Vettriano revisited

Sorry Dermot, I've never been a fan of his and this piece leaves my cold, I could churn reams on why but I won't. I think that it was Robert who mentioned Ikea and that is how I sum his work up. Popular with interior designers and those who are looking for a print to match their curtains, good job that we are all different and I do respect others points of view on his work.

I have to agree with you Dermot. Having said that most of Vettriano's work does little for me - dancers on a beach with an umbrella etc - and then along comes one which really makes me sit up and take notice - like the superb piece posted above. I guess the difference is believability in the subject matter and composition which most have little of and this one has in oudles.

My lunch date is postponed until later so I will resume... I have the highest regard for Ken Howard RA and I particularly like his series of 'studio paintings', his ability to capture light is exceptional as can be seen is this great studio work and his painterly style is masterful. Definitely another contender for our best living artist and a highly respected figure in the art world.

Two great paintings above. Yes I also love Howard, and have a couple of books on his works, but dare I suggest that Howard is maybe possibly perhaps more of a sort of a painters painter whereas Vet - I have no books on him at all - is more of a painter for the man in the street and, thus, the public purse, . I could easily live with either painting but being very much a modernist/minimalist in terms of taste and décor (unlike many of my age I'm pleased to say my house doesn't smell like a charity shop and I haven't got any brown wood furniture) I tend to lean ever so very slightly wobblingly towards the Vet. Aw heck - what do I know - perhaps I'm just a lowly street person after all. A quick edit to add that if I were offered 6 Howards or 6 Vettrianos I would chose the Howards every time but that doesn't alter my choice out the two posted above - that particular Vet is quite special - thanks for posting it Dermot.

VG great but Sisley even greater - his work a little more refined , not so brash - how about the simplicity and super palette of this one. On the snow theme another favourite of mine is Paris under snow by Laloue

I remember the critic who labelled Vettriano "pornographic", and the picture which prompted the remark. I thought it an extreme reaction - I didn't like the painting much, but it did fit in with the sleaziness of the world which obsesses him. My problem with that world - that it's artificial, and referencing one very limited genre - is something I've stated before and I'm not going through all that again. The picture shown above is competently painted, and elements of it are attractive; there's nothing wrong with it, if that's what you like. But for those who are interested in the properties of paint, it's flat - whereas van Gogh, who is also mentioned, made his paint move; and Hopper, who also used very flat paint, was generally more interesting in his subject matter, which reflected a real world, not a celluloid version of one. Why did van Gogh not sell in his lifetime, and why the difference in attitude (not universally shared, we note!) today? Well if I knew how to sell paintings, I'd be doing it..... it's always a chancy business, made more so by the gatekeepers of fashion, then and now. Back then, the galleries had a monopoly of the art the buying public got to see - the art connoisseur and gallery owners were used to sedate paintings: the idea that an artist might be a tortured soul whose emotional writhing broke through to the canvas was an unsettling idea to bourgeois Dutch, Flemish and French gallery owners, whose dislike of it when they saw it was visceral. They were used to, e.g., the Dutch school of painting, very accomplished, smooth work on the whole, specializing in interiors, pleasing rustic landscapes, and seascapes. Then along comes van Gogh, with his weird manners and behaviour, his twisted trees and eccentric perspective, his use of the new colours then available (and their unfortunate tendency to fade in a matter of months) - he suffered the fate of the socially awkward, and the different. And most people at the time didn't see his work at all. There was also the fear of madness, mental illness not being generally understood then (is it now?). Critics don't change much, though - the work of Andrew Wyeth in the USA was generally disrespected by critics of the academic bent, who guard the portals of Art with a capital A; he wasn't a pop artist, or Expressionist; he wasn't even an Impressionist; but by the time Wyeth came along - and in the USA which is a big country in every sense of the word - the sniffier galleries and more constipated critics couldn't stand between him and the public and block their view; and the fact was that the public wasn't much impressed by the avant-garde (still isn't, probably). So he was able to break through the barriers of prejudice and conservatism (the latter can take many odd forms: the champions of any form of modern art can be as reactionary as any who can see no virtue in anything painted since Constable). There are good and bad critics, just as there are good and bad painters - but these days, they don't rule the roost as once they and the gallery owners did, even if both are still too influential. The bigger problem today is that there's so much stuff out there, and so much meretricious tat expertly promoted and pushed (I don't place Vettriano in that category, incidentally) that the great majority of painters couldn't possibly live on their sales - the reasons may be different, the problem is the same for the poor bugger with the paint-brush. http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk

We all know how difficult it is to produce something good, so I cannot see why people object so strongly to Vetriano. It's not as though his work is so badly executed that you cannot look at it. I agree his work is highly commercial but as one of the lucky guys who managed to jump off the tread mill, and make his living from art (and that many people like his work), he should be applauded. Whether you prefer other styles is like choosing a sandwich, down to personal taste.

I think it is a peculiarity of the English, that they do not like successful people. I'm not sure about the rest of the British Isles though. They are completely opposite to the Americans in this respect. e.g.. a lot of them like Donald Trump, there cannot be another sensible reason why!

Here is an artist who has exhibited alongside Vettriano expressing his views about modern art. https://realistart.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/thoughts-on-modern-contemporary-art/

Jonathan Jones isn't a serious art critic - he changes his mind more often than some of us change our underwear, and it's not much of a mind to start with. And Jack Vettriano has, I hope and believe, much more money in the bank that dear old JJ will ever have, which I hope is some consolation - I do think that JV's work is a male fantasy, but then: why shouldn't it be? But what really irked me was the quote up above that JV was "the Jeffrey Archer of the art world": that's gratuitously insulting not so much to Vettriano, though if I were he I'd have taken it that way, as to those who collect or admire his paintings - and it's also sheer nonsense, however it was meant. Archer is a pulp novelist who, for a good many years, did very well out of his books (how, God knows - I tried to read one of them, and ended it by throwing it across the room and jumping on it: really. It was that bad); Archer has little respect for words, his basic material, and is ham-fisted in his deployment of them. Vettriano is at the very least a competent craftsman - it's patently unfair to make such a comparison even if one hates his work. We seem to be living in a world these days where anything that appeals to "the male" is decried as crass, or crude fantasizing. But that's not my problem with JV: indeed, I don't HAVE a problem with him, other than those I've stated before. I do wonder why he excites such passionate distaste from the art establishment - one reason is that he's not a member of it, but there's something else going on there - it's almost a fear .... the plebs like him, therefore we've got to stop this spreading to the cognoscenti: but why? Because it would undermine the whole basis of the art market, probably, but anyone's guess is as good as mine. Jonathan Jones, by the way, wrote an article on Maggie Hambling's work (which isn't invariably to my taste either) which I thought disgraceful: it was personally unpleasant, vicious and petulant. I don't in fact believe that art appreciation is "just a matter of opinion", but writers like Jonathan Jones, who offer nothing but personal opinion with an added dash of vitriol, can lead you to suppose that it is. Informed, intelligent opinion is likely to be more reliable than knee-jerk emotionalism - but not all critics or academics are capable of telling the difference. It's just that on the whole they dress their prejudices up in the language they've learned and in which they've become expert: that of the calculated sneer. http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk

Not sure it only applies to artists Dermot. There are duffers as well as cowboys in most trades and even in professions if it comes to that.