:Cassius_Marcellus_Coolidge_-_Poker_Game_(1894).png
I know which one you’ll find hanging on my wall!
“You can tell a good painting if the eyes follow you around the room.” That was another Gallery Attendants’ Theory Of Art aphorism. Your poker playing dogs absolutely fail this test.
Phil Cool had a way of doing faces too. Where’s his $120m?
Surely the OP brings to the fore the by now well rehearsed idea that the *value* of a piece of art (or more accurately, what it can be sold for) has next to nothing to do with how * good* it is.
Putting aside that our responses to art are often subjective- or heavily conditioned by what we’ve been exposed to- the international art market at the level of the Botticelli is almost solely concerned with investment & is frequently the concern of hedge funds or billionaires with no interest in the art at all.
I don’t mind the Botticelli, but it would be *way* down the list of anything I’d want to look at all day, let alone fork out for, even if I could afford to bid. This sale is determined by availability ( or lack of availability of other stuff) & the hype the market can drum up for it.
So, using one of Adam Button’s best questions, & putting market value aside, based purely on *what you like* which ONE piece of art would Afterworders like to get their grubby mitts on & have ‘indoors’? Put aside practically of size or security, what do you love?
Rembrandt? Turner? Henry Moore? Francis Bacon ? Frieda Carlo? Jeff Koons? Jake & Dinos? Ai Wei Wei?
( I baggsy a little Vermeer, BTW).
Apologies- I obviously should have included Mr Eyeball Pleaser of this parish.
The pleasure his work generates on here is self evident & I’d gladly gaze at any I’ve seen for hours.
I bagsy Courbet’s L’Origine Du Monde. A masterful composition, enhanced by a nuanced palette and rendered in confident yet delicate brushwork, this is the painting I’d be pleased to hang above my hearth.
It’s gash.
It was shown in London with that very title, translated by a Gallery Attendant. The label remained up for most of the first day.
I saw it in Musee D’Orsay. It was placed quite low down on the wall, presumably so that small children could enjoy it.
Their highest selling postcard, I gather.
A better work than the cover of that Mom’s Apple Pie LP.
Unless the purchaser is an oligarch with scores of armed security people on duty 24/7, this piece is unlikely to be found hanging in anybody’s living room.
Rather it will be tucked away in a climate-controlled vault somewhere or else it will be loaned to a museum or succession of museums as a demonstration of the owner’s wealth and prestige. A demonstration of just what a person of their stature can own.
Surely Van Goghs go for big bucks because everyone knows he produced some of the best art ever made.
While I love art and always go – well used to go – to galleries every time I was in a big city that had one, the only contemporary/living artists I’ve got any time for are Hockney, Ai Weiwei and Banksy.
Absolutely adore AiWeiWei’s stuff and was lucky to get a limited edition print of his for £100 during the first of Circa Art’s monthly offers – check them out -if you’ve got £100 going spare or need a gift for someone, a couple of the offers have been terrrfic. The other current artist I really like is Maurizio Cattelan (check out his kneeling sculpture with its face to the wall) who just takes the piss out of the pretentiousness that afflicts almost everyone who is serious about buying or collecting modern art.
Can’t abide the likes of Koons (over-priced tat), Emin or Hirst – most of whose installations are put together by assistants. The same applied to his series of dot paintings of a few years back. While a canvas with several colored dots created by one of his assistants would be worth next to nothing, once his signature was on it, it became worth squillions.
The real problem with today’s art world lies with collectors like Charles Saatchi whole ability to buy up every canvas by an emerging artist means he can drive up and then drive prices back down on a whim. Piss him off at your peril!
Interesting article about Maurizio Cattelan here
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-49686634
Circa art website here
https://circa.art/support-circa/
Banksy no, Hockney yes. Also Gerhard Richter, he who is behind the Sonic Youth Daydream Nation candle painting cover.
Never liked Hockney. Too many swimming pools.
I mentioned this to an ex girlfriend once. She replied, “There’s the lido at London Fields, but I can’t think of another one.”
Titfers aloft!!!
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Apologies for use of the words “it became worth squillions” above.
A more accurate set of words would be “it could sell for squillions”,
or “gullible idiots with too much money and too little taste would cheerfully fork out squillions”
I don’t think the pretentiousness is limited to those who buy or collect modern art either; it’s just as applicable to many of those who just pontificate about it.
Banksy….. aaaargh… you said my trigger word. I absolutely hate the guy. He (if it is one person? Or a “he” at all?) hit upon a mildly interesting stencil/monochrome style that was briefly in vogue enough to be a Blur album about twenty years ago, and ever since has surfed on the kudos of a “street” reputation and the dubious thrill of his identity being a mystery. His art is trite and attention-seeking, and with a cringe-inducing level of “right-on” virtue signalling.
I was at art school in the mid noughties and every day I felt like bringing in a machine gun to mow down the Banksy copyists who were infecting the place.
… and breathe….
I don’t like him much.
My thoughts exactly. Just awful.
Not exactly the artist’s finest work, is it?
No doubt that’s a contributing factor towards it taking so long to make an appearance.
The visual arts equivalent of a “lost” Neil Young album.
Looks like a young Robin Gibb holding a pic of an aged Barry.