High art or kitsch?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4001 ... butler.jpg" alt=

This painting of two dancers and their long-suffering servants fetched the highest price ever for a Scottish painter.

Here is a further selection of the artist's work from the BBC website.

What do you think?

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Vettriano fetches record price
From the BBC website


The most famous painting by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano has smashed all expectations, selling for £744,800 at auction.
The Singing Butler had been expected to fetch up to £200,000 at Sotheby's spring sale.

The most popular art print in the UK, the artwork sold for £90,000 when it was last auctioned in August.

click for more

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Vettriano: The people's artist
By Lawrence Pollard for BBC World Service


Jack Vettriano is not an artist for the art world. The public buys more of his images than of anyone else's, but you will

have trouble finding him in public collections.

click for more

<small>[ 22 April 2004, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

I kind of like it... I dunno why, I guess becuase it expresses how people can be inconsiderate of others at times. Like cell phones in a resturant. Thats what first popped into my mind when I saw it.

The first thing that popped into my mind was how wet sand is difficult to dance on.

I say it's kitsch.

Heh, I have to respond to this one. I for one have a print of this particular painting hanging in my room. I love it just because the way the couple is portrayed. They would dance even if no one was there to hold umbrellas over them. They dance together as an expression of love and to me they feel as if they're alone. I don't think the servants are long suffering. In some households butlers and housekeepers have a longstanding loyalty to their employers especially if they've worked for them for a long time. It looks to me as if it's concern that makes them want to shield the couple with the umbrellas from the elements but the couple's love expressed through a waltz makes them alone in this picture.

I agree with lilliana on this one...We may have differing opinions on the technical quality, subject matter, composition, interpretation, etc. of a piece of art but to label a work "bad" treads on perilous ground...So many great works of art, ballets included, were derided in their day by critics, only to be hailed as masterpieces centuries later. Van Gogh, anyone? :p

It's "bad" in the sense of naughty. A piece can be a masterwork and still be naughty; the naughtiness can even be a part of its appeal. Some masterpieces are too naughty for their time (eg: Mozart's Magic Flute).

Valid point...perhaps, then, the adjective "naughty", and not the term "bad", should be modifying the art in question?

Just to avoid further confusion?

Am I a complete bore?

A new twist to the Jack Vettriano story:


THIS OLD ART OF MINE
Jack: I DID use manual for my masterpieces
By Lynn Davidson for The Daily Record

ARTIST Jack Vettriano confirmed last night he used images from a reference book to create some of his most famous work.

The Record revealed yesterday the astonishing similarities between Vettriano's characters in paintings and photographs posed by models in a cheap guidebook for illustrators.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_ob ... _page.html

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A KICK UP THE ARTS
Vettriano's copycat row
By Ian Dow and Lynn Davidson for The Daily Record

JACK VETTRIANO'S agent accused another painter of copying his work - even though Vettriano himself based some of his greatest paintings on images from a book.

The Record told yesterday how several works by Britain's best-selling painter bear striking similarities to images in an artists' teaching guide.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_ob ... _page.html

The Independent covers this story in full with astonishing pictures of the originals from the reference book reproduced beside some of Vettriano's pictures.

I think from now on Mr V. will be considered more of a plagiarist than the art critics' bête noire.


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article316931.ece

I want to discuss the concept of dancers' having servants.