[deepdriver]

I can't find it now, but there's a piece by some writer where he interviews a New York City art critic. It takes some wheedling and wearing down, but eventually he gets the critic to admit that if a particular piece of abstract art weren't presented as "by so-and-so the Famous Artist," the critic wouldn't consider the work notable, valuable, or really very appealing at all. By itself, the work isn't very good. It only has value when attached to a brand and the according social expectations.

That's what I meant by context and social cueing.

[woodruffw]

I think this is a common observation in the art world. But we're not bound to the art world's perverse economic incentives, and Works Progress are in particular was created with consumption by mass Americans in mind.

(I also think they're basically unknown to ordinary Americans, ironically, making the social cueing you're describing even more difficult.)

[ggm]

One maybe needs to know Picasso could (and did) paint in other styles, with phenomenal skill, to decide to appreciate his more cartoon like work as a conscious choice. For more modern artists who emerge rapidly into their style, It can be hard to look at a filthy unmade bed, (Tracy Emin) or half a shark in a tank of Formaldehyde (Damien Hirst) and feel like you aren't having the mickey taken. Or Kapoor "owning" Vantablack, and displaying giant mounds of dry colour. Or Oldenburg's "big things" which are all over the US as civic art.

A lot of the critique of Koons comes down to his emulating the Warhol "Factory" model. His personal input into the outcome is sometimes questionable. Why don't we say the same about Andy? Maybe we should?

"Punch" magazine had a cartoon decades ago ranking real unsigned picasso value over faked picasso real signature. Dali (for instance) was sort-of tricked into signing a shedload of paper, maybe he didn't care, maybe he wanted to get rid of the interloper, but there are now works which have valid authenticated signature but which are probably fake art.

(I don't like a lot of picasso btw. I prefer matisse, a contemporary, and I think every bit as revolutionary in his own way)

[woodruffw]

I don’t like Picasso either (as much as I’ve tried), and I agree with the sentiments around “factory” contemporary art like Warhol and Koons. To me, these embody the worst (and naturally consequent) excesses of art capitalism.

[ggm]

I don't "like" Bacon. or, Lucien Freud, or Basquiat. All three are patently immensely skilled artists, caught up in their own world. They have major works in galleries and I like to see them but spend no time engaging with them.

This is probably why I can't be a decent art critic: I'm too bound up in what I like, rather than what I can say about work I don't like, but do admire. Nobody expects an art critic to like everything but they have to be able to be lucid about the work. I just can't fathom whats going on in Francis Bacon's mind, or Basquiat.