I studied a lot of art.. and never really liked Picasso either (tho' I did have a poster in college of that café scene). I do appreciate the fact that he was capable of the basics and then took risks pushing the envelope, paving the way for a lot of 'modern' art culminating in conceptual art a la Yoko Ono (from memory so paraphrasing one of her art 'koans' here: "Write the book of your life. Write it in your own blood. Keep writing until you die.").
I appreciate very little of the current art scene, since it seems to continue to be largely based on such concepts which are now so widespread as to fall to the level of gimmicks. The first time someone presented a urinal, or an all-white canvas, it was intriguing and provocative given the context of that era; the second and third and 100th time.. who cares? Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger created quite a buzz when I was in college.. but uh.. what have they done for us lately? To my mind a lot of today's artists only rely on "concepts" and skip the "art" part.. proceeding directly to 'craft' and mass-market fabrication. Kruger's art, once mildly interesting and provocative, instantly became the lingua franca of every punkzine and is now quite mainstream. Unlike even the slightest of Picasso's sketches, anyone can do it.
The things that puzzle me most are the 'installations'.. I don't think I've ever seen an 'installation' that made me think "cool!" or "wow!". I don't know who 'buys' them.. though I know they are sometimes sold. Once you do "Broken Kilometer" (a Km of metal rod chopped up and arranged neatly on the floor.. what's next? "Broken Mile"? "Broken Fathom"?
If you have $250 burning a hole in your pocket (aside from plane fare) you can go see this:
Walter De Maria: Lightning Field
Here's a room filled with dirt:
Walter De Maria: The New York Earth Room
Oy.
This cracks me up:
"Broken Kilometer" is a companion piece to "Vertical Earth Kilometer" which consists of a brass rod one kilometer long buried vertically in the ground outside the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel for Documenta VI in 1977. This piece is impossible to see beneath the ground, therefore the reality of the rod pierced through the earth for one kilometer needs to be taken on faith.
Other works made by Walter de Maria which need faith to believe their dimensions are his earth rooms. Walter de Maria has made three earth rooms during his career so far. His first was called "50 m3 Level Dirt" made in 1968 which filled the Friedrich's Munich Gallery with dirt to a depth of one meter. It was impossible to view the entire gallery space to see if it was entirely covered, for the viewer could only see it from the doorway. The viewer had to either imagine the work or just simply believe that it did exist as described.
AE160D Unit 13: Walter de Maria
Uncle Honey.. those Chiluly pieces are wild.. the chandelier-types are your canonical Venetian chandelier on acid.
Venetian (Murano) blown-glass chandelier
although even the 'normal' ones are pretty trippy (as above) .. and yes, I have seen these things in people's houses. Can't imagine how they clean them!
Are you referencing a particular object of his at your link? Or are you saying the whole school itself is his best 'creation'? I agree passing on rare skills and techniques is priceless and quite admirable!!
Even Renaissance masters used studio workers, so that's nothing particularly new. Nor is self-promotion and politicking. Even in Murano, many of the low-priced, accessible gee-gaws sold in the studios are now produced, erm, "somewhere to the East" of Murano.
